01 May 2011
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in Asperger's, autism
Tags: Asperger's, Asperger's Syndrome, autism, expectations, gratefulness, integrity, loneliness, masks, social conditioning, who am I?
Image via Wikipedia
I decided to copy to this blog, just for the record, a comment I made today on Lisa’s blog. One of the reasons I blog here is so that my children may some day get some insight into what life is like for this Aspie, so they can read and say, “So that explains it!” And so if I put a comment elsewhere that reveals a bit of what life is like for me, I may copy it onto this blog for future reference.
So here is what I wrote in response to Lisa’s question (for the full story, and the valuable insights of others, please see Lisa’s original post and the comments):
……………………………………………………..
“Hi Lisa,
I can sure relate to what you are saying here. It seems that you have described my own experiences.
I get so impacted by the feelings of others, and by their interpretation of the reality at hand, that I take on their stance and doubt my own gut instincts. This, I think, is because I have been made to feel “wrong” for so much of my life that I automatically doubt my own beliefs when contradicted or challenged.
I have to be very careful about what I watch on the screen. If someone is hurt or upset, that can impact me for weeks as it play over in my mind. A couple of weeks ago I finally watched Braveheart after avoiding it for years because I had heard there was violence in it. 
Well, I shouldn’t have watched. When the girl is killed by the Magistrate – well two weeks later I still feel sick and hollow inside. So filtering what I expose myself to is absolutely essential, and that would of course include people as well as DVD’s.
I often lie awake playing interactions over in my mind. One way I have found to get some peace is to repeat a phrase over in my mind, such as a bible verse or mantra, to displace the thoughts. Also I try to concentrate on (focus on) my breath so that my mind calms due to the effort needed to stay focused on my breath. But often my mind is in such a buzz that I simply cannot distract it, and so I spend hours tossing and turning while my mind spins.
I find expressing gratitude for what is, including me as I am and my life as it is, helps me centre and settle and calm.
And I remember that the same people who have convinced me that I was wrong in the past have often proven to be wrong themselves. This gives me more confidence in my own judgement. But often I forget to remember, and so get undermined again in the present situation.
But I have no sure-fire method. I am only learning to play this Aspie game, and I am so grateful to you and others who post and comment. I have learned all I know here in Aspie Bloggyland and I am greatly encouraged here and look forward to more growth.
And that is something to be grateful for and something that helps me to centre more, and trust myself more – the fact that there is growth! I can see the growth in you through your blog, and I can feel it in myself. And that is such an encouragement.
Love and hugs and blessings,
Bruce 
P.S.
I often find it hard to know what to do or what to believe. I seem to have a lot of self-doubt. I think this is because I really want to connect, and am willing to bend my guts in order to do so.
But the flip side to this coin is that I can be extremely stubborn, and stick to my own view, and essentially tell the world to shove it. I can simply close myself off to others and they have no access to me at all. This is what I did to my parents when I was in my teens.
This, I think, is a form of self-preservation. If I can’t connect without betraying myself, I put up an insurmountable wall.
So the pendulum can swing from being play-doh in the hands of others, to being a sharp-edged chunk of steel reinforced concrete.”
……………………………………………………..
Hmm…. Play-Doh vs. Braveheart! The movie of my life… hah!
Please visit Lisa’s blog (linked above) to benefit from the full discussion. (that’s not to say your comment wouldn’t be appreciated here, also, if you feel so inclined )
…………………………………………………………..
23 Feb 2011
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in acceptance, don't know, gratitude, Love, opinion, social conditioning
Tags: acceptance, authenticity, basic goodness, beliefs, belonging, certainty, community, don't know, expectations, gratefulness, gratitude, indoctrination, integrity, Love, search for truth, social conditioning, what's it all about?
I haven’t posted for a while so I thought I’d copy/paste one from my other, mostly inactive, blog. This was published there on May 25, 2010. It is primarily about religion, but applies to any groupings or divisions shaped and defined by words, such as ethnic, racial or political differences, sexual orientation, beliefs about educational philosophies, child rearing, debates about global warming, conservation, etc.. We are all in this mysterious thing called life. We need to pull together. Let’s let Love prevail.
