Finding HopeMoving House When You’re Autistic
Posted on April 24, 2018
So I just moved house. It was not fun. I am going to write about it in more detail – I think the experience might be useful, maybe for someone trying to understand how change can affect a person with Autism – but I’m not ready to do that yet. It was really difficult and I’m still pretty emotional about the whole thing. Change is notoriously hard for people with Autism but I think the permanence of a change like moving house is particularly difficult. I definitely learned some lessons during the process so I thought I’d share them.
Some context before we begin: Not only were my family moving, we were separating into different houses, which was something I hadn’t been expecting. That was a real shock to me and made the whole thing even more difficult. But we’re still close and live close enough that we still see each other as much as before, which I’m really grateful for. Now I live with my Mum; I’m not ready to move out.
Right, here we go.
TIPS
Prepare for emotions, yours and others – First, however you feel is okay. It’s a big deal. Whether you feel everything or nothing, it will take time to work that out. And just when you think you’ve dealt with all of that, it’s time to move and it all comes back. There were lots of tears on the day of the move, as well as the few days after. It’s emotional and stressful and exhausting: the perfect mix for someone to get upset. I think the only thing you can do is be gentle with yourself and each other and give people space when they need it.
Build in as much time as possible – Moving house is exhausting and emotional. And packing at the last minute just makes it worse. Giving yourself time allows you to be careful and methodical and it means you can take breaks if it gets too much.
Label the boxes – The destined room is not enough. By the time you’ve packed everything you own and transported it to your new home, you’ll have no idea where anything is. And every time you need anything, you’ll spend at least twenty minutes digging through all the boxes in order to find it. It will drive you up the wall.
Pack a suitcase – You know me: preparation, preparation, preparation. Make sure you have a bag of things you’re going to need for at least the first week. You might think that you can get yourself sorted in a couple of days but chances are you can’t and you really don’t want to find yourself out of things like clean clothes and make up remover. You don’t need that on top of the stress of moving. Also, remember to check the weather forecast before packing, just in case you find yourself caught unawares by a heat wave with only jumpers to wear like I did.
Try to create a safe space for yourself – Moving house is messy and if you’re anything like me, being surrounded by clutter for extended periods of time makes me feel very claustrophobic and panicked. So, both before moving out and after moving in, I tried to keep one area calm and somewhat neat to give me a space to decompress and recharge in. I wasn’t always successful at keeping it tidy but for the most part, it helped.
Set a reminder to put all your food in the fridge – The last thing you need is all your food going off and with a million things to remember, you’ll most likely forget something. Let that be something else.
QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT
How much help do you need?
Depending on your capabilities, you may need to enlist some help to move everything, whether that’s professional movers or friends and family or both. You really don’t want to get halfway through moving day and be unable to keep going so make sure to think carefully about what you need and ask for that help well in advance.
Do you need to be there on moving day?
This obviously depends on whether you’re moving with your family or by yourself: the demands on you will be different. In my case, my family knew how difficult the whole experience had been and so suggested going to see a friend while the removal people did their thing. They thought that the empty house would upset me but I felt like I needed to be there; it helped me say goodbye.
Do you need a clean slate or do you need to keep things familiar?
As already mentioned, change is often hard for autistic people so you might feel the need to keep things as similar as possible, such as furniture and when decorating. But on the flip side, many people with Autism feel emotions very strongly so a change might actually be the less overwhelming option. It wouldn’t be healthy to be constantly reminded of an upsetting event.
Do you need closure and if so, how can you get it?
I definitely needed to say a real goodbye. I’d lived in that house for fifteen years; I felt safe there and there are a lot of memories associated with it. For a long time, it felt impossible to leave. So, once I could consider it, I thought a lot about what would help me leave, knowing that I wouldn’t be coming back. So, on the last day, we took some pictures of me in my room and then I put a letter I’d written for a future resident under a loose floorboard. I can’t tell you why or how but that did help a bit.
