Published on 12, July, 2020
There are people here, (and ocasionally I am one of you) who hate their lives, and really wish they could take a pill and be rid of the Autism
Let's be realistic here, having Autism is like being tall. (I had a much more amusing simile complete with video but I want this topic to get past my current personal censor, so I'll try that in a separate post, I have to, I'm still laughing at the sillness) You have to live with it.
So what hope is there for those like me (at times) who feel utterly overwhelmed and disenfranchised?
And how do we negotiate the basket of co-morbidities that many of us report?
For myself, recenlty I got stuck in a cycle of what seemed to me to be "other peoples" behaviour, but at some point my own propensity for bad behaviour usually quite well suppressed kicked in and I got my self "on the naughty step". Well, I've always respected the moderators decisions as regards myself before this, BUT THIS CHANGES THINGS was, my initial (Autistic?) thinking..
I'm pretty sure it's an autistic thing (why are all the books full of words and ideas and case histories, rather than a simple haynes manual with "box" diagrams and lists of manifestaions and variants etc?) The tendancy to lose ones shi (Oh go-on, "Sitelords" some basic rude worlds really fit...) when faced with sudden restrictions or variation of ones "routine".
Where our Autism I believe spills into the territory of a disabilty or an illness is when we get a strong urge to "DO SOMETHING!!" This is a BAD mental state,(and the more you dislike things or people, or your life the more I hope you test that statement in your mind) akin to Sexual Jealousy, or a psychotic break or the effects of a drug, it's BAD.
In my case it got me on 30 days of well deserved, (and frankly, educational) moderation! BUT when I got that FEELIING of "this changes things" and the strong ideation of "I must do something" I have previously used my Autistic pattern recognition ability to recognise these strong and dangerous urges and I (like many of you, who have also worked this out, you know who you are) have an antidote. "Do nothing out of the ordinary" Seriously, this works like gangbusters, and if the issue tries to grow malignant and insinuate it into your day, then if at all possible, go sleep it off, or just do "displacement activity")
Giving myself time to process and react later (if at all) is a winning strategy that mitigates the Tism.
May I acknowledge and thank Longspoons in particular for a P.M. he sent me about 3 years ago, and which has recenlty been very helpful in terms of getting some insight, buit which seemed to have no useful effect at all at the time I suspect.. There are many other people here, who also deserve a lt of credit for helping me out in P.M.s. For those of you who distrust P.M.'s and see them as "sneaky" there is that, but your real "friends" will use the medium of P.M.'s to warn you that you are making an ass of yourself, in a much nicer way than doing it publically would.
Well that's about all the semi wisdom I have to offer, now how do YOU "mitigate the 'tism"
I must admit I got a bit lost half way through your post, but as I'm also someone who has wished I didn't "have the Tism" from time to.time, I'll try to explain how I mitigate it.
I remember a few years back reading an account of a young girl, whose mother was told by a doctor " When she is in her own room, your daughter is not autistic". I cannot remember where this comes from, but it means that when the little girl was in her own room with all her favourite things around her, where she felt safe and was in control and didn't have to.interact with people, she was just herself.
To me, autism is not a personal deficit, it's a deficit of society. A society that does not have any adaptations to facilitate us navigating it comfortably. But a physical disability, where it is obvious that people need ramps, hearing loops, etc, can be seen by people and they can imagine how difficult it would be without those adaptations, while the Tism goes unseen and non autistic people cannot imagine what it's like as they don't have our sensitivities.
So I try to make my own adaptations. A few years ago when I was still working, I moved to a flat close to my workplace so I could walk to work and not have to get the bus. I didn't go to the work Christmas party. i saved for years so I could retire a bit earlier.. I stopped being a people pleaser. I do what pleases me now.