Here’s my old post (slightly modified):
I have heard that there are well over two thousand Christian denominations and countless divisions in other religions too. And I ask what causes the divisions? Both within and between religions? Words. That’s it. Just words. And they are man-made words. Words thought up by (mostly) men. Human ideas about how it should be. People’s ideas about how they have it right and everyone else has it wrong.
These words cause “us-and-them” groupings and divisions. People gather around one set of words and take comfort in the false certainty that their words are “right” and others’ words are wrong, or at least mostly wrong. Then they get puffed up with pride in their superiority and feel they must defend and assert their “words” even at the cost of shunning the “others”, or even killing them. See the Inquisition, witch-burning, pogroms, suicide bombings, communist re-education camps,the KKK, the Holocaust, Rwanda,… just for starters.
But words are just symbols. They just stand for reality. They are not reality. The map is not the territory. Reality doesn’t change. Words do. We used to describe the world as flat. Everyone believed that. Now we describe it as a sphere, a ball. The world hasn’t changed but our words about it, and our beliefs, have changed a lot.
I can count on reality but I can’t count on words. Words are useful to the extent that they provide a predictive model that helps me prepare for what is coming next. But in the history of humankind the models have always required updating and improving as our understanding grew. Clinging to a model and defending it with one’s life betrays a lack of understanding of the tentativeness of models. Even worse is defending it by taking the lives of others.
There is an analogy from the East: words, dogmas, doctrines, beliefs, creeds, are seen as a finger pointing to the moon. The moon is Love. It’s the moon that matters. It’s the moon that is the object worthy of attention. It would be silly to stare at the finger (words), polish its nail, put a ring on it, worship it… all the while failing to notice the moon (Love)!
Now suppose there are six, eight or ten of us standing in a circle at night. We are each pointing a finger at the moon and at the same time we are each gnawing on our neighbour’s finger trying to destroy it, while at the same time trying to protect our own finger from the teeth of our other neighbour. Nobody has time to look at the moon (Love)!
Fingers (words, beliefs) will all age, wither and die.
Only the moon (Love) will remain!
Words, dogmas, doctrines , beliefs, creeds, will all age, wither and die (how many revisions have there been down through history?). Only Love will remain. Only Love is a constant.
And so with gratitude I will focus on Love. I will practice returning in gratefulness to Love whenever I wander or deviate from the path.
Love is a fire. May my divisive words be consumed by the fire of Love.
May Love abound. May Love flourish. May only Love remain.
May all beings everywhere be filled with Love.
I did a follow-up post later called “Bent fingers, Blind eyes.” It was about corrupt or misleading beliefs (crooked fingers) and about some people’s inability (blind eyes) to put even good beliefs into practice (inability to see the moon or Love). But perhaps that’s a post for another day. 
I hope this post isn’t divisive. I hope it fosters unification in Love. Let me know what you think.
13 Jan 2011
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in Asperger's, autism, senses
Tags: Asperger's, autism, blogging, expectations, eyes, overwhelmed, processing, reading, thinking, writing
Hello Bloggyland friends. I am feeling rather bogged-down in my blogging as well as being swamped with overdue responsibilities in my life off-line. I have not been able to keep up with either posting on my own blog, or with reading and commenting on my friend’s blogs, and I am quite disappointed with myself over this.
Slow at reading:
Part of my problem is that I read at the same speed at which I talk. This is because I sound out each word in my head as I read. I also see only a part of the word I am looking at (or perhaps the whole word if it is short). All the other words are an out of focus blur. So skimming doesn’t work for me. And my “sounding out” is at my normal rate of talking. If I try to “talk” fast in my head, my eyes soon start to ache and I must return to normal speech speed. Hence it takes me a long time to read your blogs.
Slow at formulating a response:
I often say that I am slow at “thinking on my feet.” By that I mean that I take a long time to process information and formulate a response. So coming up with a comment that may be worthy of posting on your blog can be a slow process — and even then I often look back and wish I had said it differently. I commented recently that it can take me 20 to 90 minutes of fretting to generate a comment. But shortly after this I found myself taking over six hours to compose one comment. That’s a comment, not a post!
