Anxiety is such a familiar feeling for me that I sometimes don't even notice a small background level of it. But I'm feeling it right now. It's manifesting as the usual tension throughout my body together with the "butterflies in the stomach" - it's a rather distracting sensation, it's very tiring and it affects my ability to concentrate on my normal activities.
Why am I feeling anxious? Because I've got to make a phone call - personal business - and deal with somebody I don't know on the other end. I know from experience that I can get it done but that doesn't stop me getting the feelings every time. That's why I prefer when possible to use the internet or speak with people face to face, one-on-one.
I used to be much worse - I was mentally and physically unable to speak on the phone to people I didn't know. The anxiety would be so intense that it would cause me to shut down. Yes, I know it's irrational. Most phobias are (I have arachnophobia and acrophobia as well). I've found that I have to be alone when I make phone calls - I can't speak in front of anybody unless the person on the other end is well-known to me. In fact I can't even make a call in front of my wife - I have to go into another room.
Other strategies I've developed to help me handle these situations include rehearsing the call beforehand - running through it in my mind and planning exactly what I'm going to say. This works best when I'm performing some structured task such as placing an order or paying a bill. Some things I just avoid - I never ring back on a missed call unless I recognise the number as belonging to somebody I know. I'm reluctant to answer the phone if it rings - voicemail is priceless in this regard. If it's important they'll leave a message and I can just listen to it and decide whether to follow up without being forced to interact with some stranger.
Doing all these things still doesn't make it easy for me to use the phone. It makes it possible. People who don't suffer from anxiety in these situations will find it hard to appreciate just what an achievement that is.
Thursday, 18 August 2011
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
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:
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.
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 skatingThis 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.
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"
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.
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
School Memories
My school days seem a long time ago now - I've lived half my life since then. There are some things I can remember clearly - fragments of brilliant clarity among the discarded remnants of temps perdu. Much of the time I spent there is lost now - faded with age beyond my powers of recall - and still more is ensconced behind locked doors in my mind.
Playschool (kindergarten, or pre-school), furthest removed from the present, divulges but few memories - a vivid recollection of an instance of my social phobia where I had an accident because I was too afraid to ask to go to the bathroom and a vague but familiar feeling of being apart from everybody else, of being on the edge, standing and looking on but not being a part of things. There are no faces in any memories of those times - I can remember the building (a Nissen hut) - its layout and furniture - in detail but despite there being teachers and other children in my mental pictures, none of them have any identifying characteristics - they are just impressionistic shadows of people.
Prep school (primary school) brings forth a stream of memories - almost always finishing first or second in the class, right through all seven years at this school. Not understanding when the class was asked who was Catholic and who was Church of England. (Although both my parents were C of E they always left my brother and me to make our own minds up about faith and religion.) Never achieving a single gymnastics badge in PE lessons - unlike the entire rest of the class - because I could never manage a forward roll. (My physical coordination is a little impaired and I have minor balance problems - I also still can't abide the feeling of being upside-down.) Sitting inside reading on my own when the others were playing outside during break times. Feeling hurt when told that I had bad breath - I couldn't use toothpaste as a child because the mint taste was too intense to handle. A ritual before exams - touching certain parts of my face and touching fingertips together. A special interest in astronomy and the planets of the Solar System - I remember being called up in assembly once - I was about 7 at the time - to recite the names of the planets in order of distance from the sun, and I remember feeling surprised that anybody would find knowing this to be in any way remarkable. Sitting on the floor regularly in assembly and on other occasions - was I the only one who found this painfully uncomfortable? Hating the feeling of how my sweater constricted and rumpled the shirt beneath it - it was part of the school uniform and I didn't have any choice about wearing it.
I'm sitting here surprised at how most of these sound negative when I don't remember being particularly unhappy at that school. I think they were more than made up for by my enjoyment of the academic side of things. I've still got all my end-of-term school reports and they all follow the same pattern - first in the class more often than not, poor at PE and games, poor handwriting, highly intelligent, very quiet - doesn't get involved. I guess signs were there if anybody that knew me had been aware of ASD back then (late '70's and early '80's).
