Laurels' Grove

Started by laurels, June 27, 2021, 05:11:21 PM

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Armadillo

I'm sorry, Laurel. I was referring to all the masking...the ones you have had to do related to ASD like the stimming you mentioned, masking gender or sexuality, masking trauma symptoms. But you are right that the masking for ASD seems to be on a whole other level of exhaustion and pain and it would have been better for me to not lump that in as if it were the same.

laurels

Don't worry about it, Armadillo, I don't think an apology is needed here (Unless you meant the type of sorry that's not an apology :) Then I accept the sentiment, thank you). I was just clarifying because I realized not everyone will know what I mean, it's not that commonly known. A risk of transcribing my personal journal entries onto a public platform! Sometimes some things need explaining.

laurels

Jun 29

Exercise 1, day 3.

  • Morning - distressed. I feel panicky about what I should be doing. My back hurts after a 40min trek to the nearest post office and I want to rest. But there's a pop-up recycling park I want to take advantage of. And I was planning to go shopping on my way back, so already strayed from the plan. Feeling immense pressure.
  • Afternoon - completely zoned out after all that above. Groceries really drained me. I did some sculpting? As a restful but embodying activity.
  • Evening - excited for tomorrow. I'm getting a whole day to myself, I wonder what I'll do. I'll have a call with a friend, that's for sure, already set it up.
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I've had so much pleasure yesterday just from being able to see better. I've stopped wearing my glasses outside during the pandemic, couldn't get them to stop fogging up. Now that we're allowed maskless outside I have to keep reminding myself to bring them along. I've missed nature so much, over a year of details lost - my last year in my homeland. Now I can see the definition in the clouds, the different leaf shapes, the tiny wildflowers. I even saw a fox chasing rabbits. I feel I can truly get the benefits of nature when I can actually see it, my autistic brain is very happy.

laurels

#33
Jun 30

Exercise 1, day 4.

  • Morning - vaguely resigned. Was looking forward o all sorts of things on my day alone. But the night was bad, got up with back pain and cramps, and it's raining.
  • Afternoon - stressed. Partner is coming back from the office soon and I don't know how I'm going to feel about my alone time being over. Will I acutely notice the difference?
  • Evening - tiny bit discouraged. Seeing how tired my partner is brings up feelings of guilt for taking this alone day as a day off, instead of making the most use of the no-distractions to progress on bigger/more obtrusive chores.
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I had real trouble last night, couldn't disconnect the train of thought that insisted on replaying the worst periods of my life in reverse-chronological order. I know sleep comes fastest when I do progressive muscle relaxation, or stillness meditation, I just couldn't do it. Couldn't focus, went right back on that hamster wheel after doing one muscle group.
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This small format of my physical notebook is great for this type of journaling. Big pages encourage me to be long-winded and I never read back through those behemoths. Here it's easy to see each entry and it's theme/point. Heartening!

laurels

(Added more quotes I found on social media)

The healer also needs healing.
The planner also needs surprises.
The giver also needs to receive.
The thoughtful also needs to be thought of.
The considerate also needs to be considered.

People give what they need.
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I am not asking for anything unreasonable.
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My needs are not too much.
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The right people will enter my life and understand how I am, and will try to work with me.
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My needs are just as important as anyone else's needs.
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I am important enough to take up space.
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It's ok to be vulnerable.

rainydiary

Laurels, I got benefit from reading the quotes you shared.  I also appreciate how you check in with yourself during different parts of the day and record/reflect on it. 

Armadillo

It makes me feel kind of sad, Laurels, that you were looking forward to your day off, but then felt a little guilty about how you spent it. But it sounded pretty fun and relaxing, aside from the guilt and (*%^&) pain.

I love how many creative things you are involved in. You and Bee here are inspiring with the arts!

I'm really sad too, that you had a rough night with the unwanted memory train. It can be hard....impossible sometimes...to turn that stuff off. And feeling like we're supposed to be able to turn it off at will is frustrating (to me at least)!

I'm curious do you try to do the muscle relaxation on your own? And if so, if guided relaxation might help keep your brain focused on that? But some people find the recordings annoying and they kind of are. But I've been doing some yoga nidra videos with my daughter in bed...she is...difficult to turn off at bedtime...and that seems to be working well for her and me.

I'll echo Rainy...thanks for sharing those quotes!

laurels

Hey Armadillo, yes I do the relaxation on my own, I'm usually pretty good at this sort of thing. I find most recorded sessions aren't timed right for me? I need to feel out each part on my own. But you did give me the idea to find a reliable external stimulus to focus on! I'll give it a think. (And the day was quite relaxing, I still enjoyed myself during!)

Ha, yes, creativity does seem to be one thing I seem to have going for me. Aside from clinical psychology I studied graphic design, I like drawing digitally, sometimes I collage. And the poetry is actually quite recent - I'm trying to fight my self-perception of being "bad at words". While it's true that I'm not great at verbal communication, especially in my mother tongue (gendered language, complicated relationship there), and especially when I'm emotionally invested in something I just can't talk at all, nothing comes out. But. I'm pretty good with writing in English, when I can take my time to figure out how to say things. (This self-doubt was also sown by an intelligence test I had to take in childhood, where I scored the lowest on "verbal intelligence" - that's the only thing I remember about the results, which I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have seen anyway?) There was a poetry challenge going around in May and I thought I'd try it, as I had a little bit of practice previously writing prayers, and I had a lot of fun with it. I didn't do it daily, too much pressure, but I'd like to go back to it. I really started releasing and processing some difficult emotions about you know, Everything. All the difficult past things, how I coped with it. A new way to unlock, explore and express things. Exciting.

(By the way, I don't think I'll be posting the poems after all - I reviewed the forum guidelines and even if I removed the swears it would still be either adult content or graphic stuff. It's alright, I still get the benefit of getting it out of my system, even if I don't show it to other people who'd understand).

laurels

I'm reading about diminishing the inner critic voice and part of it resonates, part of it doesn't. Nothing seems to be quite as conscious and loud as the article seems to imply. I don't have a "word-thought" with content I seem to react to. I don't hear a berating voice. It starts with the flashback into intense fear of abandonment and then I can work my way back to some sort of unfulfilled perfectionist expectation of myself. I don't berate myself for it.

This leads to the biggest a-ha I got from exploring that: I am terrified of losing my partner's love because I'm not quite sure how I secured it in the first place. So I grasp at straws, guessing about what "value" I have for him, subconsciously assigning Great Importance to some things (like housework - for example I get the panicky shaking fear if he comments about the food I make in any way other than delight). I haven't finished the article, I see there are some strategies to try, but I'm thinking I could discuss this with my partner, so that I have a specific instance of him explaining his feelings for me to call up in my mind when the big rejection button gets slammed. We'd work it out in a way that it's not something that my brain can twist into a list of expectations.