Autism Rocks

Communication 101

2011-11-26T12:40:00.002-07:00

To me, successful disagreement is probably the most important part of any group sticking together. I will most certainly not agree with everyone (probably because they are wrong LOL) and everyone will not agree with me ( )...

I find it very upsetting that most people are not taught how to disagree without a big fuss.

Basic rules to disagree without hurt feelings:

1. No insults. You aren't a moron for disagreeing with me. I guess. In your crazy little world, things just work differently, and I have to accept that. Even if I think you might be stupid, foolish, misinformed, psychotic, or lying, the truth is that I might also be wrong. So it's safer to just say "I disagree because I believe/thought/heard/read a study...." instead of "Maybe you should go back to school, you moron!" (I used that one to a teacher. I think I got kicked out of that class...)

2. No flaming. Please don't actually go light someone's house on fire.

3. Proof is always good. "That's not true" is not nearly as convincing as posting studies, articles, science blogs, etc that prove your point. They might be wrong too, but at least you are wrong in good company. And you are much more likely to convince someone you are right if you have something in writing to back you up. People will believe ANYTHING if it is in print, because printing is still rather magical to our primate brains. Especially if there are numbers in it, too. We don't care what the stats really mean, we just want big pretty numbers interspersed with big words so we know you didn't just make this shit up.

4. Don't disagree with yourself. If you are inconsistent, we're all going to notice. Consistency makes you sound honest, if a bit stubborn. You might still be wrong, but at least you aren't just baiting us. Listing something as a rule and breaking it yourself just makes you look like a jack ass. And agreeing (or disagreeing) with every post ever written just makes you look like a drunk idiot.

5. Know the difference between fact and opinion. It is great to post your opinion. Just don't act like this makes it a fact. Knowing the difference between a study, a theory, and an anecdote is pretty nice too. Also, the difference between witnessing something, hearing it second hand, and urban legend will help you sound like you know what is actually going on. In addition, correlation does not equal causation. Just because a majority of people who are in car accidents will have been shown to have eaten carrots in the week before the accident doesn't mean carrots cause car accidents.

6. I statements. Cheesy, yet highly effective! "You must not have paid attention in third grade!" sounds much more insulting than "I remember learning that...". It also helps you keep #5 straight. "I have tried... and had the result..." is a much more accurate response than "everyone feels better when they...".

7. Don't rehash. If you have already stated your opinion (and a fine opinion it was! We all respected it and enjoyed the way you expressed it!), you really don't need to repost your opinion every time anyone responds, agreeing or disagreeing with you. If you are going to post again, bring along more evidence to support your opinion so you don't sound like a broken record: "I found copy and paste! I am SO gonna win this argument!!"

With these simple rules, everyone can disagree without upsetting others and with their dignity intact.

Boundaries

2011-10-12T09:44:00.001-06:00

Wow. It's been a really long time since I've posted. I couldn't think of anything interesting to say.

One thing I have noticed, hanging out lately with more autistics, is that autistics tend to suck at boundaries.

It makes sense. Filters are internal boundaries and we are rather lacking in those. So how do you learn to apply boundaries outside yourself? We lack in a sense of where we end and others begin even physically. So the thoughts of putting up imaginary dividers emotionally and behaviorally is difficult.

Hell, it's difficult for NTs.

What are some basic boundaries?

* My emotions are mine to feel. You don't have to feel them just because I do. Your emotions are yours to feel. I don't feel yours just because you do. (This is a very common lack-of-boundary everywhere. I am sad because you are sad, and now I am angry that I am sad and you didn't feel sad.)

* My choices are mine to make and my consequences resulting are mine to accept. And vice versa: your choices are yours and you can live with the consequences without me trying to rescue you or fix or change it. (Another huge lack-of in general, especially in parenting!)

* Things that bother me don't have to bother you. (Another very common lack-of. You see it mostly in rules and laws where people want their pet peeves to be law so no one is allowed to do them!)

* My beliefs are mine and no one else has to believe them. (You see this lack-of in religion and politics, mostly. My belief is the only one and everyone should believe it.)

Why don't most people have boundaries? They are afraid to be alone. Boundaries seem like they would isolate you, fence you in. People would rather be blended, not quite real, a part of something else. To have boundaries is to declare who and what you are, and few people are that brave.

Boundaries do not isolate, though. They make you a real person, strong in yourself, grounded in who you are. They make you able to find others who are also strong and be friends and partners. Once you are all more real, you are also happier and more stable.

Book Rec

2011-05-13T20:12:00.002-06:00

I highly recommend this book to everyone!

The Unwritten Social Rules of Social Behavior.
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It's an interesting insight to how autism works and by explaining how they see the world differently, you can get insight into how NTs seem to function. Personally, I'm still confused that they can carry on a conversation and have coherent thoughts with all their weird emotional ties to everything, but I guess they get used to it so young, they hardly notice.

My Stress Free Christmas

2010-12-24T16:11:00.002-07:00

Apparently the trick to having a stress free Christmas is to remove all the stress. Who ever would have thought?!? *laughing*

So, I took my Imooto and Boy to and Irish Christmas concert. It was wonderful fun. Relaxed. We all dressed up and just enjoyed the music and one another's company. I don't think any of us are Christian. Not really sure. So that helped too. No weird lectures on god while trying to enjoy Irish tunes.

Then I had Imooto over to do baking. All her gifts got made and I got to enjoy her company again. No stress there, beyond going to stores to get ingredients. And that is a stress every week so I can roll with it. While we were out, we checked to see if Christmas meant sewing machines on sale. It did not. Epic fail. But I bought one anyway for my nieces, since we were there.

So then all her presents were done with low stress and much fun. So win for her.

Finally, I had friends stop by on three different days to just get coffee and catch up. They swung by while going to other holiday events, I think. Anyway, low key and just chatted. No presents or obligations. Just relaxed fun.

Finally, my mom wanted to get me a present so I told her I needed dance shoes. Mission accomplished in one trip. And I got to spend a day with her. Since we're getting along pretty well, that was good.

I also spent a couple days hanging out with my step dad and we did a trip to buy presents for his grandson. And he kept that totally low key and not stressful, too. There was no "what did you buy for whom?" or reminders that I should be more *fill in the blank*.

So, presents were accomplished (sewing machine, concert, and I fed Imooto when she was here cooking). Enjoyment of friends happened. Nothing else need be done.

I got last minute invites to both parents for dinner (Mom tonight and dad tomorrow) and I'm so lacking in stress, I agreed (with time limits). I'm not stressed about either. Dad's will be harder, as there will be a lot more people, including children. But I'll bring a good book and hand sewing and hide away. They think I'm weird and avoid me anyway :)

Plus, the dad dinner is lacking dessert. Don't ask ME how that happens. So I have the joy today of making truffles. Bwahahaha. And mom asked me to make my cranberry sauce. Cooking is always happiness.

So there you have it. Remove stress. Have an enjoyable holiday.

How to Create Charisma

2010-12-17T02:55:00.004-07:00

How to Create Charisma in four easy steps!!!

1. Create ego. Before you can gain real confidence, you have to fake it. But that is what a ginormous ego is for!! Start listing every tiny thing about you that you can stand and put it on the "AWESOME THINGS ABOUT ME" list. Eventually, you will realize the scope of your awesomeness and your ego will grow.

2. Create positiveness. You have to be able to keep going if your evil plots are foiled; learn to give a laugh (preferably an evil chortle) and know that you are more awesome than any lame ass hero and will live to conquer them at some undetermined point in the future.

Remember to compliment others. Your people will rise up for you against an enemy more out of love than fear! Your underlings need encouragement and they need to bask in the glow of your awesomeness. The worse thing to happen to your plans is for one of your minions to leave and tell your secrets. Make them want to stay with you. If you really can't muster good feelings in others, shock collars are an option as well.

And finally, enjoy yourself. It shows if you are just going through the motions. If you are no longer enjoying yourself, find a new way of doing things. It might just be that you need a different perspective. Most of the joy in life is expressing yourself. Have fun creating your signature behaviors!

3. Create self esteem to bolster your ego. By this point you should actually be starting to like yourself. You know you are awesome, that you will foil your enemies, and those around you admire you. This bolsters your huge ego by holding it up with more than just hot air.

People are really drawn to those who like themselves. Most people want to be told what to do and if you like yourself, they will like you, entirely because you do. Liking yourself creates a trend that, like gravity, draws people in to you. Also, like gravity, it makes it harder for them to escape. If they try, don't hesitate to use shock collars.

Remember, anyone who fails to admire you is obviously an idiot or so neurotic that they fear how bad you make them look.

4. Take joy in life. If you have the first three points down, joy just happens. Everything you do is great fun if you are positive and full of ego and self esteem. People cannot help liking you and this is fun too. Joy is taking delight in yourself and the world around you.

Don't listen to anyone that says if you are positive and happy you have to do "good works". You can kill and destroy from a place of love. In fact, I cannot imagine a better place from which TO kill and destroy.

Congratulations! With these four attributes, people will flock to you. They will beg to be your minions and will enjoy doing your bidding!

Dance Class!

2010-12-12T20:38:00.002-07:00

I haven't written in forever. Work exploded and got on a new project (a BETTER project) and had to get through training and then I got a cold and blah blah blah.

So as soon as I got my raise on my new project, I signed up for ballroom classes!!!

My mom got me dance shoes for Christmas, and I'm working on leotards and knee length skirts! WOOT!

I loves to dance :) I'm not sure if I am any good at it, but I adore it so I don't care. Like singing. Only I know my singing isn't great. But with years of voice lessons I bet I could carry a tune in a bucket.

I'll think of something spiffy to blog about soon! I'm thinking of practicing a Christmas letter here...

financial aid GAH

2010-08-26T00:20:00.002-06:00

So I'm in the pointless running in circles point of school. They changed my schedule at work so I'll miss too much of class for a Pell Grant. So I have an email in to my instructor to get more details (ie: can I pass with only half the class taken, and can she count me as there even if I leave halfway through?) and, if all goes well, I'll use the Pell Grant next term (in ten weeks). In the meantime, I'm still fighting with work about my schedule.

So it'll be... interesting.

I really really wanna learn how to sew well. I want to be able to make Vickie fashions and cosplay. Is that so much to ask?? At the moment, that DOES give me this term to finish the niece's winter skirts, my winter skirts, and more jammie pants for work as I outgrew all the ones I had.

I'm also trying to figure out a more or less polite way to back off certain relatives without alienating the couple I can stand. My auntie gave me the best method so going to work on that. I'm very proud. I was pretty sure that gushing over something you previously hated probably meant you were lying about no longer hating it and I was indeed correct. I'm getting pretty good at this social shit! *beams proudly* Lookie me with Social Skillz. Not mad social skillz... but like... one. >.>

I also went to this site for scholarships and while it states they have scholarships for trade schools, it doesn't list any or link to any. So while it's very nice to know they exist, I'm not closer to getting applications out. I need someone to stop by and hold my hand and make it work because financial aid is financial aid. They don't actually want to help you in any way. I suppose it's rather comforting because I do so hate change!!!

On another note: I didn't get any bug bites sleeping on my mat on the other side of the room, reinforcing my idea that these are newly hatched baby wolf spiders and I was in the hunting zone between the cat food and the cat litter. So I think I'll set my newly washing sleeping mat across the room and stay out of there way. I loves my little wolf spiders. Other than gnawing on me, they also keep all the other bugs cleaned up. Nom, little spiders. Nom nom nom. ^_^

I now work an extra 90 minutes per shift. (Hence the eating into school time...) So no more having to scrounge for enough overtime to hit forty hours. Yes, it took 90 minutes per shift for me to hit 40. Life will be MUCH easier with these hours if I can just get school to work around it for me...

I'll come up with something much "deeper" and more significant later. At the moment I just realized I hadn't blogged in a while. Of course, when I opened this I realized it hadn't been that long but I hadn't remembered writing it but it did sound awful familiar when I read it so good on my crazy brain and all the people in it working together to write a blog! Go team awesome.

Schrödinger's Nutshell

2010-08-14T23:42:00.002-06:00

It's sometimes quite a funny thing to be able to hold every single memory as equally true and untrue. Logic might dictate one more probable, but there is no proof to swing things one way or another. It all exists equally because nothing can be certain.

Perhaps the more amusing thing is that this gives me stability. I'm more stable saying "this is me in a nutshell, and the nutshell is Schrödinger's", than I ever have been before. So much stress removed, not having to fit thoughts into one reality or another. It's quite liberating.

Science is not about proving or disproving. It is about gathering evidence. It is about finding facts. It is about truth. You can jump off the roof 100 times wearing a superman cape and hit the ground each time. This makes it very unlikely that next time you'll fly, but it doesn't prove you cannot fly.

When you recognize that no one actually knows more about their past than I do but that, for their sanity, they simply accept that certain things must be real, you can see how flimsy reality therefore must be. No one cares whether or not things are, one is simply relieved to have something certain in which to believe. This is neither good nor bad, it simply is, and I think far more people would suicide or refuse to go on if they didn't have a past upon which to cling. I can see why this is so since I give up all the time and wish to not have to exist and I can see that this might perhaps be less so if I had something solid upon which to stand. But since that isn't so and here I am, I find it quite difficult to actually quit, despite how thoroughly I've given up.

I appear to have a rather well developed sense of survival.

This all comes up because it turns out my father hadn't actually meant that he wouldn't pay for school when I was 19. As he didn't bring up the damning conversation, I suppose he didn't remember it. He was simply surprised to learn that I hadn't quit school because I'd given up on school, but had quit school because I couldn't figure out how to pay for it. He was probably just annoyed at me and said something that I, being me, took utterly seriously. And I, being me, simply accepted it as fact and carried on, realized I had no way to gather funds, and figured I'd wait til I was old enough to qualify for more grants. He, meanwhile, assumed I'd given up on school because I'd always hated school.

This is, perhaps, why I've had to learn to not make assumptions: none of our realities are the same reality. They merely overlap from time to time when our perceptions line up just right.

I still do, however, simply accept what one says as what is. Knowing and understanding aren't always the same thing. I know that people lie and I know that people just talk out their asses. But I still don't understand that people do not say what is.

While I was at work today, I lost all sense of mouth noise being words. So I typed the random syllables the mouths spouted. Then I read what I wrote to see if I could spot words. Luckily, I more or less could, and so I carried on. It occured to me much later that perhaps this was a good tip for autistics: don't worry about making sense of words. If you can hear syllables, just type them out as the person talks because reading phonetically is far easier than turning mouth noise into comprehendable words.

It's funny, some days I can type out all the words as proper words, but I cannot make sense of the meaning of those words until I read what I typed.

It's a VERY good thing I type as fast as I do. I really ought to practice moving much faster so that I can fully keep up with conversations. It would be rather amusing to spend a day typing everything I hear so that people can read it back and see the nonsense I come up with.

Not only do I say "cow" instead of "milk"... I'm just as likely to hear "cow" instead of "milk". But since I didn't have the right word in my head and just said it wrong (although often I hear my own word that is wrong and it starts its own domino effect of associations), I hear it wrong and then cannot get caught back up to the conversation again. So long as I am not being timed (as on calls at work), this is often amusing and I have an entirely other conversation than anyone else with whom I converse.

I think I shall go pass out now. Pre-seizure week is always odd.

The Lolita Outfits

2010-07-31T00:57:00.002-06:00

Because this is photo heavy, I'm just linking to my photo albums and people can browse. But I have the school clothes done and some great shots of my work!

Enjoy!

I just finished signing up for the first semester of classes for my fashion design certificate at Emily Griffith so my sewing will improve!

The main album... On the left are all the individual things we made ...

Lots skirts. All the blouses are in an album together cuz I didn't sew them, I just decorated them. So it's all shots of the details there.

Trickle Down Morality

2010-07-05T00:19:00.005-06:00

There is a fundamental belief in people that if we can only put the right rules in place, people will change. The morals will trickle down from the top until we are all moral people.

Libertarians think that we have enough personal responsibility that we can self govern. And with fewer laws there will be fewer issues because we'll shoulder that responsibility once we have the option.

Republicans and democrats both seem to think that we can be personally responsible in some areas but not in others. So some things need governed and others we should choose. They both have different ideas of what those areas are and how much we need our hands held.

The Christian Reicht seems to believe that if they dictate every social act, people will quit offending them. I'm mean, quit sinning. We'll all become good, moral folk.

But people don't seem to realize that they're all assuming the same thing. With the right governing in place, we will become what they wish everyone was. From self responsible to biblically moral, they all think that they can change what people are. Some of their ideas are more or less offensive to their various followers, but their ideals are all the same.

People seem to have a real tendency to invert cause and effect. The people at the top reflect the people they rule. In America, this is because we're a democratic republic. We vote for people to make choices for us. We vote for people with our values so that their choices will not be too distasteful. They make their choices based on pleasing their constituents so that we will continue to vote for them. Family values do play an important part. What values we have dictate the chain all the way up.

The biggest driver for social change is economic change. Not laws or governing. What they are really trying to do is control the economics that will bring about the social changes they most want. If you think that family values mean a woman stays home with the children and the man works and runs the household, you need a financial situation that reflects that. A man has to be able to afford his family and childcare must be prohibitive to a female working. She should also be paid enough less that she is the logical choice to stay home.

So when someone says "return to traditional values", what they are saying is they want women to be paid less and childcare to be very expensive so that society has no choice but to have the man work while the woman stays at home. She also has to be forced into having children to tie her down, so contraceptives should be difficult and abortions illegal.

If you want everyone to have an equal voice, you want everyone to have equal income. Hence higher taxes on the rich and "fair" hiring laws. In order to have smaller government, you need more personal power, which means more personal wealth and buying power. Both are a catch-22: if you eliminate all competition so that everyone is the same, you also lose incentive for growth. If you push competition, you are going to have richer and poorer folk.

Here's another thing: people vote into office what they want. People want governed. They want told what to do. They want hand holding, coddling, and fairness. While a few of us might want smaller government, most people want big government. Huge government.

Once again, hearken back to nature. In all social animals, there are few leaders, many followers, and those followers need their leaders. They need to be told what to do and how to do it and don't survive well without that structure. There's a reason cultures are what they are. It's what is most needed. Anarchy is followed, gratefully, by monarchies and dictatorships. The first thing humans do when given freedom is to make rules. Tell young children to free play and they choose a leader who invents rules and everyone else follows them. This doesn't change as people age, only the form of game does.

So when people talk about family values, and laws to keep people safe, think about what they really want. It's a play on words for economic control. It's the morals of the people that dictate who is in office.

I get very tired of people bashing whoever is in charge for their choices when they are in charge, with those choices to make, because of all of OUR choices.

TED Talk on the need to believe, which I think is what influences our views on govvie.

the Fear Factor

2010-07-03T00:11:00.004-06:00

It seems to me that autism is a very fear based disorder. All the neurological components eat at the ability to process past fear. Lack of filters and natural structure. Lack of social skills required to create a network of support. Irregulations in hormone balance. Heightened sensory input.

Constant bombardment from the world until we have to flee.

We create anything we can to simulate filters and structure. We overstim and shut down. We make enough noise to block out the noise that other have natural filters for. That handy thing where once a sensation is there a while it gets blocked out... not so much. We feel it and feel it and feel it unless we out shout it or shut down enough we can't feel anything.

How do you tell the difference between avoiding something due to rational processing versus due to fear? They feel an awful lot alike. The results are similar. They both take an act of bravery to push through. They both leave the bad taste of cowardice.

It forces one to create a new line of questioning: If someone walked you through could you do it? Would it be possible if certain factors were removed? What would you need to be able to do this? Could you do it with anti anxiety drugs?

Maybe it's because I'm autistic, but cowardice is second only to lying in things that make you worthless.

Perseveration and avoidance tend to be fear based. Hermitude. Stimming out the world. Shutting out the world.

I'm just not sure I understand that balance. Some things one fears because it actually presents a danger. Some things are dangerous only until one has the skills to do it safely. Some things you fear just because you have nothing better to do, or out of habit. Some things are feared only for being new. Others are feared due to a bad experience. I can't help but wonder if the sorting is easier for those with categories and filters.

Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.

And since when is the feeling of dying inside a bad sign?!? I have to admit a great deal of confusion. How can it be a sign of depression when one feels awe and wonder at everything and always has reasons to be joyous? Why can't you have non stop pain so intense everything inside screams even while it's dancing in pleasure? And why do people get upset when you know that some day it will stop and you can rest or be done and that's just as joyous as every day being a sensory orgy?

