Currently viewing the tag: "utter pedantry"

The Devastating Effects of Autism on My Ego, or the amazing reality of being autistic before people knew it was a thing

By On August 20, 2011 · 4 Comments

This post was written for TEACCH and The Autism Angle blog, but I wanted to share it here. I think it came out a bit more articulately than what I’d come up with before.

Middle school was rough. I was thirteen and still liked to dress up and then carefully arrange my dolls. I was obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, collecting every piece of media I could find that might be vaguely related and stockpiling it (for what, I still don’t know). I had only learned to wear jeans in seventh grade, the fabric harsh and too unyielding to be properly comfortable, but the bullying for my preferred stretch pants was even less comfortable.

I was in eighth grade English when my teacher made an announcement. The school was going to be trying an integration program, with a classroom for artistic students who would be in our elective classes but not the core curriculum ones.

I seethed. How could I not have been invited? I was familiar with semi-integrated education already; I had been invited to go to a separate school for the Very Special Needs academically gifted kids. I was the best artist in my class, for sure! Had I not drawn and redrawn the same picture for most of fourth and fifth grade? That picture was amazing! Every one of the hundreds of copies! How dare they ignore me?

Later I found out the teacher had actually said “autistic.” She was from New England and I’d never heard the word before. It’s funny now.

It’s funny because I am autistic. I’m apparently what they call “high-functioning,” but I don’t like the term very much; the division feels artificial and the inherent value judgement is off-putting. I’m not less autistic, it’s really just that I communicate in a way allistic people seem to understand most of the time.

There are as many ways of being autistic as there are people on the spectrum. Autism is described in the medical model of disability as a series of deficits, things that make us deviations from Regular People, but I don’t think that’s true. Autism is a neurodevelopmental difference, a way of experiencing and thinking about the world that is certainly different, but not inherently bad. The disability part enters into things because the world was not designed by or for us, and as a minority group we are expected to conform to the majority, not the other way around. Autism accounts for the parts of me I dislike–low frustration tolerance, perfectionism, difficulties making friends, my propensity for depression and anxiety, my propensity for lists and em-dashes–and the parts I like a lot–loyalty, determination, artistic talents, a gift for learning, my propensity for lists and em-dashes–because you can’t separate out autism from me. Autism didn’t sneak into my room when I was small and steal me away. It’s just a word to describe how I interact with the world around me. Just a word. I sometimes think autism makes me inherently existentialist.

Being autistic means that I experience the world differently than most people, and not in a solipsistic way. There are sensory overloads, a world too bright and loud and full of textures, touching and grating and soothing. Things other people seem to find effortless, like reading facial expressions and making eye-contact, are difficult or distracting or downright painful. I can spend hours engrossed in reading about a favourite topic, unaware of pressing physical needs like hunger, and I communicate my enthusiasm in hand-flaps and wiggles and relevant echolalic quotes. My particular blend makes learning music by ear effortless and by written sheet music nearly impossible, while I prefer written instructions for academic or job-related things and watch TV with subtitles whenever possible (autism, by which I mean me, definitely has a sense of humour). It can be hard to make friends, but I keep the ones I have close, and love them dearly. I keep a planner without the school or high-powered career to warrant it, lists and schedules and therapy appointments all crammed in together because I invariably will not remember them–but my planner will. I get overwhelmed and scared and ecstatic and furious and many more besides, though I struggle to find the words for them in the moment. Words spill out onto my computer screen even when I can’t sustain a spoken conversation or get lost in the pattern of the wood grain behind my interlocutor.

I was asked to write about what it’s like to be autistic, with the guidelines of the DSM to focus the prose. It’s hard, now, because I don’t think going point by point for all the ways I can be seen as damaged is a wise way to build my identity or to speak of it to strangers. I am not a broken allistic person. I am not a collection of deficits wrapped up in skin. I am autistic and I use that word deliberately in the adjective form.

