On the effects of autism on trauma

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
I took a call today at work from an organization that works with kids with disabilities/differences, and their families.  The worker, if I recall correctly, hadn’t ever spoken to this worker, but she had an extensive file on the case and insisted on telling me about it.  She had hopes that I could direct her to services for the family, whose only insurance was Medicaid.  (Medicaid is incredibly difficult to get therapy, medication, or really anything at all with.)

She got her recommendations.  I got a lesson in misconceptions about autism.  The case was a 10 year old boy, diagnosed autistic.  In the last few years, he had been sexually assaulted.  The worker told me, repeatedly, that the family felt his autism was a blessing, because he seemed somewhat unaware of the enormity of what had happened to him.  Sexual assault is always traumatic, she hastened to assure me, but the family was of the opinion that his autism was sparing him some of the more horrible feelings and reactions people have to such an assault.

I held my tongue at the time, because it’s rare for any family to appreciate autism, I didn’t have the words to express myself at the time, and I didn’t want to yell at her for trying to do her best by the family.  She called to get resources to give the family, not to get a lecture.

But I should have given her the lecture, because the idea that autism protects you from trauma is the biggest bullshit I’ve heard this month, if not the whole year.  If that logic makes sense to you, I beg you, keep reading, because everyone needs to be disabused of this notion. 

Recently I accidentally dropped a 25 pound weight and the assorted contents of a shelf onto my foot.  Now, I’m not a trained medical professional.  I don’t know the names of the bones in my foot.  I don’t know how many major veins and arteries there are in there.  I don’t even know precisely what made the puncture in my foot, because it was 1am and pitch black at the time.

Did the fact that I didn’t know all that make the injury hurt any less?  Hell no.  My foot bled, bruised, and hurt like anyone else’s foot.  However, unlike most people, I didn’t yell, cry, call for help, or anything like that.  I just took my foot out from the pile of stuff, attempted to check whether I had broken bones (thankfully no), cleaned it, and bandaged it.

You know why I reacted that way?  Because I think differently than most people.  If someone saw that accident, and then saw my reaction, they’d probably think it wasn’t that bad of an accident, and I’d seen something like this before or wasn’t concerned about the accident.

But y’know what?  My foot bled on and off for days, and kept oozing plasma for more than a week and a half.  I was scared a lot of the time, even while I hobbled on it at work, because I’ve never broken a bone before and don’t know what it feels like.  I spent a lot of time wondering if I needed to go to the hospital or the urgent care room, and worried about whether my doctor would yell at me for not immediately going.  And I spent a lot of time pretending my foot wasn’t injured, because it really upset me to think about it.  I need my feet to work.  I don’t have extra money to throw at medical expenses.

Would you see any of that if you’d watched me at work?  Absolutely not.  That’s not how I naturally function.  To all appearances, I was merely inconvenienced by my accident.

My autism did diddly squat to protect me from the trauma of smashing my foot.  And as much as society likes to pretend emotional and mental illnesses and differences aren’t the same as physical injuries, they absolutely are.  The fact that you can’t see them bleed, or see a cast on them makes them even worse.  If people can’t see anything wrong, they assume nothing’s wrong, so you suffer in silence, alone.  

That 10 year old kid who’s been sexually assaulted?  According to the case file, he’s developing OCD-like behaviors and other anxious tendencies.  You want to tell me he’s somehow shielded from some of the awfulness that was done to him?  Really?

No.  Do not buy that crap.   You don’t need to know the size and speed of a foot-crushing object to feel every ounce of the pain.  Autistic people are often even more sensitive emotionally than their neurotypical counterparts. That boy is suffering as much or more than he would be if he was neurotypical, and worse, he’s going to suffer alone.  His family is going to just keep thinking, “Well thank God for his autism, he’s not showing the normal trauma reactions we expect victims like him, so he must not be suffering too much.” 

An explanation of anxiety

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
Anxiety in Comic Form

This is somewhat accurate, but not the whole picture for me.  I also experience anxiety as fog.  Normally I can see a few steps ahead where I’m walking, and my thoughts, if not precisely measured, are at least in a steady rhythm.  They follow trains of thought methodically. 

