Losing Patience

Several times, especially in recent weeks, I have been put in an awkward, discomfiting position when out socially. One minute I will be feeling at ease among friends and then one person will start behaving badly - disparaging and insulting others, being antagonistic, even spiteful, and completely shattering my sense of calm.

This person absolutely refuses to accept that they might be in the wrong, instead reacting angrily to criticism and blaming anyone and everyone around them; the phrase "chip on the shoulder" comes readily to mind. I'm starting to wonder if there's some psychological problem behind these personality traits - the Wikipedia entry for narcissistic personality disorder includes the following:

Narcissists have such an elevated sense of self-worth that they value themselves as inherently better than others. Yet, they have a fragile self-esteem and cannot handle criticism, and will often try to compensate for this inner fragility by belittling or disparaging others in an attempt to validate their own self-worth. It is this sadistic tendency that is characteristic of narcissism...

But this speculation does not address the issue at hand, namely that this person is causing an increasing amount of ill-feeling and upset. I know that I'm reaching the limit of my patience in dealing with this person's demands and prima donna antics, and I'm far from the only one feeling this way.

I find that I am dealing with the stress caused by this person's behavior by switching off from these interactions - I have become increasingly emotionally detached as a form of self-defense. While I still care, I am no longer willing to be subjected to this kind of bullying behavior.

Visualizing Emotions

Feeling emotions means seeing myself in different settings, each reflecting - to me at least - the nature of the sensation. This is obviously a consequence of a visual mode of thinking: my conscious identification and comprehension of my emotional state is driven by my recognition of the specific mental imagery.

To feel happiness is to take to the air, flying through the limitless skies with velocity in proportion to the degree of pleasure. Happiness is a strong, bright yellow like the summer sun, daffodils, buttercups or gorse flowers.

As happiness shades into ecstasy or excitement then the flight becomes aerobatic: swooping, twisting and turning through the air. There is an invigorating surge of glittering bubbles like swimming through the fizz of champagne.

In contrast, sadness is a leaden dullness, an unrelieved monotony of gray emptiness. Little or no motion, no possibility of escaping gravity's pull that tethers me to the ground. Everything moves so slowly as if mired in a morass, and it takes such effort to overcome the inertia.

As sadness deepens into despondency and despair, so the gray darkens, chasms opening beneath my feet as I slip down, deeper and deeper into the abyss with what faint light there is steadily diminishing overhead, dwindling and fading to a point that eventually becomes imperceptible from the gloom all around. Add hurt - pain - to this and the edges become hard and sharp, pressing in on me, trapping me in their constrictions before piercing into and through me as the intensity becomes unbearable.

Fear is cold; a blue/white arctic landscape through which the wind blows relentlessly, sculpting the ice into faerie castles with towers like scimitars, and whipping the snow up into blizzards. As I begin to panic I am picked up by the wind, and left falling endlessly, arms thrashing in vain as I try to slow and stop my irresistible descent.

Anger is a curious one. Other people speak about "seeing red"; however I cannot honestly say that red is associated with the feeling for me. Anger is a huge black and silver steam locomotive, belching smoke from its stack and spouting prodigious jets of steam from its pistons as it speeds, unstoppable, along gleaming straight steel rails, wheels flashing so quickly that they are just a blur, making the very earth tremble with its immense power and trailing an immense white plume back along its path. This thundering titan seems to me to be the embodiment of dreadful might.

And finally, calm - serenity, peaceful solitude - is walking through woodland on a balmy summer's day, sunlight filtering through the lush green canopy to project dappled shadows on the gray/green/brown tangle of the undergrowth. Not another person around; it is just me and the creatures of the woods - birds fluttering among the branches, squirrels bounding sinuously up trunks and along the limbs. Perfect natural harmony all around me.

I Think I Need A New Word

I'm struggling to think of one word that will describe the feeling of acute mental discomfort and anxiety I get when I hear somebody making hurtful remarks about anyone I know. I don't know if there is a word for it: maybe those people never feel like this. It would explain how they are able to behave in that way.

This feeling I get is so intense that I find it hard to describe, especially when I try to tell the people causing it how they are making me feel with their malicious comments. I don't do that very often - it invariably ends up with them turning on me. But it still makes me angry that they feel so superior that they have the right to put others down.

And then they try to justify themselves by saying they are being honest and direct. No, they're not. They're simply being rude, voicing their opinions behind people's backs and presenting gossip and rumour as fact. I've noticed that they never explain why they hold those opinions. There's an arrogant, unspoken assumption that the reasons are so obvious that any "right-thinking" person would be in agreement.