I am just like you. Only, maybe, not.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • •
 

so this is it (BADD 2011)

By On May 1, 2011 · 8 Comments

The conversation usually goes one of two ways:

The first:
Me: Yeah, I went to this [autism related thing].
Other person, joking: Ha! What if they mistook you for autistic? That would be so funny.
Me: Er, I presume they did, since I am.
Other person: No way. You can talk [or work or live independently or cook my own food].
Me: Officially diagnosed and everything*. Autism is a very broad spectrum of people with difficulties communicating and socializing typically, and we’re as individual as anyone else.

The second:
Me: Yeah, I went to this [autism related thing].
Other person, joking: Ha! What if they mistook you for autistic? That would be so funny.
Me: Er, I presume they did, since I am.
Other person: Oh. I would never have guessed. You are such a good example for people with autism.
Me: You know that’s really demeaning to everyone else with autism, right?

I am discomforting to people not familiar with social justice and disability rights. I am the worst sort of disabled person, because I have an invisible disability and I can fake being neurotypical, at least for a while. I am a secret spy for the disability community, come to infiltrate the temporarily able world at large with my sarcasm and socially unremarkable stims. I call them out on their language and attitudes and then have the audacity to reveal I have fooled them all along. This does not usually go over well (see above).

I have spent the past three months officially in this position, and it does not get less awkward.

So I thought I’d talk about ways I would prefer this conversation to go. Bear in mind that this is relevant only to conversations with me, as I cannot speak for the broader autism community, and autism is a special interest of mine, so I have a lot of facts ready to be provided on request.

Me: Yeah, I went to this [autism related thing].
Other person, joking: Ha! What if they mistook you for autistic? That would be so funny.
Me: Er, I presume they did, since I am.
Other person: Really? I didn’t know–sorry, didn’t mean to joke about a sensitive topic.
Me: It’s okay. There are a lot of adults like me on the spectrum, though, who may not be read as neurodivergent but really are. You might want to consider that before speaking.

This is sort of the baseline of what I would consider a good conversation on the topic. When someone comes out to you in some way, revealing a sexuality, gender ID, neurodivergence, what have you, that you didn’t previously know about and have been making fun of, it is a good thing to apologize. If you are making fun of it after knowing, then you’re an asshole.

Me: Yeah, I went to this [autism related thing].
Other person, joking: Ha! What if they mistook you for autistic? That would be so funny.
Me: Er, I presume they did, since I am.
Other person: You know, I wondered about that. You can be very [negative stereotype--usually "emotionally distant" or "stand-offish" for me].
Me: Well, that’s a stereotype–there are a lot associated with autism, many of which are only the tiniest bit true. I might seem stand-offish, but I’m really just trying to [listen/understand what's being said/ignore sensory imput/reduce my anxiety levels/work out when it's my turn to talk].

I think it’s a very human thing to relate what we abstractly know to personal situations. When I tell people I’m autistic, it probably makes sense to relate it to what my interlocutor knows about autism (usually precious little). While this pattern can be annoying, it gives us the opportunity for learning and growth–something I’m usually up for helping with.

Me: Yeah, I went to this [autism related thing].
Other person, joking: Ha! What if they mistook you for autistic? That would be so funny.
Me: Er, I presume they did, since I am.
Other person: Oh. I thought that was a thing kids have.
Me: Kids grow up, and a lot of the behaviours that people associate with autism are things kids on the spectrum do, but not all or even most adults on the spectrum do. We can learn and grow perfectly fine, we just do it atypically. I’m 26, so my experience is going to be different than that of a six year old.
Other person: That makes a lot of sense. What is autism like for you?

This is one of my favourites. The huge push for autism awareness has created a background awareness for a lot of people, but it’s awareness of the wrong sort. Simple statistics would reveal that more people on the spectrum are adults than not, but the focus is on what autism looks like in very young children. This obviously leads to the assumption that either you outgrow it, die from it, or you remain just like a three year old forever and ever. I’m not a little kid anymore! Even if I have to remind you of that, being aware that autism is different for each of us is appreciated.

