The Nice People No. 17

Pyxis

Pastures, re. your post about communicating............

It sometimes works the other way round too.

I might read someone’s post that seems perfectly fine and innocuous to me, but another poster reads it and seems to misinterpret it completely, or read something into it that isn’t there, and then gets upset or narky, until the misunderstanding is explained. (Of course, if the misunderstanding isn’t explained nicely, it can all kick off! 😱)

I’m trying to think of a word for that ‘extra-sensitivity’ but it’s not coming to me.

SingleSue

Cakeguts said:

Pyxis said:

Interesting announcement about possibly confining the over-70s to barracks.

Although I’m not over 70. 
I was a bit surprised they didn’t include vulnerable groups in that.
Strange.

Today is day 14 of my own lockdown. I’m getting increasingly worried about going to the hospital for my procedure appointment on Tuesday. 

I thought I would join your anxiety club. I have an appointment with a psychiatrist in central London on Tuesday.  With the undiagnosed autism you can just imagine where my anxiety levels are now and I can't access any help if there is any for people with autism because I don't have a diagnosis.  I don't have an underlying health problem of the kind that makes me at high risk just my age 62 and a husband who is 75 in May.  I have had bad anxiety on and off since about February but nothing for 20 years before that.  We booked a private psychiatrist 2 weeks ago because my GP having seen the state I was in decided that I needed to see someone quicker than the usual 3 months I would have to wait on the NHS. In 3 months time it could have become dangerous.  (It did 20 years ago.)  It is the anxiety and the trapped nerve that has shown up the autism.  There are lots of other things that make it obvious as well if you know what to look for. Interestingly my neighbour has known for years and so has someone else I know but they didn't think to tell me because they thought I knew.

I also had a suspicion you were on the spectrum..but that you knew about it! For me, it was the dog with a bone attitude that gave me the idea and some thought processes. I've got two offspring on the spectrum and recognised the thought processes.

I have some traits which are higher than in the average person but would not meet the full criteria. Most of mine are from having my breakdown in 2005 and the subsequent (flawed) rebuilding in which I built in a self protective layer, prior to that, my 'score' would have been negligible. 

Re anxiety, just had youngest on the phone (complex autism), his anxiety is through the roof. He has a dissertation due in a month, is in the high risk vulnerable group (he was born prematurely with immature lungs and then swiftly developed bronchiolitis  which caused permanent and long term damage and severe asthma) and has a very weak immune system. He's now extremely anxious that the last 3 years will be wasted, that he will be confined to one room with no access to kitchen facilities (he is living in halls) and unable to get home.

I'm also getting slightly concerned, I am also high risk  and could also be told to isolate. I have no idea what I would do for money, my weekly earnings may be small but it's what pays the bills and of course, an enforced and lengthy isolation would also mean no job at the end of it. My employers are good at some adaptations but being off work is one area where they are not great with (hence my zero sick days over the last 2 and a half years record). 

Two weeks I could have covered (it would be tight but doable), 12 or 16 weeks would be impossible.

Pyxis

Oh Sue. ☹️☹️☹️




Are you separated from customers by a glass screen?

SingleSue

Unfortunately not.

silvercar

OH is trying to work out if he is high risk. He had a stent put in his heart last Summer, but that was only found be accident. So he didn't have a heart attack. He's on statins to reduce his cholesterol, but that his all. Logically he now has a healthy heart, so should be fine, but wondering if having had a procedure makes you fall into the underlying health conditions category. 

MoneySeeker1

Cakeguts said:

PasturesNew said:

Cakeguts said:

.... very likely to be on the autistic spectrum with what used to be called Asperger Syndrome.  I was going to get an official diagnosis soon by something tells me that it will have to wait a bit longer. There is no rush it has only taken 62 years for me to find out. 

I stayed quiet earlier, I have processing/response issues and usually just avoid answering many posts as I don't know how to. 

I'm an Aspie   That's my speshulness.  It's.... not nice.

OK just to let you know that when I was spending time at the mental health centre where I have been a volunteer for 6 years one of the workers when I told her said that she didn't have a gift like that.  There are good sides to it that I have that I will admit to.