ADVICE FOR FRIENDS AND FAMILY
If you’re telling an autistic person that you have to move, be clear. Give them all the information. Especially when there’s so much emotion, it can be hard to process what’s going on so anything that isn’t explicitly stated may get lost.
Give them as much warning as possible. Something like this is really difficult to process – there are so many emotions involved – and it came take time to absorb and make sense of.
So I think that’s everything. I hope this has been interesting and helpful. One last thing to add: I found this article recently that is more relevant to someone moving out of their family home and thought it was definitely worth including here.
Autism Awareness Day 2018
Posted on April 3, 2018
Happy Autism Awareness Day!
Having been posting all week, I’m not sure I have anything new or exciting to say today. Plus I’m really jet lagged and struggling after an allergic-like reaction that I had on the flight to Nashville yesterday. I’m not sure how many words I have in me until I’ve had at least another night’s sleep. But I wanted to post with all the links to those posts and throw in my two cents (I’m in America, geddit…) to the discussions going on all over social media today.
Remember that, regardless of the things you find difficult or are unable to do, you are important and what you do matters. We may not always live up to the standards imposed on us and we may not always be as good as we want to be but that does not mean that what we can manage doesn’t matter, whether that’s exam results, exercising, or writing songs. How you do something, with your unique emotions, thoughts, and experiences, will be entirely different to how any other person would do it. That’s special. You’re special.
I’ll see you all soon. And here are all the posts from this week, all aimed at greater understanding around Autism:
World Autism Awareness Week 2018
The Consequences of an Autism Diagnosis
When Anxiety Is The Only Thing On The Menu
Posted on April 1, 2018
I know I touched on issues with food already this week but I thought I’d go into a little more detail so those of you who don’t experience this difficulty can get a glimpse into what it’s like. Food is a massive problem for me; it’s a daily cause of stress. Where am I going to be? Will there be food I can eat? If not, can I bring my own food? Can I get away with not eating or will people notice and point it out? It’s a constant loop and that is exhausting.
As I said in a recent post, I’m incredibly sensitive to the flavour of food; add even the smallest sprinkling of pepper to a meal and I can’t eat it. It overwhelms me and I just cannot eat it. Forget spicy food entirely. So I can only eat the simplest things: plain rice or pasta, unadorned chicken or fish, and so on. I practically live on fruit and vegetables. When there are lots of different flavours, I get overloaded. I can’t describe it better than I did in my sensory sensitivity post: “It’s like throwing a load of different coloured paints together: you don’t see all the different colours, you just get one new colour and it often isn’t a nice one.”
I’m also very sensitive to texture; there are very few things that don’t trigger my gag reflex. I’m sure all of you have experienced that at one time or another so you can imagine how desperate I am to avoid it. I remember a particularly bad experience with tofu; I’m actually shuddering just thinking about it. I have a similar problem with wet foods touching dry foods. It triggers the same response. So while my family – who are all fairly adventurous when it comes to food, at least from my point of view – flip through a library of cookbooks, I eat simple meals with ingredients that I can separate and I eat them over and over again.
Honestly, I don’t mind that. It’s safe. It’s comforting. It’s the pressure to eat ‘like a normal person’ that’s stressful. Going to restaurants and eating in public is a major anxiety: it’s very rare that there’s something on the menu that I feel able to eat and asking for something simple feels impossible. I find asking for anything difficult and drawing attention to this issue is something I try to avoid if at all possible.
As a child, I was labelled a picky eater and strongly encouraged to try different food. I know that my family and friends were just trying to help me: they were trying to prepare me for a world that would expect me to eat complicated food. But instead of it getting easier, it got harder. So eventually we reached this uneasy stalemate. But getting a diagnosis made a massive difference: it gave people an explanation, made them realise that it was something I couldn’t help. It took the pressure off in a big way. But as important as that is, it hasn’t fixed my problems with food. And as much as I struggle with it physically and struggle to get the right nutrition, it also has a big impact on my mental health.