Me: Yeah, I went to this [autism related thing].
Other person, joking: Ha! What if they mistook you for autistic? That would be so funny.
Me: Er, I presume they did, since I am.
Other person: Interesting. So [have you seen the new whatever/done something I'd spoken about previously/read this awesome book/something totally unrelated]?

Autism awareness will begin to shift into acceptance when I can tell someone that I’m autistic and it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference in how they interact with me.

*I’m a fan of self-diagnosis and was comfortably self-diagnosed for years. Had I not had the opportunity to sit an eval for free, I probably still would be self-diagnosed. Unfortunately, the sorts of people who insist I cannot be really autistic place a lot of weight on official labels.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • •
 

the very next day was my birthday

By On April 1, 2011 · Leave a Comment

I turn 26 tomorrow. It is also World Autism Day.

When I tell people I’m queer, it becomes a part of their idea of my identity. I mention my girlfriend, and a little light dings in their head to place me into the QUEER category of mental filing. They might be surprised or confused or alter how they interact with me (or not), and it might take a few further interactions for them to get that I mean queer in the broadest way and, yes, they can seriously still point out that cute boy and I’m not just humouring them when I agree.

Most people have a lexicon and background knowledge of what it means to be queer in some way. We broadly make up about 1 in 10, so there’s an awful lot of us out there being non cishet in some fashion. People recognize the concepts of bullying and gay-bashing, there are tv and movie characters who are out and proud, there are celebrities. I can say that I’m queer and it means something that we mutually understand, even if clarification might be needed on the details.

When I tell people I’m autistic, they don’t know quite how to react. Autism is kids in corners who headbang, boys who can’t speak or won’t speak, right? Autism isn’t adults who hold down steady jobs–including ones with customer service aspects!–and speak fluently (most of the time). The box in people’s heads is too small and ill-defined to fit me, and they are surprised, sometimes even angry.

Autism awareness isn’t inherently a bad idea, but the narrow scope of the spectrum that is promoted for awareness is very much dangerous and harmful for the rest of us. Autism, for me, means making enough of a single food to eat for a week, because making different food every day feels overwhelming. It means planning and rehearsing conversations, and then worrying when things don’t go as planned. It means auditory processing issues that leave me nodding at work and hoping I’ve timed it right, or not being able to hear over the sound of the tram. It means sensory issues that make it hard to hold my girlfriend’s hand sometimes. It means an encyclopedic knowledge of Kate Miller-Heidke lyrics. It means misunderstandings and hurt and bullying. And none of those are things you can see, if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

I want an autism awareness campaign that promotes actual awareness of the huge, wonderful spectrum that encompasses all of us. We each have our own strengths and weaknesses; what we share is an unusual way of experiencing the world. When I tell people I’m autistic, I want them to be able to easily fit me inside that mental box and understand that it means I might not be great at social cues and probably like routines, that I’m probably good with facts and rules, and that I probably have some sensory issues to work around.

Even more, I want people to understand that we–every single person–can inhabit more than one box. My mental filing system cross-indexes, fuckers, and yours can, too, with some practice. My being queer is not invalidated by autism, nor is autism invalidated by my being queer. It is often people who know that I’m queer who seem most surprised when I mention autism, because I am already in one minority group box in their heads.

Intersectionality is the concept of how different oppressions mix. Every person who belongs to multiple minority groups will experience it differently. For me, being queer, autistic, and genderqueer, it means erasure. I am allowed to be queer or autistic (gender doesn’t even cross most people’s minds, and since I’m not picky about pronouns it sometimes doesn’t come up).

I want to live in a world where it means acceptance. That starts with true awareness, not trite campaigns.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • •
 

bigger than the sky at night

By On February 18, 2011 · 4 Comments

I’ve been officially labelled.

