So, I've been having another outbreak of Tourette's and Asperger's confusion that has become a little bit of an odd obsession the last couple of days.
I'm trying to work out how much of each thing is inside me - is it Tourette's 100-0? Or 0-100 Asperger's?
I really can't tell. Both TS and AS share similar co-morbid conditions - OCD, ADD and various other flavours of behaviour, but they are also different, and this is where I've been going a little crackers.
Tics are in the provenance of Tourette's. Stims are autistic behaviours. Stims are things like flapping of hands, rocking back and forth - I've just been rocking back and forth just now while thinking about rocking back and forth. Tics are uncontrollable, only they are not...they satisfy an urge, wait so do stims, sometimes, but in a different way...
The only really consistent thing I pick up is that tics tend to be more centrally located down the centreline of the body, while stims are more symmetrical and found at the extremes. But even then I'm not sure about that. I do tic vocally, usually quiet little names or phrases of interest quietly burbled and usually taking on slight different, clipped forms, but the real yelling, and the most convulsive, violent, flappy tics come when I'm extremely upset or stressed by something I read or think about.
Then, at other times I think stimulating thoughts and my hands begin to flap and do a sort of clapping without moving thing.
Then sometimes my left foot has been arching within the shoes, and my left leg likes to do a sort of strange stretching thing, like a slightly demented cat.
So today, everytime by body has done something, I've tried to classify it - stim, or tic?
I've tried to classify me. Tourette's, Asperger's, or both?
For some reason this became very important, and I'm not sure why. Knowing what percentage of my behaviours is caused by one or the other doesn't change very much, they are all still there and nothing will ever change that.
Even as I write this, a tense bit of "Silent Witness" comes on, and my right arm bends over the top of my head, hand towards my left ear. At the same time, my left side tenses and pulls my body over like an anti-stretch.
Incredible thing, the brain, and body. I don't know how the heck anyone ever works it out.
Si
All text copyright CreamCrackeredNature 03.01.17
Showing posts with label psychiatry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychiatry. Show all posts
Tuesday, 3 January 2017
Tuesday, 19 May 2015
Well, my Tourette's Really got to Someone at Work
Last week, someone made a complaint about my behaviour at work.
What could it have been? My stressed obscenity yelling and flailing gotten too much for the management? Have I wasted too much time making sure my hands are germ free in the bathroom? Is my clumsiness meaning I do my job too slowly?
Apparently not.
It seems, I was...sort of...scaring someone. Immediately behind me, sits a chap who gets around by motability scooter a lot of the time, although he can walk ok over short distances. I don't know the cause of his disability, but I know he has been mugged twice. He told me this.
He told me this when he asked me not to basically tic behind him, or move too close behind him. He said his reaction to people who come up behind him and startle him thus is to hit them. Now one of the things I do at work sometimes is to automatically jump up from my desk, and take a few paces back sometimes, sometimes a bit of a trot up and down, a bit of a wave, a bit of a cricket bowl at imaginary things.
A lot of the time I'm barely aware I'm starting to do it. I just DO. I apologised and said there was no intent to it, this happened twice. The third time, he went to my immediate supervisor, who took me out back for a quiet chat.
He was totally understanding, said he knew I did things without realising, but could I please try and realise and not do stuff too near this other fellow. I said of course I would, if I did realise, and I would move away from him. He then said if he did hit me, as he'd obviously told my supervisor might happen, it might lead to very unpleasant disciplinary procedures for him.
I told him I wouldn't "press charges" as it were if it did happen, but I was told company policy would have over-ruled me. So basically, if you are going to tic, go and tic somewhere else if at all possible.
Like I said, I said I would if I could, but sometimes it's such an automated action it just happens. I myself hate being touched unexpectedly, and in fact am probably even jumpier than he is. I don't criticise him. But I get mighty puzzled when I see him standing talking to a manager with his back to a busy doorway, where people were walking through rather closer than I was.
An office re-arrangement at work has now had the good fortune of separating us. But I am very curious as to how on earth this situation would have played out. Because I wouldn't have been able to stop myself for long, and ergo the promised punch would have arrived at some point.
I think I forget how intimidating Tourette's can perhaps be. It isn't cute. It can't be cured by swimming with dolphins or going on a once in a lifetime rip to Disneyland. I can imagine a 6'1 85 kilo man in a frenzy can be quite scary, especially when the attractive snarls and yells are thrown in. I can be lungey, and disrespectful of personal space, which is a copper bottomed irony.
But, it is me, and without it I wouldn't be me any more. Was he being oversensitive? Was I?
Si
What could it have been? My stressed obscenity yelling and flailing gotten too much for the management? Have I wasted too much time making sure my hands are germ free in the bathroom? Is my clumsiness meaning I do my job too slowly?
Apparently not.
It seems, I was...sort of...scaring someone. Immediately behind me, sits a chap who gets around by motability scooter a lot of the time, although he can walk ok over short distances. I don't know the cause of his disability, but I know he has been mugged twice. He told me this.
He told me this when he asked me not to basically tic behind him, or move too close behind him. He said his reaction to people who come up behind him and startle him thus is to hit them. Now one of the things I do at work sometimes is to automatically jump up from my desk, and take a few paces back sometimes, sometimes a bit of a trot up and down, a bit of a wave, a bit of a cricket bowl at imaginary things.
