by Henk ter Heide on Sunday May 24, 2009
Last week I wrote that I would print out a picture of some actress and draw a portrait of her. But it’s taking a little longer then I expected.
I’ve run into a little printer problem and a big self confidence problem.
This is not the first self confidence problem I’ve had over the last few years. And every time I find that I get very angry with you, my visitors.
I like to compare myself with Vincent van Gogh a famous Dutch painter.
Nowadays his paintings sell for millions of dollars a piece but in his time he wasn’t famous at all. His brother bought a few paintings from him but that was about it. He even checked himself into a madhouse at some point in his live and nobody cared.
That’s far cry from how I feel my live as an artist.
I’m not famous at all but I do have a public that’s waiting for every thing I have to say and every thing I have to show.
Sometimes it feels as though they are like vultures, ever circling.
It’s not fair.
But then after a few days my self confidence problem passes and I realize that I’m the one who’s not being fair…
I’ve bought a new bed.
To make room in my bedroom I have to move a cupboard that for years has been standing in the room. I don’t have any room for it in the rest of my house so I will be throwing it out.
Curiously I opened one of the drawers to find out what was in side and found five sketch pads I’ve filled over the years.
Looking them over I remember why I have this blog.
Every few years I feel creative and buy a sketch pad and draw for a while.
But every time I get at a point where I want to draw something that is a little more challenging then everything I had done up to that point and I’m struck by self confidence problems and stop drawing.
Then after a few months/years I feel creative again and buy a sketch pad and start over again.
That’s why I have this blog.
To feel the pressure of people waiting for my next drawing to force myself to look passed problems. Problems with self confidence or any other type.
This is a drawing I did some years ago. I found it in one of the sketch pads. Although I’m sure I had some kind of idea about it when I drew it, I don’t remember what it was.
by Henk ter Heide on Sunday November 2, 2008
Dealing with real anger.
The series about what I learn in cognitive behavior therapy consist of the following parts:
- Cognitive behavior therapy
- Strong anonymous feelings
- 751
- Feelings scared
- Accepting comments selectively
- Mad as Hell
After I discovered that I in a sense caused my own anger I expected that I would stop talking to myself but it got worse.
It took me a few days before I realized that was because I was actually angry at a guy at my work. This lazy bastard has been doing only halve his work for years. The problem is that is that mister vd B is a manager four levels up. Two levels below the general manager. He causes a lot of problems for me and my colleagues.
Late December last year he subtracted 192 hours overtime from my time sheet instead of adding them. Which in effect meant that I started this year with a negative total of vacation hours. I found out about this last May when I wanted to plan a holiday.
I was told that it didn’t matter. I could still plan my holiday and the time sheet would be corrected.
Two months after that I found that the problem still wasn’t solved. So I started a complaining campaign that resulted in absolutely nothing.
In September I finally got to talk to mister vd B and he acted surprised. As if this was the first time anyone told him about this. He looked at my time sheet for 2008 and told me that I must have made a mistake with my time sheet from 2007. But he was willing to look into it.
One week later I got a new time sheet for 2007. He had actually forge it.
My 6 weeks period of sick leave in October and November was missing, instead he had written 3 weeks of holiday. And he had given me 39 holiday hours in the first week of the Christmas holiday!
I only work 31 hours a week.
After this I must have been very angry but I didn’t recognize the feeling.
I filed an official complained at human resources and demanded an answer by the 25the of October. In the letter I mention some details about Promen’s fraud with reimbursement of traveling expenses and told them that I would send a copy of the letter to the union if they didn’t respond in time.
Then I waited.
And as I learned to recognize my feelings of anger I decided that I shouldn’t go to the union but to the police.
The 25the of October came and went without a response from Promen.
I did hear via the grapevine that this lady of human recourses had talk with mister vd B and that he had promised to correct his “mistake” at some point in the future.
I was also told that there wasn’t much more that human resources could do. Which is very strange because Promen has rules about what will happen to people who don’t preform their jobs.