My downsides are getting banned from Facebook groups for making comments that other people read as rude.  Usually they are just blunt facts and I can see that now but then I just thought that people were rude. I have to remember that what is blindingly obvious to me might be rocket science to someone else who doesn't process everything in black and white.  My husband has been on at me for years about never having any shades of grey in my thinking and now we know why.

Just at the moment I have the autism special anxiety. in the past I have had the autism special anxiety and the autism special depression.  The trapped nerve wrecked my routine and then this coronavirus is about to do the same thing. 

I have also worked out though that the people who are panic buying in the shops are all suffering from anxiety so I can't tell actually how bad mine is compared to the general public.

What I will say is that the media has a lot to answer for in this. 

My answer is to stay off the computer unless I am on this forum but I don't want to read lots of stuff about coronavirus because that is making the anxiety worse mostly because I have to have facts about things and if people don't explain things thoroughly I get anxious then.  I don't have enough facts about this virus only loads of hype from the media.  My brain seems to live in a very logical world with only black and white processing and lot of worst case scenario processing.

Admits that, as a non-Aspie, I can sympathise with the problems that can happen when "telling it like it is" - as I don't do "shades of grey" either. It's either right or it's wrong basically. I'd say that an example of that is many people let themselves off the hook for some types of lies or some types of theft and decide it's okay, whereas I see a lie as a lie and theft as theft at whatever point we are talking.

PASTURES - Why wouldnt you ask what flavour of icecream it is? Duh - I would have thought that was blindingly obvious question to ask personally. I'd certainly want the chance myself to go "If it's vanilla bogstandard make - forget it. If it's a luxury/healthy hazelnut or chocolate - now we're talking and I'll have one please".

Cakeguts

SingleSue said:

Cakeguts said:

Pyxis said:

Interesting announcement about possibly confining the over-70s to barracks.

Although I’m not over 70. 
I was a bit surprised they didn’t include vulnerable groups in that.
Strange.

Today is day 14 of my own lockdown. I’m getting increasingly worried about going to the hospital for my procedure appointment on Tuesday. 

I thought I would join your anxiety club. I have an appointment with a psychiatrist in central London on Tuesday.  With the undiagnosed autism you can just imagine where my anxiety levels are now and I can't access any help if there is any for people with autism because I don't have a diagnosis.  I don't have an underlying health problem of the kind that makes me at high risk just my age 62 and a husband who is 75 in May.  I have had bad anxiety on and off since about February but nothing for 20 years before that.  We booked a private psychiatrist 2 weeks ago because my GP having seen the state I was in decided that I needed to see someone quicker than the usual 3 months I would have to wait on the NHS. In 3 months time it could have become dangerous.  (It did 20 years ago.)  It is the anxiety and the trapped nerve that has shown up the autism.  There are lots of other things that make it obvious as well if you know what to look for. Interestingly my neighbour has known for years and so has someone else I know but they didn't think to tell me because they thought I knew.

I also had a suspicion you were on the spectrum..but that you knew about it! For me, it was the dog with a bone attitude that gave me the idea and some thought processes. I've got two offspring on the spectrum and recognised the thought processes.

I have some traits which are higher than in the average person but would not meet the full criteria. Most of mine are from having my breakdown in 2005 and the subsequent (flawed) rebuilding in which I built in a self protective layer, prior to that, my 'score' would have been negligible. 

Re anxiety, just had youngest on the phone (complex autism), his anxiety is through the roof. He has a dissertation due in a month, is in the high risk vulnerable group (he was born prematurely with immature lungs and then swiftly developed bronchiolitis  which caused permanent and long term damage and severe asthma) and has a very weak immune system. He's now extremely anxious that the last 3 years will be wasted, that he will be confined to one room with no access to kitchen facilities (he is living in halls) and unable to get home.

I'm also getting slightly concerned, I am also high risk  and could also be told to isolate. I have no idea what I would do for money, my weekly earnings may be small but it's what pays the bills and of course, an enforced and lengthy isolation would also mean no job at the end of it. My employers are good at some adaptations but being off work is one area where they are not great with (hence my zero sick days over the last 2 and a half years record). 

Two weeks I could have covered (it would be tight but doable), 12 or 16 weeks would be impossible.

