Finding HopeHolding On And Letting Go
Posted on January 28, 2018
A while back, a friend shared this article on Facebook and I couldn’t not share it here. I’m currently in the process of going through everything I own in preparation to move house and so I’m coming across a lot of things that I have previously loved. I’m being constantly faced with the decision to hold onto something or to let it go. So I resonated with this piece very strongly.
I thoroughly recommend reading it but here’s a summary. The author describes feeling sympathy for inanimate objects, from “the guitar that doesn’t get played anymore” to “the once loved camera that has now been displaced by a newer one.” And the thought of an object being discarded causes great anxiety and sadness.
I’ve struggled with this all my life. As a child, all my toys had personalities and thoughts and emotions but that hasn’t faded as I’ve grown up even though I no longer play with them. They’re all still in my cupboard, neatly stored in boxes and bags. I feel guilty about that, that it must be uncomfortable and claustrophobic, but it’s better than throwing them away. That would be the ultimate betrayal. Imagining them in a bin or landfill fills me with such overwhelming anxiety and guilt that I can’t think properly. But it’s not just toys; it’s everything. I have a draw full of my old phones (how can I go from carrying them around twenty four seven to throwing them away?), a box of broken Christmas ornaments (it would be so callous to throw them out just because they’re not perfect anymore), my old school jumper, and so on and so on and so on.
Throwing things away is hard for me. I have this anxiety about letting things go, like I’ll lose parts of myself. Anything that has some meaning to me, I have to keep. It’s similar to how I write everything down and take a million photos. It goes with my difficulties around identity, a big part of BPD, and feeling like I have no idea who I really am. So I’m probably assigning aspects of my identity to physical objects in response to that. It certainly doesn’t help with all of this. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a link to the difficulty I have in managing the strength of my emotions. I’ve talked about this before: how strongly I feel emotions and how I sometimes feel other people’s emotions. I’d always assumed that it was another facet of that.
The article discusses some other potential causes:
“There is some evidence to suggest that OCD and Synaesthesia are possible causes. Put simply, Synaesthesia is a neurological condition where the senses are confused. So someone with it, may smell a taste, or see a particular colour when thinking of a specific number. Some people have a form of Synaesthesia known as Personification. This is when a personality or emotion is attributed to an object. It would appear that there is a higher tendency for those on the autistic spectrum to have Synaesthesia in one form or another.”
The link to Synaesthesia is an interesting one. I do have some Synaesthesia-like experiences: with some sounds, I experience specific tastes or sounds. The sound of 7 chords leaves a metallic taste in my mouth so strong that I avoid those chords as much as possible and working on the production of my songs can be a bit of a minefield: high frequencies, like cymbals, are yellow while lower frequencies are dark colours (different depending on the instrument) and the colours in the song need to be balanced for me to be happy with them. It’s hard work and often leaves me with a debilitating headache.
I don’t know what the answer is or whether there is one. But I think the more we talk about this stuff and the more normal it becomes, the less we struggle against it. That takes up so much energy and emotion when living with these things is hard enough. That’s kind of why I started writing all of this stuff down, to feel less alone and hopefully make other people feel less alone too.
(Left: me and my toys when I was about eleven. Right: confetti that I kept from an amazing concert.)
When I Said I Wanted Superpowers, This Isn’t What I Meant
Posted on January 14, 2018
I’ve seen a lot of people make sense of their mental health issues or their Autism or their whatever by saying that it’s given them a superpower: sensitivity to emotions, intense focus, and so on. Despite my love for all things superhero, this has always irritated me and I never really understood why until I talked to my Mum about it. The words just came out and it clicked into place.
