Fear (Or Another Four-Letter F Word)

Posted on by Astrid

Fear. I’ve used this word as a starting point for my writings many times. The idea comes from Mari L. McCarthy’s journaling prompts. The idea is to pick a four-letter F word and write about it or use it as a prompt. Well, I’m doing that now, but I doubt I’m actually going to write about fear. I honestly don’t know what to write at this point and am not feeling anything in particular. That is, I guess I “should” be feeling something, but I don’t know what. Alexithymia. That’s what I believe this is called. Any emotional state for me is “good”, “bad” or “neutral” like right now. I don’t ever feel totally relaxed I believe. There’s always some level of stress or anxiety or fear in my body or mind.

My movement therapist tries to tell me that my body needs to get used to the feeling of being relaxed, because due to my early childhood trauma, it never learned to trust this feeling. That makes some sense, in that I almost always feel like I’m on high alert even when I’m half asleep. Is that even possible? And if so, isn’t it just normal? Do I even know what “normal” is, being that I’m autistic and otherwise neurodivergent, multiply-disabled and a trauma survivor? I doubt it. But if I’ve lived my life like this for nearly four decades, is there any way of changing it? I hope there is, because this feeling of always being on high alert is exhausting.

This is another freewrite I originally typed up in Google Keep, then finished here.

How I’m Feeling (Or Something Like It)

Posted on by Astrid
Daily writing prompt
How are you feeling right now?
View all responses

I’m not sure how I feel right now. It’s past 11PM and I badly want to write, but don’t have the slightest idea what about. That’s probably why I’m turning to the WordPress Daily Prompt, which is quite generic today if you ask me. Or is it? Maybe it’s just that I, being quite intellectually-focused, don’t know how to answer this.

Wait, I was an Enneagram type 4, right? I guess not. I’m perpetually confused as to whether I’m a 4w5 or 5w4. Maybe that means I’m some other type entirely. Or the Enneagram is just pseudoscience (which I know it is but feel in my heart that it’s not).

But I digress. I’ve been feeling all sorts of things today. In the afternoon, I rode the side-by-side bike to the next town to buy some groceries. I also bought a hand mixer and a baking tray, because next week I’m going to bake Biscoff blondies. This was a fun activity, so I felt good. Retail therapy, I guess.

In the evening, I felt overloaded because my spouse was telling me a story on the phone at the same time that a staff entered my room. This had me feeling stressed out for an hour or so.

Then I felt excited again, as I was going to craft a special coffee for my fellow residents and staff. It’s special because it had hazelnut-flavored coffee syrup in it and foaming milk on top. I’m no barista or even close, but I liked the activity. One of my fellow residents, the last time she got my special coffee, was over the moon about the “liquor” in it.

Now it’s 11:30PM and I’m probably supposed to be in bed, but I don’t really feel tired. I think I’m just going to read some more blogs and then go to bed.

“Feeling Blue” Makes No Sense

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m a little late participating in this week’s Sunday Confessionals, as rather than Sunday, it’s Monday night. However, as someone who only “sees” color as it’s presented to me synesthetically, I felt the prompt of “feeling blue” appealed to me.

Blue, as I see it, is not a sad color at all. As such, “feeling blue” has never truly had its intended connotation to me. Blue is the color of clear skies (at least, in our perception). I associate it with inward-directed energy. As such, blue is the color of the letter T, which represents “Thinking” in the MBTI. It might be associated with introspection, but it’s definitely not associated with depression. I’d choose grey for that instead.

I am not a color-to-emotion synesthete, although if I want to, I can describe the feel various colors have to me. Red is angry, as one might expect. Yellow, on the other hand, isn’t as upbeat as most people associate the color to be. I would describe it, depending on its shade, as slightly content in a light shade to optimistic in sunflower yellow. Give me green as the representative of joy anytime. And purple, and especially lilac, is authentic, even though there’s no purple letter in that word.

What do you think? Do colors have emotional meanings to you?

Play Therapy #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

I had my first play therapy session on Wednesday. That is, I used to have play therapy when I was in elementary school. That was nearly 30 years ago though. Yikes, how time flies!

Anyway, I only had four sessions back then before the school holiday and apparently those were either enough or my parents didn’t consent to more play therapy. Not that they were paying, but oh well. My parents were very reluctant to agree to these first sessions anyway, because they were suspicious of anyone in the helping profession, including the play therapist. I wonder why, since the goal of therapy was that I not get angry as quickly anymore. I back then denied getting angry much at all. However, I did play with toy weapons all the time, threw out the purple-haired dollhouse figurines because people don’t have purple hair and tried to overflow the water tray. That might have been telling. Or not, since I don’t know whose initiative the toy weapons were.

I hated play therapy though, because I had to go to it during my favorite subject in school, biology. I wonder honestly what the point was.