Sometimes, though, when I’m anxious?  My thoughts skitter about, jumping from track to track of thought.  Or even worse, they hop right off the tracks and get buried in the fog.  So then I can’t even think about anything, because all I can see is fog.  This often happens right before a road trip.  I get so anxious about packing and getting everything cleaned up, that instead of doing something about those things, I sit in a corner and compulsively surf the Internet or read.  It gets nothing done, but it makes me feel slightly better until the stress of not doing anything makes it so bad I flail in any direction at all just to get something done. 

It’s bad.  And it sucks.  And it’s also not my fault, but it’s really hard to believe that. 

Losing a (metaphorical) arm

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
So last weekend I had a rather unfortunate experience.  My tablet, which I bring everywhere with me, met its demise to a tile floor and a case design error.  Now, most people don’t have a tablet, they have a smartphone or a laptop.  I find smartphones’ screens too small, and I haven’t had the money to spare for a laptop. I bought this tablet initially for my now-deceased chainmail business- turns out with a tablet and a little plugin, you can accept credit cards pretty much anywhere there’s internet.

To help justify my purchase (which was expensive, even though it was refurbished and not the latest and greatest), I set about making my tablet into a Swiss Army Knife.  I migrated my eBook library onto it and read every night. I got myself apps for both my banks, another to track my sales in business, and still another to easily store all my business’ data.  I installed a calendar app, several radio apps and a flashlight app. A meditation app, checklist app, food tracking app, and email apps. I customized the directions apps and set them to a cell phone’s data plan so I would never be lost.  I even managed to set up a Google Voice number to act as a phone, after my dumbphone died and I realized I didn’t really like having one anyway.

And that’s just the stuff I used regularly.  I brought it everywhere, scribbling notes and doodles on it, asking the Internet any question I could think of (often hours for stores and restaurants), and reading book after book on it.  For four years.  It was always there, keeping me in tune with my life, providing my appointments and my music and the Internet.  Until it was gone. The case I’d bought to shield it from damage didn’t have any protection from falling screen-first on tile floor.

The screen was completely shattered.  I took it to the maker’s store, and they basically told me: “Yeah, that’s so old we can’t help you.”  In addition, the design of the tablet was such that it really wasn’t a DIY repair.  And the folks that could repair it, would charge about half the tablet’s original cost. If not more. Not really feasible.

At the time of the break, after the initial crying fit, I really just felt numb. But I also had to try not to cry, because I was in a public place and while some people might understand crying over a broken tablet, most, I suspect, wouldn’t.  But it was rather like I’d just lost an arm, or had part of my brain removed.  I no longer had my library, my calendar, my phone numbers, my directions, my music, and all the rest. Major parts of my life were suddenly inaccessible, and without them I was lost.

To his credit, Chris (my boyfriend) understood immediately.  I’m actually stealing his broken arm comparison for this entry. Other people, I feel, would have said something along the lines of, “oh, that’s too bad. Do you really need another one?”  Chris started talking about getting it fixed or replaced, immediately.  When most of the shock wore off, I asked him about that. He remarked that it was obvious to him. I read off it every night. I brought it with me everywhere.  I used it multiple times a day, for all manner of things.  Obviously it was important to me.  And so he offered to help me replace it.

It took quite a bit of research, but eventually we got it narrowed down to two tablets: the iPad Air 2 or the Samsung Galaxy Tab S.  For philosophical reasons, I chose the Samsung tablet. (Apple does a lot of things well, but their philosophy does not promote tech-savviness. I think having the ability to tweak important parts of your electronics is essential to that.) With work stretching my hours for all they’re worth, I’ll be able to afford the replacement in a few weeks’ time. But we got it as soon as possible, because I fortunately do not live paycheck to paycheck.

Now comes the rehabilitation. Because my previous tablet was so old and from a different maker, I have to manually migrate the music and books. It’s a lengthy process.  The music alone is taking days. The books… I have yet to find a good reading app.  And while most of my apps were available for download on the new tablet, some important ones weren’t.  So now I need to find replacements.  All in addition to learning to use the new interface.

