Intolerance of Uncertainty and Managing Emotions

Rambles- this ended up intended for a response on another thread, but it didn't seem to answer the question of the OP. So I'm putting it here - because I don't want to delete it.

How I see things on the AS. 

One is that as recently diagnosed on the AS I don't understand gossip. I understand the purpose of it - in a sociological sense, but I can't bring myself to take part in it. Even if I hear something about someone else through a third party who volunteers up the information I'd never think of sharing it with anyone. To me a conversation between two people stays within two people (I know) and conversation in a group stays within a group and people shouldn't be talked about when they're not around (I know). Decisions should never be made without all affected parties informed (including children - so I was disappointed a lot as a kid). I seem to live in this cognitive dissonance where in practice I have clear evidence that these things don't apply at all times - and yet I strongly believe they should and I get very uncomfortable if I'm in positions where that belief isn't being held. 

The second is something I found out about just by accident. A project at work I was pushing for, had been agreed, but the scope of it changed and a new manager installed without my colleague or myself being fully advised. So both myself and the colleague who'd been pushing this for over 18 months had the same reaction - anger, frustration, confusion, disillusionment but the source was of our experience was very different.

My colleague interpreted it through a social lens. "Who does this person think they are?" "Why are they trying to take this over?" 

I interpreted it very differently - through a rules based lens

"Is there something I misunderstood?", "Why weren't the communications better?", "Is there something I missed?", "What was agreed?", "DId I have a right to even be advised of this in advance?", "Is there a misunderstanding - why install a new manager when both I and my colleague were able to steer this? - what's the rationale?".

Where my colleague was able to switch off, because the person was the problem, I couldn't because I couldn't understand if the process of the project agreement was faulty or my understanding of it. 

The third is that I have a very literal interpretation of job roles and high expectation of people in senior roles (I know!). So when I'm communicating with higher ups I'm astounded at the level of non-understanding or questions that are asked. A lot of my frustration comes when managers don't meet my unrealistically high expectations. After all they're getting the dosh - why aren't they reading how to be an effective manager, or leader. If I tell one how I've observed a model of consensus decision-making in action moving from divergent thinking, to groan phase, to convergent thinking to majority consensus (although I didn't name of it at the time - I had to go hunting for the thing I'd just seen) why did they not know instantly what I was talking about? 

As my therapist pointed out I have a habit of treating people like widgits (the roles they are in) - instead of people (who they are). 

Fourth, I need things explained literally to me. I can't dance around topics, understand hidden messages or read between the lines. If it needs to be said, then say it. If it remains unsaid then it's not a problem. At least that's how it should work. At work, I'm very task orientated - if I don't have clear goals or expectations communicated to me or made aware of resources available then I struggle. If I'm in a job and expected to figure it out with no clear role or benchmarks then I'll fail (which has happened more than once).

Week 4:  Managing emotions by shifting how we think.

If I could use one work to summarise this week it's discouraged. It started off ok, I was reading about being more comfortable with discomfort, the labeling of emotions but when it came to self-talk I draw a blank.

When it comes to this it's less about me as a person but how things are going in my life in general - I don't seem to emotionally be able to separate myself from the issue at hand. So I'm in a difficult situation at work at present but I'm not able to take that situation and dislodge it from my feelings about myself or other things in my life that I'm happy with. 

I don't think it's so much the strategies themselves - as in they're "wrong", but I'm less engaged with them that I was last week which were action strategies. Every time I hear words like "positive self-talk" or "cognitive re-framing" I start to feel myself being weighed down. Perhaps it isn't the strategies themselves - maybe it's more the misuse of them. Or maybe it's my black and white thinking when it comes to adverse events - and I mean those events which impact me personally. Covid I've been fairly ok with once the initial shock had gone, the lockdown, working from home, isolation - I seem slowly to have adjusted to these (although I still need to get out more for exercise). However the works situation which has impacted some of what I'm going I'm taking a lot more to heart. Put simply, I'm dealing with a global pandemic far better than I am dealing with a temporary works thing - which in a years time will not matter a jot.

So what were my issues this week?

