WYR: Representation Burnout

https://advice.shinetext.com/articles/we-need-to-talk-about-and-recognize-representation-burnout/

This article is written by a woman of color, but it's written to address a much more general phenomenon.  She quite rightly terms it Representation Burnout, referring to the fact that it affects any member of a minority group.  Visible minorities, like African Americans, first generation immigrants, or women in some fields (most sciences, businessplaces, tech), and men in others (nursing, social work, cosmetology), are the obvious examples.  You can often identify these minorities at a glance or in a short amount of time in their proximity.  Skin color, accents, and ethnic or religious clothing serve as these obvious markers.

But she also mentions her friend, who is gay.  That can be a more invisible minority group.  A given gay man may choose to express his sexual orientation by conforming to particular stereotypes: dressing in more feminine clothes, wearing an earring, speaking in a particular fashion, or styling his hair a particular way.  Or he may care for none of that, dress in stereotypically masculine ways, and simply date men instead of women.  Thus his identity as a gay man would be all but invisible to casual observation.  In this way, being gay can be externally expressed, but need not be.  Every 100th man you pass in the grocery store, statistically, might well be gay.  In this way, being gay is a mainly invisible minority group. 

Another mainly invisible minority group?  Autistic people.  Especially, but not limited to, the so-called "higher functioning" group, those of us who have learned or been forced to suppress ourselves, successfully camouflaging our autism for the sake of the rejecting, intolerant public.  There are a remarkable number of articles online talking about autistic burnout.  I've actually linked to one previously, when I was suffering burnout.  Seemed appropriate enough.  Autistic burnout is, to my view, a specific type of representation burnout. 

Most minorities are, to a point, expected to conform to the majority's ways of behaving.  Immigrants to the US are expected to speak English, for example.  Even if that is extremely difficult for them.  Black and brown people in the US are expected to behave just like they're white people, and any "failure" on their part is treated as representative of all black and brown people.  Women in male-dominated fields are expected to work within the system, rather than change it.  Likewise for men in female-dominated fields.  These are mainly implicit understandings, and no one will generally tell you what you're doing wrong if you don't conform.  You just won't be as successful in that field or area as you should reasonably be.

What sets autistic people's struggles apart somewhat, I think, is the outright and blatant communication to many of us that we're not people unless we conform to neurotypical standards.  Applied Behavioral Analysis, or ABA, often makes a point of not simply teaching "appropriate behavior" but also eliminating "inappropriate behavior," such as stimming, phrasing things in unusual ways, and doing activities in unintended yet creative ways.  We are literally told we are wrong to be what we are, and often pushed and trained to be otherwise.  For up for 40 hours a week.  It's the same message given to any minority, just louder and in the guise of "helping" us. 

At its worst, this is reminiscent of the boarding schools we once forced the children of the First People to attend.  Native American children were taken from their parents and tribes, and made to attend federally sponsored boarding schools.  The idea being that by taking them from their tribes and culture, and instead teaching them Western ways, the Native peoples could be assimilated into the broader US culture.  The initial establishment of these schools was mainly benign and meant to facilitate education and empowerment of the First People, but it didn't take long for less moral people to realize they could use this schooling system to try to erase the First People.  They kidnapped the children, took their culture (including their names) from them, and disciplined them harshly to the point of abuse.  If you're familiar at all with US history, you'll note this attempted erasure of the First People is a depressingly common reoccurring theme. 

I found the pointers and insights in this article both relevant and helpful.  By and large, I don't really have that many people I'd consider, "allies that can say for me what I'd say" for my autism identity.  Sometimes my spouse can, but for all the education he's had being married to me, and for all the writing on autism I've done, there just doesn't feel like a replacement for my speaking for myself.  Perhaps that's part of why I spend so much of my time alone.  You don't need to advocate for yourself if there's no one busily misunderstanding and prejudging you.  

Legwork and Life, week of 3/27/19

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

So last week, I posted about how spring was coming.  The weather proceeded to reward me by snowing shortly thereafter.  Fortunately, little of it stuck, and spring seems to still be advancing.  I can't say I missed the birds chirping at 7am, when I'm still trying to sleep, but I suppose I'll forgive them.  

The ducks arrived first, but this fellow only seems to have just returned.  He's the resident great blue heron, and my spouse and I sometimes see him fishing or sunning himself in our back yard.  I suppose we should name him, but in all honesty, we don't actually know if he's male or female.  So I suppose we could choose a gender-neutral name and call it good.  