It’s been a long time coming; years of wondering and researching and affirming have built to today. I’ve dissected my thought patterns, my behaviour, my exchanges with other people, and it all led me back to autism. I knew. Now I have a bit of paper backing me up.

My official dignostic label is Asperger’s syndrome. The highlights from my meeting include a persistent-tending-towards-unhelpful eye for pattern and detail, excellent verbal communication skills with few nonverbals to back them up, and literal thinking. These are all things I’d remarked upon before, and it feels reassuring to have professionals notice and remark upon them, too. No matter how dutifully one tries to be introspective, there is a certain point at which no one can tell truth from personal fiction, and I had a persistent fear I’d somehow crossed that line despite how well the category fit.

It was interesting to get to experience the ADOS (section 4) and speak with someone who is also passionately interested in autism for hours. I regret missing the cue to ask about my examiner’s autism-related blog (completely missed that), because I think it would be interesting to read (though, as I actually responded to her telling me she blogs about autism, I’ve probably read it!).

Parts of the interview were really difficult. It’s frustrating to discuss emotions and when I feel them when I struggle to identify those things at all and the categories she presented felt artificial. Does anyone feel just sad or just angry or just anxious or just afraid? How can you tell which one it is? They’re all jumbled together for me and I don’t know I could separate any of them (save maybe fear) into its own box and label it appropriately. It was also really hard to talk about Stina and Dylan and how I felt about being lonely. I’ve felt a bit raw about them since we fought and especially in the last couple of weeks as Kitty and I try to plan going to Disney, a place I associate strongly with Stina and Dylan.

Part of my interview involved working out the story of this book. It’s beautiful and the illustrations are exceptionally detailed–just the sort of thing I like. Apparently I saw things that no one had ever mentioned before in those details. That’s me: missing the big picture half the time, but wonderfully observant about things that interest me.

I want to thank TEACCH for providing this service to me at no charge. It means a lot to have an official diagnosis in my pocket in the event I do need any sort of services or accomodations, and it means even more that the state of North Carolina makes it available for all residents who need it.

Tagged with: • • • • •
 

I get this funny feeling something’s not quite right

By On October 30, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I have a massively awesome idea for a DM Cornish/Half Continent fansite.

I have the means (ish) to create it.

I have the desire to do it; in fact, it is fast eating up a lot of my headspace in a dangerously compulsive sort of way. Actually, the Half Continent in general has, I must acknowledge, reached a level of obsession only known to autistics and 12 year old girls.

What I’m lacking is the spoons. I’ll need to learn new coding programs to create what I want to create, and then there will be a lot of data imput into those programs. I know I have a strange mix of ability within one specific executive function (perseverance or grit)–for short-term projects, I’m okay, and I’m one of the most persistent people I know for long-term goals. There’s even a research study that I participated in, with people I know to corroborate my answers, that noted I have more grit than most people my age (I blame autism, as with so many things). But medium-term stuff…eh…I kind of have a history of terrible failure. Like this one time where I tried to write a master’s dissertation. Ha.

So I have this history of not being great at doing medium-term projects. Based on my completely fabricated estimates, this would be one such thing. The only thing worse than not giving into my compulsions and starting this project would be not finishing. And so, I procrastinate, which makes the compulsion part worse, but puts off my fear of self-caused failure. But procrastination also provides some measure of stress relief I don’t get during my work week (update: still like hell), so it’s a coping mechanism, too.

Basically, living in my head sucks right now and I would like $10,000 so I can quit my job and move immediately to Melbourne. Please.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • •
 

the revolution is off the adgenda

By On October 2, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I loathe person-centered language.

Part of my job at work is supervising residents in their work setting (if you want more information, feel free to scroll down to the locked post). They do a variety of jobs, and one of those is making the training binders for new employee orientation. This is a new task for my team, so it’s impossible for me to judge how independently they’ll be able to do it with time and practice, but this first lot of 15 needed to be done by yesterday and it ended up being mostly staff doing the work. Since I greatly enjoy doing this sort of menial paperwork–sorting, organizing, labelling, filing–I was very good and found it more enjoyable than most of my job.