Positive self-talk: I don't have any, at least none that I'm aware of. My mind works purely on action-consequence for the most part. When there was the exercise of looking in the mirror I see a person looking back at me but I have no thoughts about who I see. It's all physical - my beard needs a trim. I quite like my head shaved. I'm looking forward to my shower. There's no sense of "me" there - although when I was signed off I was starting to experience that. It's almost as if having things to do "in the world" distracts me from knowing me. Or maybe it's a case I'm not comfortable with how I feel when I'm with others and I either want to compartmentalise, suppress or avoid it - I mean me! Maybe looking out my thinking is skewed - other people looking on see things from a different perspective. For some reason I seem to struggle to do that if it's about me.

Cognitive Reframing: I think I do this already to some extent at least. But I still had resistance to the term and practice when I heard it and I think this hearkens back to the days when I was growing up when my folks (well 1 of them as the other barely spoke to me) would seemingly dismiss any issue I had "It'll look better in the morning, think of this you have" when what I wanted and needed when trying to share a problem was practical strategies. What do I DO!!!!!!!! Anything other than felt like the topic was being avoided or I was being dismissed. Many a time I think it was - because I was never taught anything practical in my family or any life skills shared.

Perhaps the other issue was I did a lot reframing when I had a religious thing going on - which led me not to being aware of or handling my feelings but completely dismissing them in favour of a sacred word or phrase (or prayer). Should have been harmless but I got sucked into the whole "victory" mentality of the charismatic movement- which illustrated the danger of my thirst for absorbing information without critical evaluation. All that happened was that I continued to exist in tension for weeks, sometimes months before collapsing in an emotional heap. I've never really got over that, even now where I hear someone talk passionately about religion the alarm bells start ringing. 

What I did connect with though was not only mindfulness but also the concept of connecting with ancestory. From the course---

Yeah that's him. I'm still getting used to operating this site and editing my posts etc. Think I've fixed the last one now hopefully. 

Ken Robinson's talks on the education system are really interesting too. I've heard of ' The Element ' but not read it yet. 

Ken Robinson - I've still one of his books somewhere "The Element" which is on my reading list.

I'll get to it..this year... hopefully.

I can only speak anecdotally but I've found a lot of benefits applying acceptance commitment therapy (the link to Russ Harris' website is above).

I've the illustrated pocketbook that sits on my bedside cabinet

The Happiness Trap Pocketbook: Amazon.co.uk: Russ Harris: 9781472111821: Books

I'm not one for cartoons but I found in this case it was really helpful in getting me to absorb the ideas. It really is about building in practices to increase emotional awareness, handle uncomfortable feelings and not believe the first story that pops into my head. Harris' idea of the "struggle switch" really resonates.

What it enabled me to do was rather than "fight" depression/anxiety/exhaustion it equipped me to ride it out better. I'm also rethinking my relationship with depression and trying to understand it as "signals" that things aren't quite right - is there something my body/mind is trying to tell me about me or my life that needs to change?

For example I think my "shutdowns" are my way of managing uncontrollable, rapid change with too much extraneous information. Thinking to my post below this seems to make a lot of sense. A day sleeping and general self-care has done a lot to restore my sense of balance so I can go back to work on Tuesday a little more self aware and cautious - and armed with a request for clearer boundaries and expectations to work in. 

Ethan said:

It's everywhere. 

I heard a wise man say " It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society ".

More recently, I heard a young person diagnosed on the spectrum, who makes videos now to help parents and people in general, understand the behaviors, what they mean, why they happen and so on, based on his own experience of growing-up with PDA, ADHD or more. He tells the story of his educational experience, where his parents moved him from school to school, because nothing seemed to fit or work. Basically he rebelled in all but one school to a certain extent. The one that seemed to work best with him was the one where there were no hard-fixed rules, where there was a lot of time spent outdoors and in nature combined with learning tailored to letting him follow his natural inclinations to the subjects he was interested in at the time or even where his obsessions led him to. He later explained the benefits of this freedom of choice by saying that even with completely focusing on only one subject or having an obsession, led to naturally , being forced or having no choice but to learn about other subjects as a consequence of being obsessed or focused on one subject. I had heard the same natural educational process described by the Linguist, Noam Chomsky and others but never paid much attention to, yet has stuck with me as a confirmation.  