Same now. I was initially told, back in February when I had the intake interview for therapy with two different therapists, that the type of therapy I’d get was called something like “differentiation therapy”. I filled in what I thought this meant and behaved in a way that I thought was consistent with this. I thought that the goal is to learn to identify different feelings, so this Wednesday I constantly named the attributes of the objects I played with. The therapist did note that I was adamant about which types of play-doh I liked or didn’t like, but she didn’t write anything about me constantly saying, for example, that the PlayMobil® figurine was giving its companion its left rather than right hand, etc.

I’m pretty sure I was trying to show off with this behavior. I’m now scared she’s going to think I’m far more capable of identifying feelings than I am. Or think I am. Or whatever. I hope we’ll get something out of play therapy this time around, unlike back in 1996 when I was ten.

This post was written for Stream of Consciousness Saturday (#SoCS), for which the prompt is “school”. I interpreted it loosely, because I really wanted to write about play therapy. I’m going to write an actual post on my first session later.

Poem: Light and Dark

Posted on by Astrid

Light
Feels good
Like the sun
On my skin
On a warm day in May

Dark
Feels bad
Like a rainstorm
Soaking me
In the midst of November

Light
And dark
Seem to contrast
Like one is always negative
And the other always positive

But without last November
May will never come
And so it is
With light
And dark

Feel all the feels
And remember
You’re alive
And so it is…

This poem was written for this week’s dVerse Poetics. The prompt was to use a piece of instrumental music as inspiration for a poem. I have a lot of playlists of instrumental music in my Spotify library, but choosing a piece was harder than I thought. I eventually went with a piece for which both the title and the music spoke to me. This seems to be intended for meditation and relaxation practices.

Poem: Locked Up Inside

Posted on by Astrid

In my bubble
I sit
Staring out
At the world
Outside

From around me
I hear
People talking
To me
But I can’t respond

Through the invisible wall
I try
To reach out
To someone
But I can’t

A tight grip
Of panic
envelops me
Because I know
I’m locked up inside

I have had the concept of being “locked up inside” in my head for a few days now. I first came across the phrase in an E-mail support group for parents of children with selective mutism, a disorder in which a child is unable to speak in certain situations due to intense social anxiety. I have never had this diagnosis, but as a teen and young adult, did experience periods of mutism due to anxiety and dissociative freeze responses. I use the term “locked up inside” for a feeling of intense anxiety which causes a freeze response that leads to an inability to speak and sometimes move. The feeling of being “locked up inside” is particularly frequent and intense lately.

I am linking this poem to dVerse’s Open Link Night.

Five Favorite Feelings #5Things

Posted on by Astrid

Okay, this is going to be a quick post. I want to write, but honestly have little idea what about. For this reason, I am taking up DrTanya on her #5Things Challenge. This week, the topic is favorite feelings. Here goes.

1. Delight. When I find myself in a happy flow, I can truly be delighted at things I do. I love this feeling of high energy combined with joy.

2. Inspiration. I truly love it when new ideas keep flowing. Currently, this is not the case, as you might guess from my needing to go with a meme for a blog post. That is, in the writing department, I’m not too inspired. In the crafting area, I definitely am.

3. Gratitude. It’s so great to be able to feel thankful at every possible opportunity. It is also a feeling I find is relatively possible to cultivate. In addition, I truly appreciate it when others show gratitude towards me.

4. Satisfaction. When I’m satisfied with something I’ve accomplished, it truly makes me feel great. Unfortunately, I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so I am not easily satisfied with myself.

5. Active acceptance. This means accepting a situation as it currently is, but being open to the possibility of being able to change it. It is walking a fine line between resignation and resistance. This is probably the hardest attitude to achieve for me, but I’m working on it.

What are your favorite feelings?

Bookish (And Not So Bookish) Thoughts (May 7, 2020)

Posted on by Astrid

I haven’t felt inspired to write all day today. That’s weirdly sad. I mean, before I went on this writing spree at the end of March, I sometimes didn’t write for nearly a week and now I’m feeling disappointed at not having a topic to write about by morning. I did get my writing mojo back in late afternoon. I’m joining in with Bookish (And
Not So Bookish) Thoughts. I think Christine of Bookishly Boisterous intended this as a meme anyway, so I can join in.

I finally finished Wonder by R.J. Palacio yesterday. I originally wanted to write a proper review, but can’t without it probably containing spoilers. So be warned.

Let me say this book had my feelings all over the place. I was triggered by Via’s feeling like everything was about Auggie. This resonates with how my sister felt about growing up with me. I felt tears of joy when reading Miranda’s part, because she showed such pure love to August. Then at the end, when everything is fine and everyone sticks up for August, I felt a pang of jealousy. I mean, my school was welcoming too, but mostly so they could pat themselves on the back for having accepted a blind student. I ended up giving the book a 4-star rating because of these mixed feelings.