With the improving weather, I threw open the house to air it out.  This did freshen the air, but also gave me a scratchy throat.  It's still a mite cold for the algae to be growing properly, so that makes me wonder if my problem isn't twofold.  It's worth bringing up to my doctor, anyway.  

I've already got something else to bend her ear over, as it happens.  The very last of my blood tests came back, and it seems I have a couple genetic mutations that hinder the body's detoxification processes.  The test was called MTHFR, and it was annoyingly expensive and not covered by insurance.  But like every other test, they simply drew a vial of blood and sent it off to have Science done to it.  

We already kind of guessed I had detoxification issues, because I do best with a medium dosage of N-acetyl cysteine.  That's a detoxifier you can take orally.  In an emergency context, it can save you if you've overdosed on Tylenol, but in smaller dosages it also supports the body's own detoxification systems.  Effectively, if I take two doses in a day, my mood is better.  I don't fully understand the science, but the results are clear.  

I'm hoping that the more specific knowledge of the precise failure points in my genetics will help improve my treatment.  Rather than a broad treatment, more specific supplements might help prop up the failure point and improve my mood climate even further.  Not that I particularly want to be taking more pills, mind you.  But we might be able to replace some with others, which would be nice.  

In other news, I semi-accidentally got my brain stuck on music again.  I normally have some type of music playing in my head at all times, but this mental soundtrack is usually quite flexible and spans many genres and styles of music.  Sometimes, however, I get "stuck" and hear only a single song or album.  Some types of music are better at making my brain stuck than others.  This month's earworm-on-crack is Brave Enough, by Lindsey Stirling.  I really like the catchiness, the violin, and the dubstep all blended together.   I'll probably continue to be stuck on the album for another week or so, and then shed it and get back to business as usual.  

My forays into the world of podcasting continue.  At this point I have 11 podcasts followed, and a couple more in "trials."  Most of them update once a week, or once every two weeks, so I don't anticipate having huge issues keeping current with them.  I'm also finding my initial dismay with understanding podcasters to be somewhat overblown.  The vast majority of the podcasts I've listened to were comprehensible.  Even the one run by a guy with cerebral palsy and a definite, though minimal, accent because of it.  (I call it an accent rather than a speech impediment because I have about as much trouble understanding it as I do any given foreign accent.)

Thus far, permanent residents in my podcast collection include: MBMBaM (the one that started this whole thing), Myths and Legends, Fictional, and Invisibilia.  Only the lattermost might show up in this blog, but I'm hoping to find others to recommend to you at a later point.  

Reading the Research: Emotional/Social Context

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article highlights another reason why it's so difficult for autistic people to fully read and understand emotional and social cues: they're super situational.  A seemingly warm and friendly smile might simply be a professionally-mandated nicety.  A laughing sound might, on closer inspection of the person's face, actually be tears.  And perhaps most glaringly: a tantrum thrown by a small child on a grocery store's floor, might actually be a meltdown in response to loud noises, flickering lights, or other environmental stressors.  Neurotypical people tend to get that last one wrong at least as much as neurodiverse people... probably more.  

This, of course, explains why it's not enough to simply teach autistic people what a facial expression usually means.  Not that our curricula are well advanced in that regard either, really.  As a rule, when we teach facial expressions, I've only seen the basic ones: anger, disgust, happiness, fear, and perhaps surprise.  In reality, people can display a little of one, a little of the other.  People also lie with their faces and body language, which makes the task of reading them accurately even harder.

Proper social cue training, then, would need to incorporate practice both reading complex body language and theory of mind practice.  Basically, a person needs to be able to size up a situation, and then be able to put themselves in a neurotypical person's shoes.  Taking that information and adding it to the body language and facial expressions yields the final picture.  This would, naturally, not be a very simple matter to put together.

I have, over time, managed to develop and hone the ability to do these things in tandem.  In doing so, I accidentally gave myself an anxiety disorder.  It would be good if I could find a way to teach how to do what I do, but without the anxiety disorder.  I'm just not really certain as to the best way to do that.  Then, too, I'm hardly flawless in my reading skills, so I might not even be the best choice to make this sort of training material.  Reading situations and people is very much an art, not a science, and it's hard to convey the gist in generalities.