Why does pain have to be a stopper? Can't it just be there too? Along with the laughter and fear and joy and tears and everything else that seems to always be there? Or is this another filter thing?

If it's a filter thing than, once again, autism wins!

what's next?

2010-06-27T01:04:00.003-06:00

I've been reading a lot about autism and advocacy and those amazing autistics who manage to ascend their autism. This is what I've learned so far:

1. Funny thing about curing autism or 'ascending' past it; it looks an awful lot like a compromise of Self. Learning to join the human world is no less than an acknowledgement that you aren't, and never will be, lovable. What you are inside is something dark and scary and they want you to sugar coat it and be presentable their way. It's a sure and certain knowledge that affection is a reward for good behavior. There is no such thing as unconditional love. Nothing is freely given.

You can show affection. They can know you are showing affection. Yet while you must accept their terms, their 'right' version of interaction, they will not accept yours. So, you'd best learn to talk, and lie, and keep your fears well hidden, cloaked in social games, or they'll never love you or care about you. Keeping your fears hidden your way is wrong. Stimming, spacing out, tuning in, and all the other autistic methods of dissociation are wrong. Dissociating their way is right. Dissociating into a social persona and masking yourself with the right words and right clothes and right actions, that's a good thing.

2. They'll advocate for people to let you exist, but not to live. Strangle out every purity in you until you are filthy with social aptitude. Integration into their world is a resignation of yourself. They call it freedom, but we've seen how one people free another from barbarism and it seems to result in plagues and massacres. But you don't have to massacre autistics. Humans naturally withdraw from things they fear, and they fear autistics, and any child will do anything to get their needs met, including fighting to get to your world to get the affection they'd starve without.

3. Advocates are pompous and insulting. "She is to autistic people what Jane Goodall was for the wild chimpanzees." This is the praise on a book on autism. Between Their World and Ours, by Karen Zelan, isn't too badly done. It holds tight to the us versus them the whole way through, and making us more them, because NT is the right way to go. But she does acknowledge that communication requires NTs to bend to the autistics if they want the autistics to follow them back to the good world. It's really just that quote that bothers me. Or perhaps I missed the part where wild chimpanzees have integrated into our society?

4. Getting "past" autism negates the autism. If you learn to function you are cured. You used to be autistic. You used to have difficulties. You used to be difficult. But now you are normal and speak and do what you are told. Now none of the pain you fight through daily to be good and be right counts, because now that you function, you are fine and probably always had been. Just a tough little stage.

By this theory, if you break your leg and learn to walk again, it was never very broken in the first place and it is not more likely to break again because there are no scars and no other damage done. You are cured from having had a break. If you learn to read after being dyslexic, your dyslexia is cured. Never mind that you read with a ruler under each line, that's just a silly thing you do because you have no more reading problems. It's just adaptation and learning to cope. If learning to adapt turns all your effort to shit by proving you were never unadapted, or that you now have no future difficulties, why "advocate"?

Most adult autistics adapted enough to work will never get the diagnosis and never have anyone appreciate their efforts because "beating" autism means you are cured. All effort negated. And who the hell cares that you fight non stop to cope? You don't get used to it all, you learn to deal with feeling like you are dying, all the time. You accept always being afraid. You adapt to the nonstop adrenaline and cortisol and function anyway and I am certain that there is no association between that and the statistics that show autistics have a very high tendency to develop seizures in their early twenties.

Stories on autism all seem to stop when the person communicates enough to be integrated into school. Whistles and bells if they manage to graduate. End of story.

5. NTs don't know what matters. You were right growing up: you don't matter. But if you want to live, just live. You'll never be good enough or human enough. You will always be judged. NTs treat one another like dirt, too. We learn to differentiate between Human and Person and learn to despise them as much as fear them. Curing autism through forced human socialization is cruel and breeds anger, resentment, and despair. They work so hard to make sure we know we'll never quite fit in or quite get it. And how many will be strong enough to throw off the shackles of freedom, ascension from autism, and learn that your world doesn't matter?

Friends matter. Those few individuals who care beyond the number of words you articulate. You can't have honesty and social mores. Most social mores depend on lies.

6. We don't go through anything NTs don't go through. The only difference is the pace. Developmental delay. We're just really really slow and we plod through what we can, as we can, in any way that we can. The issues you have, all NTs have had. They probably just did it before kindgarten while you are an adult and still trying to get there.

Everyone panics, gets overstimmed, and is in a fairly steady state of fear. The poison is in the dose. They have built in shock absorbers: filters and structure. NTs fear themselves and others and the world around them and they dissociate into their little worlds too. The difference is they agree upon a world and live in it together, a world of social constructs and all those weird little things they evidently find important that baffle us entirely. Kinda nice to know it's mutual.

It's just that it's easier to empathize with your own sort than another. Cross cultural empathy is actually very difficult and we are acultural. We never picked it up. It's a natural knack NTs have. So they can't empathize with us easily because we're not in the cultural context that allows it.

7. They really think we don't have feelings. I'm not sure how this works but it seems to follow along with their Theory of Mind game. Since they aren't communicating with us, we have no thoughts or feelings. I think it's the same theory that allows them to say they have souls but "animals" don't.

Some day, an advanced alien race will meet humanity and since they don't speak english and write english and use the same gestures as humans, they will be discounted as illiterate barbarians.

Okay, so I haven't learned much, but I'm starting to learn how they think about us. That is probably not a good thing. I'm not sure it's going to help me really want to learn to communicate with them on levels they're capable of comprehending. The more I learn about NTs the more I think they aren't capable of those basic things they accuse us of lacking: empathy, communication, bravery (pushing past fears), intelligence, theory of mind...

It makes me question how hard all of us fight to get "beyond autism".

I think rising above autism has three stages. First you hide from OutSector in yourself. You hide from yourself in yourself. Then you emerge from your dissociation into the social world by locking more and more of yourself away - you hide yourself from OutSector to interact with it. Finally you have to decide whether to integrate the two and in what way. Do you hide in yourself and from OutSector and become a hermit? Do you emerse in OutSector being the perfect docile puppet and lose yourself? Do you somehow manage to pull your self into OutSector and be you while interacting? What are you going to do?

Will you implode or explode under the strain? I've met very few happy autistics.

No one has thought very far beyond a cure. People only now seem to realize their children that are so difficult will some day be difficult adults. All the focus is on children and early intervention. There is very little "then what" being discussed. Those around us might feel good about a successful rescue operation, but then what? It's great you conquered enough fear to hang out with the humans, but what next? You are still autistic. They still fear you. You will never be wholly comfortable with them nor they with you. So now what? Sit and be awkward with other between world autistics and hide in one another's neuroses? Wrap yourself in isolation or isolate yourself in social constructs you don't grasp? If you are more than a mimicking monkey, what are you? Advocacy asks: how are you going to make yourself useful and survive in this world? I ask: what's beyond survival?

It's well and good to learn to hold down a job. It's one of the most important things there is. And it doesn't matter at all. Why exist if you are miserable?

Why aren't there more happy autistics? Why do "successful" autistics have a list of career achievements, and not much else? Why are autistic support groups so full of self pity, self loathing, and complaints? I tried joining a couple, expecting hints on how to cope, and maybe some smug gloating that all the cool kids were autie (we claim tesla, einstein, mozart...), perhaps sharing frustrations on interactions and dissecting it into sense. Yeh, not so much.

What makes so many people so miserable? Is it the interaction we fought so hard to be capable of? Is it the daily living tasks we fought to do? Is it the words we fought to speak? The proper gestures and appropriate motions we fought to mimic? Or is it this constant fighting that doesn't seem to get us what we started all of this to achieve?

What makes any child fight so hard to get out of their world enough to interact in OutSector where all the inner worlds collide in relationships?

Probably the same thing that makes the NTs so miserable. This shining picture of what should be, if you are normal enough and good enough. But we're all just folk. And no one is good enough. And if you don't find your own way, you're just going to stay lost. At some point, the autistic hits the stages that all children do and, like all children, they get the idea in their head of what should be. It's perfectly normal. And it draws them from InnerWorld to OutSector and from there there is no going back. You cannot make yourself smaller or younger. You can only go on. Choice after choice after choice.

aliens

2010-06-15T10:59:00.005-06:00

Illegal aliens are currently big in the news.

If I understand right, and it's always possible I don't, this being a social issue, people are upset that someone illegal is taking a job a good American could have, and using up all the welfare money, to boot.

So, if we are admitting that 11 million people is too many extra (and that isn't an annual growth, that is simply how many were counted in 2008), why is it okay that we add 27,855,843 a year (9% growth a year)?

If we are going to block illegal immigrants, shouldn't we also make population growth laws? Seems kind of hypocritical to get upset about population numbers if we don't look at our own objectively. And the fastest growth is among the poor who are most likely to need government assistance.

With the economy in such a slump, someone else having the job is a valid complaint. There's a reason the fuss is loudest now, not when people had jobs. However, if they have a job you'd be willing to take, they are also paying taxes, and spending money back into the economy. Certainly there are some with a US born child who get government help. There are also Americans scamming the welfare system. If I could find reliable numbers I'd tell you who was wasting more of our money.

"In fiscal year 1995, about $1.1 billion in AFDC and Food Stamp benefits
were provided to households with an illegal alien parent for the use of his
or her citizen child." gao.gov

"The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) had previously reported that over 39.6 million people, equivalent to one in every eight Americans, were receiving food stamps during February." PressTV but I saw this stat on several articles.

The big issue is I cannot find any set of articles that agree on numbers for welfare, legal or illegal, honest or scamming. Basically, they all agree that we are in financial distress as a nation and more people are on government aid than before, but every state needs to cut the numbers down because we can't fund the number of people that need assistance.

Illegal or not, times are tough. My confusion is that people are in an uproar about illegal aliens (who if working are paying into taxes) and not to all the people scamming the system and avoiding working, paying taxes, and just mooching off the rest of us. Why aren't there protests and petitions for welfare reform to be stricter so that we aren't funding scammers? I can't find any good studies on actual numbers, but in my own experience, over half the people I've known getting government assistance could have been working. And of those, about half bragged about it and about half complained about how rough their lives were while they sat around not doing anything to better themselves (like job hunting).

And if someone has legal US children, born in the US, are you going to deport the parents and keep the kid? It's probably far more expensive to foster the child through college (foster kids are eligible for a lot of grants!) than to just let the parents stay and raise them, even if they do get food stamps. According to a government website, each child is at least 1400 a month to raise in a foster home.

Or are you going to deport a US citizen and send the kid back with their parents? If so, what rights does that mean any US citizen has?

Whatever your opinion on it, all I'm saying is to think it through carefully. Anyone we boot out is no longer giving us money (and most they catch are illegally hired, tax paying, services buying people). There are plenty of US Citizens scamming for money. And I have to wonder if it costs more to find the people, prosecute (and house during the prosecution process) and then deport than it costs to just give them all food stamps (not saying they are all on food stamps. I'm just wondering if that would be cheaper). Since the argument is mostly financial, think carefully on what is actually the least costly. I'm not sure. I've not found numbers yet.

My thought is that if they steal a social security number, prosecute them and kick them out. If they find work (and I should put honestly in quotes, but at least not through outright theft) and are paying into the system and trying to make ends meet to support their family (and usually US born kids), good on them. If they are scamming the system (welfare and food stamps), they need to go. I feel that way about US born citizens too, for the record. If they're scamming, make them work off what they stole. I fully agree with the "why are we supporting all these people who aren't giving back?" crowd. I just play it across the board, US, immigrant, or illegal immigrant.

Then again, I think everyone on government assistance should be required to do community service to give back in some small way. I'm not really big on welfare as a concept.

Where I got my population numbers:
Google Public Data

World Population Clock

Illegal Immigration Stats per wiki

EDIT: Someone else had the same idea... visit takeourjobs.org :D

Book Review

2010-05-20T20:27:00.002-06:00

This is an early book review as I'm still reading the book.

Autism's False Prophets, by Paul A Offitt.

I've never bought the vaccine hype. In fact, I rather enjoy not dying of childhood diseases that used to plague humans. Nonetheless, I'm fairly impressed with everything that went into the anti-vaccine farce.

Everyone should read this book. It's a good reminder that anecdotes and coincidence are not science and, more importantly, believing media hype is plain dangerous.

Anyone with autistic kids should read it just to be informed. People know that desperate parents will pay a lot of money for hope and this book let's you know some of the worse ones. Better to be aware.

Nut Cream Ganaches

2010-05-14T15:33:00.004-06:00

I know... I know...

You would rather listen to my biased and ill-informed opinions about mental health and humanity in general. But today you are going to learn about desserts. Ganaches, in specific.

And if you don't like chocolates or are allergic, you should think very carefully about the sins you committed the last life to incur such punishment.

Ganache:

Chop up chocolate. The finer you chop it, the faster the melt. This is a good thing. The better quality the better the ganache. I go for the darker the better and usually use 100% cacao unsweetened, and 77-88% dark, about half and half.

Put it into a glass measuring cup and see how much you have. I tend to end up around 1.5 cups.

Measure out that amount of heavy cream into a double boiler (ie, a saucepan filled with water, with a glass or metal bowl sitting in it. When you boil the water, the bowl heats gently, insuring you do not scorch the cream).

Once the cream is damn near boiling (that is the technical term. For me, it's when I can't touch past my first knuckle without burning), pour it over the chopped chocolate. Let it sit half a minute or so to melt and then stir gently until it is mostly mixed. Then beat it until it has a nice sheen.

Let it cool a few minutes. Put liners in muffin tins and dallop about a tablespoon or so into each one. For 1.5 cups of chocolate, this comes to about 36 muffins.

The Nut Cream:

1.5 cups of any nut butter you like. Unsalted, unsweetened. Preferably grind it yourself at a health food store.

Add 1 stick of softened butter (salted or not, up to you. I like salted).

Mix thoroughly. Add a tablespoon of molasses, honey, or maple syrup if you like. Or a few drops stevia or other sweetener.

Once the ganaches are cool enough to hold shape when you tip the muffin tin, dallop the nut cream on top. Again, about a tablespoon each. I smooth it out with my finger because I run a very clean & careful kitchen.

Refrigerate. Let sit about 24 hours before you bag them, or else they sweat.

That's it!! Yummy, low sugar, more nutritious than a candy bar candy!!

edit from auntie: for people who weigh things, 1/4 cup cream to each 3-4oz chocolate bar

anecdotes aren't evidence?

2010-05-07T12:13:00.004-06:00

Humans go for fast thinking, not good thinking. If someone does something stupid in a crisis, people seem more likely to say "at least he did something" than, he should have stopped and thought that through.

This is shown by news stories complaining that the President chose to confer with his staff for very long periods of time before making a decision. Gathering of facts before stating something as true seems, perhaps, rather a waste of time.

But there is a huge difference between fact and opinion, between evidence and anecdote, between cause and effect and correlation... Most people don't even understand the terms, let alone how to distinguish them. Learning to think is not taught in schools. Regurgitating information in the same form it was given to you is what gets you good scores.

It's not just the way we are raised that determines this ability to think, either. The body, itself, is trained to respond to clues and come up with cause and effect. This is how one stays alive. If you eat a strawberry the same day you get the flu, your body is just as likely to grow allergic to the strawberry as any other reaction because it found a correlation.

But when this is the basis that we also approach science, we run in to problems.

We end up with a large group of parents saying that immunizations cause autism. We also end up with people finding correlations in nutrition that may not exist. We have doctors saying that fat causes heart attacks even though no study has fully proven this. All the studies have shown is that clots have fat in them. Never mind that clots aren't the biggest reason for heart attacks, nor type of fat (vegetable more often than meat), nor what causes clotting!

So most facts are, at best, incomplete. At worse, politically skewed.

Take the studies on whether or not carbs are harmful. The same studies are cited by quite a few different groups, all showing different results. And you can say that the corn industry backed a study that showed corn is healthy, and that the meat industry backed a study that said red meat is healing, and the PETA folk proved red meat causes cancer...

But when it comes down to it, what evidence of anything do we actually have? A handful of inconclusive studies (because they were not done well. Because nutrition studies are very difficult to do well), a lot of anecdotal evidence, and everyone calling "proof" wherever it fits their needs.

Now, I personally am a big fan of low carb. The studies I choose to buy into show that grains raise insulin and insulin is the basis of most modern epidemics (obesity, diabetes, auto immune disorders...). It is almost all based on anecdotal evidence (my friend went low carb and all her health issues cleared) and studies interpreted by low carb advocates. Do I have proof? No.

I'd love proof. I'd love to see some serious long term studies done. On most aspects of health and nutrition. Then again, I'd love for them to decide on what autism is, so it can be studied.

If you want to study a disease, you isolate the virus and you test it. You can immunize 5000 folk and not immunize another 5000 folk and study their blood to see who got which antibodies. You can discover patterns because there is a damned virus to look at.

No one knows what autism is. There are a handful of symptoms that people don't really agree on. There are behaviors that show in so many ways there's no real agreement there. They keep spreading the spectrum further and further out, making any real studies even more difficult. It isn't a disease. It's a behavioral pattern that annoys the piss out of most people. It is all the annoying traits most people have to a small degree... done huge and exaggerated.

Yet, people claim "proofs" and "evidence" and make diagnoses and cite studies and anecdotes and think they have some damned clue what is going on. The truth is, you don't have a definition to parse. Without a definition, there is nothing else. Form is beauty. Without form, there is nothing. Which is probably why people are so ugly about the disorder.

And that goes for all these things people claim "to know" without any real evidence.

Anecdotes are only that. Someone did something that seemed to have an effect. That's all. And that's perfectly fine to go by. There's nothing wrong with saying "my sister did this and it worked so I'm trying it". The problem is saying "and therefore this is true" or "therefore this is right". You don't have any kind of proof. You have a story of assumed correlation.

Bad science is very aggravating. Logical fallacies make me want to kick people in the head. What ever happened to "I statements"? They have a huge place in science. "I suspect" "I believe" "I have noticed"... What are people so scared of?

fat, weight, & body size

2010-05-04T11:56:00.002-06:00

I just finished reading Barry Groves' Natural Health & Weight Loss. My favorite part about reading books about low carb dieting is their view on a healthy weight. Women are supposed to have curves. A healthy weight is one that supports life, and that means enough fat to support breast feeding. That weight isn't unhealthy.

I have finally put on enough weight that you can't count my ribs, and then hit puberty and have tits and hips and a belly. And mixed in with the joy of finally not looking 12 is the urge to poke at the belly and wonder if it's too fat. *Rolls eyes*

Considering that underweight is far more dangerous than overweight, and that my health is better now and I have more energy and look better... I have to be impressed that even through my autistic tendency to not notice social programs... And my autistic tendency towards logic... I still poke at my little belly.

Everyone needs things so categorized today, and need approval from someone of authority, that we have invented numbers that mean nothing and all risk our health to meet those numbers.

My other favorite thing about low carb dieting is that there are no special things to buy, no special numbers to count, no weights to reach. All you do is cut out grains and sugars and most fruits and increase fats and call it good. You don't need anything you can't buy at a farmer's market or grocery. While everyone tells me how strict my diet is, I actually put very little effort into maintaining it. I would cook all my meals anyway, because I simply love to cook. Since I cook, I don't buy prepackaged foods so I don't have any labels to read. While my diet might be "restrictive" I think it's a lot simpler than most peoples'!

Most people I know have to read labels and count calories and grams of this and that and measure how much they eat and when they eat and how much exercise and of what types... That's way too much effort when they aren't getting any healthier from it all.

It seems to me that people were capable of maintaining health without the help from research groups for a pretty long time and maybe the body has a good idea of what it needs. Not a revolutionary idea, it's an evolutionary idea.

This Way to OutSector

2010-04-30T14:04:00.002-06:00

I learned something amazing from my auntie today. I'm grounded. In reality, no less. In fact, I'm more grounded in all my realities than most "sane" folk and most NTs.

After many years of all realities being one and none being any more or less real than any other, I've finally fought my way through to telling which is which. They are still all equally real (or not real), because there are still the factors of proofs and legitimate realities.

Nonetheless, I fully understand if something is Shadow World, the Nutshell (my internal world), Abi World, or Out Sector (that being what most folk consider the world). I also know if something is Out Sector versus someone else's world. (Abi World being my version of Out Sector).