Crisis team coming out to me tomorrow.  The anxiety that started out as just managable this morning got steadily worse and by after lunch I was having suicidal thoughts. I have been here before 20 years ago and was taking an SSRI but my doctor asked me to get off it.  I now realise that I should have reduced it under psychiatric care not on my own but of course no one realised that I had autism.  Lots of people have told me now that they knew but I didn't. I do now. Apparently it is obvious with me if you know what to look for.  I am slightly better at the moment because the crisis people told me to take some diazepam that I had left over from the last lot of anxiety like this 3 weeks ago.  I have to take some more at bedtime. So I should sleep well. I now need an SSRI to control all this again and it has to be done now before we are in 4 weeks isolation which has made it all worse today.  I get severe depression as well and I will get that if this anxiety doesn't get sorted out.  Today I can't eat because I feel sick all the time and I have been sitting here shaking so it isn't good at all.  Eventually my husband phoned the crisis team because we have past experience of how dangerous this can be for me.  Of course I now realise that with autism I am high risk for depression and anxiety. I just wish I had know that I was on the spectrum 20 years ago.  As a child would have been good but they didn't "do" things like that when I was young.

Cakeguts

Pastures New I know exactly where you are coming from.  I have the autistic sensitive hearing. Basically I hear things that no one else does.  In my case I hear not just sounds but the all the resonances that accompany those sounds and everything is really LOUD.  I have never been able to manage the sound of fireworks so this year we had 5 weeks of continous fireworks every night at Diwali and Bonfire night and then another week from Christmas Eve to 2nd January every night.  I got really really angry and upset from the noise.  People who don't have this just don't understand how loud they all are.  I was wearing ear defenders for much of Diwali and Bonfire night in the house but then how do you watch the television?

My autistic processing is stopping me from watching the television at the moment because of this anxiety and probably depression as well because the actors all stand close to each other in everything and my black and white processing is processing this as a problem even though logically I know it isn't one especially if I am watching something made 5 years ago.  

I have moments of blindingly obvious because I can't see the shades of grey and I get upset and frustrated if other people can't see something that is so obvious how can they not do?

I had exactly the same problem as you with Facebook. People twisting what I had written or then unfriending me because I had made what I thought was a useful comment and they took it to be extremely rude. 

Sometimes I post on here when I can see that a person who hasn't got this has posted something and left out some of the details that someone like me needs to have to make sense of it. I hate it when people leave out important facts that I need to know like when the doctor's surgery gave me a lowering cholesterol leaflet instead of the actual numbers so that I could work out how well I was doing. A nice locum doctor realised what the problem was and gave me the result which showed that I had got the cholesterol well under control on their diet and so didn't need the leaftlet because I knew how to do it.  A little bit more care needs to be used when explaining things to people on the spectrum because you can make us anxious if you just assume that we know things that you have not said.

I would have asked what flavour the icecreams were as well. I mean what is the point of saying that you want one if they all turn out to be flavours that you don't like.

The big problem I have is that I process worst case scenario which I am now told is also normal for people who have this.  I also don't show pain when I am in pain and I don't show anxiety when I am anxious so unless someone understands that they are dealing with an autistic adult they don't see how much pain I am actually in or how anxious I actually am.  The not showing pain thing caused a 3 week period when I couldn't get pain relief  in the right quantities out of the NHS to control nerve pain for a trapped nerve. They didn't think I was in much pain because I wasn't screaming the surgery down or rolling around. This when I have a very high pain threshold.  Another indicator. The pain felt as if I had put my arm into a fire and left it there to burn and they were suggesting paracetemol that you can't take all day or ibuprofen that needed something else for my stomach so that I could take it and only had three doses a day. It took 3 weeks until someone suggested alternating co-codamol and ibuprofen with stomach lining tablets.  I couldn't understand it because when you watch programmes on the television they are giving people gas and air to relieve pain like that and I had to put up with it for 3 weeks when I didn't have to.

I will have to stop writing this now as it is starting to cause anxiety again. I am just about hanging in there at the moment.

GDB2222

The Sun reports that ISIS has instructed its terrorists to avoid Europe over fears about Corona.

Pyxis

GDB2222 said:

The Sun reports that ISIS has instructed its terrorists to avoid Europe over fears about Corona.

Well, there’s the silver lining! 🤪



Ironically, it looks like the virus is doing their job for them! 
(Is there an ironic emoticon?)