I'm going to leave writing about my memories of grammar (secondary) school for another time - there's a lot of baggage there that I don't feel like going into yet (see my earlier post about my childhood experiences). One thing I will say is that the atmosphere changes as I move from prep to grammar school - clouds are gathering; a storm is imminent. I get a sense of foreboding from just thinking about disturbing some of those old memories - there is a certain trepidation in case I awaken something terrible. I have a gap of about a year and a half both in my recollection of those years and in my archive of school reports. One day I may choose to unlock certain doors and confront my demons, but today is not that day.
Playschool (kindergarten, or pre-school), furthest removed from the present, divulges but few memories - a vivid recollection of an instance of my social phobia where I had an accident because I was too afraid to ask to go to the bathroom and a vague but familiar feeling of being apart from everybody else, of being on the edge, standing and looking on but not being a part of things. There are no faces in any memories of those times - I can remember the building (a Nissen hut) - its layout and furniture - in detail but despite there being teachers and other children in my mental pictures, none of them have any identifying characteristics - they are just impressionistic shadows of people.
Prep school (primary school) brings forth a stream of memories - almost always finishing first or second in the class, right through all seven years at this school. Not understanding when the class was asked who was Catholic and who was Church of England. (Although both my parents were C of E they always left my brother and me to make our own minds up about faith and religion.) Never achieving a single gymnastics badge in PE lessons - unlike the entire rest of the class - because I could never manage a forward roll. (My physical coordination is a little impaired and I have minor balance problems - I also still can't abide the feeling of being upside-down.) Sitting inside reading on my own when the others were playing outside during break times. Feeling hurt when told that I had bad breath - I couldn't use toothpaste as a child because the mint taste was too intense to handle. A ritual before exams - touching certain parts of my face and touching fingertips together. A special interest in astronomy and the planets of the Solar System - I remember being called up in assembly once - I was about 7 at the time - to recite the names of the planets in order of distance from the sun, and I remember feeling surprised that anybody would find knowing this to be in any way remarkable. Sitting on the floor regularly in assembly and on other occasions - was I the only one who found this painfully uncomfortable? Hating the feeling of how my sweater constricted and rumpled the shirt beneath it - it was part of the school uniform and I didn't have any choice about wearing it.
I'm sitting here surprised at how most of these sound negative when I don't remember being particularly unhappy at that school. I think they were more than made up for by my enjoyment of the academic side of things. I've still got all my end-of-term school reports and they all follow the same pattern - first in the class more often than not, poor at PE and games, poor handwriting, highly intelligent, very quiet - doesn't get involved. I guess signs were there if anybody that knew me had been aware of ASD back then (late '70's and early '80's).
I'm going to leave writing about my memories of grammar (secondary) school for another time - there's a lot of baggage there that I don't feel like going into yet (see my earlier post about my childhood experiences). One thing I will say is that the atmosphere changes as I move from prep to grammar school - clouds are gathering; a storm is imminent. I get a sense of foreboding from just thinking about disturbing some of those old memories - there is a certain trepidation in case I awaken something terrible. I have a gap of about a year and a half both in my recollection of those years and in my archive of school reports. One day I may choose to unlock certain doors and confront my demons, but today is not that day.
Monday, 15 August 2011
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.
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.
Saturday, 13 August 2011
People Who Have Influenced My Life - Part 1
Certain people left an indelible mark on me as I was growing up. I'd just like to give them a little recognition. I'm not going to name them though: I don't believe that would be right without their permission.
One who particularly stands out is my English teacher from when I was studying for GCSEs in English Literature and English Language. She was head of department as well as teaching 4X and then 5X, my forms over the two years in question. I found her to always be very supportive - quick to give praise when deserved and very patient.
I always looked forward to her lessons and got great enjoyment from the subject. It was her that first gave me my love of language for its own sake and kindled my special interest in words. I honed my writing style over those two years under her guidance and grew to gain a great deal of enjoyment from the writing process which I have carried through to this day.
So I would like to say thank you to my former English teacher. I don't believe I would experience half the joy I get from language without your influence. You are an inspiration to me.
Friday, 12 August 2011
All in my Mind
Talking to somebody the other day about Aspergers, they said "It's all in your mind." Well... yes. That's kind of the point, isn't it? Idiot!
People like this anger and frustrate me. It's partly that they believe I could choose not to be this way, and partly that they believe it's not a "real" disorder. (They're often the same people who are dismissive of depression, equating it to feeling sad.)