There are things that seem to hold steady in Out Sector. Gravity, for example. That we have to eat. That we have to have money in this society to get things to eat. Cause and effect, physics, biology...

Opinions create Insert-name-here World. Positives and negatives. Good and bad. Right and wrong. My Abi World is a mishmash of whimsy and logic. Not so much social and emotional constructions.

For all that I can't read a map, I have somehow figured out how to map all the various realities around me and to understand how they interact and to face each one on its own terms. I suppose most people aren't as good at it because they haven't had to fight so hard to tell them apart? More points for Team BatShitNuts!

Let's Be Neighbors!

2010-04-02T18:42:00.002-06:00

My roommate innocently asked me why it isn't good to be congenial and say hello to strangers while we take walks. Amazingly, I actually know that answer!

Making eye contact and small chat implies a connection. I know this because on calls at work we are required to do small talk to "create rapport" and a sense of intimacy.

I am not sure why anyone would want this with a stranger and it seems to only apply when you are the help and doing customer service... because in public... you sure as heck do NOT want random intimacy. It's creepy. And culturally, it's far worse coming from a male as intimacy implies sex and sex with strange males is rather frowned upon in America.

What happened to the small town feel? It was eaten alive by "stranger danger" and xenophobia. Sure, once upon a time in America, one wanted to know their neighbors and anyone new was intently interviewed by half the town. Times, however, have changed. Now only small children and the mentally ill give friendly hellos to strangers. The rest of us have been taught that this is dangerous and foolish.

Personally, I think the isolation is far more dangerous. Parents are too scared to let their kids play outside and explore, seriously inhibiting their physical health and mental growth. I'm sure the current "lack of vitamin D" epidemic is influenced by that fear: kids are kept "safely" indoors. When I was growing up, we ran around outside all the time. Met strange children from other neighborhoods. Went exploring. Had neighborhood barbeques. Watched neighbors' pets when they were out of town and shoveled elderly neighbors snowy driveways just because.

A lot of that is missing today and I think most people are diminished by the lack of neighbors. They seem to have fewer really close friends as well. But we are social animals and the lack of social contact takes its toll. Babies die of failure to thrive from lack of touch. Adults just get depressed and mental agility. It even influences heart conditions!

This fear of social intimacy seems to be growing. Personally, I think having the good excuses of aspergers and other spectrum disorders just makes it worse. Now you have an excuse to not put an effort into expanding your social circle. How is that helpful? With diagnoses of social phobia and anxiety disorders just gives permission to hide away. We create more sickness by approving the fears. Yes, yes. Meeting people is terrifying. Eventually, you have to realize if everything scares you, the fear ceases to count.

Then again, I think people greatly enjoy being sick and so it's probably an added benefit to those sorts that their "disorders" add to their physical distress. It's like a badge of honour to be ill. If you don't have enough diagnoses you have something wrong with you?

The real question is, how does one break out of the loop by being friendly to neighbors without getting a restraining order slapped on them by a sociophobe or well meaning but over protective parent?

Settling In!

2010-03-20T12:04:00.002-06:00

So we've signed the lease, moved our stuff in, signed up to have power and gas and stuff. We're like real growed ups around here!!

I do keep forgetting to do a change of address. I know I have a form somewhere. Or I might get annoyed enough at the form to pay a dollar and do it online. I guess with all this email business they have to make cash somehow at the post office.

I'm doing the Big Scary and trying to fill out job applications. I like my job well enough (read: I hate it and it's miserable but it mostly covers the bills so long as I have no other expenses come up), but I'd really feel better with a little bit more coming in every month. They have these online applications now... with psych profiles. Apparently they want dumb people. That's what I understand by reading it. If you think too hard about the answers you prove you are either too smart, too conniving, too honest, or too analytical. No one wants those. They prefer the expense of retraining folk for high turnover, as opposed to the risk of one smart person taking down the whole company.

So I tried to not read the questions and put answer "C" a lot on all the multiple choice. And, assumedly due to the crap economy, there were ten pages of "so if a person isn't paid enough/denied the raises they were promised/was refused their bonus, would it be effective to..." with the answers all being choices about stealing from companies. I happily picked "ineffective" the whole way down without reading anything hahaha. So hopefully I didn't look like I was smart enough to read, so that they'll want to hire me.

Does this seem a big backwards to anyone else?

I already dragged (kicking and fighting, for realz) my roommate to the gym and signed us up! Hoorah for exercise! Now it's just exploring the neighborhood. We need to go get library cards. I think I'd die without a library card. How do you know where you live if you don't have a card stating which library to send you to if you get lost??

"If found, please return to Denver Public Library" it will say. And when I wander and forget where I live, they will find me and deposit me with books. And all will be well.

I also had to buy two more cupboards in which to fit my kitchen. It's all prettiful at least. And now the counters are clear in the kitchen so I can cook. Now I just need a place for my cookbooks and stuck up food magazines! And my books. I hate moving bookcases, so I'm going to build something much more transportable. I measured: I have 50 feet of books.

Lessee... we also got internets hooked up. Obviously or I'd have no intertubes to send this page through! They misspelled my name. And my email. But nonetheless, we have some interwebs in the house so I can be all social.

That's it. Off to the library now for my card! The one form I've never had issues filling out hahaha.

Ta!

What's so bad about change?

2010-03-07T23:18:00.002-07:00

I'm not sure why people have any confusion about change. No one likes it. It's not an autistic only trait to despise change.

Even people who thrive on change thrive on change they create. They still don't seem to much like life throwing changes at them. They might be a bit faster at coping because of the extra practice, but change sucks.

Being in the midst of a move, my brain has gone haywire with all the changes. It's not fear of the unknown because at the moment there are not any unknowns. It's the disconcertedness of not being.

Quite simply, the here-now doesn't exist. The was is past and I'm waiting on will be to exist. So the here-now is neither was nor will be and no now is yet. So I'm in temporal limbo. Without a now how can I exist? Nothing anywhere is until time settles back into now as the temporary will be that isn't quite.

I imagine this is why most people resist change. But in any case, I'll be finished moving this weekend and the will be will be now and now will settle into existence and then I can exist and it will all be good.

Temple Grandin at TED

2010-03-01T19:51:00.002-07:00

The points Temple Grandin hits aren't true just for autistics. Everyone thinks differently and schools are destroying kids' interest in learning. Funding is cut on the things that most involve kids in the world around them. It's all about scores and numbers, not about learning and creating and thinking and exploring.

The most interesting thing she touched on was categorization. I think the way auties categorize has something to do with the lack of filters. There aren't broad generalizations in our minds. It makes us both more capable of learning new things and less capable of coping with change.

I also like that she points out that learning social rules by rote is just learning a play. It's not natural or automatic. We learn exact responses, right down to action and voice. And then people say we've outgrown autism because we can do all the social things. It's all very silly.

Enjoy the video!

The Dissonance Factor

2010-02-12T00:34:00.004-07:00

When you read about autism, you are very likely to hear about how tragic it is. All these higher functioning sorts have no social skills and are doomed to a life of isolation and depression. They may or may not have spiffy skills that allow them to work, or cute quirky obsessions that make them book material. No matter how you look at it, though, they aren't going to have close friends and they are tragic figures who know only loneliness.

That, however, is utter crap.

The basic social skills can be taught to anyone who is functional enough to speak. With the internet and autistic groups and just the sheer number of kooky quirky freaks out there, any autistic has a really good chance of making several close friends in person and probably several close friends over the internet. Being alone is a choice, usually made out of fear or out of a poor conceptual construct of what people and friends are.

The real "tragedy" is that we are young. I'm not sure I can even explain what it is like to have a life time of experiences and still have a child's mind. Developmentally, autistics age very slowly. There is a huge dissonance between the perceived age of a high functioning autistic and their actual mental age.

We look grown up. We have good vocabularies and can discuss an amazing range of topics with logic and depth, making us appear adult. We might even have a really good grasp of our own basic emotions. We might have a bit of social awkwardness, but it comes across as shy or gawky or geeky. We tend to hold down jobs, sometimes extremely good jobs, and have apartments and hobbies. Sometimes even fairly common, socially accepted hobbies. Or at least normal within our peer group.

However, we are children. We are children with decades of experiences that cannot be deciphered in an adult way. Sometimes this leads to moments of clarity and insight. Sometimes it leads to extreme confusion.

I read often that children who deal with adult things have psychological and sociological development issues. In other words, dealing with things before you are actually ready for them will screw you over.

What does this mean for an adult with a child's mind who is having to behave as an adult? You have someone with an adult's vocabulary, but a ten year old's emotional and moral age, and they have no choice but to work and pay bills and live on their own. Is there any damage from this? If so, is the damage made easier to deal with for the length of experience, or does the length of time make it worse?

One of the biggest factors in a child taking on responsibility too soon is that they miss out on play and this damages their cognitive and social abilities. Play is absolutely vital to social behavior. We're already a bit lacking in social ability. And I think our cognitive is a bit wonky, at best. So what does that mean for us?

And why are autism get together groups not playgroups if that's the big thing that builds social learning?

I wish I could explain the dissonance factor and how much it sucks. There are quite a few movies about children magically going into adult bodies and realizing they aren't ready to deal with being as big as they wish they already were. Picture Tom Hanks in Big never landing such a spiffy job and just trying to get by and never having a chance to be put back into childhood.

We high functioning autistics are nothing but children playing house. Some of us do a better job than others, but when it comes down to it, we are all lost in the great big grown up world without filters or delusions to protect us. It's not an instability. It's knowing too much and having no recourse from the onslaught of reality as it beats down your door and has its way with you and all the while you are only a small child who can't understand it. You are just a young, feral animal going mad under the pressure until you build so many rituals to tie yourself safely up and hold you in.

And all the while you have enough cognitive ability to realize there is something not right. Something isn't meshing. Maybe you know you are autistic and too young to deal with being a grown up in this world. You can see the lack of social understanding and can grasp exactly what autism is and how it effects you. You know that you can't do anything about it because you know you are not yet developed enough TO do anything about it. You can't even really communicate it because those concepts are beyond your capacity to put into words.

I think most of the secondary problems adult autistics have stem from this dissonance. Social issues get worse if everyone around you grows up. Ever have a younger sibling who wanted to tag along and they annoyed the crap out of you because they were so much younger? Eventually the adult autistic is always the annoying younger sibling tagging along. You have to really search to find a group of people you don't pester. Knowing you pester most of the people you interact with leads to "social anxiety" and depression. You isolate to protect yourself and it just spirals in. It's harder to hold down a job when you don't interact correctly. And if you do learn the little rituals needed to interact successfully, those rituals are only stressful. They are lies and deceits and they burn autistics up inside, like any small child with a secret, especially a negative secret.

Adult autistics get more bullied. We are a naive group and most autistics have funny gaits and funny ways to phrase things. We often look like victims huddled in on ourselves against the outside world and victims will always draw bullies to them. In this world, naivety is a dangerous thing. Adult autistics are easy marks. Unless we can develop a fairly healthy paranoia, we tend to be extremely gullible. But is it worth it to learn to lie and cheat?

And while we're on the topic of interactions (isn't bullying an interaction?)... Relationships. What relationships can you have if you never develop past childhood? Children can certainly attach, and attach strongly. And love deeply. And feel passionately. But there is something different in grown ups when they are in a relationship. I don't know what it is because I'm not there yet, but I know it's there. I have been told about it and read about and all I've been able to figure is I'll be told when I'm old enough. Until then it makes no sense. It doesn't seem to be as big a deal with friends. Although my friends all have an amazing capacity for acceptance and patience.

And yet it gives us such wide eyed innocence. There is a charm to adult autistics. A part that seems to never be tarnished by the outside world because we never grow up enough to fully interact with it. How can that be all bad? We are honest and forthright and earnest, in general. We have that childlike sense of wonder and awe. I'm not sure it's worth growing up to lose that. We can't lose the childlike perspectives that see the truth and blurt it out. The wise old crone is also a toddler who points out that the Emperor has no clothes.

growing!

2010-02-02T14:46:00.003-07:00

I suddenly realized I am in another growth spurt. The achy tired fussy fidgety overstimmed feeling wasn't a klew, apparently.

So hoorah for autism and hormones!!

This means no coffee til I'm done. Caffeine leeches calcium. It means more calcium and weight bearing. And I wrote to nutrition friends to make sure my diet is supportive.

I'm practically 17 now! Whoo hoo!!

*wanders off grumbling cuz she is fussy and achy*

mouth noise

2010-01-19T03:19:00.003-07:00

you aren't listening:

when you taste color on your tongue

and music explodes across your skin

and numbers play a symphony across the page,

what words can take

the taste of a sound

or the deep thrum against the skin from a rich smell,

can make the shadows dance in joy

against the candle flame?

what words have ever described

feelings that lap against the shores of the soul;

the great dissonance from reality

as senses meld and melt and reform

into the every day that is how i perceive?

what words can form the emotions

that bubble up into a fount that bursts through my skin

and into the world around me

fascinating me with the rhythms and sighs

that pulse and breathe from every object i interact with?

when words fail utterly

and i shout with all my senses inverted

until i feel deaf with the input

and still you do not hear.

you do not listen to the way a raindrop glitters

and holds entire worlds

until it splatters against a surface

dislodging its inhabitants.

what words can recreate my world for you

so that you can perceive

through my senses?

speak express emote, let you in,

emoting makes you nervous

full of tapping drumming humming spinning

emotions pure: love and fear and anger and sadness and joy

laughing crying stomping shouting

mutters flaps disjointed words

interacting with worlds you don't see

details you don't notice

rich tapestry and you can't count the threads.

why make words

useless abstractions that tell nothing

mean nothing

until there is a word that means

the taste of a shadow on your tongue like the last wisps of smoke from a blown out candle

an average abi day (or how do i have a job??)

2010-01-09T23:04:00.004-07:00

i wake up when my alarm goes off and i chitter at the alarm.

literally chitter. like an angry mongoose. because it woke me up! i usually have it set to NPR and i listen for a while until it annoys me into sitting up. then i go to the bathroom and get a glass of milk and go back to bed and drink my milk.

usually i sing to my milk. and to my cat who is snuggled back on me for a nap. and sometimes i sing to the morning and to the sun in the window and to the alarm clock. they're just little songs. like "my milk is cold and full of fat and makes my tummy happy!" or "amira is my cat my cat and she is a fuzzy attack cat!" often the body needs to stomp and dance and spin and tap things when i'm going on my milk mission. so i stomp and dance and spin and tap things. the body is happiest when its needs are met.

anyway, i usually choke a few times on the milk because i'm drinking while singing, or i just forget when to breathe, and get confused on the order in which to do this. sometimes i upend my entire cup of milk on myself and have laundry to do. this makes me annoyed at myself. i have a lot of pillows so that i'm sitting up nicely so that i WON'T kill myself with my breakfast, but sometimes it's hard to do things in the morning. (that makes it sound like i don't choke on food all day long. i do, actually. it's not a morning thing, it's just WORSE in the morning.)

if i haven't spilled my milk (i don't cry over it), i usually get my laptop and check email. amira usually demands i let her under the covers so i put my knees up for a tent and she naps while i check email. i check my favorite forum too. and then i usually start to strongly consider the day.

first i consider that i'll have to work. after my panic attack passes i consider i'll have to put clothing on. i get too comfy otherwise, and don't take my job at all seriously. after i get all the flapping out over that idea i go back to the idea of work and flap some more. then i ignore work and see if there is something comforting going on, like friends online. then i usually remember food so i go get breakfast. i like bacon and eggs, or cranberry bread slathered in butter.

after i eat, i pace around making sure my room is still my room. i check to see what has changed while i sleep. amira watches me with, i'm sure, a mixture of annoyance (because she already did this today) and understanding (she had to do this today too). once things appear okay or i correct them into okayness, i change her litter and make sure my alarm is set for the next day and then i listen very hard for a while. i have to know who is home and where they are and what they are doing. amira and i sit on the bed together and both listen for hours. sometimes i chat with friends online while i listen. sometimes i just listen. sometimes i flick my fingers in my ears so that i can listen more precisely. sometimes i have to close my eyes and sometimes i want music.

when it is about 230 i panic because i have to go to work. i usually stomp and fuss and make lots of rhyming words and pace and flap. and then i run and turn my computer on (i work from home) and run back to my room to hide for a few minutes. then i run upstairs to the bathroom and make sure i'm washed up and teeth are brushed and my hair is in a neat braid (or else my headset bothers me).

then i trudge back downstairs and put my laptop next to my work computer and make sure that everything is set up for work. i have to have my tissues in case i get a runny nose. and i have my mug warmer in case i need a mug of coffee. and i have my bottle of water that i fill. and i have a pad of paper and pencil. and my laptop has to be at the right angle. and my chair at the right height. and the headset at the right volume. then i go through all my logging in steps.

then i flap and sing and rhyme at the computer while i log in to work. it's the worse part because the inevitable is coming. i try to be very cheerful when i log in to the chats at work so that everyone knows i'm a real trooper. i don't want them to know i die all the time and cry at work.

to die: when everything overwhelms and you fall into the dark and you have to put the pieces together enough to come back to the surface.

then i log in and i check to see how many calls because i have to panic every time a call comes in and i want to have an idea of how much adrenaline this will take.

then i have to test my voice. it takes a LOT of concentration to make my voice have "energy, empathy, and enthusiasm". but you have to have that at work. and then i put my brain through harmonization exercises so that i am ready to hear and harmonize with the voices on the phone. then a call comes in and i try to not scream out loud. i hear for a while their up and down music voice. then i match the harmony and then i try to make words out of their mouth noise and then i can't hear the music. i have to go back and forth. listen for music. listen for words. back and forth. once i can make harmony i need words so i know what the puzzle is for the call.

those are my two games to make work... well, work. one is harmonization. this gives my voice "tone" and stuff. you just harmonize to their music and it just happens on its own. i get a lot of compliments on my voice. i'm glad because i work very very hard on my voice. the other is the puzzle game. each customer has a puzzle for you to solve. they put lots of obstacles up to make it harder and you have a time limit and lots of rules and you have to make it all match up in the end. the harder the puzzle the more you don't have time to music because it's all words and then you lose tone but you get a really tricky puzzle solved and that's more fun.

i very much like these games. puzzles are always good.

then i have to put notes in about what i did and then i have to let my ears let go of the voice so that i can hear the next voice. when it is busy, i have to log out for a bit to let my ears empty. if i don't all the sounds pile up and i get very confused. sometimes it is too busy and i stop hearing at all and then i can't remember how to do any part of my job. i usually muddle through by asking for lots of help and then i log out for longer until i can do my job again. so far i haven't gotten in trouble for this. i think i'm not the only one who does it because my job is from home and people who work from home tend to not work OUT of the house for a reason.

sometimes my ears won't clear out (it's a stressful day or i have to go to the bathroom or i'm hungry or i'm tired or there is weather or there are smells or there is noise upstairs or any of the other things that overwhelm the senses) and then i have to figure out if i can fix it or not. usually not and i just get more and more stressed each call until i have tears in my eyes and shaking and confused and then i die and hide and sometimes i ask to take extra breaks but i try not to too often. usually i just push through and don't care if i am dead i just have to do it or i won't eat because you only get paid if you are actively on the phones so there's nothing to be done but to do it!

that always sucks.

today there was a smell. i don't know what it was. but it was very loud. my brain decided it was popcorn. it was very loud smelling popcorn. it was so loud my ears couldn't hear and i couldn't make words quite right. i had to think very very hard to make words happen at all. words are my archnemesis, at the best of times. my whole skin hurt from the loud smell and i was very very upset. then i tend to type inappropriately but i've rarely gotten in trouble because so many of us are inappropriate at work. i think i'm not the only autie on this job!! anyway, after work i went upstairs and i flapped at everyone very loudly and there was no popcorn. they had made rice and pork. but popcorn is the loudest smell in the world and my brain had decided that is what the smell was. after i flapped loudly at the world i retreated back downstairs to my room and my cat and then things were okay.

usually at work my ears hurt and my throat hurts from hearing and talking. my eyes twitch from having to focus on the screen. my skin hurts from the noise and the overstimulation. i start shaking about an hour in and it gets worse all shift until i sometimes sit on my hands to stop them. i rock in my chair a lot. i also dig my nails into my hands. sometimes until they bleed but not too often. i have a headache every day from listening so hard to music and words and making the words make enough sense to use them.

the best part of the shift is lunch when i can go away for half an hour and eat and not listen.

