panic

Examining some feelings that prevent me from drawing.

Eye problems

Twenty years ago I tried my hand at studying to be a programmer. I went to school for a year and got the basic papers you need to get a job. Then I went on with studying on my own to get a perspective on a better job.
It was then that I run into a strange problem with my eyes.
Every time I picked up my books to do some studying my eyes would go out of focus and the letters on the paper would get vague. At the same time I felt very tired. Although I didn’t know why I felt tired I assumed it had something to do with the eye problems.
Although I had my eyes examined I never found out what the problem was.

Examining a feeling

My involuntary holiday of, coming up to, 4 months as a result of breaking my hip gave me a lot of time to examine a few things you never get to.
So I’ve been spending a lot of time on Twitter, a lot of time thinking about several problems we have at my job, and examining a frighting cold feeling I have in the sauna and when taking a hot shower.

I don’t know about other people with broken hips, but I found that it became very easy to take really long showers. Sitting on my shower chair. Not having a lot of interesting things to do. Not having any appointments. I found I could easily sit in the shower for two hours.
Which would have been very nice if it wasn’t for the cold feeling on my back I always have when taking a shower.
I tried making the water hotter, as I always do, but that didn’t help. It never does.

But since I didn’t have a hell of a lot to do I decided that I might as well examine what was going on. Why I would feel cold under a hot shower.
Although it was very frightening I tried to concentrate on the feeling. It took me two weeks but I finally realized that the feeling I had wasn’t cold but the feeling of water running along my skin.

I also realized how it came about that I misinterpreted the feeling.
In autistics the part of the brain that recognizes feelings doesn’t work as it should. Which makes it very hard for us to recognize our feelings.
It has happened that I only found out what I was feeling by going by the authority of other people.
Someone would tell me: “I think you feel such and so”. And since I didn’t know what I was feeling I took his word for it.

In this case I learned to interpret the feeling I was having standing on the edge of the swimming pool on a cold Saturday morning 40 years ago, by listening to what people told me.
“You must be cold”. Yes I must be.
In reality it wasn’t cold that I was feeling. It was the sensation of wind blowing along my back.

Dealing with panic

Of course this blog isn’t about recognizing feelings. It’s about drawing, what I learn while drawing and what I need to draw.
I like to draw.
But being autistic I don’t really recognize that feeling. I interpret it in the same way I interpret all my feelings. In this case by the fact that I can’t get myself to stop drawing.
I don’t draw very often so after a time I tend to think that I don’t need it any more and store my drawing stuff away.
But every time I do, I get new ideas of drawings I want to do and get my drawing stuff back out.
But then I can’t get myself to sit down and draw.

After I figured out that I misinterpreted the feeling I have in hot showers, I thought that it could very well be that I also misinterpret feelings that have something to do with drawing.
So now I’m examining several annoying and frightening feelings of which I don’t think they have very much to do with drawing.
Yesterday, for the first time in twenty years, I ran into my little I eye problem. While using Twitoria to unfollow inactive Twitter profiles I got very tired and my eyes went out of focus.
At first I though that I should stop and relax for a moment but then I recognized what was happening to me. I was experiencing some type of panic attack. So I went on with what I was doing and after a while the feeling past.

Knowing what the feeling is I now realize that it’s something I have quite a lot. While writing this kinds of entries for my blog for instants.
Translating the pictures in my mind to words is hard, sometimes even painful. Many a time I’ve stopped writing and walked away with the feeling that it would go easier when I came back. It never did.
Writing this entry I also felt the need to walk off but knowing that I was experiencing a slight panic attack helped me to go on. Although the writing process is still hard to do, the panic attack did pass.

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I had a panic attact at my work last week Wednesday and Thursday.

Wednesday they gave me other work then I’m used to. Well actually the same work but in a different room with different people. It caught me off gaurd.

For some reason I reacted very strongly but without recognizing my own reaction. I didn’t treet people very nice.

Thursday they gave me back my my own work. But I felt very anxiet so I took some sick leave expecting that it would pass. But it didn’t. Last Tuesday I felt fine until entered the building were I work. I felt some strange sensation in my throat and on my chest.

It took me nearly two hours to recognize it as a feeling of fear.

It took me a few days to figure out why I felt fear at my work and why I’m still feeling fear. It has to do with the agreement I made with my employer.

As an autistic I need al lot of structure. I need to know what will happen to me and what kind of work I will do and where I will do that work.

I’ve been working with Promen for the last seven years and I found them to be a very chaotic. Over the last couple of years I have had several times that I was reprimanded for doing exactly what they told me to do the day before. Then the next day they changed there minds again and again reprimanded me for doing what I was told to do. Then the they would change there mind again, and again…

You can expect the same kind of trouble when you enter in an agreement with them: The person who is responsible for transportation won’t bring me to my place of work because I didn’t tell him that I had to go there. He doesn’t even seem to realize that it is not my place to tell him what to do. Next they called me to ask me whether I would agree to changing the agreement because it would be much easier, on them, if they didn’t have to do what we agreed upon.

According to the agreement I would get a secondment with the company Lemkes and if Lemkes didn’t have any work for my I would go to a specific interal department.

Actualy Lemkes isn’t a very good workplace for me. It’s a very nice small company with a varying workload and a varying amount of temps. Which means that it isn’t structured. But even with the varying workload and varying amound of temps it’s still more structured then Promen.

Working with Lemkes was kind of an escape from Promen. It’s kind of strange that someone with a disability would need to escape from the company that is set up especialy for people with disabilities.

Now I’m at the mercy of Promen and that’s a fightning prospect.

Boy in swimming trunk partial portrait

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