Hyper #WotW

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! I haven’t felt like writing over the past few days because I’ve been perseverating on polymer clay. Today, I thought I’d write a post after all to sum up my week and my word for this week is “Hyper”. After all, I’ve not just been perseverating on a special interest, but it’s been costing me my sleep too. I was almost going to choose “Manic”, but that would be appropriating the bipolar community, as I doubt my episodes are bad enough to qualify even as hypomanic. They’re more like autistic or ADHD (not that I have that last diagnosis either) hyperfocus. So yeah, hyper.

I’ve been literally working with polymer clay for hours everyday except today for the past week. I’m improving, but not as fast as I’d like.

And it’s not even that I’ve created anything worth mentioning really. I mean, yesterday I decided to bake a project, but it didn’t turn out as good as I’d hoped.

Multi-Layered Polymer Clay Star

Okay, I did create a purple cat on Wednesday, because my husband had been asking for it everyday for a week. Purple because it’s the least ugly color for a cat out of the ones I currently own. My husband said it was pretty well-proportioned except for its whiskers, but then again that’d be practically impossible to do with actual polymer clay. I didn’t bake this figurine though.

Purple Polymer Clay Cat

Yesterday, like I said, I did bake something, but I was quite disappointed in its outcome. For this reason, I was up late ruminating about how to prevent it from getting ugly again. As you might see, it is a multi-layered star, so I figured if I baked the bottom layer first and then attached the unbaked second layer, baked again and so forth, it should work. I also figured I’d create my piece directly on the baking surface as to not have to move it too much. Well, there I made a mistake, because the baking surface I normally use is an oven dish normally also used for food. I until now figured it wouldn’t be a problem since I lay parchment paper under my polymer clay. Until today, that is. So now I promised my staff a new oven dish.

After this happened, I decided to give up polymer clay until I can go to the hardware store to get myself a tile to bake on.

In addition to hyperfocusing, I’ve also been spending more money than may be considered sensible. I mean, like I said a few times before, I won’t go broke anytime soon with my current spending habits, but with the fact that my special interests tend to be short-lived, it may not have been wise. On Thursday, I ordered some cookie cutters and an alphabet clay stamp set at an online store, only to be told yesterday that not everything is in stock and hence my order would probably be processed a week later. Then in the evening, I impulsively bought a whole lot of polymer clay supplies, including cookie cutters, from someone on Facebook. It seems to have gone alright, both the paying and the actual supplies being on their way. I decided to cancel my store order that evening. I might order the stamp set separately later.

Overall, though my perseverating might be a little worrisome, I’m trying to reason that I’m not getting into trouble yet and won’t in the foreseeable future even if my state of hyperfocus continues for a while. And it most likely won’t. The only thing I can hope for is that I won’t give up on the craft entirely then.

Word of the Week linky

Working On Us Prompt: ADHD

Posted on by Astrid

It is Wednesday and that means Beckie has launched another topic in the Working On Us Series. I badly wanted to participate last week, when the topic was (complex) PTSD. However, I felt too low on energy then. This week, the topic is ADHD.

I was never diagnosed with ADHD, so in this sense I have little to add here. I, however, do experience many symptoms that could be signs of particularly inattentive-type ADHD. They overlap a lot with autistic symptoms though, which I do have a diagnosis of. At this point, I don’t think it’s necessary for me to get an official ADHD assessment. Most groups for adult ADHD/ADD welcome self-diagnosed individuals and those who are questioning, like me.

Symptoms I relate to include restlessness, both physically and mentally. I’m not necessarily hyperactive in that I blurt out random things, but I do fidget like all the time and my mind is usually racing. That is, it is either racing or completely shut off, like when I’m low on energy.

The same really goes for impulsiveness: I’m not impulsive in the typical way, but I am in less typical ways. For example, every need feels urgent to me. This applies to basic human needs like eating – when I feel hungry, it feels as though I’m literally starving -, but also to other wants and needs. This could be related to autistic sensory processing issues, but I believe it’s more than this, especially since it doesn’t just apply to sensory or bodily needs.

As for inattentiveness, I can’t usually pay attention to something unless it really interests me, in which case I hyperfocus and become totally absorbed to the exclusion of other activities. I know this is an ADHD trait, but it is also common in autistics and I’ve always wondered whether everyone doesn’t have this issue to an extent.

Lastly, my executive functions seem to suck. My memory for random words or digits is about average and used to be above-average, but for everyday life experiences (particularly others’ experiences) and daily tasks, it’s pretty bad. I was told when I did a behavioral memory test (where you have to retell a short newspaper story) as part of my autism assessment, that my memory is detail-oriented.