eventually the bad stuff ends and i can log out and be DONE with it. then i have to flap and stomp and i try VERY hard to not have to bang my head into walls but sometimes that is very difficult. i usually mutter and lot and if i bump into people i fall into autistic speak instead of NT speak and sometimes this bothers them but my friends are used to it. then i hide some. sometimes under the covers or in a closet. usually amira demands a tent and i sit on my bed with a cover on my legs so she can take a nap. it's very hard work watching me work all day. she sits in my lap as much as she can and when i get too flappy she helps by sitting on the mouse, blocking the screen of the computer, or trying to remove my headset. she knows those are the problems because i use them and get very stressed. i always appreciate her help but have to ask her to lie down in my lap and let me work. i hate that part.

then i usually tell my friends how mean work is to make me take calls which cracks me up because i get paid to take calls. but that's okay. i'm just glad to HAVE a job since a lot of people don't. i repeat this to myself all day long so i remember to not quit my job just because it hurts.

i always have to remember that most things hurt and if i want to eat i have to hurt. that's just life. it's not like if i was a wolf in the wild food would just walk into my mouth! you have to work for a meal or you haven't done your part in the natural balance of things. this helps a lot. it's a rightness even if it is not enjoyable.

i like a lot of people i chat with at work, though. that part is fun. if i didn't take calls and i just looked up answers for the people i work with i'd really enjoy my job. i am very personable. i'm also very good at problem solving. really the only hard part is voice translation. it's just that that is MOST of my job right now. i'm hoping to get promoted to being a helper instead of a voice translator. then i won't answer calls, i'll just help people i work with answer questions on THEIR calls. this seems a much better division of labour. i'd have all my favorite parts and they could do the parts i hate!

eventually i flap enough to feel calm. it takes about four hours. then i can start thinking seriously about sleep. i refill my new humidifier that makes the smells last longer so that i'm more overstimmed and don't always sleep because i'm too busy identifying smells. i hope i get used to it soon. lack of sleep doesn't help my stress level.

then i make sure the covers on the bed are good. i let my bed air out when i get up but i usually make it during the day and then just make sure it is right before i get into bed. i have to have the pillows stacked right and the covers turned down right to sleep in it. i also have to make sure the clock is at the right angle (or it's too bright) and the time is right. i go and make sure all the lights are off and my water filter is full so i have water to drink, and that amira has food and water, and then i get myself food and water. and then i go to the bathroom and get my teeth brushed.

then i think about sleeping and usually get very stressed because stage four sleep is a scary thing. you are in a coma. i read about this. you don't just poof wake up when you hear a sound. but i comfort myself that amira would make a VERY loud fuss if anything came to get me and it would wake me out of even stage four sleep and then i lie down and toss and turn for a while. then i try to shut my senses off but really i am very awake listening to every sound and smelling all the smells. i make it very dark but i still see everything. there are lights outside the windows. if it does get all dark i see images from my eyes in the dark all night long.

since it takes me a few hours to fall asleep, i usually just play a movie or a book in my head. or i tell a story. i let myself fall all the way into it because i figure that is just like dreaming so it's nearly as good as sleep. then i get up and go to the bathroom and then i get more water and then i lie back down and try to get comfortable again. i usually repeat this for a few hours.

sometimes i wake up and hours have passed. sometimes i am pretty sure i am asleep but i'm fully aware of everything and i know exactly how much time has passed. i'm not sure that is really sleeping. sometimes i spend all night with a story in my head and discuss the day with all the people and i'm not sure if i'm awake or asleep. when i dream they are usually epic or weird. not scary too often anymore, at least. but i wake up a lot. there are sounds and smells and lights (cars pass the window) and dreams and thirst and having to pee.

i don't often wake up rested.

eventually the alarm goes off again and i chitter at the alarm.

soon i'll add school into the mix and then things will get easier (because i'm so worn out) or harder (because i'm already too busy just having a job) but either way it'll be interesting to see what happens, i suppose.

mostly i think that life is about teetering on the cliff edge and throwing yourself off to see if you fly or die. if you don't push yourself to the breaking point all the time, you probably aren't growing. and if you are constantly breaking, somewhere in there you must be put back together or what is there to break? and that probably indicates you are learning to cope somehow.

i spend a lot of time broken. it doesn't bother me anymore. i just keep going. i don't think autism is a limit in any way. i don't believe in limits. there are challenges and most you get past (proving it's not a limit) or you don't (because you haven't figured out how yet).

it keeps my stress level very high. and i burn through a LOT of calories. i keep my diet really strict and make sure i have fatty snacks so i don't burn out. i think i also produce a lot of adrenaline. it's pretty hard pushing yourself over an edge so often. but if you don't, you don't eat. so i guess i'd rather keep myself going over than be hungry!

so that is my view of autism. you either cope or you don't. if you don't, you are going to really go hungry. it's also okay to hurt a lot. people get scared and don't do things just because they hurt. but if you really are scared all the time, eventually the fear loses power because it's just always there. so i'm scared now. and if i go to work i'm scared then...

so no loss to go ahead and throw myself over the cliff again and go to work and be scared. i mean, how is it different than not working and still being scared? well, i make money and am pretty much independent. so that's a difference. so if you are going to be scared anyway, be scared usefully!

and that's pretty much what being an adult high functioning autistic is about. being scared in a more useful manner than we did as children.

the loneliness and all that fussy stuff is there too all the time. and all the questions and weirdnesses. but that's for a different post. this is just about making it to a job every day and not caring about how bad it feels. there are a lot of very good parts of the job. so it's not even all bad no matter how wearying it is. that's another plus. things are always good if you think about them right. sometimes you have to squint and flip upside down and then jump up real quick so it's covered in colors and spots and spins. but you can always find a good if you try!

i like working MUCH better than i like not working. i eat a lot. i need money. i also like a safe place to sleep. and amira needs a safe warm place too.

so, after balancing all the factors that come of me working.... job = good.

Dasha's Journal: a review

2010-01-09T22:28:00.002-07:00

I read Dasha's Journal. It was very exciting. I went to my library and they did not have it. It wasn't in my whole county. So I filled out a form (I haven't yet filled out a job form correctly ever, but if I get books apparently I can magically do them) and they gave me the book. Well, for three weeks. I feel very important. I filled it out and they went and got it and I was allowed to read it first.

It is a good book. It is a cat's view on autism. It is one of the very few books I've read where I get the impression the parent really cares about the child for the child's sake and is not angry at the child or the world for stealing the human and leaving an autistic.

We changelings are often quite sensitive to people wanting to destroy us for being a wrongness in the world when we do not feel that we are the wrong ones.

The book explains autistics, not autism, and that is the important factor. While we all want to know what autism is and where it comes from, Dasha is more interested in what autistics are and how they relate. She points out that if an NT is incapable of communicating outside their narrow language, how is it right to be upset that other animals and autistics as well do not easily communicate out of their narrow language?

It was fun to read because I am having very autistic episodes lately and not so stable or controlled and it was nice to see someone who would understand my actions all month instead of being all weird at me because of their lack of empathy.

I shall write a post some day soon fully in autistic speak instead of trying to translate to NT talk and it will be more fun. It is always somewhat painful to force words into fitting for those who read this.

Anyway, good book. Go read it!! If your library doesn't have it yet, they'll get it for you!

Cannon Fodder

2010-01-07T17:41:00.004-07:00

if an autistic cannot see outside of himself to understand others, because we see only ourselves and others in relation to ourselves, perhaps we need to step entirely outside of the question and learn how NTs see NTs and how NTs see autistics and compare this to how we autistics see ourselves and how we see NTs. (NTs being Neurotypicals, or non-autistics.)

but without understanding who the autistics are versus NTs, is there a way to determine which answers go in which category? or do the answers themselves help one decide who goes in which category?

and what kind of questions would really illuminate anything? any question that sheds light on the question would have to be cultural and you would end up misclassifying those not raised in this culture. or are there social questions that would be answered cross culture while still highlighting the differences of one without much socialization?

does how one is raised reflect more in those answers than how one thinks? an autistic raised in a fundamental household will answer far differently than one raised atheist, just as NT children would. would a strictly raised autistic, who therefore has enough structure to function, answer more or less normally than an NT raised without rules and has no structure from the outside?

what's the difference between someone with no structure within but gets structure from without, and someone with internal structure but none from without?

isn't how a child is raised, NT or autistic, a huge indication of how they can and will think later in life? is the child raised to think rationally and critically? is the child taught to blindly obey rules? is the child taught to question or to blend in? and how different are each of these in comparing an autistic and an NT?

truly, most people have children to make someone who will love them and validate them. when they realize the child is a person who has obligations to a family, perhaps, but is certainly more interested in being loved and validated themselves, things fall apart. in a non autistic this apparently happens around teenagehood, hence all the drama therein. for autistics, it happens in toddlerhood, if not sooner, hence the fatigue and desperation of the parents.

how would a parent who simply loved the child react? if one had less to lose would one have more patience? if one loved and validated themselves would one have less anger at the child for not providing these things for them?

i've often read that the reason parents put up with the sleepless nights and the crying and all the bullshit an infant puts a parent through is for things like the first smile, and the child connecting and learning to talk. in essence, the kid giving back a bit, dammit. so what happens if the child has nothing of the sort to give? the things an autistic has to give cannot be understood until a lot more barriers are breached by both parties.

so is there perhaps no reason for the parent of an autistic to give to the child? the child is not fulfilling their end of the bargain, if you think about it. what right does the child have to not unconditionally love their parents and to not bond and to not smile or do those endearing little things that real children do?

is it not, then, more of a wonder that any parent of an autistic takes the time to find ways to reach the child, than that a parent of an autistic gives up and just tries to get through the day without sending the kid to an institution?

anyone who doesn't pull their own weight has no purpose in a society. they only drag everyone else down. there are noble things, i have heard, like taking care of the useless shows some human spirit of those who help, but let's be realistic. dead weight is dead weight and a child who does not do their share in adding to the family dynamic is, indeed, a dead weight.

so i have to wonder if this big drive to understand autism isn't some noble let's reach them pie in the sky bullshit, but rather a way to force the kids to be members of society who give back instead of only taking. autism awareness is, when done by NTs, a way to get rid of dead weight and, when done by autistics, a way to convince others we aren't dead weight. perhaps we should recognize that we all have the same goal and find a way to make autistics useful.

instead of changing autistics, why not find ways that we can be useful as we are.

medical experimentation is out since autistics do not respond physically the way most people do. however studying the results of medical experiments might yield good results as autistics get stuck in very different thought ruts than NTs do.

we are good at throwing fits and being overwhelmed by noise which could very well make the most effective front line cannon fodder ever in a war. here comes a group marching toward you and you startle them, and suddenly the noise and wailing and shouting and screaming is more terrifying than a bunch of blue painted celts mooning romans.

we are great at sorting things. perhaps you can hire autistics to sort out trash for recycling. or to find the wrong one in a bunch of anything for manufacturing quality control. we can sort and file for medical records and other paperwork deluged office.

or perhaps they will find that we do best in outdoor jobs, growing things and weeding and helping animals. maybe we all need shipped out to farms where we will get fresh air and sunshine and safe food to eat. actually, i like this plan best. slave labor meets goodwill. the farms get much needed help to do things organically and autistics get structure and a healthier environment. everyone benefits.

perhaps a peta-like anti packaged food group needs to cage autistics and spray paint NTs and show everyone what happens when the world is full of chemicals and diets full of carbohydrates. use us as the poster children for atkins or the vitamin d council. "if you want to give birth to one of these, keep eating HFCS".

if we all work together, we can keep autistics from being dead weights without having to "cure" them (salt cured or sugar cured? and why not just sun dry us?). we can find ways to be useful without having to diagnose half of america to get enough funding to stop us from existing. no one is sure what the difference is between us and NTs anyway. i'm all for the amygdala theory, myself. but if we are just going by behaviors, i think every human shows various qualities of autism. we aren't all that different, just exagerated here and there.

in our struggle to become human, we are going to have to understand what humans are, and i don't think most humans are going to be very pleased with us as we do so. we are going to see far more differences between us before we are able to accept those terrible things that being human entails. and perhaps we can help humans change to be something that doesn't shame us all.

after all, the thing that makes autistics most intolerable, next to our intensity and fit throwing, is our honesty.

i do find it a sign of the rising self esteem of autistics, as a group mind, that we claim anyone genius, prodigy, extraordinary as autistic. einstein, mozart, tesla... where once we saw ourselves as idiot savants and children banging out head on walls, we have come to see ourselves as the geniuses and gifted. perhaps we will even learn, as a group, to push ourselves harder and further than others because of that potential, instead of cowarding and inhibiting ourselves with the knowledge that we are "disabled" and somehow less.

one and all, autistics seem to be questioners. why? how? what does that do? how does that work? when will this happen? why can't i? and we are inherently narcissistic since we don't recognize outsiders. logically, this means we question ourselves, our lives, our interactions, our realities, our questions. it is, perhaps, the answers that help keep autistics locked up within their worlds.

and once we do that and race past the humans being merely NT, will they push themselves to follow us? catch us if you can, because our diversity is going to force us to do more in order to be you until we realize we aren't you, we have pushed ourselves beyond that.

prevalence

2009-12-30T12:20:00.002-07:00

So, there is concern that Hispanic school children aren't being diagnosed enough with autism. Here's the article.

"For every 10 percent increase in Hispanic schoolchildren in a given district, the researchers found, the prevalence of autism decreased by 11 percent, while the prevalence of kids with intellectual disabilities or learning disabilities increased by 8 percent and 2 percent, respectively.

The reverse was seen as the percentage of non-Hispanic white children in a district increased, with the prevalence of autism rising by 9 percent and the prevalence of intellectual and learning disabilities falling by 11 percent and 2 percent."

So... basically the concern is the kids are just being diagnosed with learning disabilities... Isn't perhaps the over diagnosis of autism a bit more of a concern? Since autism is a pretty big stigma?

Notice how the number of kids with learning disabilities is the same... it's whether they call it autism or dyslexia that determines whether or not there is an "epidemic" in the area?

This is why I am getting so annoyed at the epidemic and crisis b.s.

It's simply a changing of diagnosis and how many of those kids have any real brain damage causing the learning disorders? And if that many kids do have developmental delay, is it really such a crisis? Obviously the number of kids with learning disabilities isn't changing. Which learning disability they call it is changing. So a certain percentage of the population is a bit slower. This has always been true. Why is it a big deal?

The spectrum is a very wide category, as it's currently defined. I'm pretty sure we could squeeze a good ten percent of the population in if we tried.

basic overview

2009-12-29T22:25:00.004-07:00

by popular demand.... a simplistic and quick overview of autism (according to the abifae)...

this is all based on living with me, an autistic, talking to other autistics, and reading dozens of books, hundreds of articles on everything related to autism: childhood development, amygdala research, social development, mirror neurons, play, speech, endocrinology, synesthesia, ecology, psychology, sociology, diet and nutrition....

most important: each autistic child is as different as each non autistic child. this is a very basic concept of autism and particularly higher functioning autistics. people like labels. a label makes you belong. being different makes you special. and thinking someone else is different makes you superior. don't mistake my sweeping statements as "all autistics". i'm just too lazy to write "some" or "many" before every sentence.

what is autism? autism is a lack of ability to intuitively grasp the social world. when you take all the signs and symptoms and why is autism bad and how does it effect our lives... that's all it comes down to.

the more important question is: what causes a person to lack such a vital, basic intuitiveness?

the cause is up for debate. whether the mother didn't get enough vitamin d while pregnant so the brain never developed, or whether it is almost entirely genetic, whether it's diet and vitamin absorption or anything else... the RESULTS are the same. my guess is all the reasons have a grain of truth and it is a cumulative cause. genetics set the stage and environment knocks over the dominos.

the results are that the amygdala doesn't process right, the brain doesn't set up it's architecture correctly, and the brain never learns to see itself as separate from others. autism is a developmental disorder. everything is just set up a bit wrong and development therefore delays.

the amygdala controls arousal, autonomic reactions to fear, emotional responses, and hormonal secretions. all, coincidentally, things autistics have extreme under or overreactions to. why do autistics do it wrong? studies show that autistics have larger, more active, or smaller than normal amygdalas. is there confusion on the scientists' part? it doesn't appear so: studies say that smaller amygdalas lead to less eye contact and studies say that the abnormally large growth causes autistic symptoms. once again, maybe they are both right. if the amygdala is undersized, you are lacking in reactions. if it is too large, you get overwhelmed by your reactions and close yourself off. both will result in a lack of contact with the outside world.

if you watch this video, at 19:26, VS Ramachandran discusses synesthesia. autistics very much show signs of not having very strong architecture. we confuse and combine senses. and if we are lacking in filters for our senses, why might this not be because we're lacking filters between parts of the brain?

this lack of filter is vital in understanding autistics and over stimulation. let's say you are in a quiet room. you hear the air move through vents in the walls, you hear the foundation settle, you hear people walking or talking outside. murmurs and whispers all around you. the world is never quiet. it is susurrations and sighs, murmurs and mutters, whispy sounds and sharp sounds. add to this actual noise and the mind cannot hold it all. but we can't block any of it so we get anxious and "over stimulated". so we flap and pace and mutter and tap walls and pull tighter into ourselves for safety. we do this with ALL of our senses. and yet, sometimes, we can narrow down to one sense entirely and focus to the point of blocking out the rest of the world. without natural filters we find artificial ones and that is what "stimming" is all about.

theory of mind is getting a lot of attention in the autistic world. theory of mind is the ability to "attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own". i personally believe that autistics never develop a strong sense of object permanence, so they are a couple steps behind theory of mind. we attribute mental states, eventually, to ourselves, and then assume those states onto everything around us. like a small child who buys someone else what they want for a present and assumes the gift will be well received. we never quite grow past that. i'm a rather grown child and the best i do is to know by rote that others are not like me. this is a surprise every time a new situation comes up (read below about categorization) and i have to learn that new situation by rote, as well.

this is why we put things down and if someone moves it, we don't know it still exists. we panic. "where is it? could it be elsewhere" is not a concept we naturally have. so we obsessively put things either in the same place all the time, or out in the open so we can see it all. if someone leaves, they drop from our conscious, they return strangers to us. in a world that changes so drastically and nothing is real or permanent, we therefore cling to the things that we can to force stability into our worlds. if you think about it, a great deal of autistic obsessive behaviors come down to this lack. so do the emotional distances and the need for constant attention to focus. we are like babies in many ways. mentally, we just are not going to understand that things have their own permanence. we create permanence for the sake of our sanities through strict routine. this book is not permanent. i put permanence on the book by almost watching it. this parent is not permanent. i put permanence on this parent by my actions.

