by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday March 23, 2010
For the last few years I’ve been playing a kind of game with my self. I look at an object; a tree, car or park bench. And while I’m looking at it I try to imagine it.
Doing that feels as a kind of memory practice.
That is, I’m not sure whether I’m improving my memory. But it feels like that.
The problem until recently was that it also invoked a very strong feeling. So strong that I never knew whether it was a good feeling or not.
But a few weeks ago I noticed that the feeling had changed. It’s still a very strong feeling and I still don’t recognize it. But I’m now sure that’s a good feeling.
So the last few weeks I’ve been looking a lot. At everything around me. At everything I would want to draw.
And I finally realized something that’s probably obvious for people who are not autistic. But I never saw it.
The background of an object is very important.
A tree is nothing without the park or forest it belongs to.
The reflection of an early morning sun in a black wet road is nothing without the trees and the cars that surround it.
So for the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about how to draw background. Specifically about a color pencil drawing technique I read about years ago where you hash colors together.
In this study I’m finding out how you can mix colors.
I’m finding that the nice part of this technique that you can’t actually predict what kind of colors you’ll get after mixing a few colors.
I’m must try this on a somewhat larger scale.
Color islands
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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.
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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:
- Cognitive behavior therapy
- Strong anonymous feelings
- 751
- Feelings scared
- Accepting comments selectively
- Mad as Hell
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:
- Comments about things I can actually change.
- Comments about things that are my responsibility.
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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by Henk ter Heide on Monday October 20, 2008
Recognizing some more feelings.
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
The thing is.
When you’re writing a series of articles about the therapy you’re doing to learn to recognize your feelings, you’re tempted to wanting to write the causes of all those new feelings you find. But it doesn’t always work that way.
Last week I was going to write an article about the link between friendship and fear. But it didn’t feel right.
(That’s one of those strange things of being autistic: How can you feel that something doesn’t feel right if you don’t know what you’re feeling?
I’m told that is because reacting to a feeling is regulated by one part of the brain and recognizing a feeling is regulated by an other part. That second part of the brain doesn’t work as it should in autistics. But it’s still very strange.)
Last week I discovered that the always present feeling of cold has nothing to do with autism.
Apparently I’m afraid of something and have been so for years. Only I don’t know what it is that I’m afraid of.
Last night I found an other sign of fear.
I’m about 30 kilo over weight as of result of my ever present feeling of hunger. I’ve tried to start a diet several times but every time the feeling of hunger wins out.
Last night I had two opposing feelings.
On the one hand I had the feeling my tummy would burst but at the same time I had a feeling of hunger.
So I eat. About twice as much as I would have eaten on a normal day. The feeling that my tummy would burst became much stronger. But still I had the feeling of hunger.
Thinking about it, it became clear that I was interpreting this feeling wrong.
So what could it be.
Luckily I know the list of psychical sensations associated with feeling scared. Just like a few weeks ago I found that knowing a list and recognizing a feeling are two separate things. But when you start thinking about what a feeling could mean it’s far more easier if you know the list.
In this case I have a fairly nasty feeling in my throat.
I used to associate this feeling with being sick. But some 20 years ago I found that eating something would make this feeling go away. So I concluded that it probably would have something to do with feeling hungery.
But now it’s clear that concussion was false. This is also a feeling of fear.
(Of course eating when you’re scared will give you the feeling that you’re in control and then the feeling of fear will pass.)
So I’m scared.
And I’ve been scared for at least the last 20 years.
And I have no clue as to why I’m scared.
It’s actually a nice to know that I’m scared.
As strange as that may sound.
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday June 11, 2008
Understanding how an artist feels.
This must be one of the most exciting drawings I’ve done up till now.
Two weeks ago, just before I went on holiday, I did a little drawing to experiment with flowing colors. Just starting to draw, I hoped that I would get some sort of idea of what I was doing.
Orange fish
Half way through the drawing I realized that I should have started in a corner. I didn’t jet know what the drawing would be about. But I did know that the colors should flow down. Not up.
I started a new drawing with a few blue drops in the right upper corner and went on holiday.
