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Tuesday, February 28, 2017. I imagine that regular (neurotypical people = the majority everywhere) understand innately the decision making processes they, and everyone else use, to assess value, risk, potential of everything – as this connects to making decisions through choice.
This must be a kind of “weighting” and then “weighing” process that I do not think operates the same way for people on the spectrum. Of course it is now well known that early trauma also changes the brain and nervous system so that these process do not work the same way for those survivors, either. But with ASD the innate wiring is vastly different – add in the abuse ramifications in physiological development — and……?
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We spectrum people get different info from the world, and process info differently. Science might eventually determine how far upstream and downstream relevant choice operations – well – operate! Somewhere, I conjecture, the amygdala fear and danger circuits must be key and central = risk for MELTDOWNS!
This makes me wonder what ASD meltdowns feel like to me. They are inner, invisible, but are they no less detectable if I can train myself to feels/see them? Notice them and the power they have over how I feel in my life and what I do?
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Last night I was aware that I was dreaming ASD processing/healing information. Somehow this all settled into something to do with – GO or STAY or STAY or GO?
This pattern was also connected to GO and STAY and STAY and GO. This version, I see as I write this, was NOT in the form of a detectable pattern.
Do these patterns have something innately to do with ASD problems with TRANSITIONS – unforeseen interruptions (unpredictability) and changes in the environment, in expectations of what one is to do next?
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If anyone detects danger and threat to well-being in and around them, some aspect of their being is going to REACT. If there are resiliency and protective factors available that match the “power” of the threat – preferably that are GREATER than the threat demands posed, equilibrium will not likely be overly threatened.
For spectrum people these processes do not operate in usual ways. We detect, with our super sensitivities, threats that regular people will usually be oblivious to. Great for them! Not so great for us!
I think these processes are reflected in the difference between how young children vs adults “react” to situations. Adults by design have more knowledge, awareness, resources and access to resources needed than kids do – so they appear, as a rule, to be more “stable” than children are. This is logical!
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So FLEXIBILITY comes into play. What allows someone to be flexible in reactions and interactions with the world? With FLEXIBILITY, in my thinking, the concept of RESILIENCY appears. Like in thinking about “healthy elasticity.” The “bouncing back” process – for those with severe abuse histories, however, there is often so very little if ANYTHING positive to bounce back TO. Nothing has EVER been – OK — for them
These are fundamental tragedies.
So the questions then begin to intermix. What do the abuse survivors (on and off the spectrum) have to reconcile themselves both WITH and TO? These are essential “state of being” concerns. These are concerns that regular people are spared having to experience except under the most dire conditions — those rare events for most — that they inwardly would fear above all else if they even considered not only what kinds of events MIGHT be so devastating to them if they should happen — but also they would fear HOW they would survive them. Literally.
The life and death risks of being alive. The ones that connect to that unsolvable paradox of “having to go on being when going-on-being is impossible” such as terrorized and traumatized infants and young children experience.
Zero fun, folks. Less than zero, really. In the plummeting negative number categories of endurance and survival.
And spectrum people are so very much at risk – every step of the way along their life journey.
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Sadly I am not as good at my “deep power thinking” as I used to be. I say to myself that life has worn me down and worn me out. It is nearly impossible for me to settle down within to a platform of welcoming, accepting, positive peace in the world. Poverty, connected to my disabilities, is a HUGE contributor to my distresses in life!
In the meantime – doing the best that I can to access and then to witness what lies within me in terms of knowing things — searching around it seems now in voids of nothing, empty space, that I did not notice 10-15 years again — I do not give up or give in.
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The “come and go” – “stay or leave” — those regions where “and” and “or” operate within human thought levels — worlds of ambiguity and paradox — places where “forced choice” seems to be present when it is not — and times when it IS really present and an ASD person cannot detect this — and cannot really distinguish, perhaps, what these variables of life situations ARE — let alone what to do in response to them — based upon —– WHAT?
Being patient as I can be with myself: I am in uncharted territory.
