Where's the Feeling?

For somebody who is quite sensory-aware, naturally mindful and pays attention to what their body is telling them, I am remarkably useless when somebody asks "what did it feel like in your body?"

My new therapist ask this question a lot - it is an important part of the EMDR we will be doing - and I find it really difficult to answer! I can be bad at identifying emotions, though I am improving at times, but sometimes I'm even worse at this, which surprises me.

Is it because I don't notice it? Is it because I can't identify it? Is it because I can't remember it afterwards? Is it because I find it difficult to communicate it verbally?

During my difficult week I have been trying to pay good attention to where and how I feel different emotions and responses in my body, particularly the past couple of days since I saw her.

With some emotions it has definitely been a case of not thinking to pay attention at the time - when the old amygdala's partying I tend not to be paying attention to my precise inner sensations. At other times I have been able to notice some clues, for example my shoulders being tense and raised up, a sick feeling in my stomach (usually worry), fidgety hands or hands that want to hold something, a mouth that wants to smile.

Emotions have even been mapped in the body with thermal imaging- picture from here.

But that's pretty much all - I spent a good twenty minutes yesterday thinking "I feel calm, content, relaxed and happy, what does it feel like?" and all I could come up with was slightly smiley and it's easy to move (if that even counts!!). Does my body just not feel feelings in a very physical way or am I spectacularly bad at figuring it out?! 

Any hints or tips or do you have the same experience?

A quick Internet search for "anger in my body" or "where do I feel things in my body" bring up a variety of resources to highlight body cues for emotions - I'm going to keep paying attention and see if I can work out whether it's my awareness or my body that is making it more tricky to figure out - or maybe both. And I'll be writing it down to make sure we don't come a cropper on the "difficult to communicate it verbally" thing. Interoception differences and alexithymia are both known to correlate with autistic neurology so I probably shouldn't be surprised by this whole business!

Raw and Real

A baby is unfiltered, unrestrained and unapologetic. It is entirely authentic and neither hides nor tones down its emotions or needs. Its enthusiasm is unbridled, its sadness wholly embodied and its affection genuine and unmistakeable.

Baby Peggy does not stop to think about how his feelings or requirements might affect me and Mr Peggy and he is not worried about offending anybody or putting them out. He doesn't rein in his displays of emotion in concern that he's being annoying nor because he fears being overwhelmed by them: he simply is. When he is cross he is cross all over and when he is content he is blissfully relaxed. His smile and attempts at giggling are infectious when he is altogether engrossed in playing with Daddy. 

And do you know what? Yes, there are moments when I just want to be asleep or when I (strongly!) begrudge having to get off my backside to change yet another stinky hind quarter. When I literally want to bang my head on a wall because it's all too much. But I marvel every day at the beauty of this boy and his wholeheartedness.

There's no extra layer, no ulterior motive, no people pleasing or game playing. A baby is straightforward and unapologetic. You may take him or leave him, but what you see is what you get, and the things that you get are infinitely richer for their authenticity and un-self-conscious-ness (definitely a word).

It is refreshing and renewing to be with a person who is so generous and unconcerned in sharing of themselves.

I aspire to be more like my baby and I am infinitely grateful to have the honour of being with him and learning from him.

I think what he is missing is shame. The fear of rejection is what brings the feeling of shame, and how powerful that is. How sad that our longing for acceptance so often hinders us from fully embodying our broad range of states of being. May it be a long time until he experiences the rejection that hardens our shells.

He is also missing the fear of becoming overwhelmed by his emotions. Perhaps this is a less universal experience for adults than the feeling of shame, but it's no less important. At the moment Baby Peggy relies almost wholly on mutual regulation. Mr Peggy and I comfort him when he is sad, hurt or scared and he knows he is safe with us. He stops crying when we pick him up (well... not every time!) because he is secure in the knowledge that he is OK now. Hopefully he will learn that it's OK to fully experience his emotions and that they can be attended to and soothed in whatever way is applicable and that he will be OK afterwards. That way he will feel things at the time, deal with them and move on, just as he does now - no trying to squash them in case they get too big when all that does is means they come back later. 

Because Baby Peggy is so true and uncomplicated, I know how he is feeling and when he has a need, and I can meet that need. He depends on me and that's fine. He is not meant to exist in isolation or be self-sufficient. As he grows there will be more and more things that he manages independently, but perhaps we make a mistake when we try to live as though this is a phase that we completely outgrow as we age. Little steps can help to start to turn this view around, like saying "thank you for helping" instead of "sorry for being a pain."