Slow at writing posts for my blog:
There were times when I spent fourteen, or more, hours working on one post on my own blog. I would guess four to six hours is the norm.
Slow at typing:
Part of the problem here is typing speed. The words usually do not just flow onto the page screen. There is a lot of backspacing and retyping!
Several “new” blogs:
I have recently discovered several blogs that are either new, or new to me. So my reading load has been greatly increased of late. And I read very slowly. So right now I am feeling a bit overwhelmed.
Solutions:
I know that tension does physically slow my typing. So I can try to relax at the keyboard. I also know that anxiety can slow my thinking processes. So I can try to remind myself that my dear Bloggyland friends are not likely to be yelling “off with his head” if I don’t get it perfect! And I could restrict myself to just a handful or less of blogs, but I don’t like the thought of abandoning any of my bloggy friends nor do I like the thought of depriving myself of their writing. As to my off-line life I could try to get better organized and set aside some non-blogging days to catch up, but I’m not very good at that. And right now I am just feel swamped (overwhelmed).
Sorry:
So please accept my apologies if I have not been visiting your blog as often, or commenting as frequently, as I usually do. My participation in blogging has been rather spotty since getting swamped.
Suggestions:
So I’m asking for suggestions, if you have the time (I don’t want to swamp anyone else). Do you have any ideas that might help? I’d love to have your suggestions or comments about your experiences blogging. And thanks for your patience.
Serendipity:
Breakthrough? I just realized that this post has taken me only two hours to write! That is most unusual. So maybe just thinking about sharing these problems with you has alleviated much of my anxiety and enabled me to speed up! I hope so. Bloggyland therapy at its best! But please, if you have the time, do share your thoughts – I still need them and they will help others too.
11 Jan 2011
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in Asperger's, autism, gratitude, Love, social conditioning
Tags: Asperger's, autism, expectations, gratefulness, Love, marriage, sensitivity
I have heard comedians and marriage counsellors suggest that the honeymoon is over when one partner realizes that their spouse squeezes the tube of toothpaste at the top rather than from the bottom (or vice versa), or they insist the top should be replaced on the tube after each use (or not replaced as the case may be).
This is not a complaint or gripe about my wife. It is about my own peculiarities.
I remember very early in our relationship seeing my wife dig the bristles of her toothbrush inside the toothpaste tube when putting paste on her brush. This was such a violation of my personal standards of hygiene that I was shocked and felt revolted by this. It is possible to apply paste to a brush without the tube ever contacting the brush, I do it all the time. And the adverts on the television demonstrate it repeatedly. So from that moment on, and for the next third of a century until the present, I have kept my own tube of toothpaste separately along with my brush and my floss. I keep them not in the bathroom, but on the second shelf of one of the upper kitchen cupboards, and nobody touches them but me. I also provided each of my four kids with their own tubes as well.
As a result of this and similar strategies on both our parts, our marriage and our sanity have survived over a third of a century. As I indicated above, this is not a complaint about my wife. She has been a great support to me and a real blessing, especially considering I have been disabled for approximately twenty years with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and I am very grateful for our marriage and family.
Since I enjoyed kissing my wife, and since more “germs” were undoubtedly transferred in that way than would ever be transferred from brush to tube, I realize my reaction was not rational. I had tendencies to perfection, I had become a “clean-freak” by that point in my life, and I had a probably irrational “fear of germs.” Hence I found putting a brush in the tube quite off-putting.
This was probably more a reaction (disgust) to what I judged to be “slovenliness” on the part of my wife. And I know I am not God, so my judgements are very fallible! For all I know, the majority of people may dig the bristles of their brushes into the tube. But this is about my own weirdness, namely:
- my strong reaction to violations of my own standards of hygiene, and
- the fact that in general I am not keen on other people touching my stuff, especially if they treat it differently to what I consider correct.
I do seem to be loosening up a little as I age, and I am developing more tolerance for different approaches to life. This seems to be leading to less stress. But in the area of hygiene I still seem quite rigid.