If someone could do it, though, I feel like a resource like it would be extremely useful... and not just to autistic people.  Despite reading social cues being as natural as breathing to neurotypical people, they still study books on the subject to become better actors, salespeople, managers, or other people-intensive jobs.  Having an autistic perspective would probably be very instructive.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

WYR: Through an Autistic Lens

http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2019/02/starting-points-for-understanding-autism.html

This piece details something of what it's like to be autistic in the world, from the "this is how incoming information is handled" side of things.  I was interested to note that there is no discussion of how other people handle being around us, or their treatment of autistic people in general.   Also curiously absent, sensory sensitivities and overloads, beyond the context of filtering. 

All six of the points in this piece are or have been relevant to my life.  Of the six points, I found the last couple most comment-worthy.  I would say I tended to get caught up in loops (point 5) more as a child than I do as an adult, save for bad interpersonal interactions that are likely to reoccur. 

There were two incidents of poor communication and hurt feelings around Christmas of last year, and neither of them would leave my poor brain alone until they were somewhat settled.  It was highly unpleasant, but I didn't think it wise to try to shelve the incidents entirely due to needing to see those people in the next year or so. 

The more positive version of this, getting looped into a hobby, hasn't happened to me for quite a while.  I'm kind of sad about that, but I guess it probably allows me to manage all aspects of my life better than I would otherwise?  I used to kind of zone out while thinking about things when I was younger, to the point that kids in school would notice I wasn't in the present and start making comments about it.  In my adult life, such occurrences are quite rare, and the social awkwardness usually breaks me out of such thought-trances before someone even opens their mouth to comment. 

Related to the opposite phenomenon, needing reminders (point 6)...  I have a To Do app on my phone/support tablet that helps me track things I need to remember to do.  This includes things like washing the bedding, handling tooth care, and following up on health care appointments... but it also includes reminders to contact certain people and try to set up a get-togethers... because I literally don't remember to do that if not reminded.  Whatever brain circuits do that for neurotypical people, I'm missing them.  

Legwork and Life, week of 3/20/19

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

I'm kind of dragging this week.  I'm not sure what it is, I just feel like I don't have things together even though things are reasonably okay.  Maybe it's all the stuff I feel like I should be doing in a week, but am not accomplishing fast enough to suit myself?  I dunno.  

I'm sure the massive lack of sleep doesn't help.  I've been doing poorly about bedtime and getting to sleep at a reasonable hour, and that's definitely not helping my mood, energy level, or overall well-being.  

In happier news, I did manage to finally catch up on the podcast I mentioned near the beginning of the year.  That's allowed me to look into the other podcasts I've bookmarked, including a podcast from the BBC specifically on disability news and events.  

It's... been kind of a mixed bag.  A podcast is kind of like a radio show, but because it was born in a more informal environment, the coherence and understandability of any given podcast are not guaranteed to be good.  While the very first podcast I listened to was very clear and easy to understand (well, aside from the sense of humor), several of the others I've listened to in the last week... haven't been.  At all.  It's a little discouraging.  

It may just be a matter of attuning my listening skills to pay better attention.  I hope that's it.  I'm used to listening to podcasts while doing other things, and at least one of the podcasts I tried, I just couldn't do that.  Or perhaps it's simply that I'm unused to the standard format of news presentation, since I haven't watched television news, or listened to radio news, in years.  Either way, I'm discouraged but not giving up just yet.  

In other good news, the weather seems to be turning towards spring.  This is excellent, because while it wasn't exactly a typical winter for around here (all grey clouds all the time, no sunshine, no blue in the sky), it has been kind of a drag all the same.  So we've had a few days of temperatures in the 50s, and the snow's been melting away nicely.  The pond out back has been defrosting as well, and birds are returning, including the ducks.  My days of being able to have the windows open are numbered, because the algae will be growing soon, but I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts!  

I think these strange pre-spring days, with piles of snow yet on the ground, blue skies, and the sun shining down, are maybe my third favorite kind of day in a year.  They're very enjoyable for their weirdness, because you can go walking amongst snow drifts, yet be wearing shorts and a Tshirt.  I think they still play second fiddle to a really warm and sunny summer day, the kind I go biking during.  And also fall behind a pleasant spring day, with the ornamental crabapple trees in full bloom and various other flowers sprinkled in.  