People make assumptions when they hear how little I can eat. They think I’m being picky or deliberately difficult and see me as an inconvenience. I know that it’s not my fault and that it’s a valid reason to struggle but I find it incredibly embarrassing that I can’t eat like everyone else. I feel like it keeps me from really becoming an adult, especially when so much socialising revolves around the consumption of food and drink. It feels like a weakness; it’s something I’m ashamed of, which definitely feeds into both my body image issues and my depression, as well as my anxiety. When I get really low, as in dangerously low, food becomes even harder and I just lose the will to eat all together.
I vividly remember being about ten years old and reading a magazine article about a girl who had to have intravenous nutrition for medical reasons and I found myself wishing I could have the same, wishing I could not eat because it would be so much easier. And I still relate to that. I would give anything to be in control of this, rather than it have control of me. I wish I could choose what to eat, rather than navigate around the things I can’t. I wish I could eat according to my beliefs instead of having to worry about whether I’m getting enough protein or calcium or whatever (I would love to be a vegan, or even a vegetarian, and often feel guilty that I’m not but health wise, it’s ill advised when there’s already so little that I can eat). I wish I didn’t have to be afraid of blowing a sensory fuse, of getting completely overloaded, which can trigger a meltdown. I wish I could enjoy food. But I can’t and I’m scared I never will.
Introducing my Mum
Posted on March 31, 2018
In this post, I’d like to introduce my Mum, Sandra. We’ve been talking about her writing a post or two for a while because I think she’s got some really valuable stuff to add to the discussion of Autism, and Autism in women. Most of the resources around Autism tend to be written by parents of young children and while that viewpoint is important, the lack of any other viewpoints is something that needs to be addressed. There’s very little written by young people with Autism and I can’t find anything written by the parents of young people with Autism. So we thought we’d throw this out there.
We’ve never had a typical relationship: I’ve never felt the need to rebel and I can probably count on one hand the number of times we’ve really argued. We just get on really well and we share everything; we talk everything through. So she’s been on every step of this whole journey with me, from the moment I realised that what I was feeling wasn’t normal. She must’ve talked to hundreds of people – friends, family, health professionals in multiple fields – and spent hours and hours reading up on every possibility. She’s been to every appointment with me and she came to therapy with me until I felt confident enough to do it by myself. She pushes me when I need pushing and she protects me when I need protecting. I genuinely wouldn’t have made it this far without her. She’s always believed in me and she’s never stopped pushing to get me the help I needed, not for a moment. I am more grateful than I could ever express. She spoke for me when I couldn’t and she still does if I need her too. I only have to ask and she’s there. She is my hero. I couldn’t be me without her.
Here is a little paragraph from her to start her off:
‘Get out and take up dancing!’ was one of the many pieces of well-meaning advice I was given during my search for help for Lauren. ‘Tough Love’ was another suggestion and was just another way of saying the same thing. Because of the age she was when we started seriously looking for answers, many people, both professional and otherwise, saw much of her anxiety and depression as the ‘normal’ behaviour of an adolescent. But I felt there was more to it and knew I had to try and get some answers. So I began researching: talking, reading, anything to better understand what I saw Lauren struggling with. Now, several years later, I still remember my response to that suggestion: ‘I will take up dancing once I find the help my daughter needs’. And I have been lucky. We have been lucky. We have found some extraordinary people to help and support her but it has often been a long and isolating journey and one that I wonder whether might be useful to share for other parents or carers finding themselves in a similar situation.
We’ve been throwing some ideas around but nothing’s written yet. Between work stuff, moving house, and my mental health, there just hasn’t been the time. But we’ll get there. Stay tuned!
Introducing My Autistic Self
Posted on March 30, 2018
Someone asked me the other day how I told people that I’d been diagnosed as autistic and I realised that I’ve never told that story on here. So I thought I’d post it as part of Autism Awareness Week. Maybe it will be helpful to some of you.
