Tag: autism

Noise Cancelling Earbuds

Bones
Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

A good few years ago I went ahead and got myself a pair of Bose Quiet Comfort II headphones. These were the top active noise cancelling headphones available (within my price range). I got these right as exam period started up, and I lived in them.

I have aspergers, or autism as they’re now calling it. I come from a long family line of aspies, and we all have our own quirks. For me, noise is hard. When I’m stressed, like during exam time, I can’t filter out noise and I can’t concentrate around that noise. The noise cancelling headphones were an absolute game changer – all of a sudden I could isolate myself from the outside world and hyperfocus on my uni work. It was amazing!

Well then trigeminal neuralgia happened. All of a sudden my one escape from the world was no longer there, and I had to deal with extra pain, extra stress, and noisy life. I haven’t been able to wear anything over my face since. I made do with noise isolating earbuds and bemoaned the loss of my peace and quiet.

Until now. I just splashed out and got myself a pair of Sennheiser’s new Momentum True Wireless 2 earbuds. I quite honestly cried when I put them in and turned on their active noise cancelling function – all of a sudden the world around me just dropped away, and I heard nothing for the first time in over a year.

This is bliss. I’m going to live in these for a while now!

The Unseen Scars of Sexual Abuse

Bones

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I was sitting down to write about the anxiety of needing to do things all the time when my flatmate began cleaning the oven.  This is a completely normal and expected thing, we have a flat inspection coming up, and we’ve just spent the last few days making sure everything is cleaned and put away.  There’s just one problem: due to a defect in his septum, my flatmate has difficulty breathing and breathes very noisily and often with an open mouth.

That’s fine… for anyone else.  For me, it’s a trigger.

I was sexually abused by my ex’s best friend.  There, I said it.  It’s a hard thing to admit.  There is a lot of shame around it, shame that I did not realise what was happening at the time, that I allowed myself to get into those situations, that I was such a doormat.  I’ve told two friends.  I haven’t told my partner.  It’s not something I am brave enough to be open about yet.

Intellectually I know I am not at fault.  I had been in an intimate relationship with a narcissist for at least a year by that point.  My semblance of self, already weak after the previous narcissist relationship on the back of growing up with a clinically depressed mother and a loving but not really on hand father, was virtually non existent by this point.  I was an undiagnosed aspergers woman, and incredibly vulnerable.  It was not my fault.  It is not my fault.  A predator saw the vulnerability and took advantage.

It’s still hard to talk about.  So I’ll throw the story out to the internet, hiding behind my perceived anonymity (I know full well ‘anonymous’ only goes so far unless you take internet anonymity very seriously).

Our house was the ‘party house’.  We would have parties almost every other week at our house, no matter what house it was we lived in, and that was fine.  We used to do various illicit substances, as one does when one is young – nothing hard, nothing technically addictive, and not often enough to get addicted.  It was the usual fun shit from the raver scene.

And it was, it was super fun.  Until he started taking advantage.

I don’t remember when it first happened, but I do remember which house we were in at the time.  He began to pester me to give me a massage.  And pester, and pester, and pester, until me, being the naive, happily high, aspergers person I am, said okay.  So we went up to the bedroom I shared with my partner, I’d lie face down on the bed, and he’d massage my back.  It was just a massage.

He breathed heavily while he gave it.

This continued at subsequent parties.  He convinced me to take my t-shirt off so he could give me a “better massage” and “you can take your bra off if you like but I understand if you’d rather keep it on”.  I always kept my bra on.  My ex would, every single time, walk into the bedroom to “get something” and stop and pause and say in a high pitched voice (that I only now realise as fake) “I’m totally okay with my best friend massaging my topless girlfriend in my bed”.

Looking back at it I have to believe they were both in on it, because he never left a party to “get something” from our bedroom unless his best friend was giving me a massage.

This continued.  For years.  His best friend would pester me until I gave in and would give me a back massage with creepy heavy breathing.  It wasn’t until the later massages that he would push his erect penis (in his pants) against my arse while giving me a massage and lean down like he wanted to kiss the back of my neck.  Thank fuck he never did.  I stopped letting him give me massages after that one.  It made me sick.

A number of parties later, while completely off his face on booze (he had, and probably still has, an alcohol problem), he grabbed me around the waist and dragged me onto his lap where he immediately started grinding his erect penis (in his pants) against my arse crack with some amount of force.  I got his arms off me and stood up and went off without looking at him and blocked the incident from my memory.

I think he might have stopped after that.  I can’t quite recall.

So now heavy male breathing is a trigger for me to lock up and want to vomit.  Unfortunately for me, my lovely flatmate sometimes triggers this.

At least I have noise cancelling headphones.  I should also look into some really good therapy for this.

I Am Allowed To Be Burnt Out

Bones

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I am allowed to be burnt out.