I’m very fortunate that I can replace my tablet at all, of course.  I would probably be able to learn to live without all that, but with my memory not being as good as it used to be pre-LENS, I suspect my relationships would suffer.  Along with my sanity. 

Going Mute: an experiment in regaining sanity

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
A couple days ago I got so worn out from stress and people that I stopped talking.  Literally just stopped.  I perplexed my poor boyfriend when I wouldn’t comment on things, or answer complicated questions.  I was just so tired of words.  

The day started pretty normally, but work was exhausting.  Affter work I went home and tried to recoup my sanity, but then I had to go back to work for training.  Mostly training on autism.  The presenter did a good job, and the presentation was mostly on theories as to what causes autism, and the history of the workplace, and that sort of thing.  So less telling me what I already knew and could have lectured on, and more useful information from the clinical and research side of things.  But by the time it was done, I was exhausted within an inch of my remaining sanity.  
I got home and realized I needed to go shopping.  I made a list of what I needed, but Chris (my boyfriend) wanted to finish what he was doing before we went.  And that was the point that my brain just gave up.  I remembered the presenter at the lecture talking about how one of the problems with autism is language.  Like it’s not as natural to people on the spectrum as it is to others.  And maybe that was why I just stopped talking.  I was silent all the way to the cheap restaurant we ate at.  Silent in the restaurant, except when giving my order.  The sound of my own voice surprised me, actually.  It was like I’d forgotten I could speak.  I hadn’t really minded not speaking, except when it upset my boyfriend.  
A lot of what we say in society is fluff.  When I say please and thank you in situations, I try to mean them.  I’m not sure most people do, but even when you mean those pleasantries, they’re still fluff to most people.  Expected and ignored unless they’re not there at all.  Going mute meant I didn’t have to think about most of that fluff.  
I spoke only when it was going to cause a problem not to.  My order at the restaurant.  When I bumped into someone.  That sort of thing.  
After an hour or so, I noticed the inside of my brain felt kind of quiet.  Peaceful, even.  That’s unusual for me.  I’m not sure what to do with this knowledge.  It wasn’t really the same effect as an anti-anxiety type thing.  Maybe more like what meditation is supposed to do.  I wouldn’t know- I’m not very good at holding still and being quiet and in the moment.  Especially not for 10 minutes straight.  

A brief primer on sensory processing disorders

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
http://www.autism.org.uk/sensory

This goes to a section of a website about autism.  Specifically, it goes to a section that deals with sensory processing.  People on the autism spectrum often have over- or underactive senses.  I, for example, have over-sensitive hearing and sensitivity to light. Watch the video linked on that site: it’s a good start to understanding living with sound sensitivity. 

Action hero reflexes (2/17/15)

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
I’ve decided I have action hero reflexes.  It’s cold and snowy and I was going to my new doctor’s office for the first time.  My driving directions had unwisely routed me down highway 131, which is horrendously clogged and busy at all hours of the day.  As such, it’s a great place to spot accidents, or better yet, be in one yourself.  Needless to say, I avoid the place as much as possible.  But, I thought, maybe today it wouldn’t be so bad.  It was just a short ride down 131.  Surely nothing would go wrong.  

