Far Removed

Required message: I'm not using cookies or collecting information on anyone.  Anything like that is coming from Blogger, not me I am having an anxiety attack right now.  I feel intense fear: the kind you might feel when hurrying up the steps of an unfinished basement in the dark.  Dread, I guess.  I have just taken a clonazepam for it. I'm on Trintellix.  It's the fifth medication my psychiatrist has tried.  I've had bad reactions to both benzodiazepines and SSRIs.  Trintellix is not a benzo but an antidepressant.  Like Celexa, another SSRI, Trintellix gives me restless leg syndrome, which might be unusual as my psychiatrist said he'd never heard of that when I reported it with citalopram.  I have a sensory processing problem, as is apparently common with people on the spectrum.  The sensation of restlessness and pins and needles in my legs is very upsetting and, as I also have PNES, can cause seizures.  Last night I had some m...

There are a lot of negatives that come with having an autism spectrum disorder.  I wanted to write about some of the positives, but I could only think of one that I experience.  I process emotions quickly and, most of the time, with little trouble.  I don't get overwhelmed by emotion often, and I'm not impulsive.  I have a very academic approach to dealing with my emotions.  I am pragmatic, but not because I choose to be.  That's the only way my brain works. Thinking about what's good and bad about being a high-functioning autistic person is not as simple a matter as one might expect.  Every case is different.  Also, almost nobody, I suspect, has complete self knowledge all the time.  I'm not very good at evaluating myself.  Not only do I have low self-esteem, but I'm always looking at myself from the wrong angle.  I don't trust my ability to evaluate others, either.  I don't know what's normal.  That's a complicated iss...

I am an intelligent and articulate person.  Nonetheless, I have some trouble communicating.  I am fastidious, and I speak in a meticulous way.  I have careful and somewhat stilted diction.  It seems to me that people, in conversation, are playing a game whose rules I don't know and are taking it for granted that I do know them.  I misunderstand even moderate vagary; the slightest ambiguity can confuse me.  I'm a lot like a robot.  Hints and intimations throw me off because I can usually tell when I'm supposed to make an inference but I don't trust my ability to do that.  I'm wracked with self doubt.  Am I striking the appropriate tone?  Am I making the expected facial expession?  Is it obvious that I'm faking familiarity with the conventions of this social activity?  Have I fully understood? Often, when I can muster the courage to ask for clarification about some common thing, my fellow conversant seems baffled by my request; c...

I've been watching a show called The Good Doctor .  It's about a young surgeon with autism.  I started watching it because I was curious to see how the show would depict a high-functioning autistic person.  Often, we are portrayed as compulsively fastidious human computers.  The show seems to want to do better than that, but it has to be broad sometimes, and it's a medical drama so it has to be dramatic.  The main character also has savant syndrome, perhaps because the writers wanted to avoid the stereotype that HFA people are all supergeniuses.  A surgeon with ASD and savant syndrome isn't realistic, but then a lot of the medicine in the show isn't realistic either.  The main character is yet another autistic human computer, and I'm somewhat conflicted about that, but I make allowances because it's just TV and, while living with autism is a challenge, real life is generally boring.  It's nice to have some representation and to feel like the showr...