I guess I should take some pictures of all three, huh?  I'll certainly have my chances this coming year.  

Reading the Research: Being Yourself at Work

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article examines the issue of disclosure at work.  This is a major question for autistic people, especially those of us who have learned to camouflage.  If the identity in question is an invisible one (ie: autism, sexual orientation, chronic illness), it seems it's statistically better to disclose it.  

Specifically, "Workers who expressed their non-visible stigmas experienced decreased job anxiety, decreased role ambiguity, improved job satisfaction and increased commitment to their position.  Outside of work, these workers reporter decreased psychological stress and increased satisfaction with their lives."  

That's a long-winded way of saying that living a lie is bad for you, and so is living in fear of how people will treat you if they knew this part of your identity.  Camouflaging, which is what it's called when an autistic person suppresses their authentic selves in favor of attempting to seem neurotypical, by the way, is pretty much exactly "living a lie." 

This isn't to say that disclosure is always the right answer in every situation.  Your specific circumstances may vary: your workplace or boss may be particularly intolerant or uncaring, your ability or desire to self-advocate may not be up to the demands that disclosure imposes, or, in a temporary position, it may not even be worth the time. 

While I personally think the more of us that are visible, the better off all of us are, it's definitely a personal choice.  People can and do get burned out from having to be "the _____ person" all the time.  That's true of any identity, visible or invisible.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

WYR: Authentic Communication and Autistic People

http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2019/01/can-my-child-ever-learn-to-speak.html

This is a really excellent piece on authentic communication and the importance of non-speech communications.  I posted a couple weeks back regarding a nonspeaking (but definitely communicating!) autistic person name Deej.  This is an account from a different person who has valuable thoughts on what communication can look like.

Much is said in the autism world regarding the importance of early intervention, with the assumption that without that early intervention, the child will never learn to communicate "properly."  And by properly, they invariably mean speaking.  More and more, it seems this is inaccurate.  This author didn't learn to use speech the way most people do until age 10.

Sometimes, autistic people simply develop more slowly.  That can be on any number of spectrums, speech being one.  Others include emotional intelligence, physical coordination, sensory integration, and time management skills.  In some cases, these things may never develop to "normal" capacities.  But in many cases, it's just a matter of time.

If you or your loved one struggles with speech as a communication method, consider looking into other methods, such as pictoral systems, sign language, text-to-speech programs, and others.  A place to start might be this page.

This is a subject I can't speak to a lot personally, because I've been capable of accepted speech since I was quite young.  It is, however, highly relevant to the autism world in general.  Even those of us who, like me, tend to be highly communicative via speech, can sometimes become mute when put into sufficient stress.

However, like the author, I too think "use your words" is a cruel and thoughtless thing to say.  I strongly agree that simply being capable of speech-communication does not guarantee you a normal life.  It certainly hasn't for me, normal to above-average speech capabilities or no.

Also, as an ending note: I am highly fluent in speech.  That does not mean I think in words.  I actually don't.  Nor am I exactly like Temple Grandin, who thinks in pictures.  I think in some crazy hybrid of music/sounds, pictures, short video clips, flavors/smells, and memory concepts.  I don't know how to explain the last one.  It's more like muscle memory than anything else, I guess?  It's like the remembered flavor of a steak, except for the concept of how a shoulder is supposed to rotate.  Or what adjustments are necessary to walk safely on a sheet of ice.

Words and speech, then, are a second language to me, though one I've practiced extensively.  If I hadn't done this, what would authentic communication look like for someone like me?  I truly don't know.  Hopefully, as we learn to welcome more nonspeaking people to the table, more methods can be introduced to the general public, and be made available so that everyone can communicate and understand each other.  

Legwork and Life, week of 3/13/19

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

The fatigue from the last few weeks has either gone away or I've adjusted to it so I don't notice it.  Not really sure which, but hoping for the former.  I'm still tired, but that's more likely because daylight savings just kicked in, we lost an hour, and I was up until 1am for an unrelated reason.  On the whole, I wish daylight savings wasn't a thing.  It's kind of petty, but I don't appreciate having to adjust my non-Internet clocks (which includes my thermostat and my car's clock), twice a year.  

