Month: August 2013

426: Verbal Fluency and Females with Aspergers

| Aspergers Girls

People with Aspergers, in my opinion, often have high verbal fluency and are able to think of many things about one given letter, topic, subject, item, etc.

Here is one example of my ability to think of many things based on one letter:
link to Dirty D’s Don’t you Weep (prior post)

I think that people with Aspergers have a high-intelligence that can be demonstrated by their ability to scaffold off of one given idea. Sometimes this processing ability adds to stress and misunderstandings, and the appearance of ADHD like behaviors.

As a person with Aspergers, my own high-verbal fluency can cause high anxiety. A simple action, like my husband showing me tile for a potential bathroom remodel, can trigger a reaction in my mind in which I am jumping from one image to another. In the case of the tile for the bathroom, the tile itself is an object trigger, triggering a series of sequenced events in my mind.

On seeing the tile, my thought process went like this:

We could make cosmetic improvements to our home’s bathroom, but we don’t own the house. If we improve the house, should we buy the house? If we don’t buy where will we live? Should we sell our other house? What should we ask for selling price? What if the house doesn’t sell? Well what is a fair price? Maybe we should continue to rent out the house. That makes sense. But what about….

All of these thoughts bombard me. Wherein my high verbal fluency can lead to fantastic writings and the successful completion of projects, the same fluency can cripple me emotionally. As a result of a number of triggers, I can find myself unable to be constructive for hours or even an entire day. Certain triggers can leave me immobile for most of a week. I get lost in the loop of my own thinking.

In the future, the tile could again trigger these same emotional responses in me, and therefor the tile could feasibly remain a trigger for an extended period of time.

Here is an activity that demonstrates the concept of verbal fluency.

This was a quick activity I did this morning. If you wish to partake in an easy four-minute activity, then read the first section “Preparation” and then stop before continuing onward.

Preparation: Without scanning down further to read, find a piece of paper, a pen, and a stopwatch. When you are ready to begin the activity, scan down and read the directions. (You can type a list instead of writing.)

DSCN0736

Directions:
Don’t read past this until your list is done.
1. Set a timer to four minutes.
2. Write a list of anything you can think of that you can do with a pencil.
3. Stop after four minutes.

Read below when done with your list.

DSCN0510

****************************************
My husband’s list (written)

Write
Erase
Measure
Roll
Bounce
Whittle
Wedge
Break it
Bite it
Eat it
Flick it
Throw it
Lever to lift
Stab with it
Sharpen it
Poke it
Spin it
Stand it on end
Spear things with it
Build something with it
Draw
Paint the pencil or draw on pencil
Drumstick for music
Lift things with it

My list (typed)

Miniature sword for a mouse or small creature
Stabbing utensil for defense of intruder
A rolling device to place on table for a contest
A stick to poke bugs with outdoors
A shovel to pull up weeds
A massage roller for the arm or back
A way to make a fake mustache..hold up to face.
A tiny baton
Break it up to use as a pawn in chess game
Place on paper and use as a spinner
Use for spin the bottle on flat surface
Poke holes in something (or finger)
Break off lead and use the lead to draw and smudge on paper
Use to connect yarn and make a toy like sling shot
Bang on a drum or other object
Bookmark
Flag holder (use tape)
To keep a door from closing all the way (may need heavier object)
Stir coffee
Take hair out of bathtub ring
Fidget between fingers when nervous
Write with (of course)
Play fetch with dog
Keep a plant held up in garden
Poke to see how dry the dirt in a plant pot is
Play catch
Place under bedsheet to bug/irritate someone
Dress up in clothes and make a doll (add yarn)
Sketch, trace, smudge
Sharpen it
Throw it away
Chew it
Look at it
Dig into garbage disposal
Twirl hair

Conclusions:
My husband is a ‘neuro-typical.’ Also known as an NT. He is considered mainstream and typical when compared to a person who has a neurological syndrome such as Aspergers. I have Aspergers. When examining the two lists some interesting things come to mind. Of course I am a female and Bob is a male. So this aspect of gender also affects the results.

