Reading the Research: Support

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 stresses the importance of love and support in the lives of all humans.  My personal take on it is that the more difficult a person's life is, the more important feeling loved and feeling connection with others is.  Being autistic counts, because you tend to fit in so poorly and receive pushback for it, but things like chronic pain, addiction, anxiety, and depression also fit the bill.  

I've had a complicated experience with this sort of thing.  It's not that I've never felt connection and love like this study describes, but it's rather rare.  This is an era of distraction, with phones constantly making noises to signal new information being available.  That means most of my attention is either on what I'm immediately doing (because I have to focus harder than most to do it), or on those little distractions that add up over time to large chunks of my day.  

The upshot of all this is, I suspect, that I simply don't notice most of such occurrences.  I certainly don't feel warm and fuzzy about the ones I do notice, though I always try to verbally express my appreciation.  It's an open question as to whether I'm simply incapable of said warmth and fuzzies, or if I merely don't devote the time required to contemplating them long enough to achieve that emotion.  I've always felt like I'm a more somber person than most, even to the point of being coldly logical when growing up.  I've "warmed" so to speak, as I've found more people that accept me as me, but it's still probably true to some extent.  Autism thing?  Modern busy-ness of life thing?  Not sure.  

Either way, I'd pay money for an app that would replicate this study.  Something that reminds me at random (only during hours I'm awake, natch) to assess whether I feel loved and what incidents I can recall where love was expressed to me.  Probably just like once a day reminders, rather than 6x like the study does, lest I get very annoyed.  I wonder if there's a way to make Google Reminders do that.  

This idea goes on the "if you're ever Very Serious about being happier, consider doing this..." mental board I have going, along with a thankfulness journal, meditation, and regular daily prayer.  

(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.)