Other than that, things are going.  No apparent blood pressure/sugar/I don't even know weirdnesses.  No exciting doom-headaches or mis-aligned spines.  I'm a bit distracted from my regular work and leisure gaming with a couple pet projects in other games.  One of those projects is going to make for a sweet birthday present in a few months, so that's pretty cool.  In very brief: there's an old computer game that I loved, and so did someone else.  Its soundtrack is good, but basically lost to modern audiences.  So, using a lot of metaphorical duct tape, time, effort, and frustration, I've gotten the game to run on a modern device using an emulator.  I'm now painstakingly recording the soundtrack in .mp3 format.  I can then burn that soundtrack to a CD, and voilà, present!  

Related to #2 on my year's goals, I'm catching up on the podcast!  I'm within three months of the current episodes.  This is particularly good because my podcast-loving friend keeps finding more podcasts I think would be helpful for this blog and for my personal development.  I think I've gotten at least two more recommendations since the beginning of the year, and those are the strictly "highly useful and important" category, rather than "hey, this is funny," or "this is cool and interesting but not highly relevant to my life right now" categories.  I have to carefully make those distinctions because I only have so much time in a week, and adding more things to manage can quickly overwhelm me.    

I guess there's a serious argument to be made regarding self-care, and making time for those things that I'd normally consider non-essential.  We'll see what happens when I get caught up with the first podcast, and try adding in the latest episodes of the others.  

Reading the Research: Nutrition and Depression

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article is one of those inconvenient truths I wish would just go away.  
This study is a meta-study, which means it looked at multiple research studies in order to answer a question.  That question was, "Does a healthy diet help people handle depression?"  Unsurprisingly, the answer was a resounding "yes!"  

Junk food is delicious, has many positive associations for me, and has an immediate positive effect on my mood.  If only that was all the effect it had.  

In addition to tasting good, junk food is also very bad for your gut bacteria.  It encourages the overgrowth of bad bacteria in your intestines.  And because it's essentially nutrition-less, it fills you up without giving you anything for your body to use to repair and fuel itself.  

The US population at large, but especially autistic people, tend to struggle with both proper diet and exercise.  A limited palate, or a preference for very specific foods (often "white" foods- milk, bread, ice cream, crackers, etc) can make for a very nutritionally-limited diet.  In addition, many forms of exercise develop a very negative set of connotations for autistic people between poor experiences with team sports and mandatory school exercise experiences.  

It's accepted as a given that good health includes a healthy diet and exercise.  But in my experience this knowledge is almost immediately set aside when it comes to mental health and weight loss, and pills and special diets sought in their stead.  While these things can have their place, the foundation of good health can't be ignored in hopes of finding a "silver bullet" for depression and weight loss.  

Instead, specific treatments, like special diets and pills, should be implemented atop the basic pieces of a healthy life: good nutrition and exercise.  And then, only when needed.  There are forms of depression that can't be helped without pharmaceutical interventions, and imbalances of hormones or brain chemicals that need extra help to become stable.  But the basic foundation makes these things more effective, and without that foundation, the additional treatments are less effective.  

Now if only I didn't like junk food and hate exercise so much...  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

WYR: The World is Such a Loud Place And It Seldom Stops Talking

http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2019/01/the-world-is-such-loud-place-and-it.html

This is a descriptive account by an autistic person who suffers sound sensitivity, like I do.  I think most days she has it worse than I do, or perhaps I'm merely more fortunate to have a quieter place to live than she does.  Still, every sound or audio experience she lists, I've suffered from repeatedly. 

Have you ever stopped in the middle of a relatively quiet room and just tried to identify all the sounds you can hear?  Or just do that in a more crowded area and see how many you can identify or isolate.  It might surprise you how many things your brain tunes out, automatically, because that's what it's supposed to do. 

I am very fortunate.  I work in my basement, and my basement is quite quiet in the winter.  Without the ducks and geese outside, the only sources of noise are my computer's fans, the clacking of my keyboard as I type, the hum of the heating system, the hum of a USB charger, the hum/clicking of the timer for the lamp behind me, the creaking of the house itself, and occasionally the wind.  (Also any notification sounds from instant messaging systems like Gtalk, but I often have those routed through unworn headphones.) 

By comparison, an average coffee shop will have several conversations going, the clatter of dishes and machinery behind the counter, the beeping of timers set to aid the baristas in making the hot drinks, the music played over the speakers, the screech of chairs and tables being moved, the sound of the door being opened and closed, the clacking of at least one other keyboard, the notifications of other peoples' phones, the crinkle and rustle of food wrappers or cup lids being handled, the occasional slurping or sipping noise from someone drinking their hot beverage...  this list could go on. 

