Painful emotions from the cupboard of despair.

HI Marjorie,

if you become overwhelmed with emotions try treating it as anyone would who became overwhelmed when they see a spider or have to step on an aeroplane.  The therapies use de-sensitisation work where the person takes time on a daily basis over so many days/weeks to deliberately expose themselves to the issue and gradually build up the intensity until they can be in the presence of the issue and still feel calm.  If this is done carefully and you know you are 'safe' at all times, it can reprogramme your mind/reactions.

And please don't be too hard on yourself. Like you say, in other cultures, they actually HIRE professional mourners to wail at furnerals!  It's just not the British way is it what!!

Kittyx

Marjorie195 said:

It is necessary for my sanity to persue this goal. I forgive as a self preservation mechanism, not for the benefit of anyone who may have contributed to this death through failure, neglect or malice. It is a purely selfish act.

It is selfish to begin with as you have to look after yourself before you can help anyone else. When you have got yourself into a better place you may then be in a position to help others, using what you have learnt, so that some good may offset the tragedy that has happened. It doesn't bring the person back and it only reduces the tragdy rather than cancelling it out but it is the best we can do. Ultimately you can't blame yourself too much if you do your best.

Marjorie195 said:

Hi Longman. I have read a bit about theory of mind. I have tried to consider what people might be thinking sometimes, but find myself just taking their words at face value, I am no mind reader, I cannot take on board how one person could know what another is thinking. I can, though, spot a liar. I watch for small discrepancies in what they say.

This business of not recognising humour, sarcasm etc,is difficult. I can get a joke, if I know it's a joke, and sarcasm is often down to tone of voice. But, if I miss something, then how do I know. I don't know if I am missing stuff, it is a dilemma. Unless someone tells me I have missed the point, I don't  know I have missed it.

A few days ago, I was with 2 friends. One said to the other "your bag is heavy" She replied "it's full of coppers". They giggled over the duel meaning of coppers, being coins or police. This is no problem to me and I could participate in the humour. As the friend with the heavy bag is disabled, I then said to her, if you have a lot of coppers, then I could swap them for you, to lighten your load. What I missed was the third meaning that a bag full of coppers is just an expression to describe a heavy bag. She kindly explained. 

At my age, I have learn't to spot many of these figures of speech that trap the asd child or younger person. I still miss some, and until recently, I assumed they were specific to groups or families. 

I do not know what I am missing. How can I.

If I am on the spectrum, should I now just assume that I am missing things and make allowances? If I am missing things, then maybe such misunderstandings as "the bag full of coppers", will enable others to understand that I do not always understand them.

It's a bit like the lost contact lens. The lens I need to be able to see to find the lens I have lost, is the missing contact lens.

I've never heard of a "bag full of coppers" before and I would have taken it as being loose change. Some I can get that I haven't heard of and I sometimes make up my own phrases, like referring to a £10 as a Pavarotti. You are right that some figures of speech are known just to families and small groups. A lot of parents refer to things using "baby talk" of a child, either their own or a close friend or relative. This often persists even when the "baby" is an adult.

The most public of these is that the Queen is sometimes referred to as "Lilibet", as the infant Princess Margaret could not say "Elizabeth". I guess some of us use this type of language (by mistake) with people outside of the group where it is used.

[quote user="NAS18906"]

Can you forgive the person for making this mistake and for not having discovered a better alternative way out of their predicament? Can you forgive the world for not preventing it? Can you forgive yourself for not being able to stop it?

I replied that the man on the clapham omnibus might say that no one wanted the resultant suicide, therefore I would forgive all 3 in time and let it go (more or less).

It is necessary for my sanity to persue this goal. I forgive as a self preservation mechanism, not for the benefit of anyone who may have contributed to this death through failure, neglect or malice. It is a purely selfish act.

Hi Longman. I have read a bit about theory of mind. I have tried to consider what people might be thinking sometimes, but find myself just taking their words at face value, I am no mind reader, I cannot take on board how one person could know what another is thinking. I can, though, spot a liar. I watch for small discrepancies in what they say.

This business of not recognising humour, sarcasm etc,is difficult. I can get a joke, if I know it's a joke, and sarcasm is often down to tone of voice. But, if I miss something, then how do I know. I don't know if I am missing stuff, it is a dilemma. Unless someone tells me I have missed the point, I don't  know I have missed it.

A few days ago, I was with 2 friends. One said to the other "your bag is heavy" She replied "it's full of coppers". They giggled over the duel meaning of coppers, being coins or police. This is no problem to me and I could participate in the humour. As the friend with the heavy bag is disabled, I then said to her, if you have a lot of coppers, then I could swap them for you, to lighten your load. What I missed was the third meaning that a bag full of coppers is just an expression to describe a heavy bag. She kindly explained. 

