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toilet

Strong anonymous feelings

by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday October 1, 2008

Realizing how I deal with feelings that I don’t recognize.

The series about what I learn in cognitive behavior therapy consist of the following parts:

Some times I feel

a kind of tingling white noise going through my body. It’s actually quite a nice feeling but I don’t know by what it is caused. Which makes it impossible to summon it.
a cold wind blowing through my body. The kind of feeling that wants me to turn on the heating. But then I look at my thermometer and find that it’s 24° C in my room. It’s a horrible feeling but since I don’t know what causes it I don’t know how to avoid it.
talkative. I shouldn’t list talking to myself as a feeling. But it is kind of a feeling. A very annoying feeling at that. It tenses me up and it paralyzes me. It makes it impossible to do the work I would like to do.
anger.
a collection of psychical sensation of which I’ve learned that it means that I’m scared. But I don’t always realize the meaning of those sensations.

I never feel sadness but I do know that when tears run from your eyes you are supposed to be sad. Or it must be the kind of orange tension I feeling when I’m crying. But I don’t think so.

At this weeks session of CBT we set the target for the therapy and talked about recognizing emotions.

Although I’ve been in therapy before this was the first time I actually got to set the goal. Which is nice because it gives my control over the therapy.
Two of the 6 therapies I had in the last 25 years had a clear cut goal that wasn’t reached. But still the psychiatrist was very pleased with himself. Once the psychiatrist set a goal with which I didn’t agree but I was told to take it or leave it. The other three times we just talked for one and a half year. I never felt that my problems were solved but apparently the psychiatrist did.

This time the goal will be two fold.
One goal will be to get a better understanding of my feeling. The second goal is to get rid of the talkativeness. To finally find a way to do the things I want to do.

Since last weeks session I do know why have been talking to myself for all those years.
It has a positive feedback loop to it.
Even though it tenses me up it does make that I don’t feel the tinkling feeling and more important it also makes that I don’t feel the cold feeling. It’s very difficult for me to deal with feelings I don’t recognize. Even when they are nice feelings.

Last week I’ve been trying not to talk to myself and to find out what kind of feeling I would be suppressing. Once I felt a little nervous, but most of the time I just didn’t recognize the feeling. Mostly I felt cold.

After setting a goal we talked about emotions and feelings.
What is the difference?
I always thought that feelings are what you have in your body, headache or pain in your leg, and that emotions were the more abstract kinds like anger and falling in love.
But apparently there is an order to feelings.
The more basic feelings that even a dog could have; anger, fear, joy and sadness are called “emotions”. The more human feelings like disappointment are called “feelings”.

My homework for this week is to think about the difference between feeling nervous, feeling fear and feeling panic.
Difference in the psychical sensations they invoke, the way you would react to them and an other thing I don’t remember.

About 15 years ago I took a few years to figure out what the psychical sensations of the most important emotions were. And to figure out in what way people would act when they had those feelings.
The main reason I wanted to know that was to be able to recognize people who where angry or fearful. But I found that it also helped my to recognize my own feelings.

But in the last few days I realized that there is a difference between feeling and knowing a list of behavioral features.
The problem is that it is to theoretical.
When I see some one dressed for cold whether while it’s 25° C I conclude that it’s quite possible that they are scared. But when I feel cold shivers going down my back while it’s 25° C I never realize that I might be scared.
I don’t think I am, but I never even thought about it.

I know the list of psychical sensations associated with feeling scared by heart:

choking feeling in your throat.
pain in your stomach.
pressure on your lungs.
feeling cold.
an ever stronger need to go to the bathroom.

But I never realized that the toilet problems I’ve been having, had anything to do with feeling panic. Even though they started with a panic attack I had a little over a year ago.

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Cognitive behavior therapy

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:

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.

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Solving my travel phobia

by Henk ter Heide on Saturday December 1, 2007

My problems with toilet habits turned out to be a lot bigger then I thought.

Ever since I started this blog at the beginning of this year I’ve been surprised by the amount of knowledge you need if you want to write an article about something you don’t know and how much you must understand if you want to write an article about something you don’t understand. This means that I not only have to solve problems but I also have to figure out what the problem was so I can write about it.
That seems like a lot of extra work but actually it’s a good thing.
I’ve been taught to try to find the easiest solution for problems and go for it. I’m not sure whether that is one of those things you learn by accident or that it actually does work for people who aren’t autistic.
Although this doesn’t work for me I tend to forget. I work very hard at solving a problem the hard way and then at some point I realize what caused the problem and within 30 seconds it’s gone.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about the problems I have had all through my life with toilet habits. I told that it had come to a crisis and that I had to take some sick leave. But I had gotten a handle on things and was planning to go back to work in a few days.
Sadly I didn’t. I couldn’t.
A few minutes before I should have been picked up by the mini van to be brought to the shop in Capelle I felt some bowel movements. Not knowing what these feelings meant I called in sick again. Which turned out to be a good decision. If I had gone I would have had an other crisis.
After that I stayed at home for a few weeks. Thinking I should first learn to distinguish between the different feelings I have in my bowels.

Two weeks ago my counselor came by again.
We talk al lot about the toilet problems I had been having and he pointed me to something that I hadn’t noticed for some reason.
I was getting afraid to leave my house.
To go down town I have to cycle down a 2 kilometer long narrow road with water on both sides. When going down town I was getting afraid that I might accidentally drive into the water. Strangely enough on the way back I didn’t have this fear although I cycle down the same road.

Thinking about it some more I realized that I never had a problem with toilet habits. It always was more of a phobia and although it has something to do with toilet habits it’s more of a fear of travel. Since fear cause diarrhoea it’s an easy mistake.
The best way to deal with fobia is to face them right on. The more you think about your fear the bigger it gets. If you just deal with it usually it passes.