1. I saw what I would do with the pencil in full imagery and thusly often included exactly what the pencil would be used for. I added specifics. I didn’t just write ‘sword.’ I wrote “a miniature sword for a small mouse or creature.” Bob wrote a simple answer without specifics. It didn’t cross his mind to do it any other way. He thought he got the point of the question and answered accurately.

2. I paid attention to detail because in the back of my mind I didn’t want to confuse anyone that might read my list. Bob didn’t consider what other people would think at all.

3. I didn’t list logical things such as ‘write’ until the creative aspects were thought of. My mind immediately went to creativity. Bob’s mind immediately went to logical.

4. The question read what I “can do” with a pencil. In my mind I interpreted that question as actions and saw people or animals doing the action. In my mind someone or something always was attached to the pencil. In Bob’s mind it was only the pencil. He saw the pencil doing it in isolation.

5. I was actively involved emotionally with each thing I thought of, simultaneously evaluating if I’d like that action, how useful it was, and if it was truly feasible. I included minor details such as tape, flat surface, etc. to guide another or in essence to ‘prove’ it was feasible. Bob just thought about a pencil.

6. I knew in the back of my mind if I wrote short answers I could write a longer list but I had to add detail, even though I knew my list would be shorter. Bob didn’t even consider detail.

7. I saw the pencil naturally being used in my mind. Images popped up and I wrote what I saw. I used my environment to help me. If I saw I plant where I was sitting I could connect an idea. Bob didn’t look around his environment. He said he used ‘mental effort’ to come up with his answers.

8. I worried about my list. I questioned if all the ideas were valid. I questioned whether the one thing I started writing before the timer started counted. I worried about the time. I watched the clock. As the time ticked I evaluated in my mind how much time was left and the average number I was writing. I was distracted by the time and numbers. I thought about my typing speed and the typing speed verses writing speed. Bob worried about the amount of time left a little bit.

9. I pictured and evaluated each thing after I wrote it. As I went on to write the next thing on my list, I was still thinking about the first one. Had I used the right words, enough words, and described what I saw? For example I was concerned about the door wedge (to keep door from closing all the way) and thusly added ‘may need heavier object.’ I knew I couldn’t add more detail without taking up time, and that bothered me some. I could think of new items while still focusing on previous items at the same time. Bob just wrote his list. (He did say “that’s cool” when I read him this number nine; so there’s that.)

10. My thinking is complex. I wrote to keep a door from closing all the way (may need heavier object) and bang on drum or other object. Bob’s thinking was basic core segment from the start. He wrote wedge and drumstick.

My husband has a high verbal fluency. This is evident by the length of his list, and he was able to write without pause, until the timer stopped. He was able to think of many things. I have a high verbal fluency as well but my list was much different than my husband’s list. My list was affected by my imagination and thinking in pictures, and somewhat by my anxiety of time and worrying about what others would understand of what I wrote. Any person, NT or not NT, can have a high verbal fluency. But, as mentioned earlier, I think people with Aspergers generally will demonstrate high verbal fluency and use of imagination in their list.

Feel free to share your list and conclusions below in comment section.

Here is a study:
Verbal fluency in adults with high functioning autism or Asperger syndrome

425: What if I don’t have Aspergers?

| Aspergers Girls

What if I DON’T have Aspergers

But what if I don’t have Aspergers? What if this is just me clinging onto a thread in hopes of not being alone in this world?
What if we are just aliens, light-workers, empaths, sensitives or advanced spiritual beings?
What if I am a reincarnated sage?
What if I am a Buddhist paying for previous karmic waves?
What if I am truly crazy, self-inventing my own condition to feel more normal in claiming I am unique?
What if Aspergers doesn’t exist and this is just a human condition?
What if this whole Aspergers is a trend and being over diagnosed?
What if I am making this up in my head to fit in with a collective?
What if I find out from an expert I have something else and not Aspergers?
Am I smart enough to have Aspergers?
Am I odd enough?
Am I enough of anything?
Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee stop!
Who cares?
Really?
Get rid of the name. Call it a chicken-foot fungus dance. Call it the mushroom’s puke master. Call it genius. Call it gifted. Call it looney. I don’t really care!
WE found each other. And WE have more in common than not after years of feeling isolated and alone.

I don’t care what man-invented name, based on a collective documented list of traits based on the observation of some male behavior years ago, was the reason we met. WE met. And that’s what Aspergers means to me: Union.