At my age, I have learn't to spot many of these figures of speech that trap the asd child or younger person. I still miss some, and until recently, I assumed they were specific to groups or families. 

I do not know what I am missing. How can I.

If I am on the spectrum, should I now just assume that I am missing things and make allowances? If I am missing things, then maybe such misunderstandings as "the bag full of coppers", will enable others to understand that I do not always understand them.

It's a bit like the lost contact lens. The lens I need to be able to see to find the lens I have lost, is the missing contact lens.

Hi Kitty. Thankyou for your suggestions re thinking of emotions in terms of colour and shapes. I am going to try this. I know that I should address emotions as they occur, rather than pushing them away.

I have always admired those who can maintain control in dire circumstances. I have a widowed friend who calmly chatted to people at her husbands funeral. I am incapable of such calm behaviour and disintegrate very publicly in the event of tragedy. I have to hide away. I think I would be more at home in a more expressive culture, though I was not brought up this way. Why is it so wrong to cry. If we need to scream or cry, why shouldn't we let rip occasionally?

I will work on it and post my results in a while. Thank you

I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist and I think that was appropriate as he would be qualified to make a differential diagnosis between all of the possible disorders and conditions.

I'm now comfortable that I have a syndrome that isn't a pathology so I feel I need to understand it and deal with it rather than having a cure for it. It strikes me that a clinical psychologist can be appropriate as their knowledge of how we are the same and different to non-autistics is what I need to grasp in order to manage myself with the syndrome. Ms Gaus is a clinical psychologist rather than someone who just has a degree in psychology.

Therapy makes me think of Woody Allen's endless self examination. Not sure what use that is to me, although it is good to talk. I did find it useful to have a small number of sessions with a therapist who mainly let me talk and get things off my chest. She really helped me get through a bad patch but I don't think it was very focused and specific to my situation. I think

Valerie's book doesn't have much American context in it. I felt it really helped me understand the thinking differences that come with AS. The book is all about being positive and that suits me at the moment. She provides some structured approaches to dealing with real situations and I have used some of them in practice to work my way through some real situations. All I can say is that it helped me. It isn't all relevant but I find that I keep going back to it to remind myself of how to do stuff.

I'm sure you could get it from a library and just take it back if it isn't to your taste. Nothing ventured, nothing gained?

I've an earth science/environmental change background but extending to land and resource management. So I'm used to dealing with evidence of what has actually happened, which often doesn't readily fit one theory. However for part of my career I worked in R&D with physicists and engineers, so I've had plenty of those kind of arguments.

I haven't read Valerie Gaus, and maybe I should, but I'm wary for two reasons: she is a clinical psychologist, and her context is American. Going to see a therapist is an American thing.

healthland.time.com/.../ is a magazine interview about her work. My impression of this interview is she has seen a lot of cases (she claims 300 or 400 in 15 years, not all as clients, but that's up to about two a month - lot of experience potentially), but she hasn't got direct personal experience, and she is building hypotheses around some of her case notes. She is forming her own hunches about how her clients could improve their lives, and some of that comes over as if asperger's syndrome is in their imaginations.

You need to make your own judgement on such writers. Do they really understand? Or are they making money out of pretending to understand, however well intentioned?  She might be a saint. She might be all talk. Her claim that she can relate them to her experience of talking to engineers sounds phoney to me. She's a clinical psychologist - how many engineers does she know?

Because most books have shortfalls I'm reluctant to make recommendations. I think it is best to read a variety of books, including autobiographical, to get a range of perspectives

Hi Longman,

What subject did you teach? I looked at your profile but you didn't mention it there. Physics is an area where current knowledge is considered 'right' but we are also quite used to new stuff overturning the old. Research is all about challenging and picking holes in the limits of the current state of our knowledge.

I'll have a look at the Rayleigh problem when I have a spare moment.

I agree about the coping mechanisms being of limited use. I have been advised that I shouldn't just learn to cope with my current work problems as this will just lead to the stress and conflict being bottled up until it explodes again. You have to pick your fights however and understand what can be won and in which situations an adapting mechanism may be useful. Adapting ones approach to the unavoidable rather than just learning to tolerate the uncceptable.

I've been reading Living Well on the Spectrum by Valerie Gaus as a useful text. Have you seen it and have you got any other alternative suggestions?

Re dichotomous/black-and-white thinking, this might well be true of mathematics and physics, where people actually believe theories that have made key variables into constants or approximations, and then cannot understand when the world doesn't work that way.