I just thought again about how I worked my way through college trigonometry in ways the tutor and NEVER seen, or even anticipated. I must have been detecting what was to others INVISIBLE ROAD-SIGNS?
From my childhood – do I have skills in being able to navigate in total darkness? Believe me, if I have these internal abilities – I DO NOT WANT THEM and DID NOT ASK FOR THEM?
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I can detect that there is something to do with “familiarity” and/or the lack of it, involved in whatever these concerns are I am currently attempting to articulate.
(How do ASD people feel that familiarity, that familiar-with-others feelings when we are so different from others — even other spectrum people? How is this process of establishing familiarity operating in ANY human being’s physiology”
Seems to me this would in part be connected to “attachment” circuitry patterns established very young. Temple Grandin, for example, had an excellent mother and excellent mothering. She DID NOT come up through the chain of command suffering trauma altered development from gross neglect and abuse.
So although her ASD can be familiar to me — how well she is doing in her life — and even what she knows about being a human being — is entirely unfamiliar to me.
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So, when it comes to “familiarity” LANGUAGE must have a key and central place in these operations — so that while I navigate around in the pitch black of negotiating uncharted thoughts – I am having to find WORDS to inform myself of what I know — which then can lead to me at least writing these words down — as I stuff them in a proverbial bottle to toss out to ——- who? Where?
I can’t track that part of this process! There is no “reconciliation” there – something that must happen between humans (and other living entities according to capacities). To experience reconciliation – to communicate to others – to feel felt – rare rare rare.
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On a very real and practical level, let me put these factors into play/practice. I am nearing my 66th birthday. I do not expect to live all that much longer. I have left the border region in southeastern Arizona – via 3 years in Fargo with family – to land again south, but this time back in New Mexico (with all its romantic mystique?).
Am I staying here or going back to Bisbee area in Arizona?
Yes, if I was richer I COULD do both! I could transport myself, I could afford a domicile in both places.
So how do I even reconcile myself with my poverty – which so limits in very real time, my life options? I have a really hard time being able to do this. “Things could always be worse” and “Others have life so much worse than you do” CRAP comes into thinking — because, it seems, it is at least the WHITE American thing to do. Competitive thinking that is in itself useless, shaming, and insane! Certainly it is extremely difficult for me to find within something that can HELP me.
I am alone in the world. I really, really AM!
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Thinking about essentials of “nice” affordable housing that also meets my ASD needs for silence, privacy, beauty, etc — about transport, about medical care needs – now and coming up
feeling there are no solutions – so how the hell can I FIND them?
suddenly it came to me – Mother’s abusive tirades at how stupid I was – that I HAD NO COMMON SENSE – along with “You do everything backwards. You were born backwards and you’ve been backwards ever since.”
Horrible horrible things that monster (sick) woman said to me for those 18 years!!
BUT, here and now – “no common sense” and unusual ways of thinking, for me — tied to autism – oh shit! Those were there no matter WHO would have been raising me. Grandin’s mother? SO NOT MY MOTHER! And yet, here I am. Alive! (SO? WHAT?)
Nobody could have understood my psychotically insane Mother, but I don’t think I even had the ability – HAD the ability (so I had the dis-ability….) to understand as my siblings did how insane Mother was. I COULD NOT DO WHAT THEY COULD DO — even if they had been in my situation and I in their’s – I would not have been able to comprehend what they did. WOW, talk about my disadvantage even BESIDES being her total target!
I had a cumulative disadvantage from the moment I was born – and it’s getting worse, really, the older I get.
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I have absolutely nobody to talk with about any of this. I began nearly 2 months ago to try to get the VA to approve therapist Paul in town here – and it is making me ANGRY at their slowness! REALLY ANGRY! I do NOT ask for help unless I NEED IT!
Crap!
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I have an extremely hard time identifying needs and resources! I think this is n’t much different than trig. There are variables and interactions and formulas and patterns to resolve problems that I cannot detect let alone carry out.
Yeah, I’d like to avoid an end of life crash, because that’s what I feel I am heading straight for.
I am going to call here
Stop the Storm 