For me, it’s too simplistic a concept. At this point in time, I only feel disadvantaged – deprived – by my Autism especially. I’m told I won’t feel like this forever – I know that lots of people feel like it does add something to their lives – but right now, it takes away from my life more than it adds. So it really doesn’t feel like a superpower. If anything, it feels like I’ve suddenly got a superpower that I can’t control. If you want an excellent example of this, watch Agents of Shield: one character develops the ability to control the vibrations around her but because she can’t control it, she essentially causes earthquakes whenever she gets upset or angry or scared. Sometimes I feel kind of like that, like the intensity of my emotions causes irreparable damage to me and everything around me. I’m not causing natural disasters or shattering windows but maybe the effect is just slower.
An example that fits better with Autism might be having enhanced hearing – connected to the sensory sensitivities – but because I can’t control it, I can’t use it. I can’t isolate a single sound and tune out everything else; it’s just a tidal wave of noise, the world with the volume up to maximum. It feels like the best I can do is to manage it, to keep it at a level that doesn’t kill me. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to control it, even a little bit. What if it’s something that you just can’t control, like time or the weather? I worry that it’s one of those things, that it’ll be like this forever. Is it still a superpower if you can’t do anything with it, if you can’t do anything good with it?
I’ve done my fair share of those personality tests that supposedly tell you something about yourself, what animal you’d be or which Hogwarts house you’re most suited to. I think this is something that many people who struggle with identity do: you feel like you don’t know who you are so you’ll take any answers you can get. I’ve definitely fallen into that rabbit hole before. I’ve never found a good one for superpowers though. Mine would probably be something to do with emotions, like being able to manipulate someone’s emotions or transmit my emotions to somebody else. Maybe that’s the problem: maybe the strength of my emotions just falls short of a superpower, maybe one percent more and I’d be able to control them. That fits right into my fear that I’d be something special if I just tried harder, that I’m never trying hard enough. Okay, I’m rambling now.
Anyway. My point is… I’m not even sure what my point is. I guess I’m just thinking out loud. Reading it back it’s a bit of a mess but I needed to put all of this somewhere. Mostly I think I’m scared I’m not enough, not enough of anything. I’d love to know if you’ve thought about any of this, whether you like the superpower metaphor, even what you think your superpower would be… So if you’d like to, please leave a comment below.
(Photo by Richard Sanderson. He called this my ‘superhero pose.’)
Tired
Posted on November 25, 2017
If I could change one thing about myself it would be my energy levels.
I’ve struggled with fatigue for most of my life. When I was twelve, I suddenly got sick and missed a lot of school. I was nauseous and so tired that even walking upstairs was exhausting. I went to the doctor, had many, many blood tests, saw various specialists but no one could figure out what was happening. No one could find anything wrong. And yet I was still very unwell. The only clue we had was that the blood tests showed I had had Glandular Fever at some point. But that was it. Months passed and we tried lots of different approaches but nothing helped. I was managing a bit of school but it was only a handful of classes a week and even that exhausted me. I basically lived on the sofa, missing out on pretty much everything.
Just over two years in and someone suggested something called the Lightning Process. It sounded strange but I was desperate so we said yes. It’s a fascinating idea: changing the pathways in your brain to affect your body and your health. I went to the three-day training course but by the end of the second day, I knew something had changed. I felt completely different and it showed. I still had very low stamina but somehow I had more energy. It was like a switch had been flipped. I went back to school and although I did still struggle a bit, it was so much better than before.
Everything seemed normal until I was eighteen and doing my A Levels. The stress was overwhelming and before I knew it, I was drowning in exhaustion. Somehow, I made it through my exams but my mental health deteriorated to a point where I couldn’t start the next course I’d planned to do. I struggled with both anxiety and depression and my fatigue seemed – and still seems – to be inextricably linked. It’s not as simple as ‘I’m more tired when my mental health is bad’ but there is a correlation. Medication has helped and was one of the major factors in getting me through university but it’s still something I struggle with daily.