I was between my first and second years at university and I consider myself very lucky that I was diagnosed during the summer holiday. It gave me time to really process the news and figure out how I felt about it, as well as decide who I wanted to tell and how I wanted to tell them. I could absolutely set the pace and break it down into smaller tasks. It’s a big thing to tell people so I wanted to find the best way to do it.
I decided that the best way for me to tell people was to send a Facebook message. There wasn’t going to be an opportunity to tell everyone at once and I’ve always felt more comfortable sharing important news through writing. It gives me more time to think about what I want to say and I can always walk away and come back to it if it isn’t coming across the way I want it to. It also means that I don’t have to worry about processing other people’s reactions; I can think about one thing at a time.
This is what I ended up with:
“Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know of a change in my life without making a big announcement. Over the summer, I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (still commonly referred to as Asperger’s). Apparently it’s commonly missed in girls and young women as it presents similarly to Depression and Anxiety, which, as many of you know, I’ve struggled with for a long time. But this is a good thing because I’m finally getting the support that I need/have needed to manage it, the social anxiety, general anxiety, etc. Overall, nothing’s really changed, other than the fact that this thing I’ve been struggling with has a name now but I wanted you guys to know since it does affect my life. If you want to ask me anything, please do J Look forward to seeing you all soon.”
The second job was to choose who I wanted to tell. Within my family, it hadn’t been a secret that we were looking into an Autism diagnosis and so a lot of them already knew by this point. So that left friends and acquaintances. I wanted my good friends to know and I also wanted to tell the people that, because of university, I would be spending a lot of time with. It was such a big thing that I didn’t want to feel like I had to keep it a secret. I also didn’t want to accidentally spring it on anyone. I went down the Facebook list and tried to add everyone I thought fitted into those categories. I’m sure there are people I missed but I did my best.
I hit send and then did my best to forget about it for the rest of the evening. Just sending the message was a lot to process. So I had some quiet time with my family, watching TV and having dinner. And only then, a few hours later, did I check the response the message was getting. These were all lovely people so I wasn’t expecting a negative response but I was a bit overwhelmed by how positive the replies were. I unashamedly admit that there were several messages that just about had me in tears. I don’t think it’s fair to post anyone’s actual words but I had people thanking me for sharing the news with them, telling me I was brave for doing so, saying that they were glad I was getting support and that they loved me. Those messages still mean so much to me.
Of course, there have been occasions where I’ve had to tell people face to face but the positive response really boosted my confidence. So I hold up my head and say the words like they’re a shield to protect me. I don’t always feel as self-assured as I appear to when I tell people but I have found that it helps my confidence to act like I do. I’m not generally a fan of the ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ approach – I usually find it invalidating – but in this case it has helped. Maybe I’m not faking it, maybe I’m using it as something that protects me rather than something that weakens me. I don’t know.
Learn With Me
Posted on March 29, 2018
I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at the age of twenty, after actively struggling for several years. When I use the word ‘actively,’ I mean that, while I had had difficulties with all the things that turned out to be characteristics of Autism, they had become really hard to deal with and were having a serious impact on my life and my mental health. For example, I’d always found socialising confusing and stressful but I’d managed it for most of my life, thinking that that was just how I was built. Ultimately, that’s true but knowing where it comes from has been very helpful, both in validating that struggle but also in helping me to learn how to cope with those feelings. So, the diagnosis was a really big deal but I still think a lot about why it came so late and what that means.