One thing that particularly hurt in this case was that it was a person I'd thought was reasonably understanding and that I had classed as a friend. They don't know they hurt me - I'm not going to say anything because then I'll be getting into uncomfortable emotive territory - but I've been more wary when speaking to them since.
I know that there are people I mix with who are understanding and even actively supportive - that's why I mix with them: friends. There are others with whom I feel comfortable enough to speak but there's no involvement: acquaintances. It takes me a long time to start considering a person who has been an acquaintance to be a friend. But it doesn't take nearly as long for one to lose that status in my eyes.
(But that's not where I was intending to go with this. I'm rambling again. Note to self: at least look like you're trying to stay on topic.)
I try to communicate what it is like to be me but some people just don't get it. I'm sure it's partly my fault: I don't express myself nearly as eloquently in speech as when I write. When I'm speaking I hesitate - "um..., er..." - while I assemble the next thought. I sometimes lose the word I want - I know what I want to say, I know that I know the word, I can define the word, but can I remember it? And I start to focus on that instead of carrying on speaking.
I have a tendency to ramble - to stray off the subject - unless I actively concentrate on the direction of my thoughts, which requires planning an outline in advance. Obviously no good in general conversation! I also have a habit of expanding on minor subjects around the main topic - it almost becomes a lecture - and my audience start ignoring me, talking amongst themselves and so on - to the extent that even I realise I've lost their interest - and I just stop speaking regardless of whether or not I've finished what I was trying to say.
I should just carry a pen and paper and write what I want to put across.
People like this anger and frustrate me. It's partly that they believe I could choose not to be this way, and partly that they believe it's not a "real" disorder. (They're often the same people who are dismissive of depression, equating it to feeling sad.)
One thing that particularly hurt in this case was that it was a person I'd thought was reasonably understanding and that I had classed as a friend. They don't know they hurt me - I'm not going to say anything because then I'll be getting into uncomfortable emotive territory - but I've been more wary when speaking to them since.
I know that there are people I mix with who are understanding and even actively supportive - that's why I mix with them: friends. There are others with whom I feel comfortable enough to speak but there's no involvement: acquaintances. It takes me a long time to start considering a person who has been an acquaintance to be a friend. But it doesn't take nearly as long for one to lose that status in my eyes.
(But that's not where I was intending to go with this. I'm rambling again. Note to self: at least look like you're trying to stay on topic.)
I try to communicate what it is like to be me but some people just don't get it. I'm sure it's partly my fault: I don't express myself nearly as eloquently in speech as when I write. When I'm speaking I hesitate - "um..., er..." - while I assemble the next thought. I sometimes lose the word I want - I know what I want to say, I know that I know the word, I can define the word, but can I remember it? And I start to focus on that instead of carrying on speaking.
I have a tendency to ramble - to stray off the subject - unless I actively concentrate on the direction of my thoughts, which requires planning an outline in advance. Obviously no good in general conversation! I also have a habit of expanding on minor subjects around the main topic - it almost becomes a lecture - and my audience start ignoring me, talking amongst themselves and so on - to the extent that even I realise I've lost their interest - and I just stop speaking regardless of whether or not I've finished what I was trying to say.
I should just carry a pen and paper and write what I want to put across.
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Thursday Thought
No matter how much you're pissed off by the company, try to make an effort to be polite to the people at the checkout or call-centre or whatever you're dealing with. They're not paid a lot for what they do, they don't get any say in how the company operates and it's not their fault. Put a complaint in to the bosses, Trading Standards or whoever but don't bully the little guys on the front line. You can let them know how frustrated you feel without taking your anger out on them. Chances are they're not doing the job because they love the company - they probably need the (minimum) wage it pays.
Just because your day's gone to hell in a handbasket is no reason to lash out at somebody else. And have you noticed how most people are more inclined to be helpful if you're nice to them? Lets have a little respect for the people we deal with and - just maybe - some of that respect will come back to us, and we'll all be that little bit better off.
Just because your day's gone to hell in a handbasket is no reason to lash out at somebody else. And have you noticed how most people are more inclined to be helpful if you're nice to them? Lets have a little respect for the people we deal with and - just maybe - some of that respect will come back to us, and we'll all be that little bit better off.
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