Do you think about this sort of thing, or even notice much of it?  I do.  It's not a good thing.  I am extremely distractible, and I hate it.  I took care of a pet parrot for some friends last week, and I had to move the parrot's cage to the second bedroom to keep from getting frustrated and angry.  This parrot is extremely quiet, barely vocal at all (Pionus parrots are like that), but even the sounds of her climbing around her cage were too much distraction for me to work.  Fortunately I was still able to keep the parrot company sufficiently so she didn't get sad and lonely. 

I sympathize thoroughly with the author regarding fire alarms, by the way.  As far as I'm concerned all fire alarms were imported directly from hell.  They make me wish myself dead every second I'm anywhere near them.  I am so very grateful to be out of school, because now the only fire alarm I have to worry about is the one in my home. 

For a while, my spouse and I had ambitions of sound-proofing the small bedroom so I could use it to decompress.  Fortunately, that hasn't proved necessary due to the comparative differences between the apartment complex and our house.  The latter is exponentially quieter, even though it does creak a remarkable amount.  

Legwork and Life, week of 3/6/19

This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.

Hello from surprisingly low-pain town.  I had a wisdom tooth removed.  My first such surgery, and only one I'll need.  My dad is a mutant and had no wisdom teeth, and I got most of his lucky genes for this particular aspect of development.  To add to my luck, the tooth that had to come out was an upper tooth, and wasn't impacted or otherwise complicated.  Very much a grab and yank situation, whereas with the lower jaw, you kind of have to chisel the teeth out.  Funnily enough, the doctor did grumble a bit about how tough my bones are.  I guess that gave him some annoyance while trying to extract the tooth.  Still funny to me.  

I do have a really nice bruise on my face from the local anesthesia injections.  It was relatively faint for a couple days but appears to be getting darker and more visible despite my yellow-toned skin.  I'm guessing that's because I'm insisting on using my jaw now.  The recovery and care instructions insist that I brush my teeth and such, and I've been wanting to eat more than pudding and very soft foods, so I've needed to open my jaw wider than a half-inch to accommodate that.  Hopefully that'll go away soon.

I was awake for the surgery, and it actually taught me something kind of interesting about my system.  You see, when they administered the local anesthesia, it came mixed with epinephrine... also known as adrenaline.  The helper person warned me I might feel my heart race, and not to worry.  I did not feel my heart race or my mind try to panic.  In fact, the only major difference I could detect was the shaking of my hands.  I had serious trouble completing my Picross puzzle.  I normally have some shake in my hands, but it gets markedly worse if something is immediately panicking me.  

This reminded me of a theory I read years ago regarding deer, humans, and human society.  Deer have two modes: calm and upset.  They mainly live in calm, unless predators or some kind of threat occurs.  At which point they switch to upset, and fight or flight their way through the situation until they're out of it.  After which they switch back to calm.  

Humans used to work similarly.  When threats occurred, we fight/flighted to deal with them and then returned to being calm.  The theory goes that as human society developed, we also developed things that register as a threat but can't be dealt with appropriately using fight/flight.  Money problems and angry bosses at work, for example.  These situations put us into fight or flight mode, but because they can't be dealt with so simply, we can get stuck in fight/flight instead of returning to calm.  

The theory posits that this is part of where depression and anxiety come from, and possibly other forms of mental illness as well.  Heart disease, poor sleep, and other physical symptoms follow as well.  Living "on edge" all the time has costs to your mental and emotional health, after all.  

This is the basis of many mindfulness programs.  The idea is to bring yourself back to the calm state, into the present where your boss isn't immediately angry at you, and your money problems can wait to be handled until you get home.  It's not that you start ignoring the past and the future, so much as that you take time sometimes to be in the present.  A reasonable number of people swear by meditation and various forms of mindfulness.  

The fact that I barely noticed the effects of medically administered adrenaline, other than in regards to how well I could play a puzzle game on my tablet, strongly suggests to me that I might be stuck in fight/flight more often than not.  

I have had a very hard time with meditation in the past, to the point where it kind of felt like my thoughts were just bouncing around inside my skull, screaming to get out.  Finding calm and quiet inside myself has always been easiest for me when actively engaged in something, whether that's reading, writing, doing puzzles, or playing a video game.  I struggle with it otherwise.  

