Autism & Off-Days

Yesterday didn't start well.

My stars didn't so much align, as malign.......  probably in the waste pipe of a sewage treatment plant, as you will see.  

I took my car to the garage for a service, making sure my husband had booked a day off work to follow me down and collect me.  I organised getting my daughter to work on time.  I had a schedule prepared for Finian. I was altogether delighted with my executive prowess.  All I needed was an 80's power suit and a crown so I could rule the world.

Only to discover that I arrived at the garage a month early.

I managed to avoid breaking down in snotty tears and decided to save the situation by taking Finian shopping for new pyjamas.  My management skills restored, we headed off to Dunnes with renewed confidence.  Truth be told, I was more than a little smug that I had turned an irritating mistake into an opportunity.  Go, me.

We wandered along the pj section, and over in the next aisle a baby started crying.  Emboldened by my brilliant adaptability , I decided to seize the opportunity to teach Finian a little empathy.

"The baby is crying" I (kinda pointlessly) said.  "what does he need?"

"Turn the baby off " he suggested, a little too loudly.

The mother glowered.  I hoped she didn't have a brick in her bag.

"No"  I persisted "what would make the baby feel better?"

Finian was unmoved.  "Put the baby in the bin" he proposed decisively.  Practical, but not entirely ethical.

We grabbed some pyjamas and made a hasty exit before we could be eaten alive by a rabid mother.

Finian's mood got higher and higher until he jittered like a Wall Street hack who'd just pulled a straight 48 hour shift.  I've never done coke (and as a former ICU nurse I never will..... it's a scary drug) but I imagine his mood was similar.  His skin could barely contain him.  This was what we call his 'knife edge' mood.  There's a VERY thin line between (borderline manic) exuberance and having a fully-loaded, shit-flinging meltdown.

It was a long day.

But there was more to come.

As we left the shopping centre, I sneezed into my own mask, which was a novel experience.  Pebble dashing my face with my own saliva did not do wonders for my sense of competence.

When we got home, I realised the dog had a cut on his paw.  As I leaned forward to look at it, he expressed his gratitude by giving me a big, wet Frenchie.  Now, I don't know if you've ever had a dog's tongue in your mouth, but it made me wish I'd been born without a face.  I may have PTSD.

I was glad when the day ended.  Thankfully, Finian's mood stayed on the happy side of manic.  

Some days just belong in the bin.

for crap days (and crying babies)

Autism & Queer Eye

It hasn't been the easiest evening.

I missed yoga, burned the dinner and lost my glasses, all because of autism.

Finian is "exploring his emotions" (parenting code for being a massive pain in the arse), and is currently in his Unstable Nuclear Missile phase.  Everything is wrong.  He wants me to fix All The Things NOW.  It's hard to tell if he's singing or crying.  The wrong anything could trigger an explosion that might destabilise the earth's orbit.  

My son's bad mood could actually accelerate global warming.   

I'm not sure I want to become famous for this.

So before I get too comfortable on my cross (the view's great, but the nails kinda hurt), it's worth getting curious about looking at things in a different way.  

Autism sucks, that's a given.  But being martyred to it is optional.  

It's possible I burned the dinner because I'm a mediocre cook with the planning skills of a drunk toddler.  A myopic adult should know better than to take off the glasses they need to find their glasses.  

Missing yoga, though, is definitely on autism.  I couldn't leave my daughter to watch an autistic kid with the emotional stability of uranium.  No amount of downward facing dogs would make that OK.

But, there's always another way of looking at things.

Reframing the picture doesn't mean sticking metaphorical fingers in your ears to deny reality, but sometimes stepping back and being open to a different perspective can put a positive spin on a crappy situation.

So while I freely acknowledge that (this evening, anyway), my son is a Finian-shaped bag of wasps with all the charm of a farty rhinoceros, I'm choosing a different lens to view things through.  

I got to light the fire, change into my pjs extra early, and binge watch Queer Eye, while keeping an ear out for emotional volcanos.  So far, Finian is happily (and loudly) belting out the theme tune to Wonder Pets (in Hungarian), so all remains good.

So I'm shamelessly applying my own Queer Eye (am fairly certain they won't sue me) to view my own world in a healthier way.  

(p.s I love my son and don't really think he's a farty rhinoceros.........)

Autism & Mad Mothers

This has been one of the most difficult years of my life.  

There was Autism, usual family stuff, college and covid.  But in the Spring, the shell protecting my mental health cracked open and I fell to pieces.  One day, all the defenses I used to avoid my issues (maintaining facades, perfectionism, anxiety, depression, overwork, wine, rationalizing emotions, denying my own needs, unhealthy boundaries, whatever you're having yourself) just stopped working.