One article states: You know you're in a dream world when the physical laws of the universe appear to have changed. When gravity has been turned off at the socket, objects seem to have no inertia and vanish when they are out of view. Dreams can be surprising and unsettling precisely because we're so used to how the waking world works.

but what if you don't have a separate waking world? what if things are just kinda always unsettling because things never stay put? what if you are permanently clumsy because you can't figure out the basic way things are? or you can never quite relax because things sometimes stop existing? what if things are so unstable that you never learn to not hallucinate? you never learn to focus in on what is "real". you never learn that there is an inside world and an outside world.

without understanding that things come and go you also can't understand what things are you and what things are separate. you need a sense of separateness to understand another person and therefore to get by socially. "walk in their shoes" doesn't make sense to someone who isn't sure where this other person really exists. if i am me, then you are me, then my shoes are your shoes, and i'm already in them. we aren't too good with idioms anyway.

so, basically, we now have a child without the development to comprehend others. we have a child who either does not have enough stimulation through the amygdala to interact, or has so much stimulation that interaction is literally painful. we have a child who gets their senses confused and at the same time cannot filter the incoming information enough to narrow down the input into anything really comprehensible. this child is, obviously, going to be difficult to control and will likely be frightened often. it is very easy to picture the child more like a wild animal than a human.

the amygdala that doesn't function for us controls emotions. we tend to overreact. something kinda scary is terrifying. something funny has us running around in glee, laughing. something sad has us hysterical in tears. we don't learn how to react by watching the adults around us. we just get tossed around by everything flying through us. and all of this pumps more and more adrenaline and endorphins and cortisol into the system (causing or at least worsening all of those odd ailments we tend towards).

hand in hand with our lack of mental filters, we are lacking in physical ones. remember the amygdala regulates hormones? without good regulators, our bodies throw out too much of whatever chemicals they aim for. we don't create just a bit of insulin, we flood insulin. we don't get scared and make a bit of adrenaline, we flood the system. when we eat preservatives, we don't inflame a touch and flush it out, we flood the entire body with inflammatories and don't digest anything. or we go the other direction and don't bother making any of a chemical. then, too, we are so sensitive in our internal reactions that the chemicals around us effect us more severely, leading more quickly to the ailments that non autistic humans require years of accumulation to achieve. autistics tend towards early arthritis, blood sugar issues, thyroid issues, and digestive issues.

autistics don't do middle ground.

just in general. the world is black and white. we are opinionated, stubborn, and habit-bound. anything else leads to chaos because we have nothing to naturally ground us except for our rituals.

we don't create mirror neurons correctly (also due to amygdala issues) and so don't have the monkey see monkey do mentality of a healthy child and so we don't even realize we should mimic those around us. so we have no natural drive to try and learn the culture we are in. we can't watch children and understand how to interact with them. we will try to draw them, instead, into our world, which they cannot understand.

in our effort to create a structure that stays put and make sense of the topsy turvy world we find ourselves in, we lock ourselves in a separate world. we reach out to people and they don't know how to reach back. they don't always even realize we have reached out. an autistic child's life is full of rejections because of this. and they don't catch on to others' reaching out to them. so we are labeled unemotional, or unreachable.

we certainly connect emotionally. we just don't express it in ways others understand and/or are comfortable with. we don't get socially trained easily so we are more feral than our civilized counterparts. we connect to people and feel affection. it's just kind of bewildering since people don't respond right and they go away so much. we express emotions all the time but we're told they're all meltdowns or acting out or acting up. we don't know to lie and so we are mean or rude or harsh. we don't know to read social cues so we are shy or awkward or socially inept. however, we do tend to read the "lower levels" of body language civilized humans miss out on because we know we are animals.

other fun facts about autistics: we don't tend to label and box things by category. rather each things has attributes. this makes communication that much more difficult but it makes us much more precise thinkers. this is the same trait that has us memorize every breed of dog with fascination, or train schedules, or study every facet of autism.

we connect more easily to the simpler (ie non socialized) animals and are great with cats and dogs and most species that aren't humans. non human animals give us an outlet for our compassion and affection without fear of rejection.

we are exceedingly literal. i know i show examples constantly but i shall rely on people who know me to point them out with much giggling at some point. in any case, idioms and slang are difficult to easily understand and we take things at face value.

we create concrete metaphors. while we are very literal, we do make comparisons and they are often accurate and beautiful and poetic. many people say that autistics do not use metaphors because it is a creativity we are not capable of. this isn't true. normal metaphors just aren't logically sound.

so what things help autistics?

forced changes: if you let us settle into a routine, we will. and we'll never learn to cope with change. coping mechanisms only develop if you have to cope. mix it up. so what if there's a meltdown. that's just how we express ourselves. (i do realize if you are a full time caretaker of an autistic you are going to get burned out on the damned constant meltdowns) take the opportunity to slowly hammer into our heads that change isn't going to kill us (because that really IS the fear). pick and choose your times so that you have the time to help us through the inevitable meltdown, but don't be scared of it for the meltdown's sake. there is nothing wrong with panic. there is only something wrong with never learning your emotions and reactions so that you can take control of yourself. it will take us forfreakingever. we're developmentally delayed. delay is a huge frustrating infuriating aggrivating part of what we are. which leads to...

understand that the development is delayed. we aren't stuck or stopped. we are just really really slow. how "functional" an autistic is is much more a reflection of the rate of growth than anything else. i am 32 and mentally i'm about ten. i happen to have the education and life experience for my three decades but emotionally i'm still a child. the way i see things is very much through a child's eyes. i'm high functioning. if at 32 i'd only made it to four or five, i'd be low functioning. with enough time, all autistics will "outgrow" the worse of the "symptoms". some of us just have to live to be 300.

let us express our way. this counts for friends of adults as much as with children. yes, i'm sure it's lovely to teach your child to not throw a fit in the grocery store. i don't wanna hear some kid throwing a fit in public either. but if the behavior won't get you all arrested, let the kid emote however he really needs to. it's not like you have a neurologically healthy child and are just not disciplining him. let him find his own ways to self-calm or self-stimulate, let him learn how to get things out and therefore how to identify feelings. let him do weird stupid shit even though you can't see the point of it. the more we know about what all these crazy feeling things are, the less they will rock our worlds. autistics are quite capable of achieving a very zen like approach to their emotions and to life. i know change will happen. when it happens and i panic i simultaneously can laugh at myself and my reaction and therefore get past it. someday i might not even panic.

treat our bodies like endangered ecosystems. all bodies are ecosystems. we are a collection of flora and fauna living in symbiosis to keep our little universe well. some bodies are robust and can weather some pretty good storms and they'll get by. autistics are more fragile. our ecosystems are too out of whack to take the casual approach. we need organics (more likely to not introduce things like growth hormones to confuse our hormones, or pesticides to interfere with our chemicals). we need low carbohydrates (to keep our insulin levels low and therefore our cortisol, serotonin, and adrenaline more in line). we need no processed foods, no dyes, no artificial preservatives (i do great with salt and vinegar). we need a lack of medication (healthy bodies don't get a yeast infection on a single round of antibiotics; nor do they lose liver function on a week of tylenol). we need a minimum of chemicals (vinegar also cleans just about everything!). we need to keep our flora and fauna healthy (eating fermented foods and not antibacterial cleaning things). with our ecosystems stable, we are more stable. seriously: fewer meltdowns.

work with our logic. people want to train autistics to think like humans. it's a very cute idea that we can learn to work with your utter lack of logic. seriously, just work with us. we are concrete, serious, intense, logical creatures. if you pay attention, we can introduce you to a world of wonder where everything is awe inspiring and things fit together until everything is Right. i have been told the seriousness and intensity of an autistic is rather infant like. perhaps this is true, i haven't been around many babies. but we are definitely lacking a sense of "play". we can be light hearted and enjoy ourselves. we can create games. but there is definitely something not there that i see in others when they are "relaxing".

let us be us. most of us function enough to go out sector and act like productive humans. we don't understand it or enjoy it but neither do any of you. however, our concrete crazy brains are pretty spiffy. since love is simply affection and acceptance, autistics tend to be very good at a rather pure and simple love of everything around them. we can do the feral unconditional love very easily if people would quit interfering with it: friendship is easy on some levels for us and very difficult on the social levels. we can learn all the basics we need to get by at least as well as civilized humans. most of our "suffering" is because civilized humans are scared of us, not because there is anything wrong with us.

love us. we're a neurodiverse species. deal with it. it's you who are putting the labels and concepts of incapability on us. before you were calling us autistic, we were the crazy relatives in attics, the quiet neighbors with oddball collections, the obnoxious IT techs, the shy kids at school, the artists and musicians and poets and child prodigies. we all got by except those very few who you labeled as incureable and tucked into institutions. the same percentage of kids are still that disabled, but most of us are just folk. now you have spread that label in an effort to "help" those shy kids and now we are all told we are incapable and unacceptable. but we understand that the help was not to teach those shy kids to accept themselves and use their talents, but to help those shy kids make you more comfortable. we used to have a chance to really make it in the world. now we are crippled by your kindness until we learn to take drugs to fix our quirks and hate what we are because we are different and not what you really wanted. the label of autism has become a demeaning term, used as a blanket term for all those children who are anything "too". too hyper, too focused, too slow, too fast, too introverted, too quirky. you use the term to push us aside, instead of using it to draw us in. we call ourselves aliens because you alienate us.

those amazing people who are able to simply accept another as people don't have as many difficulties with autistics. we need not be handled with kid-gloves. enjoy the diversity.

Inverted Conclusions

2009-12-14T14:12:00.003-07:00

I read an unfortunate article in science daily. You can read it here.

They note that autistics think about others and themselves with the part of the brain active when thinking about oneself. This makes sense. Autistics only think about themselves. We don't really have filters so we filter through ourselves. How is this like me. How does it relate. It is all about me because I am the only constant in my world.

However, they somehow screwed it up and decided: This is strong evidence that in the autistic brain, processing information about the self is atypical.

Wait. What? Everything processed through the area that thinks about the self and this proves that autistics don't think about the self?

Doesn't "strong evidence that in the autistic brain, all information is processed as about the self" make more sense? As a friend pointed out: "Everything is through the filter of you, and no one else truly exists. Object permanance can't happen unless you can think of the object not in relation to yourself."

Lombardo added: "Navigating social interactions with others requires keeping track of the relationship between oneself and others. In some social situations it is important to notice that 'I am similar to you', while in other situations it might be important to notice that 'I am different to you'. The atypical way the autistic brain treats self-relevant information as equivalent to information about others could derail a child's social development, particularly in understanding how they relate to the social world around them."

I think the scientists are missing the entire point here. "...in other situations it might be important to notice that 'I am different to you'." Yes, that is the issue. We don't know the difference between ourselves and you outsiders. This, however, is not because we don't have a sense of ourselves. It is because we do not have a sense of yourselves. It is very hard to understand that you feel differently than I do. I can easily see that you would feel the way I do. I am very good at thinking about myself.

My friend has a low functioning autie son. He thinks about himself just fine. That hurt me. That bothered me. This effects me. If it doesn't effect HIM it doesn't count. We are small children, unable to see beyond our personal little worlds because we haven't developed enough to have a sense of object permanence or empathy. When he speaks quietly, he is unable to realize that Mom didn't hear, because he did hear himself. Saying "I didn't hear you" makes no sense to him. Yes you did hear me, I heard me. There is no difference. She has had to learn to say "I wasn't able to make words out of what I heard" and he can say "I do that often. Mom didn't understand me" and repeat himself.

We don't naturally filter. We don't naturally generalize. Therefore, we are not easily capable of grasping social situations or being trained emotionally. A cause and effect is a cause and effect of that particular thing. It is not now a general rule for all similar situations. So how can we generalize enough to see people as their own selves, not only separate from us but as individual to their own little world as we are to our own!

Honestly, I don't think most humans have really developed well enough to see beyond their own little worlds. They all huddle in the boxes, with blinders on, terrified of the great big world. We huddle in terror, too. The only difference seems to be that we can't filter it out. We don't have blinders, so we rock and hum and try to force the world away by sheer force of will.

And then they say we don't have a sense of ourselves. Maybe it scares them to know we have no sense of you and this suits us fine. It is supposed to make one feel guilty to realize one thinks only of oneself. It doesn't bother autistics as much. We don't have that social training. I learned to accept that everyone is living in their own isolated world so that I can say "well this is true for me but not for you." I don't have any better understanding of your world, but I am now capable of differentiating. It is still totally egocentric and all about me, but it's a starting point.

In any case, this blog started with a point: That study was totally inverted in its conclusions! We have very strong senses of self. Egocentric as hell! We are just lacking a sense of anyone else. Stoopid scientists.

Morals

2009-11-29T14:30:00.005-07:00

Randomly, I got into a discussion about morals. Right, I was convincing people I'm not evil because I am amoral not immoral. So I tried to think of morals I have and realized I had an ill definition.

So what the hell are morals? Go wiki!

"Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") has three principal meanings.

In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct or a set of beliefs distinguishing between right and wrong behaviors. In its descriptive use, morals are arbitrarily and subjectively created by society, philosophy, religion, and/or individual conscience."

Arbitrary! That's a good way to make rules for people. We all know autistics, especially, are going to follow rules for the rules sake because that is what good people do. /end sarcasm. Okay. Seriously? Who follows rules without enough logic behind them to make sense?

"The subjectiveness of morality is shown by the observation that actions or beliefs which by themselves do not seem to cause overt harm may be considered immoral, e.g. marrying someone of the same or opposite gender, being an atheist or a theist, etc. Descriptive morality does not explain why any behavior should be considered right or wrong, only that it may be classified so. For the most part right and wrong acts are classified as such because they cause benefit or harm, respectively. However, this is not by any means an all encompassing criterion; it's possible that many moral beliefs are due to prejudice, ignorance or even hatred."

Back to right and wrong concepts. Good and evil. Concepts invented to scare people into bowing to whatever power decides to be bowed to. None of which I believe in. I believe in balance. Well, you can read my little list of things I believe in. Back to morals!

"In its second, normative and universal sense, morality refers to an ideal code of belief and conduct which would be preferred by the sane "moral" person, under specified conditions. In this "definitive" sense, claims are made such as "Killing is immoral." While descriptive morality would not necessarily disagree that killing is immoral, it would prefer to say, "Many believe that killing is immoral." A refined adherence to this latter position is known as moral skepticism, in which the unchanging existence of a rigid, universal, objective moral "truth" is rejected.[1]"

This means morality is more or less a guess of what might or might not be okay to do. That's MY morality! I apparently am a moral skeptic!

"In its third usage, morality is synonymous with ethics. Ethics is the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain.[2] Ethics seeks to address questions such as how a moral outcome can be achieved in a specific situation (applied ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), what morals people actually abide by (descriptive ethics), what the fundamental nature of ethics or morality is, including whether it has any objective justification (meta-ethics), and how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is (moral psychology).[3]"

If I can quit laughing enough to type, I will comment on ethics. *hours pass* Seriously... Just reading the definition should convince ANYONE that it isn't real and that morals can only be a personal choice and even then they are only that. A choice.

My favorite thing about ethics is hearing people use the term as though it is a tangible thing. "but that's unethical!" bwahahahaha.

"In applied ethics, for example, the prohibition against taking human life is controversial with respect to capital punishment, euthanasia, abortionand wars of invasion.

In normative ethics, a typical question might be whether a lie told for the sake of protecting someone from harm is justified.

In meta-ethics, a key issue is the meaning of the terms "moral" or "immoral". Moral realism would hold that there are true moral statements which report objective moral facts, whereas moral anti-realism would hold that morality is derived from any one of the norms prevalent in society (cultural relativism); the edicts of a god (divine command theory); is merely an expression of the speakers' sentiments (emotivism); an implied imperative (universal prescriptivism); falsely presupposes that there are objective moral facts (error theory). Some thinkers hold that there is no correct definition of right behavior, that morality can only be judged with respect to particular situations, within the standards of particular belief systems and socio-historical contexts. This position, known as moral relativism, often cites empirical evidence from anthropology as evidence to support its claims.[4] The opposite view, that there are universal, eternal moral truths are known as moral absolutism. Moral absolutists might concede that forces of social conformity significantly shape moral decisions, but deny that cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior."

I am still confused about morals, but that is mostly because people seem to enjoy foisting their morals upon others (even to the point of breaking their morals in their zeal to prove that their morals are the ones meant to be followed. Anyone else wanna bomb an abortion clinic?) and drop their morals as soon as any challenges arise.

Gosh! Being honest is hard! But my morals say lying is bad. Oh! I have a solution. This isn't a real lie. It is a social lie. A white lie. A lie to protect someone's feelings. It's an ethical lie!

So let's see if I have this correct... Morals are codes for conduct. Most people base theirs on religion because people don't naturally have morals. To make society function we force morals upon one another and hope this makes up for the utter lack of personal responsibility that most folk have. Or don't have?

In any case... I thought it through and realized I certainly do have a code of conduct. And after letting my auntie Zilla and another friend read them realized it's a rather sociopathic list. Mostly because it is logic based. No emotions or social bull involved. And that seems to be the definition of sociopath, connotatively. Those who base things on logic rather than let emotions screw them over.

don't do anything that gets abi locked up (this is my only social one... avoid arrest. I think jail would be awful boring and then it would be even HARDER to get a job).
be kindly towards those people who don't suck (ie those I claim as MINE)
accept the consequences of your actions (and conversely if you want a specific consequence do what is necessary to get there)
be aware of the damage you do so that you are consciously choosing to harm
do everything to the best of your abilities. If it isn't worth doing well, don't do it.
enjoy everything to the fullest, wallow in every emotion and then let it pass so you can get to the next one, be open to the awe and wonder of everything that exists... be a child.
be mindful. Is mindfulness a code of conduct? It must be. Actively choose everything that you do. Be aware of yourself.

Those are my rules. They apply entirely to me. While I think many people would be as joyous as I tend to be if they followed these rules, I see no reason for anyone else to bother. Most people don't WANT to be joyous! Oh. And it might not work for them, but pshaw on that concept. Anything that is good for me MUST be good for everyone else. This isn't just an autistic concept (although we do rather enjoy going overboard on it) because if it were... no one would foist their ideas on one another.

Perhaps morals are just a matter of trust. We have, as a species, all proven ourselves to be untrustworthy, lacking in personal responsibility, and lacking the ability to think. Based on that, it does make sense someone would try to force those things on us from the outside. Kind of like laws. They are only there because we are not generally responsible enough on our own to not just go around killing one another. So they make it illegal and immoral. Maybe if we are scared enough we will avoid such behavior!

Really? Do you really resist killing me only because you are afraid of hell or jail time? Do you walk down the street thinking "I'd steal that and that and that and that... but oh NOES.. hell and jailtime!" so you resist?

I freely admit there are many people I see each day that I resist physically harming because I don't want to go to jail. Honestly, if we were all allowed to smack them, their behavior would surely improve! So aren't morals harming us as a society, more than helping? Not spanking kids is creating a generation of selfish idiots who can barely read, because telling them they are failing and are stupid and lazy is "mean" and we can't do that!

The truth has become morally wrong. Or, perhaps it always has been. Truth has been anti-social, at the very least, since the first girl asked the first boy if her animal furs made her ass look big. My most anti-social behavior is telling the truth. I am told it makes people uncomfortable, scared, attacked, and many other things. By social mores, I'm a complete asshole. Why? Because I tell the truth. It's horrible of me. But my morals demand it. In fact, isn't it the ninth commandment? Thou shall not bear false witness. Of course, who knows what it originally said. Maybe God was only meaning in the legal sense, at court. He couldn't have meant something silly like never lie.

I think the original most likely said: Thou shalt not lie unless it would hurt someone's feelings, put you in an uncomfortable position, risk your mental and/or emotional and/or physical well being, or in any other way compromise your comforts. They really messed it up in the translation.

In any case, the more that I read about morals, the more I realize it is the biggest farce. It's right up there with religion and democracy. Almost everyone has a moral that says do not lie. And almost as many people take great care to lie often and then invent new morals to excuse this. And these people not only say that morals are important and innate and everyone should follow them, but immediately admit that there are moral dilemmas, times that morals should be ignored, and that morals are very difficult to maintain.

Does that not sound like the biggest pile of crap ever?

Oddly, I find my code of conduct very simple to follow. I suppose this is because the main theme is think things through and do whatever you want. Just be honest to yourself about your reasons. Does this mean I do not have morals, or that I have better morals than most people?

Is moral more connotative or concrete? I think it must be connotative; therefore, I have no morals. I am amoral and that suits me. I do have a rather strict Code of Conduct however, and that suits me, as well.

Trade School!

2009-11-06T00:37:00.002-07:00

In attempting to get out of my happy autistic all change is bad rut, I'm going to move to a bigger city and go to trade school (for costuming) and maybe one day have an apartment of my own.

I'll have to share an apartment with some stranger. That part is rather daunting. Of course, so is figuring out school. Costuming isn't going to get me any nice job or anything like that. It's just something I desperately want to learn. And the school is in the middle of several ballroom dance studios and twice as many gyms.

This will get me off my lazy ass and back to working out ten hours a week and working on dance on a regular basis! Since dance is my only real way to emote, this is probably a VERY good thing. It is my favorite form of communication.

So come spring, I'll be figuring out how to move south, find a roommate, and get set up for school. I'm hoping for a grant to cover all of school. We'll see. I'm female and over thirty and that's gotta count for something! Plus I'm Bug Fucking Nuts. That is the official diagnosis in the DMV-whatever. Maybe that'll score me money?

It's very exciting. When the world finishes collapsing, knowing how to draft patterns should come in awful handy. And in the meanwhile I can likely get a couple commissions a year to make costumes for various venues. Belly dance, cosplay... Who knows.

My job might even have an opening that gives me steadier hours and higher pay. It would mean giving up working from home in pajamas and going to an office every day. I am hoping I can cope with this should a job open.

I have four to six months to make sure I have enough saved for this. It will be good. My brain is all growed up and practically ten years old, so I'm sure I'm fully capable of acting like a growed up and doing real person things like renting an apartment and going to trade school. /end sarcasm.