In my opinion, there was one big reason why it took so long to get a diagnosis and that was the lack of awareness and understanding around both mental health and Autism, especially in women. Because Autism in women often presents very differently to the stereotypical male presentation, no one even mentioned it until we’d been looking for an explanation for more than eighteen months. I have a couple of blog posts about the process of getting my diagnoses coming up but the short version is that we started out by looking at my mental health. We went to various people but no one took my anxiety, my depression, and so on as serious problems, brushing them off as things that everyone deals with. So it took a lot of work to get even one person to recognise that what was happening was an actual problem, and then even more work to get them to see that that was part of a bigger pattern. And I know that all of that was down to this general lack of awareness about how Autism can manifest and again, how it can manifest in women.
I am very grateful to have my diagnosis, regardless of how long it took to get it but I do think that getting it so late has had a detrimental effect on me:
- Expectations, my own and those of others – Having grown up assuming I was neurotypical, I have always compared myself to my neurotypical peers and hated myself when I couldn’t measure up. When I got to sixth form, I started to really struggle (mentally, socially, academically) and so the whole thing started to snowball. And because I was comparing myself so viciously to those around me who were coping so much better, I did great damage to my mental health and self esteem. Had I known that my brain worked differently and that I might need support, those two years of my life would most likely have been an altogether different experience. Even now that I know the difference is there, I still find it really difficult not to compare myself to others; I still often see myself as less capable or less intelligent or less whatever word is relevant to the situation.
- The mental health consequences – While this is not something I can scientifically prove, the chances are that this whole process has had an impact on my mental health. Being repeatedly invalidated and brushed off definitely made my depression and anxiety worse. That invalidation may also have triggered the development of Borderline Personality Disorder; I’m not qualified to make a definitive statement on that but between discussions with my health professionals and my own research, it’s a theory if nothing else.
I’ve often had friends and family ask what they can do to help me and to be completely honest, I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure all of this out for myself: what’s affected, what helps, what doesn’t… Sometimes it feels like, just because it’s my diagnosis, people think I have this deep understanding of it. I’m definitely more clued in than I used to be but even two and a half years later, I don’t always know what to do when something comes up. I think the only thing I can say is this: “Learn with me.” This is a process, which involves a lot of trial and error and over-planning and screwing up. When it doesn’t work, it’s no one’s fault. We just learn and move on to the next thing. But hopefully, we can navigate it as a team rather than a group of individuals.
I try not to spend too much time thinking about how my life would’ve been different if I’d been diagnosed at a younger age because there’s little to be gained from it. It is how it is. But occasionally the thought creeps in and I imagine this life where I’m so much more productive and engaged and independent. I don’t know if that’s how it would’ve played out but it’s a seductive thought. But as I said, I try not to go down that rabbit hole. I think it comes down to this: there are people I wouldn’t have met and experiences that I wouldn’t have had if I’d been diagnosed as a child and ultimately, I wouldn’t give those up for anything.
Living With The Volume Up Loud
Posted on March 28, 2018
I have always been incredibly sensitive, ever since I was a little kid. It was one of the words used most commonly to describe me as I grew up. While it was usually emotional, I was also sensitive to what was going on around me and that seems to have increased over time. I can get overwhelmed by all the sensory information coming into my brain and I end up struggling to process it all. The processing can get stuck or I’ll zero in on one specific thing, like tunnel vision. It can also happen emotionally. The smallest thing can unsettle me and it can take hours or days to come back to myself. When I was diagnosed with ASD, someone described this really well to me: where neurotypical brains can filter out information that isn’t relevant (not ignoring it but not consciously processing it), neuroatypical brains can’t, so all the information comes in at the same volume and overwhelms the brain.
I struggle a lot with noise. Loud, sudden noises, like a slamming door or a fire alarm are very upsetting. It’s like they’re inside my body, inside my head, and before long, I can’t think and my anxiety overwhelms me. If it ends quickly, I can slowly force it back until I can function again but if it continues, it can lead to a meltdown where I lose all control of my emotions and thinking. It’s awful.
