by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday September 23, 2008
A new therapy is going to influence the way I draw.
The series about what I learn in cognitive behavior therapy consist of the following parts:
- Cognitive behavior therapy
- Strong anonymous feelings
- 751
- Feeling scared
- Accepting comments selectively
- Mad as Hell
The last 25 years I’ve seen the inside of many an psychiatrists office. Talking about my feelings they tried to help me with all the problems I felt I had. I did learn to talk about the feelings and thoughts and goals they thought that I should have.
But it never worked. I always had the feeling that I had more problems.
At some point a psychiatrist accused me of being addicted to talking to psychiatrists. After that I stopped seeing them. Not because I felt that the problems were solved. But because I felt they just didn’t listen to me.
Last week I’ve started a new therapy. Or at least I don’t think it’s completely new, but it is to me.
This therapy is especially geared towards people who are autistic.
Although I’ve only had two sessions and don’t jet know how this therapy will work it has already solved more problems and given more clarity then any therapy I’ve had until now.
Analyzing my toilet problems I’ve found that I had taught myself to go to the toilet right before I left my home and again in the train on route to my work.
Which means that if the train is late (which happens every 1 out of 2 days) I have a slight panic attack. And since panic intensifies bowl movements the problems keeps getting worse.
The solution turned out to be very easy. I just have to tell myself not to use the toilet in the train but the toilet at work.
(Of course one of the main differences between autistics and non-autistics is that we look at the logic of a situation while you look at your feelings: Convince and autistic that smoking is bad for your health and he will quit. Try to convince a non-autistic and he will tell you that it makes him feel alright and therefore it can’t be bad for his health.)
A problem that is getting clarified has to do with drawing.
I started drawing and this blog in the hopes that I would learned how I should use my photographic memory. But in the last year I found that I had ever more problems remembering and drawing nice pictures.
I thought that it had something to do with my lack of drawing skills. But thanks to the therapy I’m finding that it has something to do with my lack of memory skills.
More specifically. Trying to remember details in picture evokes very strong feelings. Although I don’t recognize the feelings I’m assuming they are nice feelings.
But I still find it very hard to deal with strong feelings that I don’t recognize. To the point were I tend to avoid those strong feelings. And since remembering details evokes strong feelings I tend to avoid remembering details.
In the therapy I’m going to work on recognizing strong feelings and dealing with strong feelings. I’m fairly optimistic that my drawings will improve as I learn to deal with those feelings.
And I’m hoping that my computer problems will allow me the time to write about this.
by Henk ter Heide on Sunday October 28, 2007
I’ve finally found a solution to a problem that has been bugging me for the last 30 years.
For the last 30 years or so I’ve been talking to myself. Well, not really talking to myself. I had imaginary talks with other people.
As a child I was always afraid that I would get them confused with the real thing and would at some point start having those conversations out loud. Some 20 years ago that fear became a reality when I indeed started to have my imaginary conversations out loud. Although I never confused them with real conversations, people must have thought I was mad.
Over the years I have had innumerous theories about why I would talk to myself. Maybe it was a way to deal with tension. Maybe it was a method to suppress feelings. Maybe it was a method to think about problems. Maybe it was a way of talking to people when I had no one to talk to.
Over and over again I tried to get rid of this habit by using a brute force method. I thought that if I just were strong enough I should be able to succeed. But I wasn’t
Every time I started with not talking it felt good but within a few hours my motivation would be gone. For some reason talking to myself would feel nice again for a while and I forgot that I was trying not to do it.
Yesterday I finally realized that there is a lot of repeating going on in the imaginary conversations I have with myself. Often I just keep repeating one sentence and even when it gets very annoying I just can’t stop myself.
Thinking a little more about that I realized that actually all of my imaginary conversations have some repeating element to them. First I think of something and then I start talking about it.
In every conversation I repeat at least ones but usually dozens of times.
Loving to repeat is a major symptom of autism. Actually as much as I had thought about it I never did find this symptom in my own behavior. But here it seems to be.
I’ve made myself a little repeating toy. A chain with beads to fiddle with.