I knew that I would have a few lazy days during my holiday so I brought my drawing set.
Still not know were the drawing would go I drew more blue and gray drops and started wandering about the color I should use in the background. Should I leave it white or maybe color it yellow.
And what should I call this drawing?
“Blue drops”? “Blue drops on yellow background”?
As I drew more drops in different hues of blue and gray I began to feel a little tension.
Should I use different colors?
I should use different colors!
Thinking about this drawing I experienced something I’ve never have. The notion that I can use an abstract drawing to tell a story.
It’s only a short story. Even without using words I found that the story is so short that I ran out of things to say before I ran out of paper.
But it is still a very exciting feeling. To know that I can use (abstract) drawings to tell about my life.
I finally understand what artist are talking about when they say “just listen to my music” or “just look at my paintings” when asked about their life.
Escaping blue
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by Henk ter Heide on Saturday February 23, 2008
Dealing with the feelings I get when I change my plans.
Do you ever have the feeling that you wish you had paid better attention in school? I have that feeling regularly.
In the drawing course I did early last year I was advised to practice hashing and cross hashing but since I thought I wouldn’t need it I didn’t listen. So now I’ve reached the point that I have to learn the technique I don’t know how I’m supposed to go about it and what my goals should be.
But I also have the feeling that this isn’t the real problem. If I only wanted to know how I should go about practicing hashing I could look it up on the Internet or find a book about it.
I won’t.
I won’t because this is a feeling I have quite often. Usually after I had to change my plans. Which has me suspecting that this has something to do with being autistic. I just need a few days to get used to the fact that I’m going to do a lot of practicing and blog about practicing.
If I still have this feeling in a few days I still can find information on the technique.
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by Henk ter Heide on Thursday December 20, 2007
I’m experiencing some problems thanks to our revolutionary new heating system.
A few weeks ago when I drew a perspective of my green chair I was planning to do an other one without the pillows. I didn’t because my day job took so much out of me that I was just to tired. But now I’ve been on holiday for a few days and I’m well rested so I should be able to do the drawing.
But it’s too cold.
The Netherlands is going through a cold spell with temperatures of 8 degrees below zero Celsius, which is very cold for Dutch standards. Of course I’ve heating in my house so that shouldn’t be much of a problem. But it is.
As part of the renovation my landlord upgraded the heating system in the building where I live.
I used to have a very simple system. When it was cold you turned the heating up and within a few minutes it would get very hot. Then you turned it back down and it would cool down again. Then you would turn the heating back up…
But thanks to the upgrade we now have a system that should keep your house at a constant temperature for the least amount of money.
They used all kind of trick to achieve that. From using a thermostat to varying the temperature of the water in the central heating system.
We’ve even been advised never to turn the heating off. To always keep the thermostat at the temperature you like even when you leave your house or go to bed.
Turning the heating down when you leave and up when you come back would cost more money then just keeping it on all the time.
So it’s quite a revolutionary heating system.
But not for me.
The problem is that my sensing of warmth doesn’t work as it should.
Last year I already discovered that I’m unable to feel heat on my back. When I wear a thick jumper or go to the sauna, cold shivers run down my back.
Now I’m discovering something that I suspected for years: Constant temperatures don’t feel constant to me. I feel as though the temperature is constantly dropping while my thermometer tells me it’s not.
Up till last year the temperature in my room felt as though it was constantly changing. Which actually was the case. Some times my room felt very hot and my thermometer would tell me it was hot. And sometimes my room would feel very cold and my thermometer would tell me that it that it was slowly dropping. Although it was always hotter then it felt to me.
But now it always feels cold. Even when I turn my thermostat up to the maximum temperature I still feel cold. (Although according to my thermometer it’s 23 degrees C.)
I only feel warmth the first few minutes after I’ve entered my house.
I’m tempted to either creep up to the heating or lie in bed the whole day. But experience has taught me that I get cold when I try the first and get bored stiff if I try the second.
So at the moment I just sit at my computer doing a game to pass the time and hoping that the cold spell will pass as soon as possible.
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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
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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.
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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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