For me, this is a radical idea.  The admitting and acceptance of the state of being burnt out, and actually giving myself permission to be burnt out.  To be honest, I think I’ve been burnt out for years, and it finally caught up with me last year.

I am autistic.  From a very early age I was conditioned against expressing that and pressured into appearing neurotypical.  I have, up until this year, put on a facade of a successful, bubbly, vivacious and sociable business woman.  Mostly this appearance was abused into me by It, but it was also expected of me from all of my previous roles.

I have overworked and over performed in every single role I have undertaken.  I would typically arrive at 8am and leave anywhere between 6 and 8pm, having worked through all of my breaks and most of my lunch, always at break-neck speed, because there was so much work to do.  I worked myself ragged, and I went back in and did it all again the next day, because that’s just what you do.  I’ve done this in every role until I moved to my current city, so that’s a good decade or so.

Throughout most of that decade, I was also with It.  The narcissist.  The ending came about because It was becoming desperate, and eventually manipulated Itself into the position of ‘either you come with me or I go alone’.  I was in a position where I was actively pursuing the career I wanted, and I wasn’t prepared to jeopardize the career I had been working for years to be able to pursue, and I was angry that he would ask that of me while putting his own career first (always first).  So I said no.

Then I went straight back to work the next day.  And continued working, and overworking, and not thinking about anything, and putting on the facade of being a lively, successful young businesswoman.

It’s all caught up with me and there is no escaping the exhaustion that I have denied for so long.  I ignored my body at every turn.  When it screamed ‘rest’ I said ‘harden up’ and went to work.  When it said ‘no more, go home’ I said ‘nope, we’ve still got to finish this document pack’ and kept going.  And when I say I worked fast, I mean I worked bloody fast.  I put out more work in one day than most would in three.  My brain was constantly on the go planning my next move, identifying the path to take to complete the required tasks in the shortest amount of time, and in the right priority order.

Oh, and through most of that I was working a second job on weekends and doing one paper a semester at university.

So yeah, I’m allowed to be burnt out now.  I sound defensive, and that’s because I am, because I expect to be told ‘no, you’re not allowed to be burnt out, harden up and keep on going’, because that’s what I’ve basically been told my entire life in various ways.  Stiff upper lip.  Carry on.  That kind of claptrap.  Telling myself I’m allowed to be burnt out is one thing, but taking a stand and saying ‘I AM ALLOWED TO BE BURNT OUT’ to the world is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Because despite the abuse I’ve been through, despite feeling as though I’m brittle and nothing but bone and sinew, despite almost falling asleep at work on numerous occasions because I am so exhausted, I … I gaslight myself.  It’s so ingrained in me, I gaslight myself.  It has been reinforced so thoroughly in my life that I am not important, what I feel is not important, what I want to do is not important, what I don’t want to do is not important, that I can’t possibly imagine that what I’ve been through is … something.  That it’s actually not good, that I’ve been impacted by it and that feeling is valid and true and reasonable.

It’s a horrific mindset, but I’m battling it.  Slowly but surely.  Because I deserve to not be burnt out.

Processing Trauma In Dreams

Bones

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Dreams have long been touted as insights into your deep psyche, with a myriad of sites and experts claiming they can interpret your dreams and tell you … well, what you’re thinking, how your life is panning, and possibly even your future.

And it’s not all bollocks.

I’ll often find myself dreaming of spiders when I’m overly stressed.  Or that my car’s brakes don’t fully work – they sometimes slow the car down but never quite stop it, and sometimes they just don’t work at all – when I’m feeling like life has swept me up and I can’t slow down.

Last night I had a series of dreams.  There were five distinct ones.

In the first, I was loved and cherished, and I improved people’s lives by going full aspie on a water spirit who had people in its thrall (it’s not like there was a negative impact on them, just that they’d waste a lot of time in its thrall splashing around in its waters because it wanted the company).  It was so flattered that I was taking an unreasonably intense interest in what it was doing and what it was that it stopped the thrall and we sat and talked for hours and it realised it liked conversation more than splashy company.

The second one involved a frisbee, a stolen prototype helicopter, monster robots and a toy world warehouse.  There was a lot of screaming from me, and a lot of very creative piloting (of the suddenly small enough to fit between toy boxes and through open-backed shelving helicopter).

The third involved bears.  I couldn’t get the door shut and locked, and there were bears.  I finally got the door shut and locked properly (it required a huge shove and a perfectly timed key turn), then ran around making sure all the windows and doors were locked and the blinds were pulled so they couldn’t see in.  This was actually related to a conversation about Alaska and Canada and the bears and the fact that I won’t be able to go tramping out there without a big fuckoff gun because bears.

The fourth and fifth … well I’m not entirely sure which order they came in.  One involved It.  I’m starting to realise that a lot of Its behaviour, especially around sex, was abusive.  In this dream I told It he could take his blue balls and wank off, I wasn’t responsible for it.