The binders are a drastically better collection of information than I had at my previous job. There are sections about developmental disabilities, cultural diversity, and appropriate teaching strategies for adults. There are a few standout ideas in there, like an article about the differences in language use between the people who live in the group homes and staff, and how it is intensely othering.

There’s also a big section on using person-centered language, and having stared at it for days and days while doing these binders and then having a little nudge from the internet, I feel like I now have a simple explanation for why person-centered language unequivocally sucks.

Person-centered or people-first language is this idea that we should phrase things with the person placed before the disability:
Person with autism, not autistic person
Person with intellectual disability, not intellectually disabled person
Person with hearing loss, not D/deaf person
Person with vision loss, not blind person

Some disabilities lend themselves more to one construct or another–person with CP sounds pretty tolerable to my ears, while CP person or cerebral palsied person sounds weird (Kit, I welcome your thoughts on this specifically). I don’t like any of the adjective forms of Asperger’s that have been constructed (though it’s sort of moot since I think autistic is a better descriptor for the whole spectrum anyway).

At first glance, this idea doesn’t really bother me. I’ve felt pretty neutrally about it for a long time–I couldn’t see how it was harming anyone to use unnecessarily long constructs when the shorter ones were just fine and inoffensive, but whatever. If someone wanted to “put the person before the disabilty” and that led them to treating disabled people as equals, then fine.

But my work is inherently about how we (society-general we) can’t treat people with disabilities as equals. Every person I work with has a documented intellectual disability, and most of them have multiple disabilities. Because of this, they have been deemed unable to be their own guardians, their own caretakers, their own adult people. It’s not that I think needing assistance–any level, from mild to total–makes one less of an independent adult, but few have actively chosen of their own right to live with us. They are there because they have been “placed”–deemed too unable to learn, adapt, care for themselves that they must have caretakers whether they want it or not–rather than because they decided that they want help.

I think person-centered language actively harms them, and me, and all of the disability community.

Person-centered language claims to be about people first, but why would we need to make awkward linguistic constructs if disability was a neutral concept? Saying that we put people first means that you think disability is shameful, in need of being hidden or removed, that you are unable to think of people who are openly disabled as people. Saying I am a person with autism rather than an autistic person denies that autism is a value-neutral descriptor for the way I think and experience the world around me. It tries to make autism into something separate from the “real” me (and that leads to dangerous curbie mythologies and “treatments”), into something that is bad. Saying we are people with disabilities rather than disabled people shows that “disability” is a dirty word, something bad and to be avoided, rather than a word that describes our interactions with the community because of our atypical strengths and weaknesses. Saying we are people with disabilities rather than disabled people removes the burden from society to make adaptations and accomodations and places it upon us.

Using person-centered language ends up devaluing the person because it attempts to remove a central part of who they are and make it negative.

Unfortunately, I would probably be fired if I made some key edits to the binders, so they’ll remain as-is. For now.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • •
 

stare up at the sky

By On September 12, 2010 · 2 Comments

I’ve been thinking about inertia and perseveration lately. I thought I’d been thinking about depression and my own early signs of a life-long sprint from black clouds, but apparently the part of my brain that ruminates without my knowledge was busy at work on something altogether separate.

I’ve talked about inertia before–I should probably start using a tag for it and the other things I mention regularly. And I’ve talked about perseveration, and how I think it’s a useful, adaptive process in working through executive function difficulties (see the link to rumination).

A quick recap: inertia is the tendency to keep doing what you’re doing rather than change paths (with a nod to Newtonian physics for the basic concept), and perseveration is going over something endlessly, either because it provides comfort, stimulation, or a solution to a problem or otherwise fills some need.