So of course some guy comes sliding across three lanes of traffic and the exit lane, right in front of me.  Diagonally.  Like, his car’s nose was pointed off the road into the snowbanks.  I was about to hit this guy and I didn’t even know where he came from.  But I didn’t panic, I just swerved.  This unfortunately set off a chain of 5 fishtails, each smaller than the last, until I got my car under control and got off the highway.  I missed the sliding car, didn’t hit anyone around me, and didn’t go off the road.  
The reason nothing awful happened is partially luck and partially the fact that when things like this happen, I don’t respond normally.  Science tells us that most people panic, curse, and flail.  When adrenaline or panic hits, familiar places like our houses and schools become alien and unfamiliar.  We could walk across our homes blind in normal circumstances, but in a panic situation, we might not even be able to find the way out of the house.  That’s not a weakness or failure, it’s just how humans are wired.  
We tend to think we’ll act differently in an emergency because of all the action heroes we watch.  They’re calm and collected in an emergency.  They crack jokes here and there as a building burns down around them and everyone else panics and flees.  We’re made to look up to those action heroes, aspire to be them.  It’s funny, though, because if you ask a psychologist about people who act like action heroes, they’ll start talking about antisocial personality disorder or other disorders.  
I don’t have antisocial personality disorder, but something is different about how my brain is wired.  I would guess I don’t process emergencies properly.  I knew that if I hit the car swerving across my lane, it was going to be bad times.  But I wasn’t thinking about that at the time, I was so focused on trying not to hit the car that there wasn’t room for the possible consequences of failure.  
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, but it’s the first time I’ve thought to write about it.  Relatedly, I think I’m going to irrationally insist highway 131 is trying to kill me and avoid it entirely from now on.  My directions app can just recalculate my route forever.  

Adults are disappointing: a word from my inner child (1/27/15)

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
I recently attended a meeting wherein an adult man essentially lambasted an organization I belong to, indirectly so I couldn’t really respond, and so quickly and forcefully that I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.  Trying to follow the conversation was like trying to capture lightning with my bare hands.  This was a man who normally seems relatively competent, intelligent, and worthwhile, so it was rather shocking, frustrating, and painful to sit through the hour and a half of it.  The kicker, of course, was that if he’d just done his job in the first place, he wouldn’t have been so upset.  I think he forgot about that part.  

In any case, it got me thinking.  Kids in general are told to “grow up” and taught respect and how to handle emotions maturely.  The assumption was that as you got older, you got better and better at doing that until finally, when you were 18 or 21 or whatever, you were all grown up and mature and could be counted on to be an adult.  That was my assumption growing up, that if I just worked hard enough and had enough patience, I could expect the people around me to act like adults.  
I’m 26 now.  Definitely an adult age.  I’m not perfect, but I’m reasonably adult about things.  I don’t throw fits in public.  I don’t scream at people I’m upset with.  I don’t ignore work I don’t like until it goes away.  Yet around me?  I see “adults” doing these things all the time.  Is there some magical moment at 30 or so when it becomes okay to relapse to being 3?  
The fact that a grown man of at least 30 years of age thought it was okay to stonewall a conversation with his personal ranting and frustrations (which were entirely unrelated to what we were trying to do) is just sickening.  But we needn’t even get that personal.  You really need to only look at how people behave in rush hour traffic.  We’re taught to share in elementary school.  We’re taught to leave a large amount of space between ourselves and the next car, so if something happens we’ll have time to avoid an accident.  We’re taught that red means stop, green means go, and yellow means to slow down.  But what do we actually do in rush hour?  We tailgate the next person, speed right through yellow lights, and overall scream, “Me first!  Me me me!”  
I only need to sit in a fast food restaurant for a short time during peak hours to find some adult, or worse, some parent, throwing what equates to a tantrum because they didn’t get what they wanted as fast as they wanted it.  A tantrum.  Only with words, because adding verbal abuse to an already destructive behavior totally makes it better.  
When did this become okay?  Why do we just let people do this?  Why isn’t there a remedial school for adults who apparently didn’t get proper societal training the first time?  I mean, you all enforce these arbitrary rules of society I have to follow in order to be considered “sufficiently normal to be worthwhile,” so is it too much to ask that you make everyone follow them?

Brain burned

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
I’m presently experiencing what I call “brain burn.”  It’s a sensation like my brain is overheating.  I’m not sure if that’s an actual sensation or just an overactive imagination paired with knowledge of the fact that a computer’s CPU is sort of like its brain.  Either way, it’s a state I used to find myself in a lot prior to beginning my regular job.  