It was about fucking time.

My breakdown immersed me in a world of pain that I'd been avoiding for a very long time.

Many months of therapy have helped me to integrate most of my big psychological injuries.  There's still one or two sticky issues  I need to befriend, but I know I'll get there.  Tbh, I'd rather french kiss Boris Johnson after he's eaten a packet of Monster Munch, but you do what you gotta do.  Am wearing Big Girl pants now, and all that.

The big surprise is that processing the awfulness isn't as terrible as pouring all my energy into avoiding it.  I mean, therapy is horrendous.  It's like being atomized in a high-speed blender and then re-shaped in a really unfamiliar new mould.  It takes a while to get used to.  And making friends with the dark creatures in my mental basement has been...... unexpected.  

But avoiding it has been worse.  The relief of allowing the mask to slip is wonderful.  Breaking down gave me the freedom to recognize and discard what was bad for my soul.  It's a work in progress, but yanno.

Autism was the catalyst that forced me to engage with my mental health in a meaningful way.  It's very possible I would have continued to spin in my resistant groove for the rest of my days, had Autism not driven me mad.

It's kinda comical to be grateful for something that caused me pain, but here we are.  Alice in Wonderland knew her shit when she said "curiouser and curiouser".  

Autism & Processing Emotions

Finian got his covid booster today.

He was not amused.  

Despite social stories, schedules and reward incentives, he screamed the fucking place down.  The staff were amazing, though, and after half an hour of slowing everything down, he got his jab.  

It was a stressful procedure for him.  

And for me.  

I learned to sweat from entirely new pores while attempting to hold him.  My heart enjoyed a few interesting new arrhythmias as it tried to exit my body.  I discovered that my son makes a pretty decent kick-boxer.

So it was quite the learning experience.

What was really surprising, though, was to witness the range of emotions Finian went through, and how he processed them. 

On the car journey to the centre he was a little anxious, but was happy about the prospect of  a hot chocolate and McDonald's afterwards.  But when we reached the centre, fear overwhelmed him.  He was locked in a full-on adrenaline-fueled flight/fright response, and reasoning was pointless.  He was terrified and incoherent.  Three of us couldn't hold him.  He kicked and screamed like he was possessed (def a 'fight' rather than 'flight' guy, it seems).  After a spell of calming him down we decided to reschedule, which meant that  Costa and McDonald's were off the cards.  When he realised this, he sat down, pulled his sleeve up and sold out for a happy meal.  His legs were shaking with fear, but he tolerated his terror to get his treat.

On the walk to get his drink he skipped, jumped and flapped to offload his adrenaline.  There may have been screaming.  In Costa, the adrenaline wore off and gave way to intense sadness.  It was like watching a tsunami rising.  His sadness swelled and he howled over his hot chocolate.  He buried his head in my shoulder and sobbed.  There was zero inhibition.  There was much lusty wailing and salty tears.  It was an unapologetic snot-fest.

After maybe ten minutes of naming his emotions and giving him space to feel them, he was ready to move on.  It was like magic.  If we could all experience and express our emotions as freely as Finian, we'd be a lot healthier and happier.

By the time we got home, he was singing Lofty and the Giant Carrot (in Albanian), so all was well.

We're conditioned to be so scared and ashamed of our own feelings that we disown them.  We're numbed out under layers of booze, drugs or mindless distraction.  Or we're paralyzed by anxiety and depression as our suppressed emotions scream to be heard.  We don't know ourselves at all.

In therapy, I'm still processing deeply buried emotions from five decades ago........  all for the want of being helped to own my shit.  It's truly humbling to witness healthy emotional processing from an autistic kid.

sofa cuddles to re-calibrate

 

Autism & Fear

I finally finished one of this semester's assignments, and I celebrated by having a nap and reorganizing the hot press (airing cupboard, to non- paddies).

My gangsta vibes are lit.

It's a lovely feeling to downgrade my fancy performance anxiety to everyday existential dread.

Fear is not the most popular kid at the emotional party, but we probably wouldn't be here without it.  Our inner alarm system has saved us from being devoured, starved or trampled out of existence a long time ago.

But we can have too much of a good thing.

We live in a time and place when fear is used as a marketing tool.  Unscrupulous people with shit to sell cleverly tap into our western values, our innate insecurities (often of not being lovable or good enough) and access to 24/7 information assault.

Sex sells, but fear sells better.

We're relentlessly scared of everything, and it's literally driving us insane.

