Aspergers Syndrome Effects
So I’m guessing most (if not all) reading this will know that it’s a condition that you can sometimes peacefully live along side. At other times however, it feels as though you’re going head to head, with yourself being on the losing side. I’m lucky in that I don’t hit the severe end of my scale too often, I’ve even figured out to a good extent what my “triggers” are to set me in motion towards it.
My biggest trigger is exhaustion through trying to do more than I’m comfortable with. It often relates to trying to help others in some way and taking their problems on as my own. I can do this for a while but as people get comfortable with the level of support I’m offering, they then require more and more. Until I start to display signs of Aspergers “flaring up” I’m often unaware that my boundaries have been encroached upon, and passed. By this time I’ll often have just enough energy to go to work and that will often be my limit for the day. This in turn becomes problematic as the people around me in my life feel as though I’m cutting myself off from them. It’s often construed that I’m in a bad mood as I’m very quiet and not hugely interactive, but this is purely down to being at my physical and mental limit. The simplest way I could describe how I feel would be to say it’s as though I’m on auto pilot.
As I’ve mentioned, the most noticeable thing for me is a complete lack on energy. Unfortunately I seem to get caught in a difficult loop when this happens. I get tired, but I struggle to sleep and I don’t have a good appetite, which in turn seems to keep me in that position. Again, as I’ve alluded to my social life takes the biggest hit when I get to this point as people feel I’m neglecting our friendship. It’s often misconstrued that I’m simply tired and that I should be able to shake it off. I’ve found the best way to handle that situation is to send more text message than perhaps I normally would. This still maintains contact without having to push myself past my limits of comfort. While it’s not ideal it shows that I’m not just simply ignoring people.
The biggest change to occur with my behaviour that I notice on a day to day basis is that I need routine and structure much more than I normally would. When I feel uncertain about things going on around me I try to control my circumstances as much as possible for “safety.” At times I can become irrational if I feel things that should be controlled by me are taken out of my hands. When I reach this point I have to try and look at myself from an outsiders view to get a more accurate perception of how I’m behaving.
When I’m physically and mentally drained I’ll often lose my temper over things without real significance. Depending on how worked up I’ve managed to become shapes the way I deal with how I’m feeling. If I’m not too angry then I’ll look at the situation, what has made me angry and how quickly it can be rectified. Quite often it will be something that I can resolve without too much effort and move on from. To help calm down once I’ve solved the problem I will do a breathing exercise as it requires me to sit down and focus on nothing but that. If I’ve gone past a stage where I feel I can rationalise things then I’ve two mains of dealing with my frustrations. The first is to do some exercise as this will often take me to a level of physical exertion where I can’t stay worked up. When I’m at that level I’ll then be able to look at the problem without having the energy to work myself back up. The second method I use is to dictate my mood via music. I’ll start with aggressive music to match my mood, then when I feel ready select music with less of an aggressive edge. I follow this process until I channel my mood into listening to calm/relaxing music. This method works well if I don’t have adequate time to exercise or my situation dictates I can’t.
The aforementioned things I’ve mentioned are how I’m affected now in my adult life, which as an “adult” I feel I have a certain amount of control over. This wasn’t the case as a child and so it led me down some interesting life lesson roads. Most of these experiences were difficult, but at the same time I wouldn’t change them as they shaped who I am, although ask the me of yesteryear and he may disagree ;-)
The best way I could describe my behaviour for a good portion of my teen years was erratic. I think the strongest feeling I felt was apprehension towards most situations which in turn led to fear. I felt so unsure about almost everything that I didn’t have much stability, and nothing to really cling to for support. By no means am I saying I didn’t have support, but I felt so alone that my situation just continued to slide out of control. I went through very specific stages on a personal level that to read about may seem outlandish but were all part of the time frame where the situation was the hardest for me to cope with.
