Teacher Sham, I will miss you! Tears were streaming down her face! and she was struggling between sobs.
My first clinical response was to model to her some emotional regulation, you know. So I spoke calmly and didn't match her increasingly agitated behaviour; I told her slowly and repeatedly, I would see her again next week, there's no need to cry. And to be honest, I was still half-analysing how much of her behaviour was attention-seeking rather than instinctive. But after a while, looking at her increasingly wet cheeks and hearing her sob whilst rummaging through her backpack for her naptime things, my heart couldn't tahan anymore. My little adorable darling.
How the world must be to you.
It's not an uncommon thing for persons on the autism spectrum to feel emotions in absolutes and swing from extreme sensations; you would think they had mood disorders the way they change in an instant (ohhh, wait, is that what happens when they're adults? they get diagnosed with other mental issues as well?) There's no in-between. One moment it's I'm sooo happy and excited, and the next, it's like the end of the world. And I was just reading today too, about Matt Savage who has autism and is a musical savant; and he'd said, "When I was a kid, I would throw temper tantrums, just when I couldn't deal with something. I would be positive and bouncy one (moment), and then just getting angry -- like not feeling disappointed, or frustrated, or even sad, just angry. Nothing in between. I didn't know how to feel some other kind of emotion. That was true of everything, whether I was feeling happy (or some other emotion), it would just be like, this is an eternity, this is wonderful, that was all I knew. (The idea that a mind or mood could change), that it's flexible and people can be subtle and not literal, that was the hardest part (of social interaction) for me." (From The Power of Different by Gail Saltz, M.D.)
Thinking about little Gee, and other special people like her, I wondered how it must be to be told how to feel. And that isn't the world strange, making everyone not just think the way we expect them to, but ensuring they feel the feelings we do as well. Why do we all grow up learning to fall into line about how we should think, and feel, and live our lives? Is that what life is all about, that we all learn to fall into the norm and live up to some set of expectations (who set them anyway)? Extremes like Gee suffer the most because they are apparently most disparate from the mean but don't the rest of us struggle to conform as well? Must we all suppress our inner states to appear placid and consistent on the surface?
I don't know. At moments like this, I wonder if this is how therapists should think; how can I supposedly fix her if I don't think she should be fixed? ohhh, fixed is a bad word. People are not to be fixed, are they? They are meant to be understood, and loved, and appreciated, and allowed to flourish. Sometimes... when I catch myself thinking like this, I realise that if I can't change the world or change even the systems big or small that I function in, I can change my own mindset and at least have a little idealism around me.
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Speaking of emotions and emotional regulation, I've said, haven't I, that I'm an emotional junkie? I feed on emotionally-rich stories. I feel emotions intensely; and though my experience is probably nowhere near Gee's, I do feel an external pressure that I'm wrong for being so intense. That it's not normal, S. Would you just chill and be a little more normal.
I've realised just tonight that this year has had a rather sad dearth of dramas so far. It's already July, and no particular drama has properly captured my heart. And now, I'm recalling last year's excellent batch of kdramas, one of which was W -- which as I think on it, despite it's slightly disappointing end -- is really one of the best things ever to be made on TV.
It's calling me for a re-watch.
If nothing else serves after a while, even Poldark,
I probably will succumb.
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