Stimming

Its not cool to make someone feel bad about stimming.  We all do funny little things when no-one is looking; hello, ever picked your nose in the car, scratched your groin in an empty store isle, deliberately stepped on something on the ground just to hear it crunch...  The trick is to see if you can quietly teach substitutions in behaviour.  As soon as you attach shame, the stim is reinforced,  and even harder to extinguish or swap out.

I really dislike the grunting stim, a series of quiet gutteral throat clearings, it gets on my nerves!  I have been trying to teach that practicing this limits the breath.  When a real anxiety situation presents, the anxiety is already primed to jump in.  Breath is an integral part of meditation & stress reduction practices.  Try it right now:  take a deep breath in, all the way to the bottom of your lungs.  Notice you instinctively sit up straighter to do it.  Let the breath go out slowly, 3-4 times slower than it came in.  Do it several times, feel the oxygen pour in, makes you feel brighter, makes your heart rate slow slightly,  makes you feel a bit light-headed even.  That's the kind of energy needed to make decisions.

We've all been in crisis at some time or another.  Your heart feels like its going to leap out of your throat, beating so hard & fast its revved right out, talking mile-a-minute or so breathless you can't talk.  I feel anxious just re-reading that.  Thats a mind-body connection.  It can be learned to tune into it, to acknowledge it, to let it wash over without reacting to it.  My son has to learn this over & over & over again.  It doesn't stay with him, there's a gap in his memory I can't figure out.  He's really resistant to letting go of the grunting, because it makes him feel good, and because he's not aware he's doing it sometimes, and because he likes it.  Its human nature to learn & relearn what we like, there's comfort in that.  No one likes to be told what to do, what to learn, what to say.  The challenge is figuring out the block, to understand it, before knowing what comes next.  Sometimes it makes sense right away, often it needs to be set aside to percolate on the periphery while I do something else.

An introduction

Autism is predominantly an invisible handicap.  Autism & dementia are becoming more & prevalent across all cultures.  What's with that?  Humanity seems to be at the top of its game, with the endless intelligence, innovations, inventions, & technology.  Then we get these humbling knocks on the ego in our various regions of the world with huge environmental wake up calls Hello, knock knock, earthquake, tsunami's tornadoes, toxic substance leaks...  Thats life isn't it, micro or macro, crisis comes, we dig in & get through it.  "Higher Power" has more influence than we can ever fathom, regardless of religion, something is at work. Living to be the best person we can be is the goal.  Thats a tall order don't you think?

Autism seems to be the current flavour of the media.  It doesn't hurt that April is Autism awareness month.  There are so many varieties or sub categories of autism, yet very little is understood about it.  Those geeks & nerds that people in the 80's liked to make fun of, well, Silicone Valley & big business has wisely welcomed them.  In the 50's & 60's they were just different, odd, or eccentric.  If it wasn't for the "different thinkers" of the world, there would be no innovations.  I'm coming at this from a view of understanding & tolerance.  Whether people are nice, smart, dumb, or socially numb, they're still people.  This isn't a Polyanna-married-Barney-swallow-it-whole viewpoint.  It's reasonable to think that there are as many varieties of autism as there are "normal" personalities.

This blog is an effort to make me think about what I have learned about Autism, and to share it.  There are multiple theories as to why Autism happens.  Is it genetics gone awry.  Did the everyday environmental pollutants team up with immunizations to create deficits.  Are these children lacking enzymes & nutrients in our everyday diet. Is there toxins competing for receptors for antioxidants.  Is there food intolerances.  Are we seeing the benefits of the quietly genetically engineered food trickling in through our entire food chain & reacting with genetics & environment.  We may not see answers for another 50+ years at any rate.  The most interesting new development is that Autism seems to have a definite genetic link.   Schizophrenia & Autism have been mapped & found to be on opposite ends of the same genome.  I don't have a link to point to where I gleaned that from, but its out there.  Its been embedded in genetic codes longer than its been understood.

Maybe we are going to finally see more intelligence applied to understanding the brain.  Hopefully the policy makers will apply more mental health funding & education options.  Mental disorders, addictions, autism, dementia, these all affect the brain.  We are hardwired to seek what we desire.  Its cliche, mother's breast-milk is sweet, babies love sweet first, there's clear instant compatibility for survival.  Well then, Mr. Marketing, business thrives on tapping into our subliminal desires, addictions even.  I seriously dislike commercials on television and radio, the LOUD yammering insulting repetitiveness fractures my attention, drills into my head, and makes me irritated. Little normal children can't get enough of it, while other children freak out on sensory overload.  Why is it normal to be bombarded in this way?  What happens when abnormal outnumber the normal; complacence it seems.