I really do think I can. When one teeters on the edge of a cliff, the best thing to do is shove and see if they sprout wings. So wish me luck on flying. Free fall sucks.

1 in 93?

2009-10-30T00:26:00.003-06:00

Let's pretend that you have a childhood disorder that gets a lot of media attention and a lot of funding. You also have a caring and conscientious pediatrician who understands that his patients need more help than funding will allow. So he labels them with this new politically fueled diagnosis to be sure they get the help they need.

This, in turn, inflates the number of children diagnosed and encourages the concept of an "epidemic".

In reality, it is just the result of politics and medicine and people doing their best to get remedial help paid for so that children stand a chance of getting ahead in life.

But, you know, epidemic is fun to say. And it causes panic. And this increases funding. So let's just increase the parameters of the disorder and start diagnosing everyone with it.

my not crazy list

2009-10-25T15:01:00.002-06:00

So that I am not crazy, I have devised a list to sort out what is real and what is not. Since I was asked to post it, I have and I'll even explain things!

things that always seem real:

Shadow World
My People
Pain
Deep/Intense Emotions
the Dark

*Shadow World and the fae world are the worlds I always see superimposed on this one. Sometimes fae world does not seem real. Shadow world ALWAYS does. Shadow world is, perhaps, another universe that overlays this one. It is sorta like this one, only muggier and more big trees and the people aren't living in cities. It's tribal still. Lots of wars. They pass stuff on through stories and dance and believe in little gods and um. It's just a good place. Sometimes things interact and usually we pass one another like shadows. But they watch me. Sometimes I think I was born there and accidentally traded places with someone here. But I'm not sure. It feels like home.

*My people are any people I can see and connect with enough that I know they are there. Or people I feel close to so while I assume I've invented them, I'm most pleased with the invention and keep them around.

*Pain and deep emotions seem obvious to me, at least... But shallow up high emotions don't usually seem real. They are just quick reactions. So they don't make the real list.

*the Dark is my term for the deepest part of my soul where I drop through all the layers of me until I find my center and my calm.

and in the Dark, things that seem true:

Balance/Cause&Effect
Feral/Nature
Emotions
Solitude/Affection
Being an Atom/No Importance
Now

*Um. Not sure what needs explained. Solitude is where we all are, but we can feel affection and get some relief from it. And being an atom is just that. We are a tiny part of all that is and so we don't really matter in the grand scheme which is a HUGE relief to me.

things that never seem real or true, or are only distorted reflections thereof:
interactions
words/"communication"
the body
humans/social
work/job
rewards/punishments
cement
stories (memories, books, movies, talking)
passage of time
needs

*distorted reflections of true things... those would be words, interactions, social structure, stories, time, needs, rewards and punishments... I'm sure they are based on reality in some fashion but it comes out all distorted and messed up.

*the one everyone blinks in confusion at is "cement". Yes, cement! It surrounds you and cuts you off and you cannot feel the world and you are trapped and it sucks the life out of everything.

Randomly, and for the record, I find communication a reflection of reality but certain communications feel more real to me. For example, I find that emotions are all best expressed physically. If I am happy I squee and spin and twirl and run and bounce. If I am angry I snarl and stomp and huff and throw things. If I miss you I'm likely to gnaw on you or bite you gently. If I don't want to talk I cover your mouth and turn away. No ambiguity. The confusion is only when words get involved.

So, now I am not crazy cuz I have a list of what's real and I'll carry it with me and when people say "you are crazy", I can pull out my list and say "no I'm not, see??"

:D

Oh! I found out today that "wrong" has LAYERS to most people. Levels. Differences. For me it is really simple. Things are true, reflections of truth, or they're untrue. Things go with the flow of nature and help the universe click together, or they are wrong. I don't understand this "more wrong than something" concept.

It's with or against the natural flow. What else is there to know?

Meditation

2009-09-27T17:37:00.002-06:00

I've meditated since I was a child. Really, flapping and pacing and overstimming is meditation for all autistics. We just happen to meditate kinetically. Still my prefered method, through yoga and dance. I don't often sit still to meditate or say pretty words or any of those fancy things. I just do it. More natural to me than breathing. When I meditate, I don't get my breathe/swallow sequence confused and choke on my own spit.

At some point in high school, I finally read about meditation. It talked about clearing thoughts and finding your center. Since this time, I assumed that when you meditate and clear thoughts that the thoughts should stay clear for days. You bring the clarity back with you. So I figured I sucked at meditation.

Apparently, it is only clear while you concentrate so you feel relaxed and refreshed after, like a nice nap ought to do. Only better because you don't dream.

Why, one might wonder, did I think the clarity should be brought back and last forever? Because that is how I meditate. I drop down to the depths of myself, wrap myself in the dark and comfort there like a warm blanket, and bring the blanket up with me so I can stay wrapped in that comfort all day while I work and do all my stuff. Part of me is always in the meditative state, renewing the blanket, while the rest of me does daily living stuff. When I actually concentrate on it, I find clarity in the dark fire of my soul that I can't find anywhere else, and I feel loved and whole and well.

I got very curious about how other people meditate. I thought I meditated like everyone did. It never occurred to me that there was any other way to meditate. Until I read about it and thought I was doing it all wrong. I tried the "clearing the thoughts" method a bit but gave up on it as something I'd never succeed at and went back to my warm blanket.

I wonder if my method might be closer to the way a buddhist monk would do it. I also wonder if I'd get more answers to my questions if I went to live in a buddhist monastary. I don't find many people who have any clue what I am ever talking about, let alone able to delve even deeper into my questions.

Mostly I wonder why I only feel whole and loved when I'm sinking so deep into myself I can forget the outside world, and I walk in the other worlds I see and feel. (When I say forget, I do mean forget!) What is it about interacting in this world that is so caustic and scratches with sharp angry bristles until you burn and bleed?And it isn't the entire world. I'm fine away from cement and from humans. I'm fine out in nature. I'm fine among my people. It's just surrounded by the human artifacts and human people that I drown in the echoes from their thoughts that are so disjointed against their words that are again so disjointed around their actions.

So I'll just wrap in my warm blanket and keep trying. I'm sure there is some little trick to coping with the outside world if I can just find it.

Hoorah for autism. Let's get rid of filters and just let the world bombard us from every angle! And then try to hold down a job and be a functioning member of society so that we have any hope of survival! WHEEE!

*sinks into the dark*

Health Care

2009-09-03T22:54:00.003-06:00

So my friend posted this to me. I guess it's going around Facebook (that sounds like a flue or something that encourages hand washing). So and so "believes no one should have to chose between food and health care, and no one should have to worry about insurability because of a doctor's diagnosis"

"shoulds"

One can always tell something fishy is going on when they see "should". It usually points to unthinking repetition of catch phrases. Just add first person perspective. No thinking needed.

Apparently the health care issue is the big "thing" right now. I don't see why. There's a very simple cure: everyone can just cancel their insurance. Destroy the part causing the biggest issues. Once again, we have created a problem and refuse to do anything to correct it. We're just going to tack things on around it to hide the problem. Bandaids for cancer, anyone?

We vote with our pocket books and no one seems to remember this fact. If you are upset that people put poisonous chemicals in your food via white sugar and processing, don't buy it. If you don't like what insurance has done to health care, don't buy it.

Or, wacky thought, choose good food over health care and quit buying poison that causes most of the ailments that cause you to need a doctor!

I haven't had insurance in a very long time and haven't suffered in any way from this. I put my money into a healthy life style, full of unprocessed, as organic as possible foods.

Of course, I'm a radical. I have no debt. I have no car. I have no desire to drive. I'm working on moving to an area of Colorado where I won't need to borrow rides from friends as often. Silly to not own a car just to bum rides. I'm even fixed, so I can't contribute to the population crisis.

National health care that still involves insurance is going to just be more of the same. Only worse, because they'll take away our right to not be insured. If they're going to force me to put money into a system I want no part of, that's crap.

Although I have long since come to realize that we don't even have rights over our own bodies. It was quite a fight to get fixed. Luckily, my uterus was bad so it was medically allowed. The tried to convince me it was fine, and then when they had no choice but to admit it was broken, they tried to convince me to try hormone therapy. For the few years I had insurance, I used the system to make sure I wouldn't further NEED the system. Truth is, if I haven't the right to end my own life, I know that my body belongs to the state. They are the ones regulating what I can do to it. And if I don't even own my body, what do I own? What is the point in all the "freedoms" we think we have?

Americans are terrified to own themselves and so we give ourselves away like terrified whores, hoping Big Brother will solve all our problems and we won't even have to think. Just tell me what to do, and I'll obey.

This from a country that started out with the revolutionary idea of laissez-faire and as little government as possible. It's sad.

Lucidity

2009-08-05T00:25:00.003-06:00

One reason I don't blog often is because I don't often feel lucid. It's rather difficult to focus down enough to write about autism and studies and things I am studying. I understand it, in my head, but being coherent when trying to explain what I know is a very different story.

I firmly believe that autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder are closely related. Possibly the same disorder that just presents in different ways, depending on the fetus development. They have so many overlaying features, hallucinations and delusions being part of it.

Many autistics I know will tell me they don't have hallucinations, they just have hyperactive senses that display things long after they are no longer seen. So you see things that are not there? No, I see things that used to be there, because my senses don't let go. I fail to distinguish. Ditto for sounds and smells and other sensory input. Autistics are not allowed to have hallucinations. That is for crazy people like schizophrenics. So we will label hallucinations something else, to keep us from being crazy.

I am most certainly autistic and I freely admit, I hallucinate.

Sure, there are all my curiousities about reality. Perhaps I am seeing into another world and it overlays this one and so it isn't a lack of sanity but a surplus of senses. Maybe so. Maybe that conviction is a delusion. In any case, when the other worlds overlay this one so strongly that I have to work hard to keep this world solid enough to function in, I lose a lot of lucidity.

Being rather feral, I am tossed about by the seasons and the moon. My senses register a wider range than NTs and I spend a lot of time being paranoid and wanting to run.

And then I ignore my blog until I am lucid enough to right. Or until I've run off enough extra energy to focus a bit. I walked about four miles under the full moon and can almost think in a straight line. Exercise always helps me focus.

In any case, poor neglected blog. Had to write something. My writing of late is fragmented, not remembering how to use all the words. Verbs and nouns are all speech needs. Feral speak, I consider it. So here are some words.

Perhaps I'll write more about the worlds in my head at some point.

Cat Cloak

2009-07-05T15:47:00.005-06:00

I asked my niece what I could make for her because her sister requested a Gir hoodie (I need pics of that!). She asked for a medieval cloak that looked like a cat.

So being the indulgent auntie, off I went to find fabric. I got the cloak to her, very oddly, in time for her birthday. I'm more the random gift giver. Prezzies on days don't tend to happen.

In any case, here it is!!

The full view of the cloak. It even has a tail :D

Close up of the hood!

It's so spiffy! Now I want one. ^_^

And it's lined so it will be super warm in the winter. And machine washable. Hoorah!!

And it's genuine cat fur. At least, my cat slept on it every day the fabric was in the house. So there is real cat fur in there. Close enough, neh?

Childlike Joy

2009-06-30T22:28:00.003-06:00

I was reading in my yoga journal today about squealing with joy more often, taking a child's delight in the world.

That is certainly one place that autism rocks. We tend to be more childlike with all that developmental delay we've got going. I'm pretty sure that I tend to be about eight years old on the emotional and moral scales. I certainly delight in little things that most adults have become immune to.

Rest assured, the joy is contagious! When I worked at a hospital and ran to watch the sun rise most mornings. My patients got into the act and my co-workers as well. They'd mostly forgotten how pretty and magical sunrise was. How so, when it rises every day? I saw it as a daily reminder of the beauty and magic of life and they got used to it. Well, without filters, I can't get used to it. ^.^

Score one for autism!

I still dance in the rain, squee at shiny objects, collect bird feathers and, in general, make an absolute goober out of myself at everything that catches my interest. Granted that many NTs do as well, it seems to be something easier for autistics because we don't outgrow much.

The downside? Well, I still throw temper tantrums like an eight year old although I've had to learn to suppress most of the screaming and lighting of fires. Sometimes I remember that life isn't fair and have to throw a bit of a fit over it, even though my 32 years of experience already understands this cognitively. It is very odd, sometimes, to have such dissonance between emotional and cognitive understandings! Or, as I usually shout at people who try to explain things to me, "Well I know it in my head, just not my heart!"

Overall, though, it's more than worth it. I wouldn't want to be able to get used to pretty sunsets and lose my fascination with foggy mornings.

Evening Shifts

2009-06-17T01:00:00.002-06:00

I am now on an evening shift. 3-10. I love the hours. I can sleep in til a decent hour and still fit in my yoga and dance practice with my friend.

The only negative is figuring out dinner. If dinner is around 7... that means all my weekday meals end up having to be crock pot or precooked. This isn't the end of the world, but I'm still getting my schedule matching to do this.

I am growing, which means hormones, which means my autistic little brain is in short circuit mode. Which means that it is being absurdly difficult for me to wrap my brain around the new shift. It really isn't difficult to cook for but I'm just having issues with it. Hopefully I'll get myself sorted out soon. I have these lovely menus and I have the same days off still. So I ought to be able to do the menu on Thursday, like I have been all year - no change! - and make this work.

I don't know what my issue is with it. Silly brain. Must beat it now.

I managed to have one of my weird seizure episodes without any jaundice!! This is rare indeed and shows that the diet is effective. This is a huge bonus in my life. The entire point of my exceedingly strict, low carb diet is to take the stress off of my liver the rest of the month so that these episodes don't shut it down. Jaundice gets old, fast.

Ooh! I nearly forgot, my low carb ice cream was fairly successful! I made custard (eggs, cream, stevia) and put it in the ice cream maker. Added some chopped bittersweet chocolate towards the end... Needs a little bit of work but I was satisfied. More imporantly, I am confident that a carb-free or very low carb ice cream is possible and quite simple. Hoorah!

It is, of course, as is the rest of my diet, far more expensive than doing it the usual way, but health and good food are worth the extra expense, yes? I figure it is still cheaper than health insurance and medication. I'm getting more stable through good diet and it isn't going to destroy my organs. In fact, it seems to be improving my liver and kidneys. Let's hear it for paying attention to the body!

I'm slowly adding more recipes to my recipezaar site. A cookbook cannot be far behind! So long as by "far behind" you mean "sometimes in the next ten years". If that's the case, I'll be right on time! My Auntie Zilla needs to get me more test recipes! I'll blame her for my lack of cookbook. Ha. It's good to have someone friendly to blame :)

wow! a post!

2009-06-09T01:13:00.001-06:00

I haven't written in quite a while because everything keeps changing, and I've been busy trying to deal with it. All change is bad, even when it's good.

I have moved, had a schedule change after several weeks of too few hours, and dealt with friends moving away. Most of the changes have been good, but it's still a strain. I'm still adjusting to my new shift at work, but I love the new shift. It is later in the day so that I have more time for dance and yoga, which means I am better focused all together. I am still trying to get the timing right on cooking so that we all have dinner, but I work 3-10 now so it'll be another week, probably, before I really get into the swing of things. I foresee much crock pot and pre-cooking and freezing.

Speaking of my favorite hobby, I want to learn to make exquisite bento boxes! I'd been doing bento for my roommate for work, but I want to make “kawaii” bento, the cutesy version. Since I can't eat rice, I'll have time to collect supplies while I collect people to cook for. My hours are picking up again so it shouldn't be too hard to afford a few rice moulds and punches for seaweed for decoration. I'll start posting pics here as I make them.

I'd love to be able to send my nieces off to school with proper obnoxiously cute bento, but I live a few hours away. So I'll have to figure something out. Luckily, I have friends in town to experiment on. Bwahahaha. And maybe on weekends when we visit, I can leave a few bentos with my nieces. Since I am planning on more frequent visits, hopefully they'll get lots of bento treats.

Yikes! New Computer!!

2009-03-22T20:57:00.003-06:00

I have been needing a new computer for my job since I started my job. They upgraded almost immediately after I started, thus making my system obsolete. I've been saving up to get this since I got my first paycheck. I finally was able to get my new system. 3.01 GHz and 4 GB of RAM. 500 GB memory. So this is fantastic.

Nonetheless, when I got it set up for work I panicked. When they removed my VPN from my laptop I panicked more. And I was nearly in tears getting ready to use my new computer.

Why? Because All Change Is Bad, even when it is good, and when one is expecting it.

Luckily, I found this very amusing. If you can't laugh at yourself, you'll never get the joke! And autistics are funny as hell. Flap flap. New computer! Oh noes!

Despite the fear and panic and flapping, today went very well with the new system. It was wonderful to have less lag and fewer other issues. Life is happier! Which I knew beforehand or I wouldn't have gotten the new system. Which makes the panic that much more amusing.

So now we can all have a good laugh and watch Abi panic at the upcoming changes in her world!

Spring Cleaning!

2009-03-19T11:16:00.002-06:00

I actually wax enthusiastic on Spring Cleaning.

I love going through everything and getting rid of stuff I don't need, giving the house a good deep cleaning (I do Autumn Cleaning too), and letting the musty smells of winter escape out open windows with the brisk March winds!!

There is something very satisfying about clean. Most chores aren't necessarily *fun*, but they are definitely worthwhile when I see the results.

Oddly, I actually enjoy dishes (I do them all by hand) and laundry (hanging them out on the line, folding them, making them fit into drawers in happy tetris like efficiency). The other chores I'm certainly willing to do, but it isn't with as much joy.

In "The Miracle of Mindfulness" there is a time when a man is told, "There are two ways to do dishes. You can do dishes to get clean dishes, or you can do dishes to do the dishes."

I definitely do dishes to do the dishes. And laundry to do the laundry. I try to live the philosophy in all the other chores, but some are more difficult than others. Today I did clean out the refrigerator to clean out the refrigerator. It was very relaxing.

In a perfect world, I'd be able to drop work this week and spend it all cleaning and have the entire house spotless. However, I have work. And I have roommates who don't really want me running rampant over their areas of the house. So I have to be content with cleaning my kitchen, the living room, and my bedroom. It is good.

Experimental Food

2009-03-17T08:55:00.003-06:00

Happy St Paddy's Day! In celebration of beef sales, I corned my own beef. I cut the sugar and salt in the recipe and added Irish tea. The brine tastes pretty good. Let's hope the results are good too!

For dessert, I started with this recipe, and removed all the sugar. My body's reaction to sugar grows more severe all the time and I cannot even handle agave nectar. I use stevia or nothing. So here is how I did it:

3/4 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
10 eggs
2 cups grapeseed oil
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon mint extract

I baked it at 350 for half an hour. Half the batter was cupcake, the other half small bread loaves.

They poofed tremendously! Far more than they had when I'd put agave in. They are also drier, which I was fully expecting. Obviously, further experiment needs done.

I am frosting them with a very simple cream cheese frosting:

8 oz cream cheese
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/2 t stevia
1/2 T vanilla
4 oz chopped mint leaves
1/2 bar of 100% cacao unsweetened chocolate (3 oz?) - melted

I frosted the lopsided cupcakes and put a mint leaf on them. They aren't bad. I can eat them. I hope everyone else can. They are very very UNsweet hehehe. The mint is really nice too. But there is only so sweet stevia can get anything. And if I want any, that's the only option. If my body accepts more sugar at some point, I think it would be really good with berries in the frosting to sweeten it!

Luckily, everyone I cook for approves of experimentation so that I can end up with more foods I'm allowed to eat. Having a strict diet is a pain in the ass if you can't cook.

Goodbye Old Friend

2009-02-28T21:31:00.002-07:00

My best friend passed away Tuesday. She is one of the most amazing people I've ever known and I will always miss her. To know Darya was to love Darya. I don't know of anyone who felt anything negative toward her. She was just such an open, loving, caring person that everyone felt drawn to her. Even her nurses are going to her memorial.

She was diagnosed with cancer in August of '08 and I've spent every weekend I could since making sure I told her everything that I knew I'd want her to know (I called weekly and anyone who knows my phone aversion may now be shocked). Mostly how much I loved her, but also all the little things. About me and all the things I was hoping for and thinking about. About death and her joys and fears. About her family and how they would cope. We joked about her being so wonderful the gods wanted her back (I told her she wouldn't have gotten cancer if she'd been more of an asshole so the gods would have ignored her). We discussed the things she would learn if there is something after this life, and my envy of that. I'm not sure there was a topic we didn't cover in the last six months. Not that I've ever been shy about telling her anything and everything.