We are together. We are no longer alone.
Perhaps we ARE from another planet.
Perhaps we are the only humans really here and the rest are reptilians.
Perhaps we are light-workers.
Perhaps we are entirely lost and confused.
Perhaps we are crazy nuts.
Perhaps we are the change the world needs.
Perhaps we are a trend, a wake, or a breaking.
Perhaps we are the new normal.
Perhaps we are just like everyone else.
I don’t care.
Stop trying to analyze what we are and who we are and why we are, and accept WE ARE.
There is no you verses them. There is no us verses them. There is no separation.
It is all just manmade games.
We just managed to survive.
To keep our heads above water.
To see through the madness.
To understand there are things, definite things that need changing in this world.
And if we want to start focusing on self-awareness, self-love, and self-acceptance, then YAY US.
I don’t care how you get there….to that point where life starts to make sense and you start to realize you aren’t alone and aren’t imperfect and have so much to give the world.
I just want you to know YOU matter and YOU make a difference and YOU are never alone.
Stop tromping over our parade, all of you doubters, critics, and people who feel the need to give your two cents about something that isn’t your journey.
I don’t care.
I really don’t.
Beyond the need I feel to tell the rest, who have struggled in pain so very long, that you are right where you need to be. Whatever you need to hold onto to build yourself up after this world has attempted to break you down, is what you need and is YOUR choice.
Shine, shine, shine.
It doesn’t matter if you have Aspergers or don’t, or if this word never exists again.
Let go of the word and reasons.
Just let go.
Breathe.
And be.
I love you.
Whatever you choose to call yourself.

424: To the Girl in the Altered State

| Aspergers Girls

To the girl in the altered state

Every once in a while, about six to ten times a month, I enter an altered state in which I cannot recognize or reason with myself. Mostly this happens during the week before my menstrual cycle, but also occurs sporadically throughout the span of a moon-cycle. I am not separate or without consciousness of experience during this altered time, but I am definitely separated from a healthy self-image and from a sense of hope. Partially, this state of being can be explained through the symptoms of PMDD and/or severe PMS. Partially, this altered mood state can be explained through environmental influences, such as exposure to people, foods, weather fluctuations, and events. Causes of the root of these states can also be found through the intake of others’ words, actions, body language, moods and emotions. These altered states are intensified, if not jump-started, by the complexities of my thoughts, including my innate ability to scaffold one thought upon the other, and then root my ideas through advance complexities of processing equivalent in design to a skyscraper building upward and outward with exploding and expanding firework-like threads.

Inside my mind is a jumble of ideas edging their way through to exactness and refinement, entering a filter of dissection and biopsy, spit out into a conveyer belt which feeds each piece with microscopic filaments of possibility. As my mind functions much like a separate entity of its own, I get carried away in the potential outcomes, swept into immensely thick images and awakening, I can both feel, create, and to some degree control.

Here is the only place I find a semblance of control, and because I can find this peace, this place of no unexpected upset, but instead a returning again and again to the matter at hand–this machine of causation digesting and reproducing with each throb of my heart—I can remain here unaware of the happenings around me, the things occurring outside of my own thinking.

This serves me well, my thinking-machine, in times of deadlines, needed production, problem solving and sorting. I have the capacity to debate both sides of an argument with ease, essentially seeing with expansive foresight the end-trail of either avenue taken. Whether I be supporting myself or another’s endeavors, I am more likely than not to typically find beneficial solutions and make beneficial progress with any given task. I am able to mass-produce with focused concentration and powerful self-drive. Nothing is forced, induced or made to happen; the output of self happens instinctually and naturally, the process akin to the effortlessness in which a flower unfolds. I am neither under pressure or in a state of panic. More so I find myself in a blissful alleyway of escape with my troubles blocked out on one side and my worries blocked out on the other. I have managed, through simply being, to slip past both the mundaneness and challenges of life, and bask in an inner-state of creation. Here, in this creation state I am blissfully working. Pouring out information in graphic and written form, both in hardcopy and in my mind. What I see is transmitted and then drafted. Draft upon draft is reassembled and reconstructed, both internally and externally. I am me, yet I am not, producing with an extremeness I am familiar with, a rush of production that seems to resemble an urgency and need, though, to the creator resembles a necessity of action—something one was born to do and must do to survive.

