mental health

Coloring: The Great Soother.

Autism, Daily Life, School, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , One comment

The act of coloring is one of my best tools. Each tool is used for different situations, and some can be hidden much easier than others. Tools can be used for focusing my attention, distracting me from over-stimulation, and calming my mind. Tools do not always work. There have been days that I used my tools, and were still overwhelmed.

Coloring is an amazing tool because I can do it under most circumstances. All I need is a piece of paper, and any writing implement. Ball point pens are the best.

Anyone who has seen my coloring, knows it is not for aesthetics. I draw a box or connect lines on a page of text, and then I divide that into triangles. Triangles are the best. Once I have a group of triangles on my page, even if it is just a small section, I start filling them in one by one. When I have run out of triangles, I add more.

One of my earliest memories is coloring. I was asked to draw something, I don’t know what, in kindergarten class. So I took the black crayon, and zoned out. My teacher cautiously shared my completely black piece of paper with my mother. I had wore that crayon completely out, and this apparently was not the right thing to do. Other children were mad at me for using it all. and the teacher just told them that maybe I just liked black.

I don’t. Black is ok, but my favorite colors are Navy Blue and Dark Forest Green.

Even now as an adult. There are meetings I get so lost in that I start filling my notepaper with black (or blue if that’s the pen I have) triangles. At the beginning of the year we had to present to the parents about our curriculum. I remember sitting down after I made my speech, and starting coloring. I filled that my speech paper, and just as I was finishing the last bits, my teammate passed me her paper to work on. She knew I needed it. She knew that if I didn’t, I would have to race out of that room. None of us wanted me to have a meltdown while parents where in the building.

I have mentioned I have some of the best teammates at work right now, haven’t I?

The thing is, Coloring ticks all the boxes. It moves my hand in just the right way that it registers as a type of stimming. But it is nearly invisible to those nearby. Coloring allows me to focus and create order out of what is around me. Triangles are the strongest of geometric shapes. These triangles allow me to focus on them, I can block out the other visual stimulus, and focus on the listening.

In many meetings, my only other option is to close my eyes to listen. Mostly frowned up, as the presenter thinks they put me to sleep. I know, and select few others do too, that If I try to follow what is being said, I will get lost because of lighting, or people nearby, or many other things. I just simply will not be able to follow what they are saying.

If the speaker has visuals, I can follow better, but still sometimes need my coloring.

This is an autistic solution to an AuDHD problem. You see, my lack of focus is mostly a problem due to ADHD, which many Autistics also have. Following conversations and fast speaking is very much an Autistic problem. This means that most meetings are extremely hard to follow for me. I have tried making notes to help, but the act of writing important things down, means I fall farther behind on understanding. I have tried recording meetings in the past, but this caused some at my old company to get very defensive and angry. So my best tool for the job is to color little triangles, and try to get what I can from the meeting, even if it is little to none.

My triangles help me beyond meetings though. Anytime I am feeling overwhelmed, and cannot get into a quiet place, or away from people I will sometimes revert to coloring my triangles.

Temperature Troubles: My experiences with Temperature & Autism.

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I have been wondering recently about temperature, and skin sensitivities. Specifically regarding me. I have been trying to read and learn more about autism lately. It doesn’t feel like one of my normal special interests. However, with the amount of time I put in, it may be.

I have a strange relationship with temperature. I may be outside during recess and the temperature will read at 0 degrees. I don’t notice it much. On the same day, I may be at home, resting on the sofa. It’ll be 17 degrees in the house, and I will be freezing. I will need my blanket, and to be wrapped up.

This drives my wife nuts.

I am not ignorant of the temperature. I can feel a bit of discomfort. My leg muscles will tense up, and start to hurt. My knees get stiff, and I have a hard time walking. But I don’t feel “frozen” or the need to cover every inch of myself like the other teachers nearby. I used to believe it was because I am Canadian, and we joke about this a lot in Canada.

But then why do I freeze in my own living room?

My theory on cold is this. My feet are sensitive. When I’m outside, my feet are wrapped up in warm socks. I have my shoes or boots on to keep them warm. But at home, I may have no socks on if I just got home. (My feet sweat and need to breathe or they stink). Or they may have just socks on. Either way, I feel cold. My whole body feels it, but I think it starts on my feet and works up.

In the summer I have the opposite problem. I don’t feel overly warm, and often need others to remind me to take my jacket off or similar. My family knows I will dehydrate if not. I will notice a burn, or overheating that causes physical pain. But as a temp, It doesn’t bother me.

My skin, however does react. If I sweat, my skin gets itchy. My legs and my sides are the worst. I swear my sweat is corrosive as well. I get rashes on my skin from my sweat. My leather watch bands dissolve rather quickly. My metal watch bands corrode. Only my cloth bands survive, but they get itchy.