I've met too many physicists with fixed ideas that cannot be wrong - Rayleigh's Criterion for example, which requires that "noise" (small scale fluctuation) be considered random, is then used to prove that noise is random. If you build the theory around an assumption you cannot use it to solve that assumption.

Most undergraduate courses nowadays do try very hard to push students away from simplistic answers, and getting them to weigh up the different factors, and discuss. I did see that as a problem for some students on the spectrum, particularly those who felt that binary thinking was the same as Data's logic (sci fi heroes really do complicate the autistic spectrum).

Coping mechanisms can be false hopes. They may be based on perceptions of of what is happening, coloured by the individual's own social or environmental limitations. I had devised a lot of what in retrospect were just balancing acts - where if I avoided this, and avoided that, I sort of managed until the world threw another wobbly at me, and it all crashed down.

Coping strategies may work better when informed by understanding of autism. I found myself that meant reading lots of books - biographical, scientific, counselling based etc. An enormous range of books on autism are in circulation, and some to my perception are just twaddle - misguided professional advice with little underpinning and little real help.

There is a need for more "living with autism" texts. Some are good, but too many are counter-productive.

Marjorie195 said:

Hi Dogman, I agree it is difficult to know what normal is. I was on medication for 20 years and don't even know what is normal for me, let alone anyone else. 

Autism spectrum disorder seems to fit me better than anything else I have ever considered, but as I am mentally well at present, the community health people don't really want to know.

I am on my own in this, but finding ideas and support here. Most of the time I am certain I have aspergers, interspersed with moments of doubt, because I have no diagnosis. 

I try not to get emotional in public, because I have no restraint. I cry hysterically, or rant about things, or lose my temper. I embarrass my self, and all those arround me, by behaving like a five year old. So I hide it all within, and now, try to deal with it alone in the early morning, when I am at my most calm.

At the moment I'm not even "normal" for me. I have had a lot of short-term stress, such as being made redunant and a family illness. As a man born in the 1950s, I'm of the habit that "one does simply not shown emotions". They build up in me and I was off work with stress. I think a lot of my stress comes from having difficulties in life but a lot comes from being on the spectrum and having aquired "coping mechanisms" that work well in the short term but do a lot of long term damage.

Marjorie195 said:

I have thought some more about dichotomous thinking, and I do that in relation to day to day issues with people. I have been riding the Clapham omnibus and chatting to that average man. It works.

:-)

I think lifes traumatic events are different. I first became depressed when I lost my brother to lung cancer 20 years ago. I was suffering low level bullying at work at the same time. His death was something I struggled to accept, and I became psychotic in my thinking for a while. This did further damage to work relationships. I did all the things you are advised to do re bullying. My dr thought I was paranoid, and I began to doubt my judgement of things. Eventually someone visited me from work and agreed with me that I was being bullied and advised me to go and work elsewhere. That was an option I could not achieve. But at least I knew my problems were real, not just psychosis.

Eerily similar to my own experience, lost my brother to a motorbike accident, lost a friend at uni to suicide, a cousin with bipolar to suicide, suffering bullying at work, wondered if I was psychotic but worked out that I was "just" depressed and my judgement had got quite paranoid. Is it paranoia when actually the world is ttrying to bash your square shaped peg into a round hole?

What then do you do about the distressing thingsin life, if there is no solution?I put a smile on my face and acted like I didn't notice. I could no longer deal with what life threw at me, so I shoved it all in an inner cupboard. Antipsychotics aka major tranquilisers, enabled me to shrug off lifes disasters, great and small. That is where the cupboard comes in. I pushed away things, thinking they were gone, but they were all waiting for me to deal with them, in the cupboard. I was depressed, but no longer knew why. I could remember bad events, but was superficially indifferent to them. When unresolved, these events eat away at you from within.

The cupboard metaphor is much clearer now.

Re forgiveness, most of the time, yes, but this was a new thought and I expect I will forgive all 3 in time. The reasonable thought is that no party wanted the resultant suicide, therefore I should let it go.

This isn't very original! I find myself saying very 'christian' things although I've always despised religion and the church. I have never got past the pomp and ceremony and really understood what it is about. Nobody ever was able to persuade me that I should accept anything like that but I can see how it makes sense and I can see how you can get to be more comfortable in your dealings with the world. It can't be justified by a logical proof and therefore I have never been able to accept it as valid or true. Was that me being dichotomous? I'll give that question a grey 'maybe', up to a point, answer rather than a black or white yes or no!

The man on the Clapham omnibus is a potent concept to remember to use when we find ourselves at loggerheads.

