Analysing apparent inactivity

An appropriate post to emerge 

at the top of my pile of planned posts, 

given it’s been a while since I’ve been anywhere near active in this particular space.

But, if I were to choose a time to become active again, April is an ideal time, being World Autism Awareness Month or ~ as most autistics would prefer it now to be called ~ World Autism Acceptance Month.

First I must thank a caring soul for their kind & gentle enquiry into my wellbeing recently.  Their short, sweet, simple message has prompted me to contemplate my period of apparent inactivity.  Admittedly, it took me a few days to respond to the enquiry, to consider how best to articulate a response.  But in so doing, I realised I’d explained quite well ~ & unusually succinctly ~ this & other periods of quietness ... of low activity ... of apparent inactivity.

I’ve been paralysed by unhelpful thoughts.

Although it’s not like I’ve been doing nothing.  Not at all.  In fact, I’ve rightly concentrated on more critical concerns & to good effect, even if I do say so myself.  Maybe that’s all I’ve been capable of.  And that’s OK.  But because of what I have been doing, & because of what has been going on, I recognise I’ve not been interacting or connecting in my usual ways, if at all.

I’ve not been myself.  

I’m out of sorts.

“We all have days like that” don’t we?

Well, yes ... & no.

You see, something else I’ve been pondering is why, sometimes, autistic difficulties can be dismissed as every day occurrences, every day issues, not anything out of the ordinary.

And I’ve come to the conclusion that we “high functioning” autistics have maybe grown accustomed to using neurotypical language to describe our non-neurotypical selves.  Inadvertently we play down our difficulties by mimicking ~ or adopting ~ common phrases, making ourselves almost too relatable & so dismissible. 

Image via Personal Message : The Paintings of Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber 

Additionally, in the same way we feel uncomfortable about blowing our own trumpet due to our low self-esteem & low confidence (sorry, I mean our consistently extraordinarily low self-esteem & consistently extraordinarily low confidence), we also don’t like to publicise or promote what might appear to be self-pity.  But we do expect you to know what’s going on inside our heads; for example, we expect you to know the size of a problem just because we’ve mentioned it, even if we haven’t used appropriately impactful words to describe it.

   And our “I’ve been a bit out of sorts” doesn’t necessarily cut it when it means we’ve arrived late (again), or not participated, or not joined in, or not shared some news, etc, etc.

Actually, what we may mean (as has been the case for me just lately) is that we’ve been much more than a bit out of sorts, we’ve been paralysed into apparent inactivity by too many recurring, unhelpful thoughts.  Maybe we started off being “out of sorts” & this has opened the door to unhelpful thoughts & unhelpful interpretations of seemingly every day, normal interactions ... to some paranoia even. 

To add to the problem, we don’t just ponder; we dwell, ruminate, avoid, return & ruminate some more to the extent such thoughts can stop us functioning “normally” or (more accurately) as we usually would, if at all.

It happens often.  Sometimes with serious consequences for ourselves, or others.

Sometimes I’m not “a bit out of sorts” at all but the sudden, emotional impact of a situation has been so great it’s led me to avoid, paralysing my ability to respond appropriately.   

It can be proper rabbit in the headlights stuff.
Even in professional situations ~ or, again more accurately, non professional events in professional situations.  Maybe it's because something happens that is "off brief" or "off script" for a work situation that I find myself derailed, stunned, unable to decipher how to respond & the inner panic about what's right & what's wrong causes me to freeze.  The work continues (usually), but the necessary response to the "out of context" situation is frozen, unforthcoming & replaced with avoidance.  

It’s a hard-wired survival instinct.  In fact, it’s very common for autistics to operate in survival mode to such an extent that it becomes normalised for us ... our overly active amygdala is frequently & unusually triggered.  And the impact can be such that I’ve avoided those “out of workplace” situations until it’s become too late to deal with.  This apparent inactivity must have looked like I just didn’t give a damn but this is so far from the truth.

I’m just so sorry I didn’t understand myself well enough at the time to be able to implement a strategy to overcome my paralysis, my extreme anxiety avoidance, my apparent inactivity.

Yes, I really am very sorry.

Sometimes it can be something we really want to do that we find we're somehow unable to attend to, that we avoid, that we don’t action.  It’s still a survival instinct, I think.  We fear failing (although I know we learn from failure & I would always encourage others to try anyway).  But we sometimes don’t know how to start ourselves, the whole is too large to grapple with so we move away, distract ourselves, procrastinate, kid ourselves we’re actively preparing to start.  In reality, we become paralysed into apparent inactivity with regard to that particular task.  Or we may not know how to say no or how to deprioritise other tasks imposed upon us.

So, thanks again for checking in.  

That may well be enough, on occasion, to pull me out of my paralysis.

But sometimes we might need more.  

Sometimes we may need unrelenting encouragement, unrelenting validation, unrelenting help, extreme patience & time.  Other times we may simply need clear, precise permission.  I know, high maintenance, right?  But I have learnt to do this for myself over the years ... it’s just, sometimes, I lapse, proverbial balls drop & I withdraw into apparent inactivity.

And in future I will attempt to re-read & re-edit my monologuing without a neurotypical language filter.  I will try & express myself more accurately, more non-neurotypically, although some assumptions will need to be made on my part. I imagine it will be rather like someone who’s colour blind refraining from calling blue blue when really they’re seeing red & who only knows it’s blue because someone else told them it’s blue & only calls it blue to adopt the common language & to avoid confusing others.  But it’s not their truth ... red is their truth.  In the same way, the neurotypical language I use is not always representative of my truth.

But back to now & my current period of apparent inactivity.  And, actually, I’m still feeling nervous about resuming usual activities.  I can’t put my finger on why ... well, I can, I think, but I can’t bring myself to articulate fully ... those unhelpful thoughts & interpretations have not been fully quelled & I find myself almost without breath at times.  Like I’m too scared to breathe lest the whole damn charade comes crashing down, shattering into pieces too small to salvage.

So I will just breathe slowly, shallowly ... bide my time & concentrate on being ... concentrate on my angel fish ... & I will walk, when I can.

I do like walking.

I do like swimming.

And I love my angel fish.

Image via Pinterest : original source unknown