Given a subject, I can learn mass amounts of information in a short amount of time, not because I am told to or want to, but because I am internally driven to completely fill the vacant spaces in my mind with input. I am taking in what I crave, as if the newness was the exact food I needed. I have nothing to prove to anyone. And thoughts of improvement of self spurs feelings of the potentiality for pride. This pride feels like poison to me, indigestible and damaging to the whole of self. I create with passion and fever, but not for the reasons others might suspect. And the suspicion, the judgment, the expectations of onlookers, is the first part that disturbs what I take in. The latter part which causes disruption being the layers of guilt I wade through for being what I am in the way I delve into the alley of reprieve. Together, the meanderings of thoughts, including the knowingness of what I am and who I am (in the way I deviate from the world-proclaimed norm), the indigestible thoughts of feasibly self-filling through prideful ways, the known ways in which I appear to others through my behavior, and the guilt which soaks through, leaves me in a split state—one in which I am in the alley of reprieve but pushing back a self-punishing voice that regurgitates what I have been shown and told through experience and exposure of normalcy.

It is the processing and creation that occurs within me that both feeds me and causes the worst agony. Yet I can discard of the self-defeating thoughts most of the time, except the handful of times in which I am in an altered state and feeling low self-worth, as previously mentioned above.

During these moments, which I have called altered states, when I am emotionally at my end, sad and what could be labeled ‘depressed,’ I am tested by my own thoughts and circumstances, inventing ways to end my agony, and undoubtedly coming up empty with possible recourse and explanation. My mind takes off again, as if bound to creation with engines revved. Only this time I am digesting bits and pieces that don’t make sense and leave me suffering. I am stuck on the loop, a conveyor belt that keeps recirculating with the same information over and over. I keep misfiring inside, keep trying to solve the unsolvable, and inevitably end up disappointed and forlorn.

I can step back while in this state and feel myself adrift, unable to help or pull myself outside of a surrounding feeling of doom. Not one to dismiss possibilities or explanation, not setting aside feasible reasons, I keep forming hypothesis and testing theories through personal trial and error, digging myself deeper into confusion and darkness. The only way out is to sleep, to process verbally with another, to create through writing or art, or to cry. When I am on overload, having reinvented the same scenes again and again, dizzy and upset by my own making, I might have a panic attack.

During these times of reconstructing the same thoughts over and over, I cling to my greatest fear of the moment. For me this is usually attached to abandonment, sickness and death. I see these fears in full picture, too. And having died a thousand ways through various ailments or found myself worthless in forever isolation by all I love, I become exhausted. In theory, I suppose, I climb into a storybook of sorts, living out alternate lives again and again, wherein I am not the heroine but the doomed sufferer. If not a storybook than a vivid horror film in which the characters all dissolve and I am left alone in a sucking suffocating darkness that breathes me into a state of hopelessness. Because my mind is the way it is, for whatever cause or reason, the very tool that creates masterpieces is the same tool that creates my demise. In this way, the same control I lack in being swept into the alley of reprieve is the same tool I lack that keeps me from being sucked into crushing isolation.

Having tried various measures to offset these altered-states, I have found that some things can make a difference. But usually these measures are unexpected, unpredictable, and cannot be created through planning or intervention. The only thing that stops my altered-states is the unexpected. A few ways I am pulled out might include circumstances such as a joyful surprise, a state of urgency in which I need to help another or solve a pending challenge or expected occurrences such as a good friend visiting from out of town or a celebrated accomplishment.

Time and time again I have wished I had a letter to read to myself during this altered state. Ideally, I would benefit from videotaping myself reminding myself I will be okay because during the dark hours it seems nothing will ever stop the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain.

Dear Girl in the Altered-State,

You are here again, and you knew you would be; even though you think this is a new thing, it’s not! I know this time you think this is it, the end, the worst, the real test you will fail, the trial that will end you. Again, it’s not. You are fine. You are momentarily lost in a loop like a time traveler who has lost her way. The key word to remember is ‘momentarily.’