Apparently, I was the only person who was just talking to her like a friend. Most people, it seems, were scared of her dying. Not of her being ill, but of death itself. Death has never bothered me. She was unafraid of death. It's the most natural thing in the world. We're all going to die. I could die walking out my door tomorrow and being hit by a car. The only difference was that she had a more or less time frame for her demise. I think they were mad at her for leaving them, too. As though she chose cancer.

I feel lucky that I knew I had only so much time with her so that I had a chance to tell her how I felt about her and how much I'd miss her. I know I'll cherish all the time we did have together and I can't imagine that I will ever stop missing her. She's one of three people who know me and understand me and love me, that I never feel alien or awkward around, and who I feel real around.

Mourning is all about selfishness. I'll be alone now. I won't have Dar to talk to. I won't be able to do things with her... me me me. But that's not a bad thing. Mourning is important. You have to adjust to someone not being there anymore and learning that you can be okay without them. However, I don't cope well with people getting weepy about her death who never knew her. I think it's weird and invasive. They can't miss her, they didn't know her. I've been told that it reminds people that they will die, and their loved ones will die, and this makes them sad; some people over-empathize, and others just need the drama. If I squint just right, I can make sense out of the empathy.

I am pretty angry about the situation. Not at Darya. At her "friends". It seems to me that most of them expected her to take care of them forever. She was that sort of person; the one that people turn to for comfort and for help. But when it came down to it, those people didn't turn around and give back. I doubt she ever regretted giving, but I know for a fact she felt bad that people didn't give to her.

One of the things we talked about was that no one was willing to pitch in and help her when they thought she was just tired. Once she had Cancer, well that was something real. And scary. So they backed quietly away. I don't understand that at all. I think love means something very different to me than it does to most people. For everyone who said they loved her and cared about her, very few people came through for her when she needed them. Her family was there, despite their fears and grief.

Realizing now that the last year she was probably getting sicker and sicker, it is easy to understand why she was needing more and more help around the house and had so little energy. I tried to get to her house at least a couple times a month to help her catch up laundry and do little chores, cook her dinner... Just be with her and help her out. I didn't know she was sick, but it never matters to me. My people are my people and I will do anything I can to make their lives easier. I thought she was just worn out from raising two kids and having her husband on the road trying to keep food on the table. That seemed like plenty enough reason to me to help her out. Knowing what I do now, I am even more glad I took the time I did to help where I could. It never seemed like much - work took so much energy - but I know it made her happy.

But it is why I won't go to her memorial. I seriously doubt my ability to be polite to her "friends" who are so sad she is gone and wish they'd had more time with her. Where the hell were they the last six months, then? Where were they the six months before when she was getting sick? As far as I can see, they wanted her when they needed something but when she needed them, they had better things to do. But the death is too new for me to make a scene and make it harder on her family (who *were* there for her, so they deserve better).

So here is my memorial to Dar: You are the mother goddess incarnate. You are love and growth and understanding. You are springtime and early summer. You were my balance. You will be missed.

New TShirt

2009-02-10T23:22:00.002-07:00

I've always wanted to get this shirt, but I hadn't been able to afford it. However, TShirt Hell is going out of business, so I had to grab it before it was gone!

So now I can wear my new shirt with pride, knowing that I rock! And sometimes I flap and bang my head into things! But that doesn't scan as well.

Toxic Diets

2009-01-29T11:05:00.007-07:00

There is more talk every day about diet. What is healthful to the body? What foods are toxic? What is the ideal diet?

While I personally think that a lower carb (150-200 grams a day of carbohydrates in any form) is healthful for anyone, I do best on a very low carb diet (45-65 grams a day). I, and many others, have found benefits ranging from weight stabilization to mood stabilization by cutting down carbohydrates. The more I read, though, the more I think that the biggest benefit to low carb is that it naturally cuts down your processed foods.

Most recently is news that high fructose corn syrup is full of mercury (Auntie Zilla's post about it). But that is only the most recent release in a long series of realizations that we are killing our food, and therefore ourselves, with chemicals. All the preservatives and over processing, the cheaper, quicker methods... All they have done is make us sicker for cheaper. This doesn't seem to be a good trade to me.

As more and more people choose organic diets, or at least cut a lot of the processed and refined foods from their diets, the more readily available the healthier choices will be. At the moment, my diet is very expensive. It is all fresh vegetables and (as often as we can afford it) free range organic meats. Usually I settle on cheaper meat because, well, I can afford it! I don't buy much at all in the way of packaged foods. I still buy a few canned goods (organic) and frozen veggies are my friend (too expensive to get organic, unfortunately).

Most people I know eat organic as often as possible and many have allergies to the preservatives and cannot handle refined foods. I am not alone in this by any stretch of the imagination! I know many people with depression and other chemical imbalances who have been greatly helped by a diet rich in fresh foods and lower in carbohydrates - especially white flour and sugar. I know I sure as hell have been. I could not handle my job if I wasn't on such a strict diet.

So why does anyone choose a toxic diet? It isn't easy for any American to be unaware of the dangers in a highly processed pre-packaged diet. I know quite a few people who will say they realize how unhealthy it is and keep eating it! The main reason: healthier diets require knowing how to cook. Plain and simple: if you aren't buying packaged food you are preparing your own food. This is more time consuming and requires more energy.

In order to prepare food, you have to either know recipes or find recipes, prep the food, cook the food... You have more dishes to wash... People aren't taught to really cook anymore. We are taught that we don't have the time and that it is old fashioned. But I think we are going to see more of a return to "old fashioned" in any case.

Because of the financial situation, more people are semi home steading - buying chickens to lay eggs, having small herb and vegetable gardens, cooking from scratch and avoiding fast food... And cooking.

I might be idealistic and silly to think so, but I believe we are going to move away from toxic diets and back to fresh local foods. I see the beginnings of the movement already.

A few healthful links:

Mother Earth News
Elana's Pantry
My recipezaar site (lots of good chefs here, and check out the Once a Month Cooking!)
Dr. Mike's blog
The Heart Scan Blog

Work is tough!

2009-01-27T20:27:00.002-07:00

Now, don't get me wrong... I don't think work is especially enjoyable for anyone. My job is from home. I remote in to do customer service. So I am several steps happier from those working in a call center!

I also read the IMs from everyone I work with (we basically have an IRC server for work - we can ask questions and get help); I know that they are all stressed and bogged down, too.

Yet I still get the vague impression that I struggle a bit more with the "holding it together and not having a meltdown" aspect of our job. I do much better than my coworkers, however, in other areas. The system upgrades that are causing lags don't really phase me. I don't consider a customer is grumpy or excessively angry just because they are panicked or frustrated at their lack of service... So I have fewer upset customers than most people.

So there are pluses and minuses to my way of viewing the world.

I was really worried that I'd struggle a lot more than I have. Working from home is helping immensely, and so is the structure I receive from my best friend. Every day I cook dinner, which is my favorite hobby, so that helps me calm down. I also get a coffee (fresh ground and brewed in my handy espresso maker with real cream) during the last half of my day.

I haven't been blogging the last few weeks because work had me so bogged down and stressed I was afraid I'd whine terribly. The last thing I want my blog to be is a "why it is so so sad to have autism, we poor poor misunderstood creatures". So I had to wait until I'd found my equilibrium again. As my father says, buoyancy is the key to survival.

I keep jigsaw puzzles going at all times. I can put in a few pieces on breaks and lunch and work on them before and after work to help me focus away from my job. It works wonders!

Really, it's the cooking that keeps me going. Good food, lovely smells from the kitchen all day, a wonderful and nutritious dinner (and lunch next day)... Life is good!

All of my energy outside of work is going towards more cooking. I've been renting DVDs from the library about cooking. I've been checking out new cookbooks. I've been studying online. I'm planning a trip to Denver to pick up herbs and spices!

It's all about perspective. If this job allows me more money to cook better food, it has a major positive!

Auties aren't affectionate??

2009-01-07T20:25:00.002-07:00

I keep reading and hearing about the surprise felt about someone autistic being affectionate as a child.

Autism is a neurological disorder that affects the way one processes information. Because one is greatly lacking in filters between parts of the brain and from their senses, things are so overwhelming they often pull back into their own world to protect themselves.

In what way does this mean a child would not be affectionate?

My mother, when I told her I was HFA, looked confused and said "but you were so affectionate as a child"... as though that solved that. My father, on the other hand, said "that explains it. All you kids were different, but you were more different than your sibling". *laughs*

As an adult, I am better capable of dealing with things and have learned to articulate. Now only people who spend substantial amounts of time with me, or know autistics, realize that I am. Funny that everyone who has lived with, worked with, or seriously studied autism can pick me out in a matter of minutes though!

And I am, without any doubt, affectionate. If I like someone, I pet them, snuggle into them, stand very close to them, sit practically in (or actually in) their lap... I find it very difficult to be near anyone I like without touching them.

My faerie godson, Max, is a low functioning autistic (or PDDNOS) and he is quite affectionate. Most of my friends who are autistic are affectionate...

I think this stems from when "autism" only meant the extremely low functioning cases where the nerves are so sensitive the child couldn't be touched. But they still snuggled into things of their choosing and banged into walls to get touch. So even then, it was more a lack of insight than a lack of affection.

However, if you assume a child can't be affectionate, are you going to be as likely to give affection? Or to recognize their attempts at affection? I worry that this concpt keeps autistics from learning about affection or getting their needs met.

The broadening of the autistic spectrum has had interesting ramifications for everyone involved. I would not have counted as autistic when I was going to school. Possibly not even a decade ago. However, my brain certainly works in the same filter-free fashion, so it's good that they are learning more.

I have high hopes that "affectionate" won't be considered anti-autistic for much longer. It's a misconception that can be a self fulfilling prophecy!

Recipe of the Week

2009-01-04T21:24:00.004-07:00

On the suggestion of a friend, I am going to post a recipe each week that is, for me, very autie-friendly. Low carb, preferably organic and unrefined...

This week's recipe is hot and sour soup.

This is a very quick and easy recipe.

You need 2 cups of chicken broth (I use either Better Than Bouillon or Free Range Broth)
1 T minced ginger (fresh, or use 2 t powdered)
1 T minced garlic (or 1 t powdered)
1/4 cup shoyu
2 T rice wine vinegar (start with half the amount and add vinegar to taste)
1 T chili-garlic sauce

Mix all the ingredients and heat to a simmer. Beat an egg in a bowl and add it to the simmering soup. Let it cook for a minute or two. Serve.

You can add scallions or peas or mushrooms or any other veggies you enjoy.

You can buy shoyu (a rich soy sauce), rice wine vinegar, and the chili garlic sauce at most grocery stores. However, you can use any soy sauce and white vinegar if you need.

This usually takes about five minutes to make. You can make it heartier by adding cooked chicken, veggies, or extra egg.

Happy Holidays

2008-12-24T22:38:00.008-07:00

Holiday posts tend to be full of survival advice of one form (sticking to your diet) or another (how to not kill your visiting relatives) or they seem to just be trying to shove enough sunshine up your ass that you won't be capable of killing your relatives.

So let's try something different!

The World's Best Hot Chocolate:

4 oz Ghiradelli's 100% cacoa unsweetened chocolate
2 cups heavy whipping cream
6 cups whole milk
1/3 cup sugar (or sugar substitute)
1/2 cup peppermint schnappes
1/2 star anise (the whole star, not ground)

In a crock pot or double boiler or whatever you have that won't burn, mix the chocolate and cream and slowly melt. Once it is fully melted, add the milk and sugar and bring to a low simmer. You don't want it to boil! Add the star anise and schnappes.

This makes four servings. (1/4 cup = 4 T... so each serving gets 2 T of Schnappes - adjust accordingly).

This will ruin you for powdered cocoa forever.

Cheers!

In other news, I found out today that "It's a Wonderful Life" is *not* actually about a drunken angel that shows some idiot how good the world is without him and helps him kill himself. Those were the spoofs. It is actually about some idiot with very little character who destroys his friendships, marriage, relationship with his children, and tries to kill himself just because life got royally screwed for him. In the end, some angel shows him that everyone would be miserable without him, he buys this, becomes the happiest person ever, and everyone gives him money to save him from the trouble he was in.

Really damned lame.

I mean, seriously, one little mishap and the world is over? Even if it was a really big damned mishap. He takes it out on everyone, hurts all his loved ones, and then decides to kill himself to give his family the insurance money on him when everyone knows they don't pay out for suicides.

To top it off, everyone "worse off" without him proves that none of his family has any character either. His uncle goes in some insane asylum just because his business fails. Hello?!? MOST businesses fail. Most people try four or five times before finding one that works for them.

I know that holiday movies are supposed to be trite and silly but this one was pretty impressive. Even Miracle on 34th Street had more redeeming value!

Still, it was better than any of the creepy ass cartoons out there, like Rudolph and that freaky dentist elf and that perverted snowman they can't kill.

The best Christmas show ever was Tales From the Crypt: And All Through the House. Now this made a lot more sense. It's about what a bad idea it is to kill relatives at Christmas and the dangers of letting Santa into your house.

Here's wishing everyone an enjoyable and jail-free holiday season! Eat lots; if you fall off your diet there are another eleven months in the year! Enjoy the hot chocolate.

Investments

2008-12-19T21:17:00.001-07:00

Investments in Yourself

Selfishness is both highly over- and underrated. There are good and bad kinds of selfishness. There is the bad kind that puts oneself first at the expense of others, or that doesn't consider anyone else at all. There is also the good kind, the kind that puts itself first out of love and the knowledge that one is important and that one cannot help others without being taken care of oneself.

I try to make investments in myself. An investment is a way to put in a little effort to get back a larger gain. Investments take financial, emotional, mental, or physical energy. How much you put into it determines what you get back, just like any other investment.

I believe in a good healthy selfishness. I believe that if I don't eat right or get stressed out, or any myriad of neglects, that I will be unable to live my life well. I will be unable to serve those I wish to serve. I will not do as well at my job. I will not be able to keep up my home or make myself happy. I believe in saying “no”. I believe in refusing company of those I don't like. I believe in taking time for myself. I believe in joy and appreciation. I believe in long hot baths with a good book, and a bar of 88% cacoa chocolate when my hormones rage. I believe in yoga and jogging and long walks and a healthful diet. I believe I am a very important person to me and my world.

Healthful Diet

Food is the building block upon which all cells in the body are made. Garbage in, garbage out. Therefore, eating healthful choices is an investment into your physical future. It also determines your mental and emotional state, so it is an investment into those futures, as well.

A good diet is just basic self-care. It nourishes, keeps down stress and illness. It is also a way to appreciate yourself. Every time you eat a healthful and delicious meal, you can know that you are important enough and cherished enough to be fed this well.

Avoiding foods that you are allergic or sensitive to helps remove a factor that exacerbates autism. This usually means a fairly strict diet. For all that we autistics are fortunate in many regards, whatever causes the brain set up tends to play havoc on the body. This is true of our sibling disorders bipolar and schizophrenia, as well. Therefore, I keep my diet low carb and as low in preservatives as possible. (Go to the store and find meats and cheeses without preservatives. It's a challenge!) My auntie Zilla has a blog about eating low carb and its many benefits

I spend more on food than the average person. Doing so keeps me from getting sick as often (fewer doctor bills and sick days – days I won't get paid), keeps me from needing insulin (a very expensive need that I have avoided through diet), keeps me from being as moody and keeps my meltdowns to a minimum. More than worth the bit of extra money, in my opinion.

And, best of all, my food tastes really really good. I invest about an hour a day on my food. It is one of the more relaxing parts of my life!

Clean Environment

Your mother was right. Keeping things clean will improve your health. Cleanliness might not be next to godliness (I've never understood that phrase), but it certainly influences your mood and mental state.

Obviously, not cleaning means lots of dust and molds and other allergens.

Not as obviously, environment and mind reflect one another. If your thoughts are scattered and disorganized, so will your home be. If you can force organization on your home, it can actually help you think more easily. Especially if your version of autism includes easy distractability.

Benefits to a clean house:

you don't have to rebuy things because you have lost them to the piles of messes
fewer allergens = fewer health problems
even if you stay home most of the time, getting up, getting dressed, and making your bed can help improve your emotional state even if all you do is flop on the bed and read a book
you become more efficient because you can find things quickly
you know where everything is so you know whether or not to panic when something is in a new place

While it is much easier if you are severely OCD, it's not a requirement. It just takes mindfulness and willingness. I spend about 15 minutes a day cleaning up after myself. Add another five on the days I unload the dishwasher. (Lots more time added because I'm living with people I do all the cleaning up after, but that's different.) Maybe once a week I put in a straight hour for scrubbing of bathrooms and kitchen floors. It really doesn't take a lot.

Cleanliness also includes cleaning yourself. Showers are your friends. Clean hair is good. Deodorant and toothbrushing are also good. Brush your hair. Wear clean clothes. If you are going somewhere important, be sure your clothes match.

Interaction

The dreaded “s” word. Socialization! Most autistics get it drummed into them from a very early age that interaction is dangerous and terrifying. Autistics are, literally, hurt by interaction most times they attempt it. People talk to loud and hurt our ears. There are too many people talking at once so we flounder in confusion. There are lights and smells and input from everywhere.
People expect us to know rules they never were able to teach us and so we might be ostracized or picked on or we might simply give up on them as a bad job. People make sudden movements with their bodies and their topics of conversation hold no interest for us.

However, it is rather a requirement for survival of a human (or mutant human). Without socialization, a small child gets Failure to Thrive. This tendency never changes. It might not kill you outright, but you will shrivel up and die inside.

This creates the greatest difficulty most autistics face. You must have the thing that hurts you most. So autistics keep trying and keep getting hurt and getting more and more neurotic about the entire thing which makes them more likely to get more hurt because it makes them pretty damned annoying to be around, on top of their other social deficits.

The solution: become a masochist. Learn to revel a bit in the pain, appreciate it, and force yourself into small, controlled groups until you build up some resistance.

If you seem to have no talent towards masochism, it will be more difficult, but you can still manage it.

Hobbies are one of the easiest ways to start. There are clubs online for everything. You can probably find a yahoo interest group for whatever your obsession is. In fact, the group will likely have several other autistics all obsessing together and pleased they finally found people who understand.

Once you get comfortable talking online, find a local group that plays to your hobbies. They might even have information online so you can meet people before you attempt to actually face them in person.

The main reason that autistics get depression so often is because they don't get interaction. Most people with severe depression don't get enough interaction. Forcing them all out the door and into comfortable social situations is the goal of most of their therapists. So, save yourself the money and chuck yourself out of your nest and see what happens.

Yes, it's gonna hurt. Yes, there will be meltdowns. You will even have all the secondary symptoms of social contact: stupid fights with friends, gaining and losing love, getting over involved, getting hurt... and most importantly, finding one or two people who you connect to and feel close to and who become really good friends.

Another wonderful way to interact: volunteer. There are animal rescues, there are nursing homes, there are libraries... There are more ways to volunteer than I can think of. But if you are interested in something, there is very likely someone who would appreciate your services.

Preparing to go out into the world: wash first. Remember the toothbrushing and deodorant and all the other points about cleanliness. Think of topics that are safe for public consumption. These things include the weather and sports teams. Failing that, find something that will at least not offend. I have no damned clue what this might include, but I have friends willing to write me lists before we go places.

Exercise Those Brain Muscles

Never fear, I really do know it isn't a muscle. Nonetheless, expand your horizons.

Enjoy your obsessions. Study in depth and off to the side. Find neat new tangents you hadn't considered before. Find a new application for your interest. Take it to a new level. Autistics have the obsessiveness and drive to make new discoveries and form new concepts. Take advantage of those talents.
Expand your obsessions. If you love one type of car, can you get equally interested in other vehicles? Mechanics? Physics? Build a car?
Do something altogether new. Yes, all change is bad and anything new is, by definition, a change. See: becoming a masochist. And while you are at it, find a new hobby. Fear doesn't harm you, it is just uncomfortable. So challenge yourself. Learn a new skill.
Read a new genre of book. Try switching between fiction and non-fiction. Try a new author. Read how-to books.
Try a new food. Stay within your diet, but try something new. Never had... whatever that spiny fruit in produce is? Buy it and try it. Never had thai? Try a new restaurant. This is also a really good way to break away from severe food habits and to help get all the nutrients your body needs.