As the wise educational reformer or advocate, Ken Robinson, has often pointed out, Paraphrasing of course,   ; The current education system in the Western World was constructed or formulated to accommodate the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. We are still left with and still operating that rigid education system, even though, in much of the West, Industrialisation has disappeared and is no longer the reality. The pain & suffering this has caused is not in the daily headlines because it doesn't effect those who own the media, right away. This is non-sense. It effects everybody eventually. 

The young guy I was talking about is called Harry Thompson. His video on education is a real eye opener. I've heard him say something like ( paraphrasing ) ; people like him are not here to annoy people but to change the system as it isn't working. Kinda profound I thought. 

Anyway, my point in writing this is, maybe he's right. I've heard someone else once say something similar ; That your pain is your purpose. 

wow and I thought it was only me that had 'failed' with CBT. not to mention using a counsellor who did not have any experience of autism. 

are there any treatments for anxiety/depression which tend to work better with ASC to your knowledge Ethan? 

LMFAO! This is literally my working life for the last few years. The number of times I have been to meetings to plan the meeting where we will actually discuss the thing that needs to be done before writing an options analysis and then having another meeting to discuss what everyone thinks of the options only to end up doing what I suggested in the first place!

Turtle said:

I think he deals with it by accepting these people are just crazy and there is not much logic to their methods. That it's just a chaotic hierarchical,  and at times, dysfunctional system.

This is completely true and one of the things I started to realise when I started on secondment with other teams and companies which has finally coalesced in the last year. Things are... chaotic, and all the problems I wrestle with on my current team are replicated across other teams. It's everywhere. 

I was doing pretty well handling it all - one of the things I'm linked into is a project which is being developed using agile methodology. It changes all the time but because the on-going changes are  communicated in a systematic and clear way I'm able to handle it. Even things like botched data because some of our collectors fudge the input I can build in formula's to search and weed that stuff out. Even when I worked in a frontline advisory role for a while, which could get incredibly chaotic, I could function because even though things could become unpredictable (staff off sick, urgent problems coming in) I could problem-solve and juggle it all because I knew what resources I had access to, what things would solve the problem, who I needed to contact and so on. I think my expectation was that leaders where were they were because they had answers to things. It took me a while to realise they didn't. Then it was that they knew how to manage people in situations which were a bit messy. Then I realised they didn't really know that either. 

I've never really grasped in a large organisation how much (or how little) senior people know about how things work and slot together across different roles and how much the understanding varies depending on who I'm talking to. 

Even changes to working hours I can cope with (did bank care on the NHS for ages). It's when my role and the expectations change, and change rapidly without explanation or clear rationale -  and because the types of issues I'm being asked to work with keep shifting I have to "reset" every time and it becomes exhausting. Just thinking about it starts to close my brain off. I'll get to a point where I can figure out how to manage this new situation I've just been dropped in - but it looks like I'll need a conversation with someone because I can't just keep being moved around completely different roles on a whim and be expected to function. 

On the positive side, I've slept all day today, and even though I feel a bit shaky I feel much better for it. This forum is my "Beatles" though- it keeps me sane and my indulgent splurge this morning finally got me to a point where I could begin to rest. 

In most cases I can get into that headspace to work through situations where I don't know how things are going to pan out (thanks acceptance/commitment stuff!). What I'm rubbish at is when things are landed in such a way I've not had chance to figure them out....on almost every occasion the communication has been lacking or the change has been poorly managed. Which is tolerable if it happens - on occasion. When it starts becoming the norm I begin to unravel. 

If the ask and my role is clear, I can work with shifting priorities, juggle tasks and apply myself. If the parameters keep shifting (either my role, or the thing I'm being asked to produce) because people don't know what they want then it gets exhausting. As I keep telling people "figure out what you want before you ask me to do it". It seems most of my management chain know they want something in some vague nebulous sense - they just don't know what it is exactly that they do want when asked about it. This is one of those "unspoken skills" I need to pick up - how to get clarity from the person who is asking me for something but is thoroughly confused about the ask.  