Aging.  Bad breath.  Missing out.   Being uncool.  Drinking the wrong beer.  Malnourishing our kids.  Cancer.  Body hair.  Having normal teeth.  Loss. Not being rich/thin/clean/ripped/popular/successful/young/sexy/stylish/accomplished/nourished/travelled/fragrant/healthy enough.  Last season's shoes.  Boredom.

We're strung-out consumers blindly buying the next antidote to fear, forgetting that fear is just another normal emotion.

Unless you're Finian.  

One of his many superpowers is deflecting marketing strategies.  He'd probably eat this season's must-have shoes.  Yum.  The only things that scare him are his Bob toys being misaligned, and loss of WiFi.  

Sometimes Autism rocks.

It's taken me almost a year in therapy to know how to process emotions and understand why they call it "work".  Finian is miles ahead of me.  He's almost casual in his genius at knowing what is worth fearing, and what deserves no attention.

I'm still terrified by my laundry monster (it definitely growls at me some days), and some of my college tutors are kinda scary.  But I'm learning from my favourite teacher.

Autism & Hormones

Hormones are impish little chemical messengers we need to stay alive.

We need insulin to transport sugar from our blood into our cells.  Adrenaline activates our primal survival instincts. Melatonin makes us sleepy at night (unless, of course, you're my autistic son who takes this as a personal challenge).  There's about 50 more hormones playing fast and loose with our well-being, trying to maintain some semblance of balance within our insanely capricious bodies.

Hormones are all well and good, though, until they try to kill us.

I'm not so much thinking about the major diseases like diabetes or osteoporosis.  I'm more thinking about the complicated stew that exists within households when everybody's hormones affect everyone else's.

For the past few years, Finian has been surfing hormonal swells and troughs that have left him half-drowned and disorientated.  Meanwhile, I've been busy honing my menopausal skills of  becoming wise (laugh among yourselves, please), developing acne and growing an impressive beard.  

The co-existence of puberty and peri-menopause is the back-lash of women's audacity to live into old age.  A century ago (in the west) the life expectancy for women was 48.  In 1500 we could look forward to the sweet release of death at 35.  Good times.

Menopause was not a thing when you were the geriatric mother of toddlers.  We were pushing up the proverbial daisies long before our ovaries cashed in their pension and retired to a villa in Costa del Sol.

These days, the chemical soup of living in a house with badly behaved hormones is the unwanted gift that keeps on giving..... like the Christmas bath salts that can be multi-purposed as drain cleaner.  We think we've reached the end of it, but it always surprises us with an unexpected new layer.

Recently we took Finian for psychiatric evaluation as we couldn't figure out if his escalating anxiety and self-harming was a result of puberty, pathology or autism.  Or maybe a thrilling blend of all three?  We're still none the wiser really.  It reminds me of the unending new layers of therapy; I dig into the dark places, process the blocks of awfulness and then endure the post-grief exhaustion.  Believing, in my naivety, that it's over.  But it never fucking is.  It'd be so wonderful to take a holiday from myself for just a while; I can totally see the attraction of searching for a little oblivion down a bottle or in a pill.  Of course, there's no real escape from our clashing hormones or from our dark stuff.  We have to be brave enough to live our real lives.  The best route of 'escape' is to work through the shit show with courage and vulnerability.

I bet our ancestral sisters, who never needed a tweezers or hair dye, are laughing in their graves at us.

not a real Christmas gift

Autism & Playfulness

It's been a tough two weeks for Finian and, by extension, us.

He spent a fortnight screaming, sensory seeking, barely sleeping, avoiding food and needing constant reassurance.  It didn't pass the tipping point of self-harm or a full on meltdown, but we were worn out by the time his mood leveled out.

It's often hard to pinpoint a trigger for a mood change.  This time, though, it seems that his return to school was the guilty party.  In addition, some hormonal gymnastics were going on as he had an acne outbreak that looked like a medieval plague had partied on his face. Oh, and he was madly anxious about this being his final year at school.  So altogether it created a perfect stew to nicely boil his racing emotions.

It really wasn't fun.

Finian was miserable, tired and cranky and it didn't take long for the entire family to catch up with him. 

Absence of fun and joy can make living with Autism unbearable. We actually need to foster our own playfulness so that we can tolerate the difficult spells a little easier.  My husband and I consciously create opportunities where we can be irresponsible, carefree and a bit giddy.  We go on lots of coffee dates, hikes and  kayaking trips.  We cuddle up on the sofa, drink wine and watch comedies.  We spend as much time with friends as we can.

This is not with the intention of portraying ourselves as Barbie and Ken (besides, my boobs aren't perky enough and James has too much body hair to qualify).  We need fun so that we're not arguing over who gets the china in a divorce court down the line.

Having fun is serious business.

normal services resumed