One of the phases I found myself in was one of trying to isolate myself from others. I did this as a means of self preservation to try and stop myself from feeling hurt. I was in my very early teens at this point and couldn’t understand why nobody was able to help me. It wasn’t for the lack of trying either, people were willing to offer up suggestions about what was happening but unfortunately none of them seemed coincide with how I really felt. This became more and more frustrating as all I wanted to be was a “normal” child and go to school. It got to a point where talking about my situation would inevitably lead to another dead end so trying to be optimistic seemed a fruitless task. It felt as though shutting myself off to people was the easiest way to avoid further disappointment or hurt. It’s even fair to say I had a self imposed martyrdom to keep myself from getting too hopeful of things being resolved.
Of all the different stages I’ve been through I think this one has had the biggest impact on my personality. I got so used to bottling up my feelings as sharing them had very little impact I can still fall back into doing it. Despite being aware that doing it affects nobody but myself, I often pre-empt people’s reactions through their previous responses/experiences. I do try and bear in mind that people can surprise me whereas the reaction I’ve built up in my mind won’t, so it’s worth chancing it. I’ve also had it pointed out to me that I display very little facial expression no matter what the situation. I feel this again came from shutting myself off as a means of defence. This again is another reason I have to try to verbalise my feelings as I don’t give many physical cues, which are obviously a huge part of interaction with people.
I had distinctive stages which happened independently to one another, yet had big impacts on my day to day life both at, and away from school. The first stage I went through I displayed signs of agoraphobia and social anxiety. I personally believe these were a by-product of having such poor confidence and lack of stability that I inadvertently created additional symptomatic problems. I became fearful of people passing judgment on me without knowing who I was and without due cause. The largest contributor to this was that I became a “hot topic” to talk about at school for the other children. I’m hesitant to say that I was a target for bullying as it seems nowadays parents don’t allow children to be just that, and have disputes and allow them to resolve it themselves. I was however on the receiving end of people shouting verbal abuse at me and becoming the shared classroom joke. I even found out that some of my friends were a part of the group. This lost me a great deal of faith in people, as I just couldn’t understand how people I’d done absolutely nothing to offend could be so hurtful to me. I began to think complete strangers would pass instant judgement on me and form a distasteful opinion of me.
With expecting people to view me, the thought of going into a public place would be exasperating. The thought of it would bring about signs of anxiety even if I was being accompanied by somebody. The most overbearing feeling I got was dizziness when I thought about the size of the place I was going to and the amount of people that could potentially be there. When I was to visiting somewhere, it meant I was moving away from my safety zone and lost almost all control over my environment and what happened within it. There was also the added bonus of being apprehensive about talking to people (who I thought were going to judge me) so shopping trips for me were always interesting lol. I can’t seem to recollect a point in which things seemed to change to where I was more comfortable, but thankfully and perhaps mercifully they did.
The last couple of stages I went through I’d say were the strangest as they seem to have a direct affect upon my mental state. I spent a good portion of my time feeling drunk and I also had a period where I became fearful of the weather! As good as feeling in an almost constant state of being drunk may sound, it was generally the lesser desired affects I felt :-\ My reactions seemed markedly slower than they should and my automotive skills suffered too. I was excessively clumsy constantly falling over nothing. I even went to the doctors under the assumption I must have something wrong with my hips for my legs to keep giving way under me. It turned out that in fact I was just extremely clumsy without just cause. As with going into public places I had dizziness, however this was more of a mild spinning sensation, which is one of the reasons I would liken it to being drunk. I would also feel an almost mild sedation like I wasn’t quite “with it.” To make further assumptions about how I felt when I was younger I’d attribute that sensation to trying to nullify my feelings. If things couldn’t get through to me then they couldn’t hurt me.
My fear of the weather (specifically rain) came following on closely from when I initially started having difficulties with going to school. At that point it felt as though I was on a high wire with no safety net. I was never afraid of the rain per se, it was almost symbolic of the lack of control I had over anything. After all, rain can appear seemingly from nowhere and ruin what could have been a good day. To get past my apprehension toward the rain I tried to appreciate the beauty you can find in it. I’d sit with my brother and sister and watch lightening storms which would be accompanied by heavy rain. I learned to enjoy (and still do) how fresh it would feel outside after a storm, showing me that some good can come of what I’d perceived to be bad situations.