Thanks little one, for showing me how rich and beautiful an authentic, vulnerable, dependent life can be.

Many Neurodivergent Returns of the Day!

I'm a bit cross about my birthday this year. I feel it has misfallen rather, at the end of a week where I've somewhat overdone it socially, and am dealing with some fairly hefty hammers to my mental health.

I often feel that there is a great expectation to enjoy one's birthday: a pressure to celebrate and be happy (hence "many happy returns!") and have a Special Day. I feel like if I don't have a lovely day I will be disappointing people, because they have expressed their wishes and hopes that I will have fun, or have a wonderful day etc, and I have not demonstrated this to be the case. I know this isn't what they intend - they are kindly expressing their hope that the day treats me well, and I do the same to others because I hope their birthday does treat them well. But somehow it makes me feel sad or guilty if I can't fulfil those wishes!

The points I want to make are twofold, I think.

One: "happiness" isn't everything, and neither can it be manufactured or conjured up on a whim. 

Please don't start CBT-ing me here or telling me how to create my own happiness. I know we can do things to shift our emotions but that isn't my point right now! What I'm trying to say is that why should emotions be in a heirarchy with happiness at the top? Are "good" emotions somehow more valuable than "bad" ones? Am I a better person if I'm always happy? 

Admittedly it is more pleasant to feel positive emotions, and for most people it is easier to be around somebody happy than somebody sad or angry (perhaps hence the general pressure to be happy, because then the other person doesn't feel obliged to feel bad that you're feeling bad/try and help you/invest time in being with you in your sadness where it is less pleasant). 

But that doesn't actually mean that it is objectively better to be happy all the time or at a specific time. I generally end up feeling better, calmer and more at peace if I acknowledge whichever emotion I happen to be feeling at a time and honour whatever message it is bringing me. I often experience problems if I ignore my emotions or mask them or pretend that I'm feeling something I'm not.

Two: happiness looks different and is brought by different things for everybody, especially neurodivergent people.

Here's a sky to gaze at from yesterday

Today I will likely not be displaying any heightened emotion. Firstly, autistic people tend to display their emotions differently from non-autistic people, but also I generally feel at my best when I am not experiencing any heightened level of emotion, positive or negative. Many people enjoy extreme happiness or excitement, but these create disturbance in my physical and neurological systems which is unsettling and "stressful" in a body-brain way rather than a cognitive way (if I am very happy or excited they are good things but still create strain on my systems and require recovery, rather than replenishing me). So top of my emotional heirarchy would probably be "calm" or "peaceful" or "content."

When I am feeling at my absolute best, it is not astounding to see, nor necessarily apparent to others, but I am enjoying a state of non-happening, non-stress, just being how I am in that moment. This is why I like time to enjoy something that brings me happiness: I gaze at the birthday candles until they have nearly burnt away, drinking in the moment of glow and stillness, or I linger by the glorious sunset or majestic waves for longer than typical, bathing in every sensory aspect of the calm and awe it inspires. Stillness and calmness are when I feel at my true "happiest."

Visiting my Geordie Peggy
and tea at THE BEST Thai
Restaurant. And yes, we're
both autistic so we always
have the same thing! A
wonderful day, but exhasuting.

Today I stayed at home and watched my church service on YouTube. I have done too much people this week and it has been getting more and more imperative by the hour that I do something to sort this out. The peopling I have done has been so enjoyable, but I went overboard (being sociable on two consecutive days), being out of practice at scheduling because of lockdown! My brain is also trying to deal with some nasty stuff mental health-wise and that takes huge chunks out of my coping resources and notches my mood down and "negative" emotions up.

So today I was church at home, and that was just right. We managed to move this afternoon's appointment to yesterday. Basically I have managed to cancel nearly everything I would have been doing today. Mr Peggy's work day got extended slightly. I am wearing joggers and fuzzy socks. I came downstairs to balloons and pressies but no people. I have been alone for five hours and will be for two more. I have finished my jigsaw puzzle and now I'm writing a blog post. Next I will clean out the guinea pigs because hopefully then it will be Sunday (not going to church has made a confusing rift in my routine!). 