I went back to work last Tuesday and had two anxience days in which a took I lot of anti diarrhoea medicine and had four very frightening travel experiences.
On Thursday some one asked me what exactly scared me. Not something I wanted to talk about because I thought that my fear would increase if I thought to much.
But the opposite happened. I realized that I wasn’t afraid that I would soil myself. I was afraid of the feeling it self.
The moment I realized that the fear was gone.

BTW I read that some autistics are afraid of public toilets.
Although I never feared them I do have a problem with a lot of public toilets.
There are two types of toilets. In homes you usually find the type with a plateau on which the stool comes to rest before you flush it down.
In public places you tend to find the type with a watery hole in which the stool disappears.
I’ve always had the problem that I couldn’t feel my stool coming. I still have the problem that I can’t feel how big the stool is.
To know if the rest of my day will be “save” I have to look down. It’s quite scary when that isn’t possible.

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Twisted toilet habbits

by Henk ter Heide on Monday October 22, 2007

Autism causes some problems with feeling the need to relief myself. (A somewhat graphic description.)

For years I’ve had this annoying habit of having to go when ever I left for somewhere or arrived somewhere.
In my teens I didn’t think anything about it. I just did. At times my mother would get very angry because of my need to “go” at the last moment. But I thought that just was part of our ongoing battle.

I only realized that something strange was going on when I got my first IT job.
We worked in two shifts. An early shift from 8 AM till 5 PM and a two men late shift from 3 PM till the work was finished.
When I worked the early shift every thing went the usual way. Just before leaving at 5 PM I would go. But when I worked the late shift I began to notice something odd. The two man shift had to perform some tasks together and every man had a few task of his own.
So it would often happen that one of us was finished while the other still had a few minutes work. In such cases the first one to finish would turn out the lights in none essential areas and get his stuff so we could leave the moment the other was finished.
When I was the first to finish I also would go to the toilet knowing that we would leave within a few minutes.
The strange thing was that it happened several times that while I was leaving the toilet my colleague would announce that he was finished and that we could leave. In which case I turned around and again went to the toilet.
While going to the toilet for the second time in one minute I felt very guilty. But how ever guilty I felt I couldn’t stop myself.

It was only when I started working at the sheltered workplace that I realized that this wasn’t just a habit but something much more compulsive.
By Dutch law large companies are compelled to give employee a break every two hours and to service them with a canteen where they can eat there lunch, grab a smoke etc.
While working at the sheltered workplace I found I had to go every time on route to the canteen and on route back to the department.
It got ridiculous. Going to the toilet ten times a day: When leaving my home, when arriving at my work, when going to the canteen and coming back (6 times) and when going back to my home and when arriving at home. And then in the evening I would go ones when I went to sleep.

The last eight month’s since I started working at the shop in Cappelle my toilet compulsion is getting frightening. It’s a thirty minute drive and every day I’m afraid that I won’t make it without having an accident.

Two weeks ago the Autism center send me some help that took the shape of an “Social Psychiatric Nurse”. A gentlemen that is going to help me organize my housekeeping and deal with a few other problems.
After telling him about my toilet problems he suggested that I should eat bran to activate my bowels.

After eating bran for two weeks I’ve finally figured out what the problem was: I’ve never been able to feel my bowel movement! So I never knew when I had to go. So I always squeezed my buttocks together. Which for some reason gave me the feeling that I had to pee.

The last two weeks I’ve taken some sick leave to have some time to learn to recognize the different feelings that warn you. Which turned out to be somewhat complicated because you have no way of knowing if you really have to go without going.
So if you don’t trust your feelings and you are really afraid that you will soil yourself, you tend to go early only to find that you actual didn’t have to go. Then while you are mustering up your courage you can withstand ever stronger feelings that might mean that you have to go.

At the moment I’m reasonably certain that I will be able to recognize the feelings. So next Wednesday I’ll resume my work. Let’s see how it works out.

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To tortillon or not to tortillon (drawing: Nova)

by Henk ter Heide on Friday June 15, 2007

A tortillon is a piece of compressed paper you can buy in the shop or can make yourselves. It’s used to pull the pigment over your sheet of paper.

I’ve used it ones to find out what I could do with it. But I was a little disappointed. I thought that it should be possible to create a nicer effect. After some experimenting I’ve found that an ordinary piece of (single sheet) toilet paper works wonders.

Nova

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If you’ve ever looked at the texture of drawing paper you’ll know that it isn’t completely flat but kind of bumpy.

When you hold your pencil almost on it’s side when you draw, you only grace the bumps. The lower parts of the paper texture stays white. When you first start with drawing you learn to see the white parts as an disadvantage but actually it isn’t.

By using a piece of kitchen or toilet paper you can spread the pigment evenly accros the paper and get a kind of glassy feel.

You’ll have to try it for yourselves to see it because it doesn’t scan that well.

For this drawing I used a second sheet of paper as a kind of painters palette and a piece of toilet paper as a brush. I colored the edge of the “palette” and used the “brush” to pull a little bit of pigment onto this sheet. Then I moved the “palette” and pulled some more pigment on this sheet.

To be fair there is one exception to the rule that blending with (toilet) paper gives nicer results then blending with a tortillon and that’s when you’re in a tight spot. A (commercial) tortillon has a pointed top which makes it ideally suited for small spaces.

A problem with tortillons is that pigment will stick to the top. If you don’t want to buy a tortillong for every color you’ll ever use you can use a blank piece of drawing paper to rub the pigment of the top.

While drawing this picture I accidentally found a new technique. I’ll try it as soon as I have the materials I need and I’ve thought of a picture to draw.

(I’ve send this drawing off to a source of inspiration.)

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