When it comes to studying or writing (although not songwriting), I need some background noise, almost to fill the space around me and in my brain. I often refer to the earlier example of information coming in through every channel: if I listen to something familiar, like a well watched TV show or audiobook, it’s like I’m filling some of those channels with something that I don’t need to process because I’ve already processed it, leaving me with only the channels I need to work on whatever it is I’m working on. Having said that, if there are too many different sounds going on, I start to get overwhelmed. It’s like my brain can’t balance them correctly, focussing on one too much and not hearing the others and so on. As you can imagine, that can make playing music quite difficult. I’m finally getting into the habit of carrying earplugs around but that has issues of it’s own: I find the sensation of essentially blocking my ears a difficult one, plus they’re pretty uncomfortable.
I’d never really thought of myself as being sensitive when it comes to touch but the more I think about it, the more experiences come to mind. I’m pretty specific about the fabrics I can wear and there aren’t many things I can put on my skin. It doesn’t take much before it feels unclean and once that feeling sets in, I can’t shake it. It’s horrible. There have been a few days where even multiple showers won’t fix it. I’ve also had some pretty bad reactions to various soaps and make up products, even those labelled as suitable for sensitive skin. The most dramatic example of this was when I was given perfume for my birthday. I love the smell of it but wearing it causes this weird reaction: my eyes water, my nose itches, my throat hurts, and so on. The worst part is how badly it irritates my lips: the skin burns and splits and it can take days to heal. And I don’t even have to be wearing the perfume to have that reaction; I only have to be wearing something I once wore with the perfume. Washing and airing the clothes hasn’t seemed to help much but I’m holding out hope that it will eventually fade.
My relationship with food needs it’s own post (I’ll get there, I promise!) but I think it’s important to mention in this context. I am really, really sensitive when it comes to food, so much so that I can only handle pretty bland stuff. This used to be a big problem because my family is pretty adventurous when it comes to trying different recipes and that often caused stress and anxiety all around. I got labelled as a picky eater and the most common response was to push me to eat the things I didn’t like, assuming that the experience would get better. But it didn’t; I just got more and more anxious around food. But since the diagnosis, it’s been easier. Well, easier to manage. It’s something that people can understand and that has really lessened the pressure on me. Now, the people around me let me decide what I can and can’t handle. I struggle with both texture and with taste and that can make some food impossible to eat. I get so overwhelmed by all the flavours that I can’t taste any of them individually. It’s like throwing a load of different coloured paints together: you don’t see all the different colours, you just get one new colour and it often isn’t a nice one. And that links into being really sensitive to smell. Something that those around me can’t smell can overwhelm me like a fog. It gets into my throat and my eyes. I won’t be able to focus and often have to leave the vicinity.
There are other things that overload my brain and while they aren’t exactly to do with my senses, they feel pretty similar. I guess they’re based on intuition and it seems that my intuition can be as amplified as my other senses.
Being in a crowd of people also overwhelms me emotionally. I get overloaded with how everyone has a name, a favourite colour, family, friends (who all have names and favourite colours), foods they hate, superstitions, dates they always remember, phone numbers they always forget, movies they quote, and so on and so on and so on. I get overwhelmed by how much is in everyone’s lives and I end up feeling like I’m being crushed by the weight of that. I feel like I can’t breathe. Some days I don’t feel it so strongly but on the days where I feel really fragile, like I don’t have any skin, it’s very, very stressful.
Another thing that needs it’s own post is my reaction to other people’s emotions. I feel like a lightning rod for them, especially the strong ones. I want to write more about this at some point but again, it’s relevant here. When I’m around anyone feeling a strong emotion, I start to feel it too. Most commonly I feel other people’s grief. And there’s always guilt mixed in: they’re not my emotions so I shouldn’t be feeling them. But I can’t help it. And it doesn’t take long for me to feel overwhelmed by all of that.
All of these things become exponentially worse when I’m stressed or anxious which, of course, is when I feel least able to cope with it. I don’t know if it’s something I can change, or whether my brain is wired this way, making everything so intense. Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s neither.
