Personal Blogs

It's been a while since my last blog post so here is a litlle catch up. Ive raced up in Nottingham and came first in my final and beat the Girls4Gold team, which is nice broke a couple records for Exeter but still no medal :/ . My fourth assigment is due soon and the tutorial for this assigment was last week and guess how many people turned up... Yep ONE, me. I know im special but I didn't need a whole classroom to myself. Anyway here is some, I'm not saying all but these two are quite popular, what I mean by that is people who work in the autism field and when i got tested they asked "which argument do you support". I will try and be neutral and list pros and cons of each if I miss something please say.

Argument 1- Autism is a evolutionary step. I know as first glace its sounds odd. This is the arument as I understand it. As most reasonable minds see things there is a thoery of evoulution. In this we came from lizards or small mammals of the time and further back it crated eyes, ears and most of our anatomy as we know it now. Where autism comes in is a lot of us have hightened senses may this be hearing, seeing, smell, touch, taste or all of them. This is a state of evolution which hasn't completely finshed because the brain hasn't mapped these funtions as being that hightened so to cope with this each fuction  has a shut off point where it overloads. It explains whythere is no uniformity in autism. Some other evidents to back it up is that evolution is in constate flux and some of us have better memory, pain toleration and reflexs. Although some of this has to be taught, its there. So depending on this scale it shows people how evolved they are. Also the number of people being dianogsed with autism is growing so it kinda shows that they are more and it is growing soon autism maybe the norm- which will be a change. This is a rough explaintion for everyone, but here are the pros and cons.

Pros:                                                                                                                            

- It explains autism                                                                                                  

-It explains why we have better senses then 'normal' people                          

- Explains the spectrum a little more                                                                           

  Cons:                                                                                     

 - It doesn't explain how we have evovled         

 - Some things have to be taught           

 - It doesn't explain the personality quriks most people with autism have such as being obnoxious or things like twiching

Argument 2- Autism is the human idea of a scarifical lamb

This runs of the same idea with the evolutionalry setting. As most reasonable minds see things there is a thoery of evoulution. In this we came from lizards or small mammals of the time and further back it crated eyes, ears and most of our anatomy as we know it now. Where autism comes in is a lot of us have hightened senses may this be hearing, seeing, smell, touch, taste or all of them. This is a state of evolution which hasn't completely finshed because the brain hasn't mapped these funtions as being that hightened so to cope with this each fuction has a shut off point where it overloads, this is where we would get either killed or put in serous danger. Instead of being the more advance idea of people, we are scarifial lambs who help the collective survive. Apart from those with good memorys because they would record what had happen so the rest of the 'pack' or group you are with don't make the same mistake. Hence why we don't understand danger or have emotions because they aren't needed. Also to help this argument most people with autism when have an overlao of sound or emotions will freeze, instead of running or facing it. 

Pros:                                                                                                                            

- It explains autism                                                                                                

-It explains why we have better senses then 'normal' people                          

- Explains the spectrum a little more                                                          

Cons:

  - It doesn't explain how we have evovled 

       - Some things have to be taught        

- Isn't explained why it is still needed thousands of years later                                                                      

 - Doesn't completely explain atypical autism  or the people with  autism who can adapt or mimic        

I hope this was intresting and i will let you pick which one is you think is right.  

It's the last day of mental health Awareness week and it's focusing on stress... Oh boy. I know they want more people to know more about mental health in general but stress? I know everyone 'suffers' through stress, I'll explain why it's put like that later, let's put it through the eyes of someone who autistic. 

Stress to us is well... life. I could just sum it up like that but I'm going to explain mainly because when I talk to people they don't understand how I see things, but if i do anything general I'm going to focus from a higher functioning autism (& Asperger's) point of veiw. 

Every step I take I see countless dangers, it could be anything from me tripping to a meteor falling on me, most non-autistic brains will filter this. Then add on contacting people so talking or just walking past them, as I think a meteor is going to fall on me you don't have to guess much with might happen with that, still I will say, so to me the person could be harmless to they might spontaneously combust (blow up with no help needed).  When it come to talking to people I don’t know what people could say so I prepare phases to things either to buy me time or to give answer. Also like most people with autism I’m sensitive to the world around me, in my case light and sound. So I have to process all the sounds around me to keep a step ahead of what’s in front of me. I have to adjust my vision so I take in enough light to see but that’s it any more and I feel like my eyes are going to burn and too little and I can’t see. It’s handy at night time but I’m not an owl. On top of things I physical twitches so I have to hide that because if I twitch people have been known to either not help me or treatment like I’m a toddler. Also I also have verbal twitches/outbursts, which make things interesting... I sometimes can’t control somethings I say like “peek-a-boo” or “I’m a turtle”. This doesn’t make life easy but you get use to it. To add some general things in its between 23-28% of all autistics are epileptic and a further 25-36% have epileptic like issues but it’s not epilepsy. In this area all of them combine so that is 48-64% of all autistics will have a epileptic attacks (for the 25-36% it is usually their last) usually it will happen whilst being asleep.  Also when we have meltdowns or shutdowns all what I said times it by ten because most of us won’t even talk until we can handle what is happening. So the idea of handling stress for neurotypicals (non-autistic people) is laughable because before people usually think they have a lot going on or too much happening. For a day just try being us or look at how much you actually have going on. Most of autistics have all this and most likely more. This is partly why I  (and maybe others) have special items such as bowls and forks etc. Or why I have special places I vist or have specific spot I go or sit. If it moves the slightest bit I have to recalculate everything and adapt. 