After fair warning they are sacked.
Last Monday night I was so mad I couldn’t sleep.
I wrote a little note about a few other fraudulent things mister vd B has done. (Among others forging my psychological examination in 2002. As a result of that I didn’t find out that I’m autistic until 2006.)
I told the lady of human resources that if I wouldn’t find an answer in my mailbox by Friday I would notify the police and send her the note via Promen’s internal mail service.
I don’t believe I’ve ever been so angry as I was Tuesday morning on route to my work. People must have thought I was mad as I was yelling to myself at the top of my voice.
Wednesday my manager told me that I will be having a talk with someone on November the 10the at 10 o’clock. He didn’t know with whom but I would get a notice in the mail.
I didn’t get a notice in the mail so I still don’t know with whom I will be talking but I’m assuming that it will be with the general manager. He is the only one in the company with the power to sack mister vd B. Which is one of the two solutions to the problem that I find acceptable.
The other being that mister vd B is convicted for fraud and spends the next few years in jail.
by Henk ter Heide on Sunday April 22, 2007
It seems that a lot of what I’m doing the last couple of months is relearning things I knew as a child and trying to loose things I’ve learned in the last twenty years. But I’m also learning some new skills.
Like most autistics my thinking process is very visual. Thinking about something is like watching a little movie that is screened in my head. When I think about what I need (shopping list) a stream of pictures pops into my mind.
Until a few month ago I didn’t know that this was a strange way of thinking. It suits me and I never gave it a second thought.
The only thing is that thinking in pictures gives you a disadvantage when you want to say something. “A Picture Is Worth One Thousand Words” is very treu. The problem is that it’s very difficult to think of those thousand words the moment you want to say something. So as a child I didn’t talk very much. Usely not much more then five or six sentences in a week.
But as an adult you are bound to run into a lot of problems if you don’t talk. Many people think it’s very funny to abuse someone who doesn’t talk.
About twenty years ago I learned to talk in my mind. In the beginning I practised for situation I was expecting in which I had to talk to people. But it never was enough. I allways had the feeling that I had to practise more. The last few years I was allways practising. 98% of the conversation I practised never happened.
But all that practising was exhausting.
The last few months I’m learning to stop the talking in my head.
One of the thinks I never managed as a child was how to deal with anger.
Most neuro typical curse and yell when they are angry. I have tried it but it doesn’t work for me. Talking when I’m angry just gives me the feeling that I don’t understand myself.
But I’ve found a solution. I have found a large block of something in my mind. Tied it with a rope ( I think) and bash it in to things. Probebly it does a lot of damage. But mostly it’s a relief to feel all that anger be released.
Beating them
by Henk ter Heide on Saturday April 21, 2007
Yesterday I had a fight with the owner of a local pub I have been frequenting for the last ten years. He bought the place nine years ago and soon after that started to make strange jokes: When I came in he would tell me that he would be glad if I left. When I’d leave he’d comment that I overstayed my welcome etc.
Being autistic I have a hard time judging whether somebody is making a joke or not. But most of the time he was a nice man who didn’t bother me. So I assumed that it was some kind of joke, an anoying joke but still a joke.
But a few months ago an other costumor reacted insulted after hearing this joke. She told him that see didn’t like him making this kinds of remarks to me. So it clearly wasn’t a joke.
The last few month I’ve been asking him to stop making this jokes. He didn’t. Yesterday I lost my temper. There were a few other costumers in the place who took my side. The owner told me that I was no longer welcome in his bar because I didn’t like his humor. To which one of the other costumers reacted by saying that he wouldn’t visit this place any more. This angered the owner even more and he told this costumer he wasn’t welcome either. Then he told me to leave and never come back because, as an owner, he had the right to insult and abuse his customers.
Explosion
I’ve been thinking about why I go to this place. Twenty years ago I used to go to a pub called “de Paap” (an old Dutch word for monk). It was a nice pub with a lot of young customers with whom I didn’t have much contact but I liked watching them and listening to what they were saying. But sadly it went out of business after a few years.