However I don’t know if these peculiarities are simply my own eccentricities or if they are shared by other people on the spectrum, and I would like to hear from you, dear readers. How do you feel when your standards of hygiene are not met? Does it put you off? Are you bothered when people mess with your stuff?
22 Nov 2010
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in acceptance, gratitude
Tags: acceptance, basic goodness, don't know, expectations, gratefulness, gratitude, who am I?
Today I thought I would modify a post I did on my other blog last April, and copy it here:
I awoke this morning. Not everyone did.
I opened my eyes and found I could see. Not everyone can.
I heard the fan humming. Not everyone can hear.
I wanted to get up – so I did! Not everyone can do that.
I can walk, think, talk, write. Not everyone can.
There is no shortage of things for which I can be grateful, if only I stop and think about it.
I was given the gift of life for a new day. I haven’t done anything to deserve it. There is nothing that can be done. It is always a gift.
Life itself is a pure gift. For too long I have taken these basics for granted, as if I were somehow entitled to them. They were always there so I assumed I had a right to them. How arrogant of me.
I wake up to discover that I am still breathing, still pulsing. Someday I won’t.
I wake up to discover that I can see, hear, get up! Someday I won’t.
Each and every moment is a gift. Every breath is a gift. I don’t have to think “now breathe a deep one, now breathe a shallow one”. My breathing just happens. Same with my pulse. My heart just beats without direction from me.
If I am looking for something to be thankful for, I need look no farther than my breath and my pulse.
I did not build this body/mind which I call mine. Nor do I know how to keep it going. I am the beneficiary of something or someone far greater than I.
And so I am grateful to our Creator and Sustainer (or, if you prefer, the Universe, Life, the Absolute, etc.) for all these many gifts.
I will live with joy in this body of mine, and experience these many good gifts for what they really are: pure gifts.
“I lie down and sleep; I wake again, for the Lord sustains me.” Psalm 3:5 nrsv
Gratitude: there is no shortage of things for which I can be grateful if only I stop and think. Often in my posts I am focussing on difficulties I experienced, but I am basically so much happier than I have been in a long time. This I credit to the Aspie/autie community helping me to understand who I am and why my life unfolded as it did. It is such a relief to be home!
10 Nov 2010
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in acceptance, Asperger's, autism, social conditioning
Tags: acceptance, Asperger's, autism, belonging, conformity, expectations, masks, social conditioning
I was composing a comment on Laura’s blog in response to her post on the relief she experienced in finding an understanding developmental pediatrician. I am so glad she found someone who is sensitive and open. But the comment got long enough that I decided to use it instead as a post on my own blog! It’s a topic that gets me rather worked up and I think it deserves an actual post here.
As a retired adult I have run into rejection of my Aspieness by two professionals who may not have a full understanding of Asperger’s, and who also see me appearing as a competent intelligent person in their offices. If only they knew the huge strain it takes to pull off that act!
One of those professionals is my kind family physician who, even though she thinks I don’t have Asperger’s, is willing to make a referral for a formal assessment if I want one. And she respects my self assessment, even if she doesn’t see it at this point. She gives me the impression that she has an open mind on the issue.
I am so glad to have found your blog Laura, and those of others in the community, because I can read what you all say about your lives and I can make a mental checklist…. yup, that’s me…yup, that’s me… right down the list. It astonishes me how you all know so much about “me”.
I think when I have a couple of dozen posts on my blog I should print them out and hand them as a package to these two professionals. It would be an eye opener for them I am sure. They have no idea what is hidden behind my facade of competence. It is hidden because I have trouble organizing and expressing thoughts, and remembering my past, on the spur of the moment, such as when I am face-to-face with professionals. And I have learned to stuff my emotions. I put on a really good act, not just out of habit but also because I have been at it so long that I can no longer cry or pound my fist in public. I’m a very “appropriate”, “cooperative” and “together” person. In short, I allowed the system to beat me into conformity. It suits their needs.
But now that I have found my tribe and my voice, those days are over!! Thank you Aspie bloggers!