This is why I phrased stress the way I did to a neurotypical, stress can be a hard thing and I can do other things like affect eating and sleep. To people who are autistic we have the same things but it affects us physically we have so much mental capacity we can starve are brain of anything needed or we can stop any of our senses. In theory with the capacity we have over our brains we can do anything in theory. For neurotypicals there are signs and symptoms for us there’s some signs and some symptoms but no one knows what happens in our heads. Stress is the most certain uncertainty most autistics face and it leads to different forms of self harm and abuse. It also makes any condition/s we have a whole lot worse, take socialising it’s tough but it’s doable, with stress it’s like your mouth is sowed shut and your whole body is wrapped tight. 

I thought I would end of my mental health experiences. Through my autism I have anxiety disorder called selective mutism  also I have anxiety on top. I have also had breakdowns, yes breakdowns-plural, no one noticed accept me. They though I also had depression- but that turned out to be autism. I’ve also had other things happen which I won’t say on here being public. So my mental health was rough and it still is but I take a day at a time because that’s all I can do. I evolve to a different thing every time, like eevee - best excuse for use pokèmon I could find.  

I thought i would talk about what overloads feel like and also what shutdowns feel like aswell. I thought i would firstly explain what overloads and shutdowns are for anyone who isn't ASD litteral. 

Overloads are where all the infomation me or anyone with autism has collected through the day but it usally hasn't been processed yet most of this is filtered by your brain if you don't have autism or some learning disabilites. This will usally be everythign you encounter so everything you see including raw light, hear even if it is distance or background noise, feel inculding air touching your skin and taste including everytime you breathe.  If you think about it you do alot of this in a day and not relise. So if you overload you feel slow and sluggish as your brain can't take anymore thing in but it has to, it's like force feeding your brain to stay awake and take more things on.

Shutdowns/Meltdowns usally happen if someone is overloading or have overloaded this is where we can't take anymore infomation or don't want to and we stop everything we are processing but no how to shut ourselves off so there are usally three ways  someone with autism will go. They will shut them selves off completely, get very angry and bossy- this usally looks like a tantrum that a todler might have at times or they still keep try to keep processing but have to slow everything down to get to a point where they can keep  everything stable. Guess which I do? That right number ...3 ! I have done all these somepoint in my life, but i think if i keep going i will eventually pick up the slack although this dosen't always work in which case most of us will go to the extreme idea of how to stop shutdowns or overloads and that is sleep or in people with higher functions some of us have learn to  shut down the processing part of our brain so we can see the world around us without having to processing it, although we won't  remember what has happened in that bit or what happened through out the day but most of us live with that as msot of us will have an order what was going to happen that day so we can trace our steps, if we can be bothered.

Overloads feel to me like the whole world is going through my head, if i don't know what is going to happen then i just feel like i want to put my head  on a table and hide away. It can feel like everything is caving in around me because everything has slowed down. This could be different  for others. There is a video The National Autistic Society  did which i will link in somewhere...

Shutdowns right this one is tricky to describe if you never had one but i will try my best to describe how it feels to me. To it feels like i am trapped in a mountian of infomation but everytime i move or do anything more informtion gets put on top of me but i can't breathe  more and more. This is where my diffenition of friend comes in as they help me through this or they can help me process this. I only have a few friends who can do this and I'm very thankful they are there.

To make things a bit lighter and more colourful I was working today and i got sidetracked a stared drawing in one of the coffee breaks i had. I drawed the Autism Awareness symbol with its little phases or tag lines- i don't know what it is called. If you can't read them they are  LOVE, TEACH, HOPE, INSPIRE. I know they are in the wrong order slightly but i can't change it .

To me you can look at it two ways as a person or parent: you can LOVE them for being them. TEACH them about life and how to get through. Install HOPE inthem to live life to the fullest and from there HOPEfully you can INSPIRE them to be the best of them.

Or

There is the the awareness route which you LOVE your community to TEACH the community about autism and how to be understanding towards autism. From there you HOPE people will continue to listen and understand and you INSPIRE more awareness in your community.

Anyway here is a picture of the picture, if found the limt of what photo can put on hopefully you can see the photo through a shortcut (at the top). I think it was just too good to show.  ;)