Something happened to me recently that offered me a great opportunity to post something more on the “Autistic” side of this blog than the “Apologist” side. Since I’ve failed to update this blog for nearly 2 months now and this post will be much shorter than usual (not even 750 words!), I decided to take that opportunity.
Background
I had a text conversation with someone over something that was bothering me. I need not go into detail to make my point; let’s just say it was a conversation that probably should’ve happened several years earlier, but the overall situation and the character of the people involved had become more obvious in hindsight.
I wound up saying everything I wanted to, basically venting and unloading my grievances over the situation. I wound up feeling a little better because I finally got an opportunity to say everything about the situation that made me upset.
Reconciliation didn’t happen; but again, thanks to several years of hindsight, I was more in a position to accept that than ever before. I can pretty much guarantee some Bible verses pertaining to all this will come up in my upcoming series on biblical wisdom literature, but for the sake of confidentiality, I won’t say which ones.
However, I started feeling very tense in my head once the conversation was over; like I needed to cry but couldn’t. Recognizing that grief was involved (both due to the nature and outcome of the conversation and because a girl I’d had great discussions with by messaging didn’t feel chemistry when we met in person, so we decided to “just be friends”–only two nights before this conversation), I remembered something I heard when going through Grief Share 2-3 years back: feelings associated with grief can hit you at any time, and you should give yourself space to feel them. So I went into a separate room and tried one of the sensory processing exercises I learned from Asperger Experts (who I recently learned had changed their name to Autism Experts; to be fair, they said in an older video that they retained the “Asperger’s” label even after the DSM-5 removed it as an official diagnosis because most people were still familiar with that term–things have changed enough in the last few years for them to change their mind on that, I guess; also, while Google’s AI overview tried to partially attribute the name change to an attempt to distance themselves from Hans Asperger, the fact that Asperger worked for the Nazis is hardly “breaking news”–why do you think the British Army confiscated his research notes after WWII?). AE founder Danny Raede calls this exercise “Being With That”, and acknowledges it as a form of “Mindfulness”, but I prefer to call it a “Sensory Scan”.
The Exercise
I sat in a chair and paid attention to what sensations I felt within my body: my tight chest while breathing, pressure on the upper sides of my head, a feeling of dryness in my mouth, tension in my jaw while my mouth was open. But the important thing was that whatever physical sensations I noticed, I attached no significance or meaning to them; I just acknowledged them, paid attention to them, and let them happen. And as another sensation grew more prominent than the one I was focusing on, I’d shift my focus to the new one.
This is especially useful for autists–like many autistic people would be in this scenario, I wasn’t sure what emotions I was feeling (although I think at least grief, anger, sadness, and senses of betrayal and loss were in the mix), but whether I could label it all didn’t matter; all that mattered was that I let myself feel it all in my body.
Eventually, I managed to start crying, but kept focusing on my internal sensations. I kept doing both until my face was ready to relax. Then I wiped the tears from my eyes–and felt refreshed and ready to get back to business.
In only 10 minutes, I had processed my feelings (at least, as much as I needed to at the time; I wound up taking a nap from emotional overwhelm later that same day). So for the time being, I could move on with my day.
Just thought I’d give autistic people (or those in their lives) some free tips!