‘This too will pass. This too will pass.’ You aren’t going anywhere. You aren’t checking out. You aren’t crazy, and you are certainly not dying. No more than anyone else on earth, anyhow. You are a mortal and a human being and you are affected by so much in this world. You take in mass amounts of information, much of what you can’t even recognize until it is spewed out the other side through you, like some salmon flying upstream and landing on shore.

You are enough. I know you think you are not. But you are. You are pretty and smart and lovely. You are sweet and kind and caring. I know you think you aren’t good enough, no matter how hard you try and that you aren’t worthy. But you are.

In a few days you will be smiling again and loving life. Here are some important things to remember. The rest let go. All of it. I mean it. Let go of the worry, fret, regret, upset, and all that makes you mourn. Cry if you need to but don’t hold it in, and follow this list like a trail of breadcrumbs that will bring you home.

I love you. I love you so very much. You are brave and my princess, and you are never alone. You will lose your faith during this time, but the angels are still here. You will lose yourself, but you are still here. You will question everything and everyone, and not believe a positive word out of anyone’s mouth, including mine, but that is okay.

Still with all of this said, you will think this is it, the very last straw, the end of it all and the beginning of everlasting suffering. That’s bull. It really is. It’s a dark voice invented in some alley way in your mind. We don’t know why it happens, but it does. Probably a side effect of all your processing, like the sludge overspill form a well-greased engine. That’s all this is: an end result of your mind at work.

Don’t trust the negative messages and don’t make any decisions. And believe in us, in you, and finding your way back. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to fix yourself. You are perfect. And you don’t have to search for a way out. It will just come. The custodian is in there right now cleaning up the gunk with a mop. Just wait. That’s all. It’s okay if you are impatient and you don’t believe me. All is okay. I know that anything on this list will take all of your energy, but doing just one will help you. Remember I am here waiting, and you will come out of this altered state soon. For now pamper yourself and know you are loved.

1. Shower or take a salt bath. You will instantly feel better
2. Walk and if you can’t walk then dance to music. Move. Just move.
3. Accomplish one small task, like emptying the dishwasher, one little thing will show you that you are okay and capable of productive activity.
4. Create through your sorrow: dance, paint, draw, write, or do something that spills the emotions out of you into reality.
5. Process aloud with loved ones how you feel.
6. Treat yourself to food, you will be starved during this time, and that is okay. In a few days, once rebalanced, your healthy eating habits return.
7. Avoid the mirror and taking photos of yourself. How you view you is not reality. You are creating flaws and negative messages when you see yourself.
8. Go outdoors. Even if for a moment. Let your feet touch the earth.
9. Get in contact with nature, feed the wild crow or pet your crow, stare at the water, breathe in the air, soak in the green of your surroundings. Don’t hide out in your house, you will suffocate.
10. Allow yourself times of no production. Just be. And don’t analyze. If you need to listen to the same song over and over do it. If you need to watch a movie over and over, do it. Don’t judge yourself, your actions, or what you are doing. You are enough, and it is okay to rejuvenate.
11. Avoid triggers that increase anxiety including gluten products, coffee, and exposing yourself to people that drain your energy.
12. It’s okay to say no.
13. It’s okay to let go of your responsibilities, slow down, and take care of yourself.
14. It’s okay to cry and to be afraid.
15. Don’t try to solve, fix, or understand what is happening. It is out of your control and that is okay.

I love you, my precious one.
You are enough.

423: I am enough

| Aspergers Girls

Life isn’t simple. It never will be.

As hard as I try to make it so, life will continue to be complex and awe-inspiring, heart-rendering and heart-breaking, and full of a mystery so full that to attempt to empty the bottle of unknown would leave me drowning within the first rendered droplet.

I am this and I am that.

And I see myself as constantly changing, as if I have lived a thousand life times in the span of a few days.

My mind is preoccupied and occupied by both my thoughts and my conclusions, and this gigantic network of interwoven threads of information.

I am constantly spinning. Unlike the spider’s quest, my web doesn’t begin anew; instead I build, scaffolding off of previously filtered information again and again. Some gigantic enterprise continually producing inside of this person I seem to be.