Although I made this toy less then 24 hours ago I already feel a lot more at ease with myself then I ‘ve ever done.
Every time I feel the need to talk to myself I start fiddling with my chain and the feeling fades away.
Even writing this article is a lot easier then usual. Usually it takes me days to write a story. I find a few words that could fit and keep repeating them over and over. That gets so distracting that it takes for ever to come up with some more words.
This time I jumped out of bed at 5.30 AM and the story came in one burst.
by Henk ter Heide on Saturday October 27, 2007
Thinking about the relation between autism and identity.
The last few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between having autism and being autistic.
When I first started writing about autism I talked about having autism primarily because there are more searches for the keyword “autism” then for the keyword “autistic” and I wanted my writings to be found. Even so I had to correct myself several times. I’m prone to using the word autistic.
In the mean time I also read about autism. At first I read about the symptoms of autism and those article were written by experts in the field who always talked about having autism.
The last few months I try to read article that are written by people that have experience with autism themselves. That turns out to be much harder for the simple fact that there don’t seem to be many people with autism who blog about autism.
But the few I’ve found are adamant in their opinion that it should be “having autism” and not “being autistic”.
They seem to hold the same opinion I come across at the sheltered workplace were I work. “I’m not a wheelchair but I sit in a wheelchair.” Or a more clear cut explanation: Not being able to walk or to see or to lift heavy objects is only one of my qualities. It’s not my foremost quality.
But I still haven the feeling that it should be “I am autistic” and not “I have autism”.
So I’ve been thinking about the difference by comparing it to being gay.
I’ve defined myself as being gay, although it is indeed only one of my qualities, ever since I was 18 yr old.
I discovered that I liked men when I was sixteen. For two years I thought about what that meant for my life and what kind of problems I would have to face and by the time I was 18 I came out of the closet. I have had my fair share of problems but I must say that hardly any of them had anything to do with being gay.
But there is more.
I’ve met several thousand gay people over the years and in general they had a good life and were happy with the choices they had made.
I’ve also met some 50 to 60 men who like men and without exception they have a lot of problems. Not only with their sexuality but with all parts of their lifes.
They don’t like the job they have. They don’t like their girlfriends/wifes. They don’t like sneaking around (although they only think about it but never actually do). And most of all they are always afraid that they will be found out and loose every thing they have. (Although I would think they hardly have anything that is worth anything.)
Reading about the problems that people who have autism describe I’m reminded of a lot of the problems that are common with men who like men.
Fears of the consequence of being different. Fears of being bullied. Fears of not fitting in. Stories about painful remarks people have made.
What I miss are stories about solutions. Thinking about the sort of problems you’re likely to face and how you will deal with them. Instead of being blindsided the moment it happens.
So what’s the difference?
Well the difference between having autism and being autistic is something I’m still thinking about. But the difference between being gay and liking men is something I’ve solved years ago.
Sexual preference is hereditary. It’s something that just happens to you. You don’t control it. It’s something that makes you different from other people and they will react.
Identity is a choice you make. Usually it entails thinking a lot about your main characteristics. It means that you’ll have to think about what you want from life and what you want to change. You’ll have to think about what you could change and how to do that. You’ll also have to think about the characteristics you can’t change and how to deal with those. You’ll have to think about the kind of problems you’ll have to face and how to deal with them.
It’s a lot of work to think about identity but at some point you’ll be finished. You will have a blue print with a describtion of the way you want to live your life. Although this blue print won’t prevent you from having problems it will make it a lot easier to deal with those problems.
Twenty five years ago I had dozens of strategies about how I could deal with the kind of problems a gay man could face. I’ve forgotten most of them because I never came across any of those problems.
I’m not sure why that is. Maybe I was to pessimistic about what could go wrong. Or maybe I was able to recognize problems and avoid them. Or maybe I displayed so much selfconfidence that people left me alone.
This time I think it’s probably better to just define an identity for myself to steer my choices. I don’t think it’s a good idea to spend to much energy in thinking out strategies for situations that might never happen.
I define my identity as autistic gay artist who will get back at his ideal weight of 65 kg at some future point.