I'm much more forgiving of my peers - but when it comes to "leaders" I get incredibly frustrated. My expectation is that their job is to ensure I have everything I need to do my job. What I see in practice is folk talking around an issue rather than take concrete steps to solve it. Listening to those conversations is exhausting. As for following their lead.... none them have a clue where they're going.

Pikl said:

A therapist told me that because it's not possible to predict EVERYTHING, that I trigger my own anxiety.

That's absolute bullcrap - it's our overblown hard-wired fight-or-flight anxiety that causes us to work out multiple 'escape strategies'.     More NT cart-before-the-horse thinking.

I have a friend who works for a big company and the stories he tells me about his management issues are fairly ongoing at times. I have been with him on his days off where he has had to communicate with them. They are just crazy people who have no idea what they're doing. It is the blind leading the blind and their communication skills are non-existent. His latest manager is half his age and has barely any life experience let alone any ability to manage other people. The only qualification he has is a few useless courses on his cv that apparently impressed the bosses whilst having no experience in doing the actual job he has been allocated to ' manage '. Zero. Throughout the pandemic he has been in and out of furlough, had his hours, shifts changed from one week to the next, often at a days notice and on top of all this, the company has recently been bought-over and his long-term, early retirement plan basically ripped-up. 

He is a fairly sensitive yet outgoing personality on the surface. I think he deals with it by accepting these people are just crazy and there is not much logic to their methods. That it's just a chaotic hierarchical,  and at times, dysfunctional system. I think he is lucky in one sense, as his biggest consolation in coping is that he knows many colleagues throughout the company which they can off-load to each other the craziness of those above them. I think that makes a huge difference.

Management is a massive problem everywhere it seems. You only have to read through these threads on this forum to see the stresses it causes. I think it is just another consequence of this modern world we are living through. Another example of a long list where we have lost authentic human connection or purpose or meaning. A kind of dislocation. It's well documented. 

With the personality of my friend, I don't think he would have coped at all well alone in dealing with his environment and so for him having colleagues to off-load is his release of stress I guess. It reminds me of the George Harrison interview I once heard when discussing Elvis and how he was so famous yet so isolated in the end. George reminded us that Elvis didn't really have that many close people who he could talk to or understood what was happening to him with all the worldwide fame and so on, whilst The Beatles had each other to make sense of it all or to off-load with humor etc. 

So maybe this forum or others is our ' Beatles ' . It definitely helps some to write things out to make sense and to process. I know it does for me. I even write stuff I don't even send anywhere in the end as sometimes I have already answered myself by the time I finish. It's a good thing overall though.

I analyse everything and try to predict every outcome, from situations to conversations. A therapist told me that because it's not possible to predict EVERYTHING, that I trigger my own anxiety. I'm just trying to be prepared.

Week 3.1 

So technically not blogging on the course (that'll come later) but I'm struggling with uncertainty - or more specifically change - and I didn't want to start a new thread just for the sake of a gripe.

I'm struggling - and this is theraputic.

In the last month I've been hammered. I've had a change of manager - twice. There's been stress about access to my report (essentially certain individuals in my leadership chain wanted to see the full psychological report, which had a load of personal history in it - which although they never would have got access to it, gave me extra stress I didn't need), the parameters of a project I've been prepping/leading on for 18 months trying to get sponsorship for changed overnight, had new leadership and was communicated badly to me (which led to a pretty bad overnight meltdown), I've started a new role whilst providing support for that project, fielded some ridiculous asks with aggressive timescales - only to find what I sent wasn't enough because apparently it's a numbers game and I wasn't told to provide numbers, just a couple of examples for the ask - but because team A provided (X) then we need to provide more so we can be like team A. I think I'm doing OK then barely 2 weeks in I hear rumblings I'm going to be switched full time to the project, then I'm told to carry on with where I am then within 24 hours I'm back on the project again full-time. I make myself available on the day, it takes an hour for someone to get in touch with me to tell me where we're up to, then our new leadership moves all our data to cloud based storage so I've a new application to learn - I get the videos, but they don't apply to me because the leadership hasn't set up the right access so I have to use a workaround to create documents, - and, as it turns out, our leadership doesn't understand what they're doing, because when I asked why I hadn't got the access I needed they had to call someone else in who didn't know how to fix it either.