24 Oct 2010
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in Asperger's, autism, burnout
Tags: Asperger's, authenticity, autism, burnout, expectations
Burnout. This is a piece about my own burnout. I am writing in the hope that anyone struggling with burnout may find something here that may be helpful.
I remember, many years ago, reading a sidebar in Scientific American. I don’t remember the main article but the sidebar stuck in my mind. It was about a study of stress in monkeys. The experimental group was stressed by loud sound and the control group had no stress. At the end of six or twelve weeks (I’m not sure of the exact time, but it was short) the stressed monkeys were all found to have lesions in their brains but the controls had normal brains. In short, stress actually caused brain damage. (But do take heart, recent research into neuroplasticity has revealed that our brains are very good at building new circuits around the damage).
I heard a piece on the radio the other day about an author who was writing a book about his research into an actual gruesome murder. He would work on it until midnight. Then he would feel that he needed a shower or some way to disinfect himself. His wife finally told him that he needed to take a break from the book. She could sense the toll that dealing with the horrible facts day-after-day was having on him.
I once worked for ten years as a social worker in child protection. I would usually wake up at three in the morning thinking about my clients’ situations. My wife wondered how I could exist with only three hours sleep a day. The fact is that I couldn’t, as we eventually found out. My family physician sent me to several specialists over several years trying to find out why I was getting progressively weaker to the point that I did not know if I would make it all the way to my car, without collapsing, while carrying some milk from the supermarket. I was also having progressive, profound memory and cognitive difficulties. It got to the point where I had to take written notes when discussing a case with my supervisor, and then reread my notes before going into a clients home, and then take glances at the notes during my interview to make sure I covered everything. And I used to be one of the top investigative workers in the agency! Over time, as I gradually went more and more down hill, my doctor finally, in 1993, diagnosed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis as it is known in Commonwealth countries).
Then she sent me to someone who specialized in CFS/ME. He was reluctant to confirm the diagnosis because he was picking up strong signs of burnout. So he sat on the fence for a year, and I carried both diagnoses. Then after a year, he said that I should have recovered from burnout by then so he settled on CFS/ME. The Long Term Disability Insurance I had at work tried everything to rehabilitate me but to no avail. They considered me “totally disabled” which meant that I was unable to work at any occupation. I collected LTD benefits for seventeen years until I reached retirement age last January. I say that just to give you an idea of how severe the disability was (insurance companies don’t like paying out benefits!).
Since joining the Autism Spectrum blogging community, I am seeing CFS/ME as probably a misdiagnosis. My doctor’s original hunch about burnout was probably correct. But hardly anyone had heard about Asperger’s back then. Profound Mid-life Autistic Burnout is what I believe I experienced.
My clients would tell me that I wasn’t like their other workers. They said I cared about them. One mother, whose children had been placed in care, told me I was too sensitive for this line of work. They were seeing the highly charged empathic response of Aspies/auties. Our overactive brains take in too much, and process it so thoroughly, in such a highly charged manner, that I believe we risk burn out. Especially when day-to-day work involves exposure to so many tragedies.
Caution: the next paragraph contains a description of an abused child.
I have memories, of things I saw, and disclosures I heard, that are still vivid after all these years. I can still picture the back of a little three-year old girl. Her babysitter called us because the girl’s back was crisscrossed like lattice-work by raised red welts from her mother’s belt. I can see that little girl in my mind today as clearly as I saw her in real life 25 years ago. I will carry her memory to my grave. And that’s not to mention all the disclosures of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
There was also the extreme stress of attempting to function in the neurotypical work world. In the course of investigating child abuse I interviewed children, perpetrators and parents. I participated in case conferences at the agency and at hospitals. There were staff meetings and visits to foster homes. I often testified in court. I was on the union negotiating team.
But I was also known as “the invisible worker” by some of my colleagues because, at lunch, I retreated to my office to recoup and recharge, rather than socializing in the staff room.
I had great difficulties getting my paper work done. When I should have been writing a report I would find myself just sitting there at my desk while in my mind I was off in some fantasy world much more to my liking. (but on rereading this, I ask myself who wouldn’t want to escape the world of child abuse? but I still struggle with getting things done because I really like my fantasy world!)
