Sudden Changes

I know this is meant to be graphic, although I will try and take some out this is a disclaimer that there may be part find either disturbing or upsetting. Although I don’t know emotions I know that one 😃.

Sudden changes these are hard for everyone even neurotypicals. I will try and do some of these sudden changes as there are a lot of them. I am going to cover around four of them. These will be death, break ups in a relationship, someone going to hospital and a general sudden change.  From this I will talk more about the affects because people don’t want to know about things like this.

A general sudden change. This is where something is out of someone’s control usually. To someone on the spectrum most of us need control and order in some way. So, anything that throws us out of that order is sudden. This can lead to things like meltdown, overloads and physical abuse to other people- sorry. These are the general things that people know happen. What is happening inside my head at least, is that everything I have done to create a functional order has failed. Nothing will work for me. I can’t do anything for my self- I’m a failure. I can never be normal. I always assume people know everything that has happened to someone, so people should know why I am upset or having an overload etc. but people don’t everyone needs information before they can act. This is pretty much mooted when this happens because anything that is happening in my world that throws me out of balance will catch other people as well internally or not. The really truth is that the meltdowns, overloads and the physical are the lighter side of a much darker coin. Generally, people on the spectrum self-harm, we starve ourselves, we become more violent and volatile and we regress into a more primal state. None of this is on purpose but because those are the best logical choice that come to mind first. Before anyone thinks “oh why don’t you think about this this way...”. Most people on the spectrum can’t think rationally only logically. Logic is a process which things make sense because ‘this’ happened first; without ‘this’ something else happens in some cases self- harm and other hitting someone around the face with a chair. To us that is a very simplified form of the logical we use. Although this is what happens with general sudden changes.

Death is a tricky one, not just because it depends how someone has died but also the closeness to that person.  I will make a rough guide about what most person on the spectrum feel to that area.                 

If it’s:      A family member          - depends how close but you feel sad

                A friend                           - feel sad may also feel guilty as they could have helped

                A friend of a friend       - depends how close but sad if not then they don’t care.

                A friend of a family member - depends how close but sad if not then they don’t care.

So, I will talk about two of these because the other ones I have ‘been caught up in’ I haven’t care about them 😉. I have lost several family members, one was on the day before my birthday and got the new on my birthday- lovely gift, some have been natural causes, some have been cancer and one so far has been through suicide. I have lost friends in several fires and some through unknown causes- which isn’t helpful.  Generally, when things like this happen especially in things like suicide and death by fire then it’s very hard to say goodbye because you still think they are going to come back to life. When things like this happen usually people on the spectrum work out this isn’t the case, we can self-harm, harming others or just try and end it for ourselves because we can’t cope with an illogical inconsistency throwing out our own perspective. For this feeling to go you usually need to wait around 5-10 years. I’m not kidding. It takes years to recalculate the ‘inconsistencies’, from inconsistency I mean mix emotions we can’t comprehend or a feeling which we don’t know the meaning of but its making our emotion for us, like an emotional autopilot.  This is why sometimes some people may just choose to self-harm because they don’t know what to do and how to deal with it and this is helping, it like me twitching where I know it helps me at times understand what is going on but when I accidentally punch myself it isn’t so helpful. Also, it goes on the ‘superpower’ of the person. For me its stereotypical, science and mathematics. Some of my friends it is languages and others it’s the humanities: history, geography and R.E etc. So, if it is sciences you understand more when someone has cancer or dies of natural causes, but the others won’t as much it isn’t part of their life and is their main focus in everything, it’s the humanities or languages, music or art. When someone dies because of a religious reason or a bombing I won’t completely understand why, but the person who studies humanities will because it has been a part of religion and history for over 2000 years or more.  Whatever are specialty is, there is usually a way of finding a way of describing it in that terminology but one thing really doesn’t translate. Self-harm, apart from other languages like French, Spanish and Italian there is a word for it, except Klingon it is a now counted a real language and there is no word for self-harm :/.   I don’t know where it comes from, even an autistic person doesn’t know where this comes from, it’s just there. This happens a lot most people thing it is a logical process gone wrong, but who knows it could have gone right.

A break up in a relationship might feel like ‘the end of the world’ to most people to someone on the spectrum it feels like you’re in a black hole at maximum velocity in compacted gravity with a binary star hitting you. Just to explain it to anyone who doesn’t understand science. When you are in a black hole time it looks like from the outside that it moves at the rate of  roughly  1 second every 10,000 years but  inside it is the opposite the compact pressure squeezes your body so tightly it can make a double decker bus fit in a baked bean can and the a binary star increases this every time one is sucked in. So in short, it’s a quantum parallel of bad. So, when this happen as I have said in another one of these blogs. Any behaviours or things that they are used to doing together or for them has to go. It pretty much a program reboot but they have to keep so much of their personality so one they aren’t a robot but also, they can meet and interact with people.  This again can go wrong. Apparently because we can’t handle the amount of information we harm ourselves. I think we don’t know who or what to say so we show people. This may not seem like a sudden change but like I was saying it if was out of our control then lots of things could happen from any of the things I have already said, or actually it must be one the only times suicidal thoughts could actually be a way because when you program things, even in AI, you put a ‘self- destruct’ in case of any issue too big to handle or the model is defective in some way. This also works with self-harm as some people just want to get the ‘get the defective bit out’ but also love the feeling pain gives them as it is a replacement for the missing person. So the more blood drips the more that defective bit is leaving them- it don’t work like this just to say but some who specialise like me in science and mathematics know ‘where the best place is’ this can lead to accidental suicide or serious self -harm as it may have tried an artery or tried other things which have lead them to near death.

 So, this is literally out of the control of most people, someone going to hospital. I don’t mean A&E, I mean in a ward most likely been in an accident that has landed then on a ward or if someone has a health issue that has put them on a ward.  So, the main thing is worry, even if they can see them every day, mainly because of one thing. Chance. There is always a chance of something happening. It could be a bacterial infection to them spontaneously disappearing. Bit of Autistic logic here; As hospitals have sick people they could pass it to someone who isn’t even near them, or they somehow have transporters that make people disappear 😉.  In seriousness my [friend, family member or pet] could catch someone like the norovirus or a biohazardous virus because they are in a place full of sick people. That what goes through our heads or at least the heads or autistics that like maths and science. As there is roughly the same chance of them being cured as there is them dying, 50/50. It looks on the surface quite funny-ish. To us the stress can lead to again self-harm, then back to stressing about the self then we might not eat then we stress about that then anything else I have missed, within reason it will always fall back to this violent circle. Then you can add losing control over meltdowns then a ‘one day depression’ on top of everything else. 

And who thinks we have it easy.  I know this is a long post, but thank you for reading through it, I know some of this can be hard to read through; but there is a point to this. Some sudden changes can be avoided so slowly changing things can be easier then things just happening. Even if things can’t be avoided then people need to ask more than “Are you okay?” because most of have default answers to avoid small talk. Actually ask “how do you feel” or anything where we can’t say “I’m good” or “I’m fine”. This is a good way of checking on people on the spectrum or if you know someone well enough any little changes challenge them ask why that is happening. As most of us don’t change as soon as we have a stable order.

So, this is a kinda general but still graphic idea of what happens in sudden changes. If you want to comment, please do. 😊