“Borsolino” was my new favored watering hole. The crowed in this place was much older. I wasn’t really interested in the things they talked about but the character of the place was nice. A bit like a big living room. It radiated a kind of freedom.
Ten years ago, after working there for sixteen years the owner decided that she wanted to change her life and stopped with the business.
Which left me without a favored pub. After some searching I settled with “de Passage”.
I don’t like it there. I never have. I don’t like the owner very much. Some of the customers are nice people but I hardly see them. Most of the time the place is empty. (I never understood how he earned his money).
The owner is filthy. He drools. Not all the time and when he started out nine years ago it was much worse then it is now. But he still does it. Even in the kitchen while he is preparing diner for customers. (I don’t order diner if his cook isn’t present).
This cook is a nice fellow who has a nice dog he brings to the job ones in a while.
The trouble is that the only place where he can house this dog is in the scullery. Which means that the dog runs back and forth through the kitchen which isn’t allowed by Dutch law because of the hygiene.
I think I’m going to call the health and savety expector next monday. Let’s see what he thinks of my jokes.
Accepting comments selectively
by Henk ter Heide on Sunday October 26, 2008
Dealing with anger by selectively listening to comments.
The series about what I learn in cognitive behavior therapy consist of the following parts:
One of the assignment of CBT two weeks ago was to find the psychical sensations associated with feeling angry.
Seeing as how easy it was to find the psychical sensation associated with feeling fear I didn’t expect that to be very hard. But it turned out to be impossible.
Although I’ve been angry several times in the last two weeks I never noticed that I was angry until the anger passed. So I did notice that being angry causes you to raise your voice. And I noticed that I have trouble expressing myself when I’m angry. I kind of loose the ability to talk.
But I don’t know how it feels.
Talking about this with the psychiatrist, he suggested to investigate whether I have some thought or feeling just before I get angry. So if I can’t recognize my anger by the psychical sensation I might at least be able to recognize it by the thoughts I have just before.
That assignment turned out to be far more easier then I expected. You would think that if you aren’t aware of your feeling of anger you wouldn’t know what happens just before you get angry. But that turned out to be obvious.
I’m always commenting on myself. Or actually I’m always imaging people commenting on me.
Turns out that when I imagine someone talking me down, I feel scared. When I imagine someone giving me a comment in which he tells me that he didn’t listen to something I had to say, I feel anger.
After I found that, I figured I should go to the next level. Knowing what scares and angers me, I should be able to avoid getting those feelings altogether.
But I’ve tried for years to stop myself from imagining people who are commenting on me. I’ve never succeeded and I really don’t know how I could. Further more the comments I imagine that people are giving me are based on comments I really get from people. They frighten and anger me just as much when I get them for real as when I imagine it happening.
Thinking about something a Steve Pavlina says somewhere in his blog: You can decide for yourself which comments have meaning for you and which don’t.
Sometimes people are only commenting because it’s easier for them to let you do the work then to do the work themselfs.
I decided to only accept two kinds of comments:
This is the point I reached last wednesday. After living with these rules for two days it seemed as though all my problems were solved.
I came across several situation where my feelings about myself improved significantly after using these rules. Some of those situations only existed in my imagination while others were actually happening.
The most important one was when I told my father that I had found out that something I used to fight about with my mother really wasn’t my fault. Most autistics have this problem.
But he didn’t believe me!
That horrified me until I realized that it really didn’t matter anymore. This isn’t something I can change, whether he believes me or not. It’s not my responsibility to decide what he believes. And last but not least I been living on own for the better part of 30 years so he can’t really hurt me.
I really expected that this would be the end of my problems. That I would stop talking to myself and start drawing and writing art reviews again.
But it didn’t. The talking to myself has actually gotten worse. I can’t find the energy to draw and to write reviews. (Although I will be publishing the blog carnival next wednesday.)
But the anger and the fear are gone!
I just have to figure out what’s next.
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