It’s like trying to navigate through deep fog at night, only it’s in my brain.  And I’m dead on my figurative feet.  It’s hard to get stuff done.  It’s hard to think coherently.  I’ve been spinning my wheels a lot in the last few hours, on relatively few calories.  Building a blog and making it successful are two very different things, and I have the metric ton of articles about tips and tricks to prove it.  Normally I don’t mind learning new things like these, but at the moment my brain is reeling from everything else I have to do (and work tomorrow, so no sleeping in).  
I’m presently downloading a meditation app in hopes that the quiet time plus some dinner will help. It’s interesting to note this exact sensation hasn’t bothered me for several months, despite having lots of different kinds of stresses in my life.  Perhaps it’s the fact that I haven’t moved much while working on these problems, or the lack of achievement in solving any of them.  Or perhaps it’s the lack of balanced nutrition today, or the lack of sunlight (it’s been overcast all day today).
Whatever the cause, I didn’t miss it, and I hope it doesn’t come back.  I’m going to go feed myself, meditate, then put on some quiet piano music and hope it goes away.  

#winning, or How to Combat Negative Thinking (1/25/15)

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
I have the tendency to think in negatives.  I must not do this, people don’t like that, I really want to but shouldn’t think this, rather than: this is a good idea, I like this, people do this, etc.  This is, unfortunately, a decades-long habit.  When your primary focus is “not upsetting people” rather than “succeeding at life,” I guess focusing on failures to avoid comes with the territory.  

That kind of focus is not very helpful to living a fulfilling life, however.  You end up living in dread of your next failure.  In my case, the failure is not so much a possibility as an inevitability, which lends an extra dimension of unpleasant to life.  So as an adult with a shred of hope for a better future, I’m attempting to change my habits one at a time.  My more recent attempt at making positive strides is pointedly noting when I have succeeded at something.
For example, I recently amused a coworker while on my normally joyless daily trash pickup.  I empty all the trash cans and diaper cans first thing in the morning, which is smelly and eventually heavy work.  At the end of it, I have to haul the huge bag on my back to the dumpster.  The only way I can manage it is by throwing it over my back, Santa Claus style, and trudging through the snow.  It took exactly one iteration of this for me to start thinking of myself as the worst Santa Claus ever, but as I’m not precisely social, the joke is new to most of my coworkers.  So on the way out a few days ago, I commented to the passing coworker, “Time to be the world’s worst Santa Claus,” as I picked up the full trash bag and slung it over my back.  To my surprise, the reasonably weak jest made him laugh.  So I followed up with, “Bad children get stinky diapers,”  and received another favorable response.  
I’m not much of a joker, so this was reasonably pleasant. Normally I’d just be pleased for three seconds, then continue on my way.  That day, I tromped out into the snow and pointedly made a note to myself that I was winning.  Not only was that social encounter a success, I might have temporarily improved a coworker’s day.  So that’s a win.  
I might start saying it “hashtag winning” just to spend more time savoring my success.  That may also have the side effect of making me sound like I think I’m ten years younger (ugh, no thanks), but I’ll take it.  
I’m hopeful that this idea, if I can make it stick, will be another tool in the fight against depression.  I’ve been having a reoccurrence of my brain doing the “hey, remember when you failed miserably at ?  Why don’t you stew on that for a bit!”  It’s like watching the top 5,000 stupid failures of your life, but on shuffle and the TV turns on at random (but you can’t look away and you still have to get up to turn the TV off).  I’m sure psychology has a word for that concept, but if I was taught it, I forgot it.  Basically, it’s my brain’s way of putting a little buzzkill into every day (or hour, depending on how bad it is).

Proactively reactive (9/24/14)

Posted on by Realistic Autistic
There are two basic styles of dealing with problems, to my understanding: proactive and reactive.  Proactive people go out of their way to think up what problems might ensue from a chosen course of action.  They then plan how to deal with those problems before they happen.  Reactive people choose a course of action and then deal with any problems that actually crop up, rather than taking the time to plan for problems that may never actually occur.  