Little did I know that my differences, which I tried so hard to cover up and overcome, were actually signs of autism/Asperger’s which I should have been celebrating. Had I known then what I have just recently learned from the autism spectrum blogging community, perhaps I might have been able to accept my differences, and live accordingly, instead of trying so hard to behave like a neurotypical. I am not sure how I would have earned the income needed to support my homeschooling wife and four kids, but perhaps something creative would have occurred to me. There was so much needless stress caused by attempting to be what I was not. My attempts virtually always fell short of my expectations, which in itself increased my stress. And the price I paid was high.
A professional suggested once that people like me, whom he diagnosed as Socially Phobic, belong in backroom research laboratories and computer labs. Before moving to the country I worked as a data analyst on a research project. We had a four or five person team meeting for two hours on Tuesday mornings to update each other, and outside of that meeting I never had to talk with anybody! The rest of the week I worked at home and in the computer lab analysing data. My wife helped me with the data entry, which reduced my workload and hours. I did talk to her, but I liked that. It was the best suited job I have ever had!
So if you struggle with burnout, please be careful. Be gentle and kind to yourself. Keep your eyes open for a creative solution that honours your own true beautiful makeup.
(Edit Nov. 20/2010: I originally wrote this because a blogging friend seemed to be going through a burnout, but it turned out to be a different medical problem so I modified the post accordingly).
08 Oct 2010
by Bruce (born 2b me)
in Asperger's, autism, social conditioning
Tags: Asperger's, autism, expectations, parenting, social conditioning
Parental expectations can make or break some kids. When I was in school in the 1950′s and early 1960′s my mother had great social ambitions for me. She wanted to see me in the executive suites of a large corporation or at least in a profession that paid well. She was always asking me why I didn’t join in more and be more sociable, more “outgoing”. She had my best interests at heart. But this disconnect with who I really was did nothing but undermine what little self-confidence I had. Nobody was talking about Asperger’s back then so I don’t hold it against her in any way.
My Dad was often disappointed in my report card. If a subject interested me I had no problem getting an A without any effort. But if a subject bored me I would retreat into my inner world and dream of my interests. I think my difficulties with boring subjects was due to what today they may call “poor executive function”. It has always been difficult for me to get organized and to push myself to complete boring projects. On the other hand, if something grabs my interest I have great difficulty letting go; my attention and focus are totally hooked and I will be absorbed for hours without any sense of time passing at all. Hence I never had any time left for my boring subjects. My father found it frustrating that I got A’s so easily in some subjects and did so poorly in others. But then he hadn’t heard of Asperger’s either so I don’t fault him at all.
So parental disappointment over who I was and how I performed left me feeling that I was a failure deep inside. The net result was a combination of dropping out (I planned to build a boat and sail around the world) and of burning myself out trying to pass for sociable and functional in the neurotypical work world.
It is only recently, in my 60′s, that I have discovered Asperger’s/autism. That seems to explain my life so well that I now self-identify as on the autistic spectrum as an Aspie. That has given me permission to let go of the demands to be sociable and functional. I now do what I can and accept my need for retreating from overly stimulating situations. Having a reason for all the quirks and quarks of my unusual life has given me a tremendous boost in self-respect. Understanding how and why things happened the way they did is very liberating. I now have a community, besides my family, with which I can identify.
I am so glad that Asperger’s/autism is getting so much publicity. Modern parents will be better equipped to understand their children’s minds and manners and they will hopefully be more open to cultivating the child’s natural gifts, as well as supporting, working around or simply accepting their difficulties. Above all, the children will be more likely to be loved for who they are just as they are. What a healthy, happy way to grow up!
A really refreshing account of identifying and nourishing a child’s gifts and strengths was posted by Laura yesterday. She talks of these gifts and talents as little acorns which, if nourished, will grow to be mighty oaks.
So parents: there is nothing wrong with being on the spectrum. Please accept your kids for who they are and let them know they are precious. Create a safe and nourishing environment and their little acorns will sprout.
Recent Comments