Raise your emotional IQ

We are very deficit in emotional understanding and empathy, as a group. It is part of what autism is. We develop very slowly in many of the emotional and mental areas. It isn't that we aren't ever going to get there, it is that we take a lot longer to make it. At age 32, I am morally and emotionally about 8. Luckily, I study enough to understand the basics of good communication and am able to get by as an adult, but my basic stance is not that of an adult. It will keep growing as I keep working on it, but it is delayed. Autism is a developmental delay. People don't seem to understand that developmental delay means autistics' development is delayed.

Because we are very young in this department, don't try to approach it like an adult. It will be over your head. Study at your developmental age. There are some great websites about ages and stages that can help you figure out where you are and guide your reading choices. Choose children's books designed for your developmental age. There are some wonderful ones out there and they will be much easier to understand.

Learn about cause and effect. Because this is logical, it is a bit easier to follow and understand, but there are children's books about it, too, if you need a lower level to start at.

Buy children's autistic guides to communication. Comic book communication is one series, I believe.

Find a therapist to pelt with questions about social rules and your feelings. Learn to express them appropriately and find healthy coping mechanisms. A good therapist can help you learn to manage your stress and teach you ways to deal with meltdowns. They can be a sounding board for your ideas. Mostly, they are someone to talk to who is more likely to accept the developmental stage you are at.

Read books about autism. Non-fiction, written by autistics, are the best ones. However, I highly recommend Unstrange Minds.

Study communication. Learn about how conversation works, connotation, cultural concepts, word value... There is a lot to communication! You can even find books that break down non-verbal clues, like stance and volume and pitch of voice.

All it really comes down to is appreciating yourself. If you are worth your own time and energy, other people will see your value as well. People believe what you tell them. If your words and stance and actions all say “I am not worthy”, no one will have any reason to believe otherwise. If your words and stance and actions all say “I am important and worth spending time with” they'll believe you. Even when you annoy the living crud out of them, they'll find they enjoy your company. Your quirks become one of those wacky things you put up with, instead of a detriment.

Myths and Misconceptions about NTs

2008-12-07T12:24:00.001-07:00

Neurotypicals... that mythical creature that lives on the other side of autism, where life is easier and communications flow...

From what I've read, autistics seem to have put NTs on a pedestal. Whether this is because they feel so poorly about their autism, or because they've read too many glittering stories about NTs, I don't know. But I am here to shatter the mythos!

Myth 1: NTs are good at relationships.

Fact: Go into a bookstore. Go to the self help section. Do you notice that the vast majority of books are about how to have a good relationship? Know why these sell so well? Because NTs suck at relationships. They might have different problems than autistics do, but I'm not sure they do. It all comes down to crappy communication and unrealistic expectations.

Myth 2: NTs are natural communicators.

Fact: Everyone learns to communicate. Most people are taught very poor habits from parents with very poor habits. Almost all couples therapy comes down to learning better communication. Most disputes between friends and family: poor communication. The reason kids have trouble learning: poor communication (on the kids and teachers and parents parts). The reason people get hurt feelings and feel so alone: poor communication.

Communication is a skill. One that has to be learned and practiced. A lot. There are classes on it, but most people take away how everyone else messes up, not how they can do better, so even then, people don't automatically learn good habits just because they went to class for it!

Myth 3: NTs understand the Social Code.

Fact: They don't usually even know there IS a social code. Just for fun, go out and ask someone why they do *insert social rule here*... They won't know why. "You just do. That's how it works." They might blindly follow the rules, because they have mirror neurons and all those other wacky things that make them capable of catching on to these subtleties... But understand it?? Nope. Not likely.

This is why they aren't often able to smoothly transition to another culture or accept new frames of reference. They don't realize they are following a program spoon fed to them since birth. They assume that this is how they are, this is how the world is, and anything else is very confusing. That isn't understanding. That is rote memorization.

Myth 4: NTs do not miss body language.

Fact: Go back to the self help section. Look at how many communication books have chapters about, or are entirely about, non verbal communication. Some people have a knack for it. They are more likely to get into jobs that require that knowledge. Even more people can pick up on it once it is pointed out to them. Most people just don't pay that much attention to it. They have the skills needed to do it, but they aren't interested.

That's right: autistics spend all this time and energy learning to communicate, only to go out into the world and realize that most people don't give a damn. To some extent, I think autism's deficit is more that we care that we are lacking skills, not the lack of skills themselves.

Myth 5: NTs have an easy time making friends and getting jobs.

Fact: There are a lot of lonely people. Watch television and count the ads that zero in on people's loneliness: do this and you'll have friends. Buy this product and people will like you. Call this number and chat with someone who will like you. The ads wouldn't be successful if people didn't feel alone! Surf the internet and count the ads and sites that do the same. The vast majority of people feel cut off and alone. This goes back to the poor communication. They might have a lot of acquaintances, but very few people have real, close friends that take away the isolation.

There are a lot of jobless folk out there. Ignore the current depression we are in. At the best of times, there are still unemployed. Almost everyone I know dreads interviews. Most people aren't certain how to do resumes or fill out applications correctly. In fact, books on every part of the hiring process fill the self help section next to having good relationships.

Myth 6: NTs understand emotions.

Fact: People are taught from early youth to shove emotions inside. To not look at them or feel them or use them. People act like petulant toddlers their entire lives because of this.

Most people are swayed by their emotions because they've never bothered to really look at them. This is why those ads work! This is why communication doesn't occur. NTs are terrible at emotions. They translate all their emotions into something easier for them. Many people like anger, because it can fuel them to achieve things. So they turn every emotion into anger. Some people make everything into sadness so that they can be pitied and get attention. Some people just shove it all inside and have a heart attack.

Very few people have the balls to deal with emotions, understand them, and use them effectively.

Myth 7: NTs have empathy and social mores.

Fact: NTs want people to think they have empathy and social mores. To not show proper emotions or make the right words shows that you have not been properly programmed and do not fit correctly into society. I'm not sure people even expect anyone to actually feel anything. They just need the appropriate words and face changes to show that they are well programmed.

This is where autism comes into effect. We can't be correctly programmed because we are missing a lot of the files and architecture to do it. So while we are not feeling any more or less than the average person, our reactions show our lack of appropriate programming and that is a danger. Those programs are what keep people from unleashing anger inappropriately and, if Freud is to be believed, is the only thing that keeps us all from turning on one another in primal fury. So it makes a bit of sense that a lack in programming is going to make the other folk nervous.

The differences in autistics are not in the actual communication or comprehension. It is in the innate ability to learn it. We can learn a lot by rote - but it shows. A rehearsed line doesn't flow like a natural one would. It isn't our lack of mores, it is our inability to be programmed with them. It isn't that we miss body language, it is that we are lacking the skills to pick up on it.

An NT missing body language is only missing a few specific cues... or doesn't understand what a certain set is about. It is usually cultural - they just weren't raised with people using those, or paying attention to those. Not catching most of it is a different story.

There is a tendency to make a big Us Versus Them out of Autism Versus NTs... but that just isn't realistic. We're on a vast spectrum. They're on a vast spectrum. There are tons of overlaps. We simply have a different neurological set up than they do.

They aren't great at communication. They don't get most of what confuses us either. They just have enough context that it doesn't bother them. That is why they won't answer our questions about why and how it all works. They aren't being mean. They really don't know. They don't care. They are able to work within it without having its borders defined. We can't see any of it, so we can't find those borders and need it all explained.

The differences are small, but vital. There are certainly differences between ASD and NT. If not, there wouldn't be any autism. Or any NTs. But we're all just people, all confused, all trying desperately to find a way to be happy and survive. Turning it into us versus them is counter productive and hurts everyone.

It is simply a lack of understanding creating fear, and that fear creates a need to herd together against another herd. It's all very silly.

Hopefully we can continue finding and disspelling the myths about NTs until we are all comfortable enough to interact with them. It isn't their fault that they have filters and mirror neurons that limit their abilities. We have to be patient and accepting and help them to help us.

Meltdowns Happen

2008-12-05T14:11:00.001-07:00

It is funny. Funny odd and funny ha ha, in case you wondered. I am a very highly functioning autistic. I am able to hold down a job under the right circumstances. I am able to socialize to a pretty good extent. I am able to do all the basic chores around the house. Nonetheless, I have meltdowns on a very regular basis.

So what are meltdowns?

The brain, whether through too much sensory input, information, cascading thoughts, chemical overload (usually serotonin or dopamine), or some unknown factor x, gets overwhelmed. Being overwhelmed triggers adrenaline. This is the important part.

Adrenaline feeds panic. It is there to do this. If you have to fight or flight, you want adrenaline fueling you so you can move quickly. Your heart rate and breathing increase. You might feel shaky or dizzy. You might have to empty your bladder. You might want to cry or scream, run away or hide, hit things or hurt yourself. It's a natural reaction to adrenaline.

So, you have a brain overloading anyway. You add extra overload in the form of adrenaline. My amazing powers of foresight predict autistic meltdown: stuttering, jitters, flapping, spinning, tears, banging your head into a wall, rocking...

You cannot think straight, you cannot make words to get help, everything around you is too intense and adds to the overload. Your brain is going to find the shortest route possible to feeling okay again. You need to reset the system, calm the onslaught, get grounded. Time to reboot.

As time goes on, one gains (we hope) maturity and experience, two things that will help you reboot faster and more easily. Autism is all about control, and meltdowns are all about losing that control. There are techniques that help.

1. Step back and take several slow, deep breaths. This tricks the body into calming itself. If you have time to breathe, your brain will recognize you aren't in immediate danger.

2. Go ahead and rock or tap or pet the walls if that calms you. Self soothing is good. Calm is good. A bit of detachment is good.

3. Self-stimming is not so good. There is a natural tendency to self stim when the brain gets overloaded. It's a short circuit method to reboot, or at least remove yourself from the situation. It is like lighting a controlled fire to fight a wild fire. It works. It feels soothing. However, it also trains the brain towards adrenaline and overstimulating itself, and it removes you from the rest of the world making it harder to function as an adult. Optimately, this choice is sub optimal.

4. Still breathing? Breath is the key to almost every form of self control.

5. Figure out what set you off. Was it too loud? Too bright? Did a siren go by or a dog bark? Were you simply getting frustrated and started a negative feedback loop? Tell yourself it is only overstimulation, you are not in danger. It is annoying, not life threatening. It is frustrating, not harmful. These things will always be an issue if you have autism. It will always be annoying and frustrating. However, if you can learn to accept it as a mild annoyance and not as a danger, your body will not react as violently.

The goal here is to not only reboot during the meltdown, as efficiently and unembarrassingly as possible, but to train the brain from having as severe a meltdown in the future. You likely won't ever get rid of meltdowns. They're part of autism. Without filters, we're just gonna have them. This is about being an adult and taking charge of yourself, your body, your reactions.

Tantrums are annoying enough in a five year old. In a 25-year old, it's a bit pathetic. In the same way, certain types of self soothing are acceptable and some are best done in private (I can't be the only one who masturbates to soothe the nerves!).

What calms you? For me, texture is nice. I need to make a little square that is raw silk on one side and velvet on the other. I can keep it in my pocket and pet it when I get overwhelmed. If rocking helps you, find a way to do it in public that won't disturb anyone. Find the root of the inappropriate action. Is it the movement that soothes? Is it physical stimulation? Is it blocking out other senses? Find an acceptable method with the same root.

Basically, we are adults now, as frightening a concept as that might be. We cannot help but overstim and have meltdowns, but we can control how we react to it. There are positive ways to adapt to the way our brains work.

Holiday Traditions

2008-11-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

Autistics are creatures of habit. To a rather psychotic degree. If anything changes, what proof do we have that this is the same place we were yesterday? Reality isn't steady enough to handle changes!

Tradition, though, is the basis of holidays.

According to dictionary.com, tradition is: the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from generation to generation, esp. by word of mouth or by practice: a story that has come down to us by popular tradition.

There are a few other definitions but this is the one to do with holidays. Holiday traditions seem to be steeped in emotion. Because grandma did it, I remember her when I do it and feel nostalgic and sad because she's gone and glad because I'm passing on something of hers. I'm sure this is very important in human culture.

So what is an autistic to do? We often - to a foolish extent - imbue meaning into objects. We imbue meaning into rituals. We ought to be very good at traditions. Yet it seems to be missing something. Some deeper emotional connection. They aren't doing these habits because to break them would be painful in their heads. They are doing it for a group connection, a family mind set, some weird borg-like assimilation of action that creates a common bond.

We don't bond like that. We are not, by any stretch of the imagination, incapable of bonding. We are just particular. We are much less likely to assume a bond for no other reason than genetics. We are also less likely to accept someone else's compulsion or habit as our own. We are perfectly capable of making up our own, thank you! And when we do manage to make a habit out of what the family does, we don't have an emotional "i belong" feeling about it. It becomes like any of our other obsessions. It must be done. It must be done correctly. It's lack brings about panic because our world is no longer our own.

It seems to me that the doing matters to most people. They feel a connection and a sense of continuity by doing it. They remember happy times and sad times and they enjoy reveling in all those emotions. They aren't just doing it because once something is done three times, it is a tradition, and we don't even know why.

So, again... what are autistics to do? Even when we make these traditions our habits, we don't do them "right". We are too rigid, too lacking in connection, too emotional about all the wrong spots. You put great grandma's figurine in a place of prominence to honor her this year, we freak out because that is not where it goes. We aren't going to care about the prominence or silly emotional components you are trying to confuse our order with. You are simply doing it wrong. And we are simply doing it wrong. And it doesn't match. And things that don't match cannot live in calm or perfection. And so it's all ruined.

And now the autistic is flapping, mom is crying, the cousins are giggling at the scene, the grandparents are wondering why mom can't control the autistic, and the dad is surreptitiously removing the figurine with a hammer.

So traditions are just confusing.

If anyone has them, and has an autistic, they have my sympathy. Or what passes for it, coming from me. I shall at least giggle at you.

They're shooting at me!

2008-11-19T14:35:00.001-07:00

I was thinking about one of my favorite books, Catch 22. It is full of life lessons.

Yossarian: Those bastards are trying to kill me.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: No one is trying to kill you sweetheart. Now eat your dessert like a good boy.
Yossarian: Oh yeah? Then why are they shooting at me Milo?
Dobbs: They're shooting at everyone Yossarian.
Yossarian: And what difference does that make?

This is what I've learned so far about autistics. Everyone is shooting at them. They are all picked on and harassed. It's apparently beside the point if this is true of nearly everyone, auties are special because they are being shot at.

How do you explain to the socially inept that they aren't being picked on. They are ignoring all the information given to them to help them and so people feel hurt and ignored and fight back. How do you explain that the problems probably often start with them and the way they interact? How do you explain that anyone being rude or acting like they want to be bullied are going to be treated the way that so many auties are? Abuse "victims" have the same problem. They act like a victim, so they get treated like one. That's life.

I have replied to many posts written by autistics stating that this isn't an NT versus autie issue. It is just the way people treat people. It probably isn't nice or fair, but they aren't being singled out. This has so far resulted almost unanymously in shouts of "Then why are they shooting at me?"

*throws hands up* I give up. Yes, they're shooting at you. They all hate you and are out to get you. It's a very good reason to hide in your house and not deal with being autistic. Very clever of you.

I was asked to join a small task force to write some politicians about autism rights. But I'm not sure about it. I don't think it's a rights issue. I think it is an education issue. I also think it is something that is going to require more money than any sane politician would be willing to deal with. Socialization classes for all adults with this diagnosis? Clinics to help undiagnosed adults GET the diagnosis?

We would have to have separate concepts for all the varieties of autism. What I need in order to work has nothing in common with what a low functioning autistic would need. And an asperger would need something else, all together.

Autism comprises of too many variables. The spectrum is huge. I wouldn't be surprised if they start separating the spectrum into specific categories like they did when "neurosis" used to cover most mental illness.

I like the idea of educating people. I would love it if a diagnosis of autism made a person eligible for socialization classes and special help on a job. It could mean someone goes to work with you who knows the job so that they can teach it to you at your own pace. It could mean someone goes in with you to interviews to help you give the right impression. I don't know. Those are all things that aspergers or high functioning autistics would need.

What about someone who needs a very specific type of job? A lower functioning person who would be able to sort paperwork, but wouldn't be able to do more interacting than that? What diagnosis gets what help?

And how do these people get diagnosed? So far, it is only understood in children. Teens are a great mystery and teachers and parents are at their wits end dealing with them. Soon the kids will be adults and the same parents will start realizing that this is an adult problem, as well. Then money might start pouring into adult programs like it is in childhood programs.

I am going to stay on the committee just to help throw ideas around. If they can get something workable, I'd be quite interested in trying to push it through. I just don't think people understand why autistics are so "picked on". We are socially inept. That is reason enough right there. Add to it that we tend towards gullible and over earnest and there's not much to stop people from taking advantage. That's not something that any law is going to help. It isn't like people are feeling a prejudice due to skin color or gender. It isn't prejudice at all.

There is a lot education could do. Teach people about all the various ways of interacting and communicating. Teach it to NTs and spectrum. Hope the NTs can learn more patience with spectrum folk and that the spectrums can learn some communication and social skills.

In the meantime, I'll just try to ignore the cries of "they're shooting at me."

They're shooting at everyone.

Yes, but they're shooting at ME...

autism as a gift

2008-10-27T19:37:00.000-06:00

I read something really neat, from The Miracle of Mindfulness that I'm going to blog about later. "True mind is our real self; is the Buddha: the pure oneness which cannot be cut up by the illusory divisions of separate selves, created by concepts and language." It reminded me that many cultures see autism as a gift from god, that the inability to speak means the person is closer to god. Words separate us.

I find it interesting that so many cultures are able to see autism as a gift, and so many others see it as a disability. I also find it interesting that autistics have an easier time finding their niche in smaller communities than in large cities, where they simply get lost in the large numbers of people.

The definition of diversity keeps changing and growing in this country and that is a good thing. It used to include only certain physical disabilities. Now it is including more physical and many mental disabilities, as well! Children are far more accepting of the differences than adults and it is easy to see the trend growing.

As time goes on, I think it will be easier for people to see autism as a gift. Probably not for the autistic person being closer to god, but for the other talents we tend to have as a group. We are good at organizing information and looking at things in new ways. It should be possible to fit even lower functioning autistics into a task that they can do to earn money and find a place in society. It can be as simple as helping to sort mail or deliver messages, or something more complicated like going through code to find discrepancies.

Most important, though, is that having less access to language and communication allows us to explore the world in other ways; to cast aside the illusory divisions of language and culture and to embrace people at a deeper level, and to appreciate all life at a deeper level.

While many people spend their entire adulthood trying to learn to discard social stricture, we grow up free from it, able to see what they are looking for with much less effort. Perhaps we are closer to "god", or perhaps it is the false masks of society that draw others away from Nature so that they forget who and what they are.

Crowds

2008-10-26T17:27:00.000-06:00

I found myself having to explain what a crowd meant to me. A friend is inviting me to his Halloween party and I want to go if I finish my costume. However, if I am having an overstim-rific day, I'll have to decline.

He explained that there would only be about ten people, including me. That is when I realized that my view of "crowd" and his didn't match. Every person I am near has a smell, a voice, and actions. That is a lot of input! I do best in crowds of four. Or fewer. Fewer is best. Two is nice.

I don't think that NTs are very aware of their senses unless something is overwhelming. They don't recognize everyone's scent, but are certainly aware if someone has a very strong scent. They are aware that everyone has a voice, but they are able to block out the ones they aren't actively listening to.

Filters are something almost entirely lacking in autistics. Being able to block out one sense, or part of one sense, is something akin to magic to me. I cannot imagine how it works or how it would feel to do it. What do you see and hear if you are randomly blocking stuff? How does it work? Don't you miss out on things?

It's a great mystery to me. Probably as much a mystery as how I manage without any filters is to NTs. They would need the inverse of a sensory deprivation tank to understand it!

Introduction

2008-10-23T21:51:00.000-06:00

I hate introductions. They are basically small talk and they make no sense.

Nonetheless, I am told blogs should have them, so here goes.

Hi. I'm a high functioning autistic. Actually, I think I am more likely MCDD, but I don't have an official diagnosis yet.

All this means is that I have trouble with social interaction and understanding how normal people connect things in life. I get overwhelmed easily by sensory input. Most importantly, I have a unique way of viewing things because I do not have social conventions helping shape my ideas.

There is a lot of crap out there that people think they know about autism. I am here to tell my truth about it.