Now I’m reading Wink by Rob Harrell. It’s a bit of a similar themed book, but so far not as evocative.

I also downloaded Rules for Being a Girl by Candace Bushnell and Katie Cotugno. I saw it on Rebecca of BookishlyRebecca’s Goodreads, which was linked to her blog. I’m probably going to link my Goodreads here too.

I’m also further digging into The Empath’s Survival Guide by Judith Orloff. I’m beginning to think I may be just a highly sensitive emotional mess, not an empath. However, it’s still an interesting read.

In other news, yesterday was a truly great day for my blog stats. Not that I care much about them, but then again sometimes I do. I am truly loving being able to interact with all my readers. I can’t believe how for years I rarely replied to comments. I believed at the time that my stats would be screwed if half the comments were mine. Well, whatever. I apparently cared more about my numbers then than about genuine connections, which is weird at best.

How is your (reading) life going?

Today I Feel…

Posted on by Astrid

Today I feel pretty awful. Several of my day activities staff were off sick, so I got assigned a relatively new staff. This was hard enough. To make matters worse, I was pretty badly overloaded all day. I did try to relax in the sensory room, but really couldn’t find my calm.

In the evening, I started a Dutch blog again. It’s been the umpteenth time that I started one and I’m not feeling too optimistic about how long I’ll be able to keep it up. Then again, I did finally find a way to link to it from this blog, so that I don’t have to keep switching primary sites each time I comment on a Dutch blogger for them to see it. Of course other bloggers seeing your content shouldn’t be the point of blogging. At least, it wasn’t my point when I first started blogging. I didn’t care about my stats. But that was over thirteen years ago. Now, of course I do care.

I saw a post by a Dutch disability blogger. That blogger in fact inspired me to start a Dutch blog again. She was discussing the notion of “mild” forms of impairments. I generally hate that notion, even though I still often fall into the trap of judging people, including myself, by it.

For example, I am diagnosed with level 1 autism spectrum disorder and probably level 1 cerebral palsy too. Only my blindness can be seen as “severe”. Even so, it’s of course the combined effect of these disabilities that causes me to need the support I need. Thankfully, the long-term care fudning agency got that in my case eventually. It doesn’t get it in some other cases.

Like, a friend of mine shared a newspaper article a few weeks ago about an elderly man who was profoundly hearing impaired, nearly blind and hardly able to walk but still too “mild” for nursing home funding. This man ended up taking his own life. I was incredibly saddened by this and at the same time, it made me feel guilty. I’m trying to turn this guilt into gratitude though.

This post was partly inspired by the first prompt in a 10-day writing challenge I participate in. The prompt was “Today”.

Feelings After Watching a Documentary on the Blindness Rehabilitation Center

Posted on by Astrid

Today, I got a subscription to see past episodes of Dutch television programs mostly so that I could see a documentary series called Five Days Inside. It’s where three presenters rotate to visit mostly health care settings or other institutions that are not commonly shown to the general public. The episode of four weeks ago was about the blindness rehabilitation center I attended in 2005. I actually still recognized some of the staff talking to the presenter from when I went there.

Watching it had me very emotional. I don’t know why. I guess because most of the clients who were featured, some roughly my age when I attended the program, are so optimistic about their future despite sometimes having recently lost their vision. When I attended the program, I often felt way ahead of these people and way behind of them at the same time. After all, I had pretty good Braille reading skills. My reading speed at the start was more than twice that which is the ultimate goal of the rehabilitation program for adults. As I learned today while watching the episode, some people don’t even have the tactile ability to ever learn Braille. Most will only be able to use Braille for simple labeling, not for reading books, like I do.

On the other hand, I never learnd to cook. Not in those four months in the center or the eighteen months in an independence training home that followed. It wasn’t for lack of teaching, but I couldn’t manage these tasks. Or even simpler tasks such as putting peanut butter on bread.

Today, I talked to my CPN from the mental health agency. We were talking about my skills or lack thereof. She seems to blame my parents for not having taught me properly. I understand. Then again, with my having had a meltdown each time my parents tried to make me learn new practical skills, it’s only understandable that they gave up. My CPN acknowledged this is a common autistic trait. My parents would say I’m not autistic, just stubborn. Apparently I decided from as early as age seven on that I would never learn practical skills because I couldn’t do them visually. Or maybe because I thought I was too smart for them. I don’t know what my father’s theory boiled down to exactly.

And now I see these blind or partially sighted people who are planning on working or going to college. I don’t know how I feel towards them. On the one hand, I feel envy. I wish I could cook tuna macaroni or zucchini soup. I wish I could ride the bus on my own, then go into town to buy raisin rolls. I wish six months of training could teach me the skills to live independently and go to college or work.

Then on the other hand, I feel an enormous sense of relief. I feel relieved that somehow my support coordinator was able to convince a long-term care funding lawyer that it’s at least partly due to blindness that I can’t.

PoCoLo