I think they are the same thing, or facets of a larger single thing. And I think that thing is at the heart of difficulties in choice making in autism spectrum disorders and at least partially to do with why concrete plans are necessary. I’m not sure if it is part of the larger executive function or a related but separate thing.

Inertia has negative connotations, at least for me. Inertia is continuing to do something that isn’t really great for me (like not eat or not sleep) because it is easier than the alternative (procuring food or getting ready for bed–which usually entails saying goodbye to Kitty, something I loathe). Inertia means staying in bad jobs because it is easier than finding new ones. Inertia means multiple degrees in a field which doesn’t hold a career or major interest to me, because considering a change took too much thought and spoons to be done at a pace that would have allowed me to change.

Perseveration has a mixed connotation. Perseveration is going over and over songs until I know them by heart and can sing them pitch, tone, and word perfectly. Perseveration is almost always thinking about one of the few topics I am especially interested in, like autism or MBT. Perseveration is the way my brain works to process complex information by letting it tumble around and then finding notable, interesting things in what that information sticks to inside my head. Perseveration is eating the same food for three, four, five days in a row all. the. time.

Both are the inability to change topics or actions without a strong desire to do so. That desire can be internally or externally motivated, emotionally or physically motivated.

This inability to move off a single track can make it difficult to impossible to make decisions and choices. I know that the DSM is too strictly categorized for this to ever happen, but perhaps autism should be considered partially an anxiety disorder.

I wanted to buy a computer–a laptop. I researched laptops for months, learning about screen types and the inner workings of a machine, learning about various OSes and interfaces. I learned what my price range would need to be to get something like what I wanted (a tablet with the ability to write directly on the screen). And then I didn’t do anything. I knew what I wanted, but I was absolutely paralyzed by the idea that as soon as I made a choice a better, cheaper, more awesome choice would appear and thus be unavailable to me. I finally bought my laptop only because it was on woot that day and the price was about half what I’d been prepared to pay previously. I needed that external limitation to make a decision: woot is only one item per day and there is no guarentee the item will ever turn up again, the price is drastically lower than anywhere else online, and there is a limited number of units available–but you can’t tell how many until it’s sold out. I’ve had this laptop for about two years now and I suspect I would still be dithering about getting the BEST LAPTOP EVAR had I not been constrained by this.

Having choices makes choosing extremely difficult when you tend towards this style of thinking. The more choices I have, the more likely I am to fall back into the holding pattern of inertia and just not choose. When I am hungry, I need to have explicit options rather than an open ended “what do you want?” because the latter will only lead to frustration and upset. (Kitty, in her wisdom, knew this years and years ago and tolerated my saying over and over that I hated planning meals and that it made food unappealing, and to her I apologize again for being a shit. She was completely right and knew me better than I knew myself at the time.) Having a schedule means I actually get things done. Without, I am likely to spend all day online, playing games or looking at tumblr.

Unfortunately, none of these things allows me to write coherent blog posts sometimes!

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • •
 

the one thing I know

By On July 22, 2010 · Leave a Comment

…is that I like spreadsheets, organization, and Kate Miller-Heidke.

Just got done making a spreadsheet that shows the titles of the songs from which I’ve pulled titles, the songs in the official canon I haven’t used yet, the songs that are official or semi-official canon but are covers, and the demos which have any sort of name. This is actually the third spreadsheet of its sort, as I have one keeping track of the number of times I use a song and one that lists the song, the lyric, and the date.

So I’m feeling a bit compulsive and pleased, now. And tired. Tried to go to the library, but the lights are made of some sort of migraine-creating forcefield that also happens to emit visible light, because within ten minutes my eyes and head ached. I feel sort of spoon-drained now.

Tagged with: • • • • • •
 

what are you so afraid of?

By On July 17, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Grading People from Rolling Credit on Vimeo.