With respect to planning and organizing tasks, I suck at those and always have. I used to do pretty well when faced with a deadline, but even then I struggled to organize tasks. I recently read that ADHD children often learn to do tasks on high adrenaline. The reason is often that neurotypical adults assume that, if a child is capable of something relatively difficult once, they must be able to do it all the time and must be able to do all assumed-to-be-easier tasks in that category. For this reason, neurotypical adults often force ADHD children into doing tasks they cannot yet do, assuming they can, and as such cause the child high anxiety. This causes an adrenaline rush, which temporarily increases the child’s ability to perform.

When I read this conversation on Facebook (it was originally posted to Tumblr but I don’t know where), so many bells rang in my head. Like many people referred to in this conversation, I can sometimes do seemingly more complex tasks while not being able to do simpler tasks in that same category. I am also very inconsistent in my abilities, usually being able to perform a task under pressure better, but with less pleasure. For clarity’s sake, this conversation was meant to explain the harmful effects of forcing children to do tasks they feel they are not capable of.

Since I do not have an ADHD diagnosis, I’ve not had any treatment specific to it. I’m also not on ADHD medication. I, however, find that some coping strategies that work for ADHD individuals, do work for me.

Autistic: Living Life on the Spectrum #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day one in the #AtoZChallenge, in which I’ll share a collection of miscellaneous musings. For my first post, I’d like to talk about a topic people who used to follow my A to Z posts on my old blog, are thoroughly familiar with, since I chose it for my theme in 2015 and 2017: autism.

I was first diagnosed with autism at the age of 20 in March of 2007. The clinician who diagnosed me, didn’t give me an Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis, like my support staff at the time had wanted. I didn’t care, as I at the time already didn’t subscribe to the rigid subtypes of autism, be it Asperger’s, PDD-NOS or classic autism, or high-functioning and low-functioning autism for that matter. I believe autism is a spectrum condition presenting differently in every affected person.

Later, in December of 2007, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s after all. This remained my diagnosis, along with a few mental health conditions, until the summer of 2016. Then, my autism/Asperger’s diagnosis got taken away. The psychologist who changed my diagnosis, claimed that my premature birth and the brain bleed I suffered as an infant, preclude an autism diagnosis. As if those genetically wired to be autistic are somehow exempt from being born prematurely or suffering brain bleeds. I know that, because the exact cause of autism is still unknown, it may be hard to differentiate autism from the mental effects of brain injury. However, since said psychologist couldn’t diagnose me with acquired brain injury either, because I sustained the brain bleed before age one, I ended up with no diagnosis at all that could explain my social cognitive differences.

I sought an independent second opinion and, on May 1, 2017, was rediagnosed with autism spectrum disorder under DSM-5. I am diagnosed with level 1 ASD, which is the mildest kind. I am pretty sure that, if the psychologist had taken the opportunity to assess me in a more natural environment, I’d be diagnosed as level 2.

Autism is still diagnosed based on the presence of social communicative difficulties and repetitive behaviors and interests. As of the release of DSM-5 in 2013, sensory issues are finally part of the diagnostic criteria. In my opinion, they aren’t given nearly the amount of attention they deserve. Neither are executive functioning difficulties. This is a term which describes organizational skills. I scored high for ADHD on the initial screening tool, but couldn’t be further assessed for it. Though I’m pretty sure I have some ADHD-inattentive traits, they could just as easily be part of my autism.

Autism, like I said, presents with social communicative differences. These include, in my case, difficulty making and keeping friends, difficulty interpreting non-literal language and tone of voice. Of course, because I am blind, I cannot read body language. My conversations also tend to be one-sided, in which I’m either the listener or the talker.

The other criterion of autism is the presence of repetitive behaviors and interests. I engage in near-constant stereotypical, self-stimulatory movements (or “stimming”). My language can also be repetitive, but this is particularly clear when I’m overloaded. As for special interests, I don’t have a lifelong obsession, like Temple Grandin does with animal behavior. Rather, my interests, though they change often, can be obsessive in intensity and focus. For example, I used to have an obsession with calendar calculation (calculating what day of the week a certain date falls on).

My main autistic trait though is overload. This is also a common brain injury symptom. In that sense, I’m doubly blessed.. I tend to be both sensorially and cognitively very easily overloaded. This then causes me to stim more, use echolalia (repeat other people’s words) and may lead to meltdowns or shutdowns.

Something interesting about overload is that it rarely occurs when I’m engaging with my special interests. This may make you think I’m just lazy, but I’m not. For one thing, my special interests involve little offline interaction. For another, they are my special interests because I’m good at them.

I hope that through this post, you’ve gotten a little glimpse into my life with autism and learned something new. For those not aware, April is autism awareness month. I encourage you to read other blogs by autistic people. You will find that most have a kind of difficult relationship with autism awareness month. I, like them, prefer autism acceptance.