For example, a proactive person may say, “I’m going to a meeting with Steve, Jimbob, and Leslie.  The meeting is about fire hydrants, so I should be prepared to talk about fire hydrants, but I also work with Jimbob on electric pink paint, and Leslie on sirens, so maybe I should bring materials for those things as well.”  They then do so, and are hopefully prepared for any eventuality at the meeting.
A reactive person might say, “I’m going to a meeting about fire hydrants.  I should be prepared to talk about fire hydrants.”  Then when they get to the meeting, Jimbob might want to talk about electric pink paint.  The reactive person may well be able to talk about electric pink paint as well, but they won’t have materials to show.  
You’d think being proactive, then, would be the best course of action in all cases, for all people.  Being prepared for reasonable possibilities is wise, after all.  Well, it may be wise, but it isn’t the best option for everyone out there.  Let me explain.
There’s a thing in psychology called mental energy.  It’s rather like the body’s energy, but not as easily measured.  A mother who has to deal with four screaming children will have much less of it than a person who’s spent their time watching TV, or reading a pleasant book.  It’s related, I think, to one’s store of patience, but not directly comparable.  You spend a small amount of energy every time you make a decision.  What to say next in a conversation, how to drive to work (and other drivers in traffic), how best to proceed on a project… all of these take mental energy.
Planning for many possibilities takes a lot of this mental energy.  You have to use your imagination to decide what might come up at the meeting about A, based on who will be there.  This is a relatively small amount of energy used in a single decision, but if all your decisions throughout the day are planned in the same way, you use up a lot of energy fast.  
The more economical way is the reactive path, which takes less imagination beforehand and only uses the mental energy when needed.  I think some people have larger pools of mental energy to draw on than others, but everyone is familiar with the feeling of being mentally exhausted.  You don’t have to do physical exercise to be tired out, after all.
My path is a blending of the two approaches.  I mostly react, but after the problem is dealt with, I use my imagination to prepare for other, similar probabilities.  So if I were going to a meeting about fire hydrants, I would be prepared to talk about fire hydrants.  But if Jimbob wanted to talk about electric pink paint during or afterwards, I would remember that and plan accordingly next time.  Perhaps I simply don’t see Jimbob that often, so he snatches any opportunity to catch up, or perhaps Jimbob is a very communicative person and constantly wants updates.  Either way, now I know to prepare for Jimbob next time.
In some cases I’ll take my reaction a step further.  Say a rampaging turtle has gotten into the meeting room and is upsetting the proceedings.  The simplest solution is to remove the turtle, of course, so the meeting can proceed.  That can be the end of it.  But a better solution is to remove the turtle, then patch up the hole in the wall by which the turtle got in.  That way no more rampaging turtles will disrupt the proceedings in the future.
This approach took time to develop, and it’s not perfect, but it does get me through the day.  Every day can be exhausting for a person on the spectrum.  As I understand it, neuraltypical people have an intuitive sense of what to say, when.  Things like knowing to start a conversation with small talk, or asking after a person’s family even when you’ve never met them and don’t care, or what comments and reactions to express when someone tells a story.  Obviously no one is perfect, and even neuraltypical people have off days, or are bad at small talk, or just can’t figure out what to say for some conversations.  
For me, every conversation is a complicated decision tree, where the tree keeps changing as the conversation progresses.  I can mostly assume my boss wants to talk about work, and passersby in the grocery store want to talk about the weather or some other inane topic.  
Even with conversations that simple, though, I have to watch my eye contact (don’t stare, but don’t look away too much, the percentage is about 75% eye contact to 25% looking away).  And I have to watch my tone of voice, because how you say things can make people think you’re bored, interested, faking, or sincere.  I can sound like a machine if I’m not paying attention.  What’s worse, I’m not an actor with a library of tones, accents, and facial expressions to choose from.  I stumble through each and every conversation I have, trying to express what I mean with word choice and whatever clunky body language I can pull together.
I think my stumbling has become more adept as time passes, but I often end a conversation seemingly calmly and politely, then spend the next five minutes suppressing the desire to flee the area immediately.  When that amount of effort has to be spent on each conversation, and there are many conversations throughout a normal day… the stress builds fast.  
I’m not sure whether I simply have very little energy to draw on, or whether living my life is simply that exhausting, but I usually end up pretty tired at the end of the day.  Or even in the middle of the day.  It’s functional, mostly.  And mostly, it’s the best I can do right now.