This would be a disaster of a birthday for many people, but for me it has worked out perfectly. Last night I was frustrated and upset that I was feeling so completely rubbish and that it was going to be my birthday just at that time so I wouldn't enjoy it properly. But now, I am decompressing. I am feeling better. I am looking forward to Mr Peggy coming home and to spending the evening with him, opening my presents and cards and quietly watching some unemotional TV. I have had a morning of stillness and I am several notches calmer than I was: the space I made for myself means that in spite of the week behind me, I am enjoying my birthday. It might not be the birthday you would want and it might not look how you expect a birthday to look, but my happy is not made the same way as your happy; my stress is not made the same way as your stress, and my most enjoyable day is not made the same way as yours. 

So no need to feel sad for me or judge the way I choose to spend my special day (generally, I prefer same to special, or my special in small doses amongst plenty of same!) - this is the one day of the year that I can jolly well do what I like, and this is what I liked today!

Birthday Bunting Banner 😍

Memories

When I'm driving along or walking and autumn washes over me, I feel all scrunchy, and not in a good way.

When I first came out of hospital I was constantly assailed by completely overwhelming and uninvited memories. The slightest thing would trigger them and the emotions would take over me. It was exhausting, upsetting, and draining.

They come in ebbs and flows now; weeks where I'm much more here and now and weeks where I am being taken back in time throughout every day. New triggers pop up that I haven't met before and I'm back at day one, struggling to see the road through my tears as I remember somebody saying something a certain way, or filled with anxiety as I simply realise that something I am going to have to do may trigger memories. 

I can cope with the little ones that pop up a few times a day, snapshots of a time that seems so far away now, the odd turning over of the stomach. The unexpected ones and the new ones and the ones where the unidentified emotions just take you over or you've been dreaming about it all night and the feeling won't leave you are harder to deal with. 

It was a completely separate life. It doesn't fit into or link with my life outside. Nobody in my daily life has the same points of reference. That thing where people reminisce when something reminds them of a previous experience doesn't work, because none of my experiences from the last year are common to the people I spend my days with. You can't say "ah, remember that time when...?" If you want to share what's in your head (which is a big way most people communicate and build relationships, and occasionally it occurs to me to do so even though I am uncomfortable inviting attention by talking at the best of times, especially talking about myself) you have to tell them the whole story and they are still unlikely to really understand. It's not relatable, you'd just be the weirdo that's constantly talking about when they were in the loony bin... I also feel like that's somehow taboo, that I shouldn't talk about that time and that place in everyday "savoury" conversation, though I know this is probably just my own judgment. Over time I will build more recent experiences that do relate to my daily life and daily interactions and normal things that aren't about bonkers brains, but it seems that for the minute most of my recent frame of reference lies in that realm.

I don't know if I want to remember or not. It hurts, which is off-putting. Am I feeling like I am there again? Am I in the same emotional state as I was in at the time? Or am I having emotions about what it was like at the time? Do I feel like I want to be there again? Is my brain trying to experience it again because I have not finished processing overwhelming experiences? If I write about it in as much detail as possible will it help me to process? Sometimes I feel as though I need to go through everything in the minutest of detail with somebody safe and helpful, examining it all - what happened and how I felt about it and how I feel about it now. Being careful not to miss anything, until I am satisfied I have dealt with it all. I feel like the memories might become normal memories then with a normal level of emotion attached, just a part of the story.

I think not being able to share them stops me from integrating these memories into my story. They don't belong anywhere; they are in a separate box, largely to be got out only with my fellow loonies, then put back in again as I go back to real life. Except that my brain is telling me that they are important to me by refusing to let them stay in the box. They run riot because they need to be attended to, seen, heard, understood, given a place in my story and then somehow to become as unremarkable as everything else that happens. Maybe that's why I'm writing so much about that time at the moment. I'm sorry if it's boring or repetitive or weird, but as always, I write this for me, not for anyone else. When I can't talk about it (and it's isolating too, not being able to relate to others about a huge amount of what your brain is doing), I can see if writing helps a bit.

*DISCLAIMER* I use loony and bonkers as terms of endearment and humorous way of describing myself and my friends and celebrating our positive differences. We are all most excellent people, very capable and responsible and intelligent and interesting and, you guessed it, normal people (whatever that is!). Sometimes our brains do things that other people find unusual or that cause us problems if we or our culture are not equipped to deal with them. But that doesn't take away anything from our personalities and normal human qualities. Please don't think I am in any way demeaning people with quirky brains (yay to neurodiversity!)!

Do I have to be sad? Why?

The functions of emotions are to motivate behaviour, to communicate to others, and to communicate to oneself. This short clip explains beautifully. It will use no more than 150 seconds of your life but could open a whole world of understanding to you (sorry, I really love DBT!!).