It's not uncertainty I'm struggling with. It's the rate of change. Or poorly communicated accelerated rate of change. I'm tired. Very, very tired. My head feels like I'm wearing a hat made of rocks. I'm disconnected. I don't want to sleep right now even though I'd like to. But I don't want to focus on on anything. When I logged off last night I felt exhausted - I dozed for hours - that horrible light sleep where the brain is still whirring and there's lingering feelings of anxiety, barely managed to offload the shopping and store it, just about managed to remember to eat, and then ended up binge watching Star Trek because the only certainty I had, wasn't my environment, or my cat (he knows somethings up - he won't leave my side), or the knowledge I've 3 days of chill-time but episodes which the plot and characters are familiar, So even though there's very few Trek episodes I actually like, it harks back to days when I was off for months and the Sci-Fi channel/Sky One were the only things I could focus on.

I hate this. My flurry of ideas and ability to lose myself in what I'm doing when I've a task has gone. I just feel tired, unfocused, disconnected and I'm struggling to tune into anything. I'm waiting to fall asleep but even though my brain can't absorb anything I'm too awake to do that - I suspect I've elevated levels of cortisol careering around my body. 

According to my know-it-all wristband my heart rate is up and it's little pointy needle is telling me I have a high level of stress. If I think about it- I am feeling pretty stressed- bloody wristband. Not in a "prickly" sort of way where I'm a little oversensitive to perceived slights, inefficiencies or people taking a little longer than I'd like to do things/return calls/or just message me, but an all-encompassing resignation that work - at the moment - is draining my batteries. It's almost as if I was getting to grips in my new role, then because I've been switched mid-cycle of figuring stuff out, my brain has just shut down. 

You see, I would tell work. But what's the point. Because I'll get the management BS. And I know when they're talking BS because I'll get the employee get-on-board pitch and not the "actually, yeh, that's pretty bad, we really did screw that up". If there's one thing I need it's clear prep time and structure - not something dropped on me then my ability to work sabotaged because the people who are transferring my work around are not only forgetting to communicate it properly they simply don't seem to have a clue as to what they're doing. It's that loss of autonomy - that stings. I hate that. I feel powerless... 

"This feeling" I say to myself "will pass". Well, yes it will, but I'd sooner work not act like such assess that I Iose that breathing space I need to function. Role, clear structure, defined goals, kit that works, then let me work. Communicate things so I've time to adjust. That's it. That's all I need. As if by some weird quirk "The Conversation" has dropped its daily email with the tips on how to deal with headaches - as well as a helpful headache-spotting chart (It's a tension headache apparently, so that's enlightening. I can name my pain). 

I'm going to take some decompress time. Celtic music with the cat and try a movie later. Getting this down on screen has helped - so, much as I feel a bit guilty about what I perceive to be laziness, I actually need to do this so I'm able to function next week.

I hate this. It's exhausting and frustrating in equal measure. 

One of the conversations I had with colleagues was that they would (more than likely) have to take the initiative in closing some things down as I can get absorbed and lose my sense of priorities. There's been a bit of a shift this week, compared to the last two weeks so they are very kindly telling me they've had enough for the day - instead of waiting for me to say it, which I very often don't. 

You're having the same problem that I used to suffer from - 'it' needs doing, I can do it, no-one else will bother - I may as well just do it now because it will delay me tomorrow.

In a work environment, that just means I will automatically burn out unless someone actually stops me doing any more - by intervening directly - sends me home or takes 'it' away from me.

In a home environment, I please myself - I set my own priorities and do what I need to to satisfy my own sense on achievement.

LMFAO! 

I feel very much like this. I have often had managers frustrated with me for needing to know every little detail before I can do something, including what to do if x, y or z happens. 