I think I'm beginning to understand this more. Sometimes I find it easier to spot in other people's posts (here on the forum, for example) than in my own thinking.

One of the thoughts I've had about this is in relation to school and university experience. All of the way through this we have been tested and encouraged think of things as right or wrong. We are marked in exams as to whether we get the right answer or the wrong answer. This is probably more true in the science and engineering faculties and I think this reinforces our (ASD) innate skills and intuition which is to tend to think that things are black or white. We find ourselves quite at home in this academic, test oriented, environment.

We then go forth into the world and enthusiastically and belligerantly (sometimes?) our own right answer and we suffer confirmation bias (everyone does this) and select things that agree with us and we tend to discount the feelings and thoughts of other people. We discount these even more than non-autistics because we simply don't receive their mesasges.

We find negotiation and compromise difficult and, lo and behold, the world and his wife take a dim view and we are exiled and castigated for our belligerance.

I'm wary of this dichotomous thinking/black and white thinking concept. It crops up in the guidelines around the Triad of Impairments around Theory of Mind. People on the spectrum may be perceived as having difficulty understanding the grey areas of another person's meaning, and interpret things in black and white. However that could simply be down to communication difficulties and not getting alll the information, and consequently not seeing other possible meanings.

Particularly facial expression, intonation and other body language is used to create these subtleties of language. Being on the spectrum we don't have the ability to process non-verbal information properly, and we have to reply on the cold factual evidence of spoken language. We miss sarcasm, double entendre, bluff, humour etc., and see things to factually.

I'm not sure if black and white thinking percolates into every other aspect of autism. But some books on autism, by clinicians rather than people with direct experience of autism, have a habit of extending the Triad of Impairments into every aspect of living with autism. They speculate about things and create myths which are far from helpful.

I carried a lot of "baggage" through life, unresolved issues, grievances, deeply felt hurts. I spent huge amounts of time going over and over them. And I did really suffer grief and distress.

Since diagnosis I've managed to resolve most of them. It wasn't a rapid resolution, but when you realise what difficulties you were having before, and how they affected your perception, it does help to sort things out and see them for what they were.

Some of my grievances were about people who I felt had done me a grave injustice and where I couldn't see myself getting it sorted. When I looked into it, a surprising number of these miscreants had died along the way - I don't mean anything spooky - just the natural course of things. I was worrying about people who had long ago been laid to rest.

I'm now able to use my time more effectively. There are still some old bones that resurface to gnaw at, but I'm better at banishing them.

Hi Marjorie,

what you are talking about is a coping mechanism - "hide it all within".  Life has taught you that emotions can be extremely painful and that our culture does not approve of externally expressing our angst.  That may work for 'outside' life and indeed may be essential at times, for who can collapse in a heap in the middle of a supermarket or halfway across a road??  But emotions still need to be addressed or they will build up.  And yes, this is best done quietly on your own at home.  So few people take the time to be quiet with themselves to allow their minds to settle and sort things out.  They have the TV blasting all the time or insist on being out and about with folk.  

Aspies need more than normal 'processing' time for their brains to sort the day's (or life's) events out.  And a brain, even an AS one, has an incredible capacity to cope so I would encourage you to have more faith in yours.

Start with 10 minutes a day.  Make a quiet space, maybe just candle light, and a comfy seat.  Close your eyes if you are ok with that and just allow your thoughts to settle.

The meditation folk liken your mind and it's thoughts to a stormy lake with waves and froth on the top.  When you sit still, you can 'sink' down underneath the turmoil of your thoughts and exist in the quiet depths below which exist for everyone.

Whatever way you need to express your emotions is just right - for you.  Some folk can't describe them in a NT way, so try turning them into a shape or colour.  Anger can be a hard spikey red ball for example that hurts as it hurtles about.... then use your quiet time to imagine the red ball becoming soft and fuzzy and not hurting anymore.  Such exercises can be a way in to working with your emotions rather than coldly analysising them in a therapy session.

Above all, remember you are beautiful as you are!  I don't know why your life has been so painful or had so many tragic events.  Some folk get a raw deal and some don't - or does it just appear that way?

Kittyx

I have thought some more about dichotomous thinking, and I do that in relation to day to day issues with people. I have been riding the Clapham omnibus and chatting to that average man. It works.

I think lifes traumatic events are different. I first became depressed when I lost my brother to lung cancer 20 years ago. I was suffering low level bullying at work at the same time. His death was something I struggled to accept, and I became psychotic in my thinking for a while. This did further damage to work relationships. I did all the things you are advised to do re bullying. My dr thought I was paranoid, and I began to doubt my judgement of things. Eventually someone visited me from work and agreed with me that I was being bullied and advised me to go and work elsewhere. That was an option I could not achieve. But at least I knew my problems were real, not just psychosis.

