It's been a while; Autism related entry

It's been a while since I've last updated my blog of an autism related issue. Some things came up and in order to move on I have to get them written out. I may have spoken a lot of this in past entries, but it is good to have a refresher once and a while. Since autism varies from person to person, I share from my personal experience. Some may relate and some may not.

Anyways my emotions are hot. I'm feeling in a panic over the feeling of having no one to talk to right now (at the time I am typing this) over what most would consider a minor issue. In order to understand the sense of panic I feel when something little comes up, imagine if you just suddenly got news that your best friend, mom, dad, or whoever means the most to you, has been in a car accident or had a heart attack and is in the hospital. You get the initial call that happened, but then are on nerves waiting for an update.

Let's say it's not possible for you to reach the hospital. There's no number to call, heck you don't even know where they went. You don't know anything besides those few details. Depending on how fatal the news sounded and how much the person meant to you, I can imagine you are pacing around, biting your nails, crying uncontrollably, whatever people do when they feel a sense of hopeless panic.

This is how I feel over minor problems. I have the same intensity of emotion, the panic, everything. Often I am told to be patient. If you're mother is dying in a hospital an you aren't aware of where she is, I would imagine being told to be patient would probably be one of the last things you want to be told.

When I am trying to describe to people this sense of panic I feel, I am often put down, or even worse made to feel like I am causing trouble. I can't help the sense of panic I feel. I acknowledge I can have control over what I do in the panic. After all anyone facing a situation like the one I described can control how they behave, but it is very...very difficult. The mind is not there. The heart is racing, the breaths are shallow and the eyes gushing with unwanted tears. It's really hard to control one's behavior at this point of stress.

I used to know one autistic man who must have felt this kind of panic when they changed his routine at a group home he lived. Either that or he had to move to a place where they couldn't keep up to his routine. He had to have a shower taken a certain day and time of the week. One week they couldn't do it at the right time. He had to have his shower taken another day. As a result he got terribly angry, upset, hurt, and violent. He broke at least one of their windows by smashing it. After all to him it had to have felt like his whole world crashed that day.

I'm not that severely upset when changes happen, but I will feel dismayed and feel like I've just been dropped off in the middle of nowhere, in a strange place and left to find my way home with no direction... Depending on my mood, this panic can create a full crying spell and a meltdown. I don't like surprises. Also if I am left without explanation for things, then I'm left confused. My mind doesn't take confusion well. If I don't have a solid explanation, my mind will go over past events that seem similar to the event I am in. It pairs up some usually really negative and disturbing incidents. Common feelings that will show up when I am in a mental state of confusion over an event: rejection, people are deliberately against me because I am a freak. They know it. They can tell. Even by one glance or by reading my written word, they know I'm not one of them. Those people know... they see through me. They have in the past. I've been rejected. My mind pulls up concrete memories to prove it. Therefore this situation is no different. I don't fit in. I never will fit in. I don't have a niche... The negative speech continues into some kind of mantra. There is no easy way to shut it off once it starts.

Usually when I try to explain this to people, or if I worse yet, react out of these emotions, it triggers anger. In turn when people snap about my reaction, then it feeds the feeling of "they don't like me because I am different." and then I react even more apprehensive. This kind of miscommunication keeps going until either I or the other person reaches breaking point and one of us ends up severing communication and possibly leaving the scene. On web forums, it may drive one of us to perminantly leave the site.

Why does this happen? I used to be left really confused until I heard from other people who studied the field of autism as well as reading up some articles. I found out that when an autistic person gets riled up by emotion, it floods the brain with more activity than it would for a non autistic person. I wish I could find the exact articles I read to link to, but if you look down meltdowns and autism, you may get a general idea. After all these emotions are likely the driving force behind most of the major meltdowns someone has with autism.

I hope this sheds light into some of the conflicts I get into, and hopefully help give some insight for those curious to know more about autism, emotions, and meltdowns. Anyways I feel a bit better getting this down. The sense of panic has lessened a bit.

An Experiment for those dealing with aggression and meltdowns

Anyone here willing to be my guinea pig for this experiment? This was an idea that came to me last night as I was trying to sleep.
When your child is about to be in the heat of a nasty meltdown:
1. See if you can distract your child before the meltdown occurs by finding something else for him/her to do to calm down. One person mentioned in an email that getting her son to do crafts seemed to help.
2. After the child calms down, rather than asking questions like, “How are you feeling?” or anything to do with emotions, try coaxing your child to explain what happened right before the meltdown. “What happened before you started crying?” may be a starting point. (Even if you know or may have an idea of the cause, ask anyway.)
3. If they can’t speak or “don’t know” see if you can encourage them to either write, type, or sign out what went on. (This may work for nonverbal autistics with practice)----------------------------------
The reason behind this experiment is to get the child to use their cognitive thinking ability. This seems to be a strength shared with many people on the autistic spectrum. I asked Jonathan Mitchell (pro cure and likely non-verbal) what he thought was his strength. “Articulate and write well” was his answer. Not surprisingly this ability seems to be common with the aspergers and HFA autism.
Emotional thinking and understanding is one of the weakest areas for an autistic person. To know intuitively what one is feeling without being able to identify WHAT they are feeling is a set-up for frustration and anger. This ability between cognitive ability and emotional ability can leave quite a gap, and this may cause a lot of intense frustration.
For me, in order to understand feelings, I had to classify them like discovering a new species. Once I put a name to the emotion, I could know what I was feeling and begin to work on an appropriate coping mechanism. With any hope this experiment will help an autistic person to start thinking and understand more about themselves. Hopefully this will help them begin this process to understand their own emotions on a cognitive level. Once someone can understand their feelings, coping with them should be much easier. Eventually in time, maybe this cognitive ability will help the autistic child to understand other people’s emotions on a cognitive level.
Cognitive thinking is somewhat different than actually feeling. The child may still not show the emotion on their face (unless he/she finds it to help, then the child will likely practice that expression.) With any luck most of the meltdowns will be a thing of the past, except for an occasional bout when dealing with new and unknown situations. Even those hopefully will become rare.
I really hope this works. If it does I want to pass it on.