The other … the other I’ve just realised is me speaking back about my sexual abuse to my abuser.  It and Thing (as that person will now be known) are two different people.  Very similar people, but definitely two different ones.  They were, in fact, best friends.  They suited each other well.  Both were self absorbed, showed little empathy for others, and were largely sexist.  They joked, they said they were joking, but their actions always said otherwise.

Mind you, I never realised this until this year.

So this part of my dream.  This final, crucial part of my dream.  I was at work.  I wasn’t at my current work, I was somewhere else … not entirely sure where, but I was in an office and I was working.  There was a loud male colleague over the other way, a real jokester, and he’d leer at me.  I got up to do some work at one of the benches.  He got up and came past and stood behind me as he reached for the printing next to me and ground his crotch against me.

This is what Thing did.  At parties we had at our house, he would get drunk and then pester me to give me a massage because he “gives great massages” and later because I “loved his massages”.  I’d already been conditioned by It to agree, to do what I was asked to do, to do what I was told and to not make a scene.  I’d inevitably agree.  We’d then go to the room I shared with It, I would lie face down on the bed, he’d insist I take my top off and try to convince me to take my bra off (that one never worked), and he’d give me a massage.  The first few were actually really great massages.  It was only later that he started to press his erection (in pants) against my ass and rub while giving me a massage.  I would wait a few minutes (so as not to be rude, how laughable) and then say ‘that’s great, thanks Thing’, and I’d put my top back on and we’d go.  Much later, he’d grab me by the waist during parties and sit me on his lap and grind his erection against my ass.  I’d escape pretty quickly then.

He breathed heavily.  I still panic when there is a male heavy breather around.

So back to the dream.  This ‘colleague’ ground his crotch against my arse and then sauntered back to his desk with his printing.  I was furious.  I held the end of the bench, then I went and sat down, and then I thought, no, I’m going to tell him that what he did was inappropriate and if he did anything similar again I would report him for sexual assault and pursue him to the full extent of the law.

So I did.  I got up and I went over there and I leaned on his desk and he smirked.  I told him that what he did was unacceptable and if he did anything similar, I would report him for sexual assault to HR, and then I would file charges against him.  And he started laughing and making light of it and started turning his chair away from me to laugh with his other colleagues and make a big joke of it.  So I grabbed the back of his chair and spun him around to face me fully, and told him in a much louder voice (which always carries in an open plan office) that he did not get to laugh this off, or make light of it.  That grinding his dick against my arse was sexual assault, and I would pursue him to the fullest extent of the law, and I would make sure he was locked up.  That what he did was serious and absolutely inappropriate to do to anyone.

His little beady eyes glared up at me as I woke up after delivering my grand and impassioned speech.

It’s been on my mind all day.  I’ve been turning it over and over again, trying to understand what it was.  It was only this evening that I realised that dream was me confronting Thing and not allowing him to dismiss his actions, to dismiss his impact on me, to minimise what he did or make light of it.

Once It is no longer a part of my life and I am fully in the clear of It, I will no longer have to pretend to like Thing should I ever see him again at mutual friend functions.  I will be able let mutual friends know that Thing and It have traumatised me and abused me – probably not the details, but I can let them know in no uncertain terms that these two creatures have seriously harmed me.  I won’t have to pretend.  About any of it.

Social Anxiety

Bones

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Today my mind is racing.  Yesterday I was invited out to a social gathering by a neighbour.  They have dogs.  I have dog.  There was going to be a big dog meet up nearby with a walk and a trip to the cafe.  At the time I thought it was a great idea!  So I said I’d probably see them there.

I got home and panicked.  I slept badly.  Now I’m sitting in my house, hours past the meet up, wired up and anxious and trying to figure out where it all went wrong.  My mind is pulling up all sorts of excuses – my dog wasn’t too bright this morning, I slept badly, I couldn’t afford the coffee (I’ve just over-extended myself sorting out two very very large bills), I’m not feeling well …  at the end of the day, I suspect it’s a mixture of social anxiety and an element of too much sensory input.

It’s even harder when you don’t have their number to say ‘hey sorry, anxiety is really bad today, I’m going to camp it out inside’ and you actually have to go over there and say so.  Which I will do this afternoon.  I have found people are a lot more understanding when you say ‘I have anxiety and today is a bad day’ or ‘I have autism and need a quiet day’.

But as a result of all of this anxiety, I’m shut down today, down to emergency services only.  I don’t feel up to cleaning, I don’t feel up to doing anything except wrapping myself up on the couch and watching TV.  Which is compounding my stress a bit because I have things to do and I just don’t have the energy.

So I’m going to tell myself it’s okay, wrap up warm, put on something nice, have a cuppa tea, and we’ll try again later this afternoon.  The world is not going to end because I didn’t vacuum this week.

(In writing this I’ve calmed down considerably, and now feel like I can relax.)