When I was diagnosed with ASD, I was told that fatigue isn’t unusual and sleep problems are common with Autism. Personally, I’ve struggled with insomnia but more often, I sleep long hours only to wake up as tired as when I went to sleep. It’s like sleeping is just a break between days; I don’t feel like I actually get any rest from it. I think that it’s also to do with how hard my brain is working all the time. Simply existing requires a lot of processing of information: my surroundings, what other people are saying or doing or feeling, sounds, smells, as well as my own reactions and emotions about all of those things. I have to actively process all of that and it’s exhausting. That’s a normal day. If something emotional happens, good or bad, it takes all of my energy to deal with that. To me, strong emotions are like fog and it can take days or weeks to work my way through it. Sometimes longer. I also live with a lot of anxiety, which has always done a number on my energy. That anxiety feels like a programme running in the background of my brain, using up my energy, physically and mentally.
It’s a constant struggle, a constant frustration. I know that I have less energy than the people around me but I can’t seem to change my expectations. I try over and over again to do the same amount as everyone else but I can’t sustain it. Sooner or later, I crash, completely exhausted. I’m getting better at managing my energy and building in recovery time but I can’t seem to stop myself raging against it. I can’t accept it. I feel a bit like one of those wind up toys that just keeps running into a wall. I want to do so much more than I have the energy for and that’s really, really hard to deal with. As is the long-term nature of it. You can’t just quit your life for a few days like when you get the flu or have a migraine. I’m not making light of those things – I’ve had and hated both – but the need to keep pushing forward despite feeling so exhausted and the anxiety about not making any progress wears me down in a way nothing else does. It affects every aspect of my life and it’s starting to feel like a part of me.
This makes it impossible for me to work. I’ve been extremely fortunate to get some benefits over the last few years but it’s still very, very stressful. I find it so difficult to adjust my thinking, to adjust to my new reality. I keep trying to meet the standards I’ve grown up believing I need to reach only to feel like a failure when I can’t reach them. The idea of even a part time job fills me with blinding panic because I know that I am physically incapable of doing all the tasks that would be required of me. Some days, even having a shower feels like climbing Mount Everest. I want to link to this Tumblr post because I think it explains the relationship between energy and the tasks you’re trying to do really well.
And it’s not just physical energy; it’s mental and emotional energy too. I get overwhelmed and burnt out really quickly, I think because I feel everything so intensely. A job that doesn’t account for that would have a devastating effect on my mental health and even though the world is starting to think about mental health and spread the message of putting you’re mental health first, I still feel incredibly anxious about this area of my life. I feel like having so little energy means I’m lazy. I feel like a burden for not having moved out, for not being able to be independent, for not having a job. Everyone I know has had jobs that they didn’t like and I feel like I’m entitled for wanting a job that I like and can do with the limitations I have. I feel like I shouldn’t want more than my neurotypical peers, like I should just get on with it and stop expecting special treatment. And yet, I know the limits of my mental health and of my body. These two sides keep clashing (which I’m sure doesn’t help my energy levels). It’s a horrible place to be stuck in and I can’t help but think that it’s connected to getting an Autism diagnosis so late: I grew up with the same external expectations as everyone else but a different internal capability. I know that now but it’s hard to hold onto that when the voices in my head are telling me that I’m just not trying hard enough. That one is a constant, in every area of my life.
I’ve often used being a Mac in a PC world as an analogy for Autism: most of the functions are there but they’re in different places or you have to find an alternate way of doing something. And I think it’s true here as well. When you run a programme that isn’t meant for the system you’re using, it doesn’t work as well. I think that’s a good analogy for being neuroatypical in a neurotypical world. I feel like I have not been designed for this system and so I don’t function as well as the people that have. Or maybe the system hasn’t been designed for me. It’s a chicken and egg situation. But you get my point. For whatever reason, I feel incompatible with my environment and that takes up a hell of a lot of energy.
I don’t really have any answers to this problem. I’m not even sure how to finish this post. This is something I struggle with daily and at the moment, I feel very worn down by it. I don’t want to spend my whole life planning in recovery time, replying to ‘how are you?’ with ‘tired’. I don’t want my life to be decided by my energy levels but I’m scared that it will be.
Finding Hope 