Unfortunately, "otherwise" might well be what I need to be healthier.  It'd be rather notable if I managed to learn and practice meditation and found that it made my hands stop shaking entirely.  

Reading the Research: Thought-To-Speech

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article describes a really exciting potential breakthrough in assistive technology: thought-to-speech interfaces.  I've seen various forms of this over the last few years, which is good.  I'd actually theorized, back in college, that something similar could be done, but wasn't really in a place in my life where it was feasible to research it.  Essentially, the person is hooked up to a computer, which has been taught how to recognize the approximate "sound" of a word or number, in brainwaves.  You can thusly think a word, and have the computer say it for you.  

While this sounds like a fun party trick for most people, it's life-changing for people with cerebral palsy and epilepsy.  Nonspeaking autistic people, and those with difficulty forming words due to muscle control issues, might be able to harness this as well.  Instead of struggling to form words using their vocal cords, a person might don an apparatus (or have an implant installed) and simply make their smartphone talk for them.   We already have text-to-speech apps.  If the words could be inputted via thought, it's a very simple matter to have a program read the words aloud.  All without requiring the fine motor coordination to use a keyboard or some other specialized input system.

I was talking about this with a friend of mine, and he noted that such a thing would probably need some kind of push-to-talk option.  Otherwise the device is likely to try to translate random brain noise and or even thoughts not meant to be read aloud.  I'm not 100% sure how big an issue that would be for everyone, due to differences in the way people think.

I've noted before that I don't think in words, but rather some mixture of images, short video clips, sensations, and music.  I somehow don't think that'll translate into words very well.  At least not immediately.  Possibly someday we could picture something in our minds and have it show up on a screen.  Whole diagrams and such could be made much quicker that way.  I expect using such an interface would a skill in its own right.  Still, it'd replace CAD software, and people train to use that.

Honestly, even as a person without speech impediments and physical disabilities, I'd probably try to learn this software.  I actually can't stand to physically write my thoughts down on paper because of how long it takes to shape each word legibly.  I loved having access to a keyboard and word processing program because it allowed me to write my thoughts so much faster.  Imagine if I could simply write my blog posts as fast as I could think them!  It's a technology I'd love to have.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Worth Your Read/Watch: Deej

http://bloom-parentingkidswithdisabilities.blogspot.com/2018/05/deej-upends-what-you-think-you-know.html

Lacking speech does not mean lacking intelligence, or capability, or humanity.

This seems like such an obvious thing to say.  Thing is, it's not.  Speech is the single most common communication method for humans.  It's taken for granted that you can and will communicate via speech at a moment's notice.  If you can't express yourself "normally" via speech, people automatically relegate you to a rung normally occupied by pets and very small children.

Deej, the interviewee in this article, knows this far better than anyone I've ever met.  He suggests, in the article, asking neurotypical people why it is that speech is associated with humanity.

I'm not NT, and never will be... but I would guess that it's because it's one of the things we as a species think separates us from other animals.  It's one of those age-old assumptions, that speech is what makes for sentience, and therefore because humans have speech and language, we are superior to all other animals.  (Also unstated, therefore humans lacking speech aren't sentient and therefore aren't human.)

It's false, of course.  Language as we recognize it may be a specifically human form of communication, but it doesn't make or break a person's humanity.  Deej shows us this clearly, in this interview and in his movie.  He is fully human.  No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

I have never been physically disabled or had any extended period of time where I couldn't speak.  But a few lines from a YA science fiction series comes to mind.  A character in the story has a pretty severe case of cerebral palsy.  He generally can't speak a single word without a lot of effort.  In the story, he gains the ability to communicate using telepathy.  While using this ability, he comments, "You know what hell on Earth is?  Having a large vocabulary, an encyclopedic knowledge of musical theater, and a speech impediment."

I kind of wish telepathy was a real thing, or that we had two or even three primary communication forms instead of just speech, so that people like Deej, and this character, could express themselves freely.

Communication is important.  Speech, though, is only one form of communication.  It's time we recognize and prioritize other forms of it as well, so people like Deej aren't told, by our words and our actions, that they are less than human.  We have so much to learn from him, and from people like him.

Find Deej's website here, and his movie's website here.