I don't know how to handle this kind of behaviour except by walking away - it upsets me so much that I overload. I feel that I'm letting the target of the comments down by not standing up and defending them, but I've tried and I can't handle the stress of the confrontation that results.

I guess there are just some people out there who are hazardous to one's health - poisonous if you like. Certainly incompatible with my peace of mind and general well-being.

Expressing Sympathy

How do you tell somebody that you sympathise with them; that you understand what they are going through and just want to do or say something that will help them cope with it and - hopefully - help them feel better?

I have a deep aversion to any reliance on trite stock phrases: "I'm sorry", "Chin up" and all that. They always strike me as insincere and demonstrative of a lack of thought. I like to try to cast my words in an original way - to make my message personal and unique to the person and situation. And that can create problems for me because I need time to compose my response. It's so much easier in writing but that doesn't help at all when you're face to face with somebody who is telling you how they feel. Dealing with emotional content in conversation requires a lot of effort at any time. So I struggle, end up muttering "Sorry" - if I can say anything at all - and feel bad for not managing to come out with what I wanted to say and falling into the trap of cliché.

Still, I'm as bad on the receiving end. I say "Thank you". Then I start thinking that that's not enough - I think it sounds like it's just an automatic response, without any thought. I worry that the person will think I'm ungrateful or insincere. So I want to expand on it but I can't easily think of appropriate words on the fly - I end up feeling frustrated with myself on top of whatever it was in the first place! Not the other person's fault - it's pressure I put myself under.

It would be so much easier if I didn't feel when people I care about are troubled - when they are feeling sad or hurt. Most of the time I don't know what to do to "fix" the problem and that hurts me because I think I'm letting them down. And I can't say all this to them at the time - I can't tell them how I feel about their situation. I could write it here but that's clearly not the same. Are a few muttered stock words like "I'm sorry" backed by my full conviction better than another person's empty words of reassurance uttered in tones of sincerity? I don't know. Perhaps the end result is more important than the intent, at least to the listener.

All I can really do is tell them that I care about their situation and I want to help if possible. Would it work if I just said that? Or does it sound like a politician's response to some disaster? When I run the words through in my mind there's no emotional inflection - it's like a string of syllables without any semantic aspect - sounds without meaning, empty. I'm saying what I mean and even I am unconvinced, so how could I convince a person I'm speaking to that I am sincere? Writing is a much more comfortable medium in which to express myself.

Daydreaming

Sitting in its bowery shade,
I relax against the old tree.
I feel silent reassurance
Permeate the air around us:
A slow calm aura of confidence
Born of radical connection.

A living, breathing extrusion;
More of the earth than upon it.
The semblance of eternity,
Changes slower than perception,
Illusory stasis when seen through
The quick shutter of our short lives.

Part of me wants such attachment
To my home - anchored fast - roots deep,
Gripping strongly without effort.
I envy the regularity
Of its natural existence:
Day follows day, blurs into one.

Does the tree in turn feel envy
At the longevity of rock
Against which human endeavours
Are so fleeting? Vistas of time
Viewed through myopic eyes soon blur,
All distant objects lost in mist.

To be alive is to be quick.
Thoughtfulness replaced by motion
As we rush through life, eyes fixed
On the future. Peripheral
Vision unheeded, we ignore
The richness of our here and now.

I stopped to think, reflect. A time
To open up my senses to
My present. Let the future come
Later. For these precious moments
I am the tree, I am the rock,
I just am, now is forever.

Comfortably Numb

I first heard The Wall when I was 16. I'd already got a copy of Dark Side of the Moon and had spent many an hour lying in my darkened bedroom - door closed, eyes shut - just listening to it from start to finish. There's something in particular about Pink Floyd that resonates with me - I can lose myself in the music, becoming totally involved. The sensations - visual, spatial, tactile - conjured up in my mind complement the sound wonderfully.

The Wall connects on another level though - it's one of the few works where I find many of the lyrics have meaning for me. The second track is The Thin Ice:

"If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
[...]
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice"

This speaks to me of the superficiality of society - how fragile the social structures are that I rely on to support me, and how that support can disintegrate leading me to a breakdown, overwhelmed by my own fears, desperate for help.

The recurrent themes of the album are alienation, fear, desperately seeking connection with others, rejection, bullying and abuse leading to depression and mental overload - meltdown/breakdown, withdrawal and isolation. I can identify with all of these.

But the track that I feel the greatest affinity for is Comfortably Numb. It begins with a doctor approaching the protagonist: "Hello/Is there anybody in there?" - I'm in shutdown brought on by an emotional overload. I can see and hear what's going on around me - what people are saying to me - but I can't respond.