What then do you do about the distressing thingsin life, if there is no solution?I put a smile on my face and acted like I didn't notice. I could no longer deal with what life threw at me, so I shoved it all in an inner cupboard. Antipsychotics aka major tranquilisers, enabled me to shrug off lifes disasters, great and small. That is where the cupboard comes in. I pushed away things, thinking they were gone, but they were all waiting for me to deal with them, in the cupboard. I was depressed, but no longer knew why. I could remember bad events, but was superficially indifferent to them. When unresolved, these events eat away at you from within.

Re forgiveness, most of the time, yes, but this was a new thought and I expect I will forgive all 3 in time. The reasonable thought is that no party wanted the resultant suicide, therefore I should let it go.

Hi Dogman, I agree it is difficult to know what normal is. I was on medication for 20 years and don't even know what is normal for me, let alone anyone else. 

Autism spectrum disorder seems to fit me better than anything else I have ever considered, but as I am mentally well at present, the community health people don't really want to know.

I am on my own in this, but finding ideas and support here. Most of the time I am certain I have aspergers, interspersed with moments of doubt, because I have no diagnosis. 

I try not to get emotional in public, because I have no restraint. I cry hysterically, or rant about things, or lose my temper. I embarrass my self, and all those arround me, by behaving like a five year old. So I hide it all within, and now, try to deal with it alone in the early morning, when I am at my most calm.

NAS18906 said:

One of the problems might be working out what is normal. How do any of us know what goes on in the mind of a non-autistic? I suspect that there is a lot of repressed emotion and emptiness in a lot of people. But what do I know? I only have experience of my own one mind as a reference point.

Coming to terms with a friend's suicide is hard. You sound as though you are angry about it and that you are struggling with the irreconcilable thoughts that "it shouldn't have happened" and "it b* well did happen". Anger doesn't achieve anything here because you cannot bring the person back. You can only move on and be sad, have regrets and sorrows and memories. Remember them for what they were rather than their ultimate misfortune. People are fallible and sometimes they make bad choices - to me suicide is the ultimate bad decision because you can't go "oops sorry, bad choice" afterwards. Can you forgive the person for making this mistake and for not having discovered a better alternative way out of their predicament? Can you forgive the world for not preventing it? Can you forgive yourself for not being able to stop it?

When people challenge me for not being "normal", I challenge them to give me a definition of what "normal" is. I quite like the term "neurotypical" as someone who does not have any sort of disorder. However, as someone rather older than most, I would say that not all "neurotypical" people process their emotions in the same way and that there are many variations. I get that those of us who have some sort of ASD have additional difficulties. One thing I (mis???)learned in childhood that displaying emotions was not a "good" thing to do. Maybe it was being male and being born in the 1950s.

I've learned the hard way that I store a lot of emotion and recent events have driven my stress levels to very high. I don't always know how bad I am and need to learn when to push the "help" button. Maybe we're all a bit like that.

One of the problems might be working out what is normal. How do any of us know what goes on in the mind of a non-autistic? I suspect that there is a lot of repressed emotion and emptiness in a lot of people. But what do I know? I only have experience of my own one mind as a reference point.

Coming to terms with a friend's suicide is hard. You sound as though you are angry about it and that you are struggling with the irreconcilable thoughts that "it shouldn't have happened" and "it b* well did happen". Anger doesn't achieve anything here because you cannot bring the person back. You can only move on and be sad, have regrets and sorrows and memories. Remember them for what they were rather than their ultimate misfortune. People are fallible and sometimes they make bad choices - to me suicide is the ultimate bad decision because you can't go "oops sorry, bad choice" afterwards. Can you forgive the person for making this mistake and for not having discovered a better alternative way out of their predicament? Can you forgive the world for not preventing it? Can you forgive yourself for not being able to stop it?

I think you misunderstand me. Depression is very much in my past. I have experienced many very unpleasant things over the years, bullying, bereavement etc. I been dealing with these past events during the last couple of years post inapropriate medication, and autism only occurred to me a year ago. I an undiagnosed, but it brings  many answers, including the notion that the person I lost was probably on the spectrum and undiagnosed.

What I have come to realise is, that I think I have a strange way of dealing with past pain and even current painful emotions. I have to actively seek to deal with things, to prevent them gnoring away from the inside. It is a healing process for me. I have gradually been having more happy times and less unhappy, screwwed up confusion.