A lot of the time I'm barely aware I'm starting to do it. I just DO. I apologised and said there was no intent to it, this happened twice. The third time, he went to my immediate supervisor, who took me out back for a quiet chat.
He was totally understanding, said he knew I did things without realising, but could I please try and realise and not do stuff too near this other fellow. I said of course I would, if I did realise, and I would move away from him. He then said if he did hit me, as he'd obviously told my supervisor might happen, it might lead to very unpleasant disciplinary procedures for him.
I told him I wouldn't "press charges" as it were if it did happen, but I was told company policy would have over-ruled me. So basically, if you are going to tic, go and tic somewhere else if at all possible.
Like I said, I said I would if I could, but sometimes it's such an automated action it just happens. I myself hate being touched unexpectedly, and in fact am probably even jumpier than he is. I don't criticise him. But I get mighty puzzled when I see him standing talking to a manager with his back to a busy doorway, where people were walking through rather closer than I was.
An office re-arrangement at work has now had the good fortune of separating us. But I am very curious as to how on earth this situation would have played out. Because I wouldn't have been able to stop myself for long, and ergo the promised punch would have arrived at some point.
I think I forget how intimidating Tourette's can perhaps be. It isn't cute. It can't be cured by swimming with dolphins or going on a once in a lifetime rip to Disneyland. I can imagine a 6'1 85 kilo man in a frenzy can be quite scary, especially when the attractive snarls and yells are thrown in. I can be lungey, and disrespectful of personal space, which is a copper bottomed irony.
But, it is me, and without it I wouldn't be me any more. Was he being oversensitive? Was I?
Si
Friday, 27 February 2015
Mr Spock and the Joys of Non-Neurotypicality
Many better writers than me have already been pretty eloquent in expressing the impact Leonard Nimoy and his creation of Mr Spock had on their lives.
I'm not going to bandwagon jump, nor am I going to pretend that Spock was some kind of inspiration for my love of sci-fi, spaceships and astronomy.
I've written elsewhere of where that came from - the artist Donald Rudd - but what was actually going through my mind on hearing of Nimoy's death was a piece by Oliver Sacks in his collection "An Anthropologist on Mars". Sacks writes of two autistic people in that anthology, the artist Stephen Wiltshire, and the animal behaviourist Temple Grandin. I think it's in the Grandin piece that Sacks talks of how autistic people often stated that their favourite character from TV was Spock, and his latter day successor Data.
Sacks, who incidentally himself has stated recently that he is not long for the world theorised that it was the portrayal of a person with very non-human emotional needs trying to make sense of a very human environment that appealed to folk with autism. I think also that the fact that the tremendous contribution these people to those around them, and the fact that their colleagues valued them and treated them warmly when they were perhaps not able to respond likewise, would also be influential in this.
Perhaps also the Aspergic love of knowledge and information too would be an attraction.
Seven of Nine, a character who would also would have had "AS Appeal" in addition to her other obvious charms, was not around when Sacks wrote the article. Certainly sat where I am upon my Tourette's spectrum, where it dances with that of Asperger's, I found all these characters fascinating, and enjoyed their relationship with the neurotypical world, although I was and still am very suspicious of how the terms "Neurotypical" and "NT" get thrown around sometimes.
There is a whiff of contempt about it, I occasionally find...albeit a rather understandle whiff.
Still these are terms that have entered common (ish) usage. And it is to Leonard Nimoy "and the character I created" that a huge amount of credit must go to for making not just autistic - or non-neurotypical - people perhaps feel more comfortable in their skins, but anyone who felt that maybe you know, "knowing stuff" was more important than having cool hair.
Si
I'm not going to bandwagon jump, nor am I going to pretend that Spock was some kind of inspiration for my love of sci-fi, spaceships and astronomy.
I've written elsewhere of where that came from - the artist Donald Rudd - but what was actually going through my mind on hearing of Nimoy's death was a piece by Oliver Sacks in his collection "An Anthropologist on Mars". Sacks writes of two autistic people in that anthology, the artist Stephen Wiltshire, and the animal behaviourist Temple Grandin. I think it's in the Grandin piece that Sacks talks of how autistic people often stated that their favourite character from TV was Spock, and his latter day successor Data.
Sacks, who incidentally himself has stated recently that he is not long for the world theorised that it was the portrayal of a person with very non-human emotional needs trying to make sense of a very human environment that appealed to folk with autism. I think also that the fact that the tremendous contribution these people to those around them, and the fact that their colleagues valued them and treated them warmly when they were perhaps not able to respond likewise, would also be influential in this.
Perhaps also the Aspergic love of knowledge and information too would be an attraction.
Seven of Nine, a character who would also would have had "AS Appeal" in addition to her other obvious charms, was not around when Sacks wrote the article. Certainly sat where I am upon my Tourette's spectrum, where it dances with that of Asperger's, I found all these characters fascinating, and enjoyed their relationship with the neurotypical world, although I was and still am very suspicious of how the terms "Neurotypical" and "NT" get thrown around sometimes.
There is a whiff of contempt about it, I occasionally find...albeit a rather understandle whiff.
Still these are terms that have entered common (ish) usage. And it is to Leonard Nimoy "and the character I created" that a huge amount of credit must go to for making not just autistic - or non-neurotypical - people perhaps feel more comfortable in their skins, but anyone who felt that maybe you know, "knowing stuff" was more important than having cool hair.
Si
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