"[...] I can ease your pain [...] Can you show me where it hurts?" is the misinterpretation of my state by people around me. They intrude, disturbing me and I try to shut them out - to create a barrier in my mind and block them. "There is no pain you are receding [...] You are only coming through in waves/Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying" - I'm succeeding in blocking them - filtering them out of my sensory inputs.

"I can't explain/You would not understand/This is not how I am." This is my inability to express how I'm feeling. The fact that even if I could describe how I feel, it would be so removed from your own experiences that you could not empathise with me. The dichotomy between my calm, unemotional exterior and my inner turmoil that causes you to misinterpret my feelings.

The song's perspective switches back to the doctor: "OK/Just a little pin-prick [...] I do believe it's working [...] Come on it's time to go." This is people trying to change me, to force me to conform and behave in a "normal" fashion - a sometimes painful experience.

The song concludes: "When I was a child/I caught a fleeting glimpse/Out of the corner of my eye/I turned to look but it was gone/I cannot put my finger on it now/The child is grown/The dream is gone." The illusions that I had in childhood have been dispelled - I can't even clearly recall the innocent naivete of those days. It can be a hard, cold world and it makes no allowances for those who are different - who have difficulty coping.

"I have become comfortably numb." If I don't open up - if I keep myself to myself and don't get close to anybody, I can minimise my chances of being hurt. I can try to keep a lid on my emotions, I can try to stay uninvolved. I can try to make myself numb - not to care - so that I won't feel the intensity of emotions, so I won't feel such pain - so I'll be comfortable. I'll be able to function in the world at large but it will be at the expense of losing an important part of myself.

"Comfortably numb" - it's dangerously attractive, a great temptation to be numb and never feel fear, pain, anger. But such a cost. Never to feel happiness, love, excitement. And that would be a cost far too high for me to bear. So I will suffer the bad times, the depths of depression and the agonising pain in the knowledge that when the good times come round again it will be on a wave of exaltation. The contrast - the ups and downs, highs and lows - the sheer emotional rollercoaster is part of what makes us human and alive, and to abandon or deny that would be to diminish ourselves; it would be a living death.

I Need a Hug

Your words fall like snowflakes:
Softly, silently
Smothering my heart
In their icy blanket.

To you there is only
A superficial
Serenity, while
Underneath I'm bleeding.

Cut deep, I used to feel
Such pain! Now coldness
Has suffused my core
With a creeping numbness.

Springtime seems so distant
From bleak midwinter.
More dead than alive.
Solace in abeyance.

False hope brings quickening:
Green shoots pierce the snow
Only to wither.
A late frost overwhelms.

My hibernating heart,
Its reserves of strength
Exhausted, clings to
Memories of past warmth.

Overloading on Emotion

Recently I've been trying to explain to my wife how emotional overtones in what people say can overload me. It was difficult to get across for two reasons.

The first reason is that she still gets the impression that I don't feel emotion because I don't show emotion. She struggles to understand how anybody can be experiencing feelings without any outward sign. This can be one of the key barriers to understanding between somebody on the autistic spectrum and somebody who is neurotypical.

The second reason is that overload is difficult to explain to somebody who has never experienced it. It's not identical for everybody; indeed I don't experience it to the same degree every time. Essentially it is overstimulation of some form, either emotional or sensory. The intensity of the signal coming into my mind causes me to fixate on it like a rabbit caught in headlights.

I pick up on emotional content most when I'm one-on-one with somebody. In a group there's typically too much going on and I start to miss behavioural cues. But face-to-face with one person I find I can often get the "out of band" data along with the signal. I can hear some emotions in the tone of voice and even recognise some body language. It's not as instinctive as it appears to be with NT folk. But now and again, particularly when I know the person well, I get an empathic gestalt of their emotional state.

Imagine if you will that you are sitting on a quiet, deserted shore. The sun is shining: it's warm. There's just enough of a breeze to be comfortable and the small waves lap rhythmically. You are relaxed; you lean back and close your eyes sleepily...

..and then you open your eyes again to find you have been transported in that instant to the middle of the city at rush hour. Traffic all around: engines snarling and horns blaring. People jostling and rushing all around you. Noise, smells, lights, touches coming from all directions: a cacophony registering on every sense at once. And that's how it feels to be hit by that tidal wave of emotion.

Special Interests and Happiness

While programming is my primary special interest, I have other interests that I follow whenever I get the opportunity. I derive great pleasure from these activities.