It is odd to look around at the world and take in the rules and regulations, the patterns and shapes, and the ways in which I am told to be and even see.. am told to understand and even how to use my mind to comprehend.

It is odd and extremely confusing to live in this world of extreme rigidness when such a remarkable being I be, full of potential and possibility.

Yet, indeed, I understand the need for structure. Of course without some sort of system all would fall apart and fail; at least that is what I have been told.

That teaching along with so many more that my mind hurts, and like the bottle of unknown spills out into more masses of reasoning upon reasoning.

I want to be simple, I suppose. If I think long and hard about the idea, which takes me a matter of seconds, I can see how simplicity breeds comfort—a false type of security that doesn’t exist in nature. I can see how simplicity eases the soul and leaves one freer to breathe and carry on. And I can imagine myself simple and free, drifting through life with the troubles past me because the challenges were never captured long enough to matter.

But what of my heart? So large it grows. I cannot help but want to complicate matters. Not because I long for disturbance or am the eager eater of drama. Nor nearer is the fact that I am in need of complexity. It is just how I am made: built into this someone who meanders to and fro inside a self that meanders to and fro; an insider watching through a window as the outsider moves. Each step we make either together or separate; each step leading deeper into a knowing that nothing is within control. Even as all about people reach, stabbing onward like phantoms attempting to grasp a steering wheel of hope.

I am not melancholic. At least not always, and essentially not at this instant; still I see enough and know enough to understand that no easement of woes exists. And I watch as bystander within bystander observing the masses create havoc of life in an attempt to alleviate a suffering they do not understand. And I watch, waiting for the games to end, waiting for people to come home to their own selves and to stop the games that seem so endless and limiting all at once. Restricted with manmade boundaries and manmade torture to be something and someone else through process and progress, when all along the someone was already divine and perfectly whole.

It is a type of treachery many succumb to through manipulation, repeated exposure and through the absorption of the spillage of the profiteering fools. How we are played as pawns and how I am made to watch helplessly the empire that calls itself wholesome.

I am not this gentle foolish child set innocent into the world. I am wisdom unfolding through and through. Cherishing the dance I play out in my head, as the dance outside in the place called reality is folded into layers of hatred and trickery. For I am escaping all that I see aching outside. And I am pulling in the answers to the folly and pain. I am reworking the outcomes and calculating the events’ offspring, hoping to counteract the wickedness that seeps through the avenues of discourse and greed.

I am enough into myself and need not partake in the ways that were made by the few to reinvent the perfect ones into blundering self-hating conformist.
And I am enough to know that when the season passes and the lies are exposed, I will remain the same. I will still be here with my honesty, integrity, and abyss of hope-filled love.

I refuse to be created into something I am not. To be made into something that is easier for others to comprehend and forget. To be ironed out and made flat and non-dimensional, so the waves I create no longer disturb those adrift in their own murky dark sea.

I am me. And in this I am everything. In this I can reach out my hand to another who is still breathing by her own accord and wish, through the pain of the world, and take hold of purity and hope.

I am me, and in embracing all I am, I have the capacity to embrace all that another be, before the blindfolds were attached and the ground moved asunder, so that floating ghosts appeared where banished souls once traveled.

I am enough and empowered with light, so that where I travel the warriors of angels come and guide me.

In my folly, in my surrender, in my imperfection painted as a coat of varnish on my silky silhouette, I am still enough.

I am everything and nothing. I am entirely filled and emptied.

And in each way I move and think and live, I am a testimony to truth and fairness.

I refuse to be what the world wants to make me into. Refuse to climb out of who I am to be someone I am not and leave but a shell of what I was created to be. For no one can fulfill their potential half-empty or entirely gone. And no one can withstand the weight of the world beneath the burden of their own disheartened soul.

Whole I stand. Undone and complete. Entirely me. And when the others shake because I am, I shall reach out again to find the hand that used to be, and offer my love. Over and over I shall reach, if not into my outer world then into my own self to pull out what has been formed and blended into the miracle of making, and to offer out what is no longer mine and undoubtedly the thread of love that keeps us sewn in strength.

To pull out of the game long enough to remember I was neither born a pawn or made into less than enough. And to remember I am here in serenity, fulfilling my dreams, the ones born onto me beyond the misery of fools’ making.