A short commentary on the use of the terms “high functioning” and “low functioning” as applied to autistic people

Tagged with: • • • • • •
 

I thought we talked this over yesterday

By On July 16, 2010 · Leave a Comment

My attention span is currently at a level I would describe as “kitten.”

I’ve known for a long time that my attention is directly correlated to the interestingness of the material–this isn’t unusual for kids identified as gifted (nor the adults they grow into), or anyone on the spectrum. In fact, it was this extreme hyperfocus that first had me questioning if I might be on the spectrum as I read tales of kids and their encyclopedic knowledge of topics and saw myself. This one time, I drew the same picture with only minor variations a couple hundred times; I was nine. I suspect I could still draw it.

I’ve also known for a long time that if I’m otherwise engaged, I can pay attention to topics of less interest with some reliability. In a school setting, for example, I’m usually really strongly into one class and then have varying levels of caring about the others–just like anyone else. Because of that high interest class, though, I have this sort of carry-over attention effect making it easier to pay attention to other material that is not as engaging for me. This has led me to the conclusion that I do well in moderate to high stress environments, but yesterday I started thinking (a rare thing these days when my mind lands on a topic and only stays for a few minutes at most), and this may not be the case.

There are different kinds of stress. Google thinks there are three–acute, episodic, and chronic–but that’s not what I mean. Those factors certainly play in, but I think stress can and should be divided by what part of you it engages, not just the length. Intellectual stress would be things like heavy schoolwork, complex reading material (fiction or no), non-rote professional work, puzzle solving. Emotional stress is identifying your own and other people’s feelings, social cues, working with other people. Physical stress could be identifying sensations (like needing to pee or being hungry), things that involve physical labour, or enduring discomfort (like working in a too-cold or too-hot place). Some combination of three things creates the stress, and that can then be chronic, episodic, or acute.

By this system, I really like things that are chronically intellectually stressful, with low levels of emotional or physical stress. I don’t like to move or worry about what my body language says. That is…not how I would currently describe my life. So even while I feel stressed, worrying about money and the cat and immigration, it isn’t the sort of stress that puts me in a position to spend a lot of time thinking. Those stressors are not comfortable for me, so they use up many more spoons than the stressors I like–and because I’ve wasted those spoons, I can’t do the things I enjoy (like reading scienceblogs) which could potentially refresh my spoons.

When I’m stressed–in the bad, not comfortable way–my memory and attention are spotty. I need to have a constant stream of intellectual information coming in–and going out, such as via blogging–to feed my own ruminative processes. Not only do I think they are a good thing, I now think they are essential to my well-being. When I am taking in enough information to have a viable ruminative background process going, my whole mind is working in concert, concious, unconcious, and memory. Being able to ruminate this way requires a precise memory, which is the first thing to go when I’m under stress (I often have no memory of meltdowns, for example–they’re just missing or I have a handful of photograph-like images).

I have been incredibly, risably forgetful lately–and lucky Kit doesn’t mind. Things we discussed multiple times have slipped my mind as if they never were. There is no sense of loss, of having forgotten something. My memory is not recording in the first place. Even when she reminds me, often with my own words, they feel new, unseen.

We talked about it yesterday, and I think it shifted my brain into the right gear to ruminate, because it hit me this morning, how all of this is connected for me: I need intellectual stress (and preferably as little of the other kinds as possible) to function well; I know alternate sources for this when I am not in uni; when I do not get this stress I become unable to seek it out because my will to live attention span grows shorter and shorter the longer I go without; this correlates with an unusually poor memory; these things are because with information coming in, I am able to ruminate properly (like any good ruminant and/or monster), because it is an adaptive and helpful process for me rather than being a destructive way to rehash bad memories or thoughts; therefore I have to just force myself to do something brainy, because it will sort of kickstart the whole process and I will stop feeling leaden. Which is…a helpful conclusion, and hopefully writing this will have done enough kickstarting I’ll no longer feel like my brain is dribbling out my ears slowly and painfully.

Tagged with: • • • • • • •