Words have always fascinated me. I've enjoyed reading ever since I can remember; in fact I would describe myself as a voracious reader. But it's not just about reading: it actually is the words themselves. I read dictionaries for pleasure, learning about etymology and relating words to their roots. I decided to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in Middle English in part to become more familiar with the history of the English language. I own several books about words and phrases; one of my favourites is Melvyn Bragg's Adventures in English which traces the development of the language from Latin and Anglo Saxon to the modern day.

I get excited when I find patterns in words across languages that reflect common heritage such as sassenach in Scots relating to sasunnach in Scottish Gaelic, saesneg in Welsh and saozneg in Breton: all derived from Sais (Saxon). I get similarly excited when I discover the origins of phrases like start from scratch, the bitter end and half-cocked, especially if the origin is strongly visual (as in these three examples).

Naturally when I get excited by finding something new I want to tell people about it. After all, if I found it that amazing then surely everybody else will? No. They don't. It usually falls completely flat. You can picture the tumbleweeds blowing across the scene as my exposition is greeted by deafening silence. What makes it worse is that it's not the dropped-jaw silence of minds stunned by the revelation. It's the silence of boredom and indifference. And then they carry on talking about whatever they were on about before I piped up. So I don't bother so much now. I find it hard to understand that others don't share my passion for certain subjects. I know in an abstract way that they don't, but that knowledge is pale and insubstantial against the intensity of my own excitement and I find that I can get carried away.

I used to flap my hands whenever I got excited. This attracted a lot of negative attention - bordering on bullying - when I was young and over the years I have managed to moderate it so that it now manifests as simply a clenching of my fists and tensing of my arms and hands, with perhaps a little shake. At the time other kids would say that I was "having a benny" and I always took the phrase personally. I never heard it in reference to anyone or anything else until recently when I watched The Full Monty and I can't really describe the shock and the gut-wrenching fear/embarrassment that it triggered. All of a sudden I flashed back to my schooldays and was being ridiculed again. The trouble is that the hand flapping was a natural expression of how I felt. I get a little sad that I don't feel able to express myself fully - to completely be myself - without fear of ridicule.

There are other behaviours that I have suppressed as a result of pressure to conform to the mainstream. I sometimes think that as long as people in general do not accept atypical behaviour then I will continue to give in to that pressure. And because I can't be myself I will feel down more often. Whenever I feel happy or excited it will cast a small shadow across my sunny feelings, a small discordant note in my harmony, a small smudge of dirt on a spotless white canvas. So perhaps it is time to stop conforming. Perhaps I can summon the self-confidence to be myself. To regain the physical expressions of my emotions and not feel ashamed of them. To accept that some people will think me mad and not to care. I guess I can dream...

Hurt Inside

How do you answer when somebody asks how you are?

Me, I just say "I'm grand" and leave it at that. It's not that I never feel fine, but even when I'm feeling down I don't like anybody to know it. I've always been a private person, keeping things to myself and it's hard to break the habits of a lifetime. Of course it's become habit because I find it so difficult to talk about my feelings.

It would be nice occasionally to have somebody to listen to me while I struggle to describe how I'm feeling but I've found that two things get in the way. Firstly I have to trust the person completely before I'm able to open up at all. Secondly they have to have the patience to let me take my time explaining.

I've found it can be easier to just write things down: I started writing an occasional journal in my mid-teens but kept it private. I did find it a help to put down how I felt in writing because I didn't get the mental block nearly as much as when I try to talk about it. I have a ritual that has evolved over the years: I write longhand in a particular notebook by candlelight. I have always found the act of writing about my feelings to be ultimately cathartic but it is emotionally tiring at the time. It is as if I have taken some of the pain out of myself and put it away in my notebook. It still exists but it's outside me. As this might suggest, depression or hurt is my main trigger for writing. I hardly ever write when I'm up because there's no need to.

I can't always find the time to be alone and write about how I feel, and when that happens the hurt remains inside me. The danger is that I have no other release for it until I shut down or suffer a meltdown. I find a shutdown is exhausting, not to mention the disruptive effect it has on my day-to-day life and relationships. So I think perhaps I ought to try to find somebody to talk to instead. Sounds simple, doesn't it? If only it were that easy to form the kind of relationship where I can trust somebody to the necessary degree. Although I know plenty of people well enough to no longer feel uneasy in their company, I have never learned how to move the relationship to a closer level, so I never feel that I can impose on somebody by asking them to do something that personal for me.

So that's why I expect I'll just carry on saying "I'm fine" and keeping the hurt locked away inside until I find time to take it out and preserve it in my notebook like a pressed flower.