As you'll know from my previous post, I've been visited a lot by sadness recently. Now, instinctively I really hate sadness. My goodness, it hurts so much. Loss, endings, emptiness, aloneness - they're not pleasant to feel. But I've been on this therapy train for long enough now to pay attention. My life experience tells me that if I ignore an emotion is only going to spring up on me and shout its message louder until I deal with it. It might bog off for a bit, but it will come to get me, and it won't be pretty. And by then I probably won't even know why I have it so it will be so much more difficult to resolve.

I've made a treasure basket (bowl) of
sensory objects that are meaningful to me

So the sadness is shouting pretty loudly right now, and I've made a conscious effort to allow it to be there, talk about it, and to bear it in a healthy way (self soothe, distract, mindfulness - the three pillars of emotional regulation oh how I love DBT ha ha! Useful recently have been working on my sensory cave project, being outside in the countryside, listening to music, starting some gardening projects, talking to friends/family/professionals, listening to meditations, time in my sensory cave and being honest about how I feel even if I'm worried about the effect it will have on others).

The next step, as I like to get my old Brian engaged in things too, is to really explore sadness a bit more. What is it for? What is it telling me? How can I act helpfully towards it to ease my suffering or bear my pain (suffering being an unnecessary addition to pain - there's a whole other can of worms discussion!)?

First port of call is my emotional regulation handouts (from Marsha Linehan's DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, 2015). Amongst others, sadness is prompted by losing something or someone irretrievably, being separated from someone you care for, being alone, or feeling isolated or like an outsider, things being worse than you expected, things not being what you expected or wanted. Well, my sadness is pretty understandable and accurate then. (As an aside, biological changes and experiences are also included on each emotion sheet, which can be really helpful if you're not sure what emotion you're feeling.) No need to act opposite!

I'm interested to look at the listed expressions and actions of sadness then, to see whether I've been using any of them. Do they come naturally to me, or perhaps not, because I have tended to avoid sadness where possible? Maybe if I don't use them naturally they could help me process the sadness.

• avoiding things
• acting helpless, staying in bed, being inactive
• moping, brooding, or acting moody
• making slow, shuffling movements
• withdrawing from social contact
• avoiding activities that used to bring pleasure
• giving up and no longer trying to improve
• saying sad things
• talking little or not at all
• using a quiet, slow or monotonous voice
• eyes drooping
• frowning, not smiling
• posture slumping
• sobbing, crying, whimpering
• other _______

Looking at the list, some seem helpful and others less so. Perhaps more markers than suggestions, or ways to understand our behaviour compassionately before inviting sadness with us as we continue life. I think the list demonstrates how we can get stuck in a spiral of deepening sadness too, as several of those actions will feed back sadness to the brain and increase the intensity of the feeling.

Just hope you're not such a snotty crier as me!

Some, like crying, are definitely good to try though: no matter how much it feels like you'll never stop once you start, I can assure you it's not true! I have found if I can let myself cry (proper crying, not the leaky face type that comes upon me uninvited!) it really helps to be able to carry on life. It's an acknowledgment. Yes, I am sad. I have a gap in my life and it hurts. That's OK and I'm going to gently carry on with what I want to be doing in life. (Love to throw in a bit of Compassionate Mind too...)

Lastly, the sheet looks at aftereffects of sadness, which could include not being able to remember things, feeling irritable, touchy or grouchy, blaming or criticising yourself, ruminating about sad events in the past, insomnia, appetite disturbance, indigestion and others. Ties in nicely to the post I'm planning on executive function, and hopefully allows us to be a little compassionate to ourselves, understanding why we may have some seemingly unrelated difficulties, and continuing to care for ourselves in a constructive way.


As a final note, another great look at sadness I found is here (What is Sadness?). It takes you through a similar process but points out a few different things such as some people's tendency to avoid sadness (See also this 80 second clip on avoiding sadness. It references Borderline Personality Disorder but is relevant to most people.) and how we may want to respond to others' sadness. I particularly like this quote on the function of sadness:

The universal function of sadness is to, in some way, signal for help. This can be a signal to others saying that we need comforting, or to ourselves to take some time and recoup from our loss.

That is the message I'm going to take away from this curious little exploration of my sadness. I have a human need for comfort, and it is entirely right to experience that need and tend to it in a healthy way. As my psychiatrist told me all the time, sadness is there to show that you care.