Week 3:

I finally got round to it after procrastinating all weekend. Not sure why it took me so long, think I just wanted to unplug from screen-time for a while. Lots of other things I didn't get done this weekend and I paradoxically got sucked into hours of gaming after a "I'll just have a quick blast on X" thought" so ended up blowing my screen-time quote anyway. Think I just wanted to switch off, but there's way better ways of doing that than shooting pixels, or watching numbers get bigger for a virtual reward.

This week was all about self-management and strategies. Two things impressed upon me. The first was how growing up these strategies weren't in my household. The things I did, I did because I had no guidance on what else to do.  One section read:

"Managing our emotions is not about suppressing them, controlling them, or conforming to someone else’s idea about what we should do or feel. It’s not just about calming down"

In my household it absolutely was these things. Now I understand what my psychologist meant when she said I'd had a "double-whammy". If I was having an unpleasant emotion, then I wasn't in distress, I was putting it on - because it was inconvenient (a word I heard a lot growing up). 

The information on the physiological response was a huge help to - a reminder as to how important it is for self-care and the detrimental effects to too much stress. It slotted in well with Gabor Mate's work - although he linked it into the pathology of disease. His thesis is that when someone is subjected to a stressor which they do not address the body manifests dis-ease. I'm not sure about this as it can give too much crecedene to "it's all in the mind" - that people can "think themselves sick". Reading Mate again, I'm sure this isn't his intent, but it could be read that way.

The second thing that impressed upon me was how much of this weeks material is familiar - sleep, exercise, reframing, breathing, eating well, doing things I enjoy. I realise I do need to build my emotional capacity and manage things better in the moment, rather than getting worked then "getting through" the day to renew at the end of it. Oddly working from home gives me plenty of opportunity to practice these strategies in a safe-environment and I'm still poor at doing them. I've noticed that I seem operate on one overarching thing at a time - so when I was off sick "getting better" was the focus, so I did all the right things. Now I'm at work "working hard" is the thing so everything is subservient to that. Which is absolutely ridiculous. 

Think I've got some work to do. Somehow my mindset has slipped. It is all about conscious mindful living and implementing the strategies I already know - and know that work. I've not been motivated at all this weekend, probably because I pushed myself too hard (unnecessarily) during the week. I still think that being really productive is evidence of how well I am taking care of things (not myself I've noticed) - so the first smart thing I can do is stay within my contracted hours and start taking care of myself again.

As I said to myself after my last episode when it boils down to it - it's my health that counts. I think that because of my history I'm always struggling with the tension between the short-term frustration with normal everyday things and the fear of it all boiling over into a long term mindset and my having a meltdown. What I have lacked all through my history is that inability to recognise and manage how I feel - and the space to allow me to explore that. Now I have all those things - so it is just a case of putting that knowledge to work along with the strategies to work with my autism. Every once in a while - it can feel a little overwhelming.

Something else I'm not very good at. Being kind to myself and giving myself time to grow.  

Week 2:

Well I completed the "action plan" which was all about listening to emotions and the body. This ties in with my reading by Gabor Mate, the prods from my therapist and my learning from last week - where after two very hefty experiences I was sat thinking "what is my body telling me". 

This week has been about the importance of emotional awareness in oneself and others and use of the "mood meter" (which I use already) - with some work on distinguishing between closely related emotions. What I find difficult is being aware of my feelings "on the fly", I need to sit and allow myself to feel - and I also need a prompt to name the feeling otherwise it's a vague ("down", "ok" and so on). 

Although some of the course seems obvious (different people have different reactions dependent on the situation) I wonder in practice how much I'm really aware of this and live it. My therapist pointed out once that I had a tendency to treat people like "widgits" - so I related to them in the roles assigned to them, and not as the body language or emotional state communicated.

There is a different language to emotions than I've been aware of. Use of words like leverage, shift and create environment. This is a language I never used - emotions were just "there" and either "good" or "bad" (depending on how acceptable they were to the person I was with).

This course may not solve anything, but it may make things easier to manage. I'm starting to think how many small actions there are in each day based on emotional awareness and relationship with other people.

Putting the action plan aside until later. It encourages an emotional check-in - I've mood meters in my study and living space to encourage me to do this. Alarms rarely work - I just ignore them. 8 sections (weeks) to go. Feel better now about going on my streaming binge....