My mouth, like my feet, however is sensitive. I love Hot drinks, for example, but cannot drink them too hot. I love holding a hot mug of coffee, or hot chocolate. I just hug it, it’s awesome. But I need it too cool before I can drink it. Likewise I am very susceptible to Ice-cream headaches. That one may be just because I eat it too fast…

Interestingly, the American National Library of Medicine seems to confirm that It may be an autistic trait in me.

I am by no means an expert in Autism. However, I can, and have tried to express my experiences as an Autistic Adult (Autist?). Please don’t take my articles and use them to diagnose yourself.

Memories vs Reality

Autism, Daily Life, Family, Musings, , , , , One comment

Throughout my life I have done and seen many things. I have some great memories. I have amazing memories of going places. I have wonderful memories of meeting people. I have memories that are not accurate. I have memories that nobody else has.

This always baffled me growing up. I remember experiencing a lot of things, or being told things. I remember seeing things happening. I remember things happening to me. But when I asked people about them. nobody else remembers, or they remember it extremely different.

Tire Swing

Probably the most prominent one is the Tire Swing incident. When I was very young we moved around town a lot. My Mom and Dad had separated when I was still in diapers. So Mom moved to the City nearby. One of the places we lived at was a white condominium. There were 4 buildings all arranged in a rectangle, leaving a kind of paved courtyard in the middle. The courtyard had space at two corners for cars to enter and drive around inside. This happened before My Mom married my step father.

The other 2 corners had space for people to walk through. I remember one corner had a tire swing set up. The tire swing was one where the tire was laying horizontal. It was attached by 4 chains to a central pivot in the frame. The tire could spin or swing.

I don’t remember how old I was exactly when we moved here. But I was lower elementary age. probably 6 or 7 years old. I do remember clear as a bell that one day I was on the swing. I think two of my brothers were, there. Some older boys came in through the corner path, and saw me on the swing. I can still see the face of one of the boys. He had curly light brown hair. They grabbed the swing and spun it as fast as they could go.

I flew off the swing at top speed because I could not hold on. I tried my hardest, but it was just not in the cards for me. As I flew off, I hit the speckled wall. These buildings had little bits of quartz or white rock as a weather proofing sticking out of them.

I hit the wall. and most of the boys ran off. I blacked out. Somebody carried me home.

This did not happen, according to my family.

Apparently, I did have an incident on a tire swing like this, while in upper elementary. I was across the street at the school. This was after we had finally managed to buy a house. My mom and stepfather had been married a number of years at this point.

In the version everyone else remembers, but I do not. I was at the school across the street, (I should have been 11 or 12 at this point). Some bigger boys, probably High School students came through the school grounds. They spun the tire swing really fast as before and I flew off of the swing. But instead of hitting the gravel-ridden building wall, I hit the metal frame of the tire swing.

huh.

Mom’s had Enough.

Another situation that I can remember is different. I believe we were at the condominiums that I mentioned before. Mom was still trying to put her life back together. She was preparing for a date, and of course us boys were being crazy. There were four of us, so we were loud. But I don’t remember being loud or bad. I remember being in the living room.

I remember clearly Mom getting so frustrated. Eventually she had enough and threatened to leave us there, never to return. She stepped outside when she said this. She had not even gone to the curb when she came back to apologize.

This memory is carved in my mind. To this day, I get anxious seeing children take advantage of their parents. The feeling is worse when I see parents losing their temper at their kids.

Never happened, according to my family.

I love my mom. As a father I can sympathize as to how stressed she would have had to have been to say that. But apparently, my Grandmother had done this very same thing. Mom had never told us about it until I brought up my memory. She had promised herself to never pull that on her own kids because grandma had done it.

Head Full of Tubes.

As a child I remember mom telling me clearly about when I was a baby. Mom told me about how when I was born there was something wrong. I remember being told that I had a swelling on my brain or something on the day I was born. Mom told me that the doctors had rushed me off to intensive unit. I was told that they had to put tubes into my head. These tubes were to relieve pressure on my brain. If they had not relieved the pressure, I would have died.

Not only did this conversation never happen, but I did not have tubes in my head as a baby.

I have more memories that are seemingly false too. To this day, I am not 100% sure of my long term memory. There are a lot of things from my childhood that might still turn out to be false. I don’t know. I will hold onto these memories tightly even if they are not real. They are part of me. These memories that I have helped shape me into who I am, even if they are not true.

What makes me worried the most is that I do have family that has difficulty with the same issues. Memories of things that didn’t happen. But their memories are much more recent, and they are not always convinced that the memory is false. I worry about them. I also have fears that this could be my future.