Sheila's Posts

Once upon a time, this post contained a list of sites I chose as examples of what impressed me as being some people climbing into the autism industry wagon. I didn’t state it was what they were doing, but rather I phrased my thoughts as a question to arouse others to think about what’s going on. I also had asked if there was nothing left that someone wasn’t trying to corner the market on.

Even though we all have the right to speak our thoughts and/or feelings, even at the expense of offending someone (it’s impossible for anyone to not be offensive in some way to someone at times), it doesn’t mean exercising those rights are always necessary.

Just because I removed the entire list that was here does not mean that I did so to bow down to please one particular businesswoman. The list was removed because I realized it wasn’t necessary for me to be pointing my finger towards others to get my message across. There are plenty of sites selling all kinds of products ‘for autism’ online for people to make their own conclusions on this matter.

Industry is the organized action of making of goods and services for sale; the people or companies engaged in a particular kind of commercial enterprise.

A commercial enterprise can be a nonprofit industry. A nonprofit entity has a mission that benefits the “greater good” of the community, society, or the world. It does not pay taxes, but it also cannot use its funds for anything other than the mission for which it was formed. Nonprofit organizations can and do make a profit, but it must be used solely for the operation of the organization or, in the case of a foundation, granted to other nonprofit organizations.

Because nonprofit organizations are known for their ‘missions’ that are supposed to benefit the “greater good” of the community, society, or the world, it’s easy for them to scam people. People want to support noble causes, but what most people don’t want to pay attention to is the growing prevalence of fraud. This is a serious problem during our economic crisis.

It’s a given fact that there are some people in positions of high authority who are managing large nonprofit organizations (including autism) and are spending money irresponsibly by doing such things as using private jets, claiming luxuries as necessary expenses, and then billing those expenses to their nonprofit organization.

The only people who deserve to have their ‘charitable’ affairs kept private are those who keep money out of it, restrict their charitable acts to good deeds only, and then trust that the recipients of those good deeds will pay it forward. God is the only one who should receive the glory for the charity passed around. Because people love to look good in the eyes of others, the temptation to credit themselves for something another person did is always a possibility. Whenever those kinds of shameful deeds are done, the vengeance must rest in God’s hands.

Those who aren’t interested in doing good deeds by having recipients pay them forward and would rather sell products for the good of mankind should always be under as close supervision as possible and be made to be accountable for every cent received from the sale of any product or service sold. The government not only can’t handle such high levels of supervision, it is not motivated to do so.

It’s up to each individual to investigate what others are doing whenever something seems to be ridiculous. We should be wondering how some people can afford extravagant lifestyles,¹ especially if they’re not like a rocket scientist, brain surgeon, or an entrepreneur like Bill Gates.

Even though it’s not the intention of most people to exploit something like autism, those who do have those intentions also have grand opportunities for doing so by being skilled in knowing how to play upon the concerns others have. That’s why it’s socially responsible behavior to question the financial affairs of others periodically.

¹There are many who live an extravagant lifestyle that don’t believe they’re doing so. That’s because they tend to be greedy and want more, so they compare themselves to those who do have more. The gap between what someone needs versus what they think they need has been blown way out of proportion thanks to society being brainwashed by what the media portrays. For example, the home remodeling shows are notoriously pushing that envelope all the time (a kitchen is in sore ‘need’ of updating even though all its appliances, cabinets, floor, lights, counter, etc. are still performing their functions?!?!).

How many people end up being disappointed because they don’t get to serve on jury duty? Again I was not needed. To someone like me, getting a jury duty notice is like receiving an invitation to a party. I get excited, but as each night passes that I’m not chosen, I end up hoping that maybe tomorrow’s news will be different. My previous jury notice before this latest one at least got me into the court house, but all I could do was watch others get called for questioning as they selected their jurors. This time I never even made it into the court house. I know it’s nothing personal, but knowing this can’t change its effect when you’ve lived a lifetime of an excessive amount of personal rejections.

For people who hate jury duty, stop to think about how much more your vote counts there than it does if you’re a conservative living among liberals who have taken over your homeland, or if you’re an Aspie in a neurotypical dominated world. Most liberal neurotypicals probably can’t comprehend such things and probably don’t even care. Before someone wants to straighten me out on my seemingly socially incorrect attitude here, please realize it is okay for me to express what I personally experience many times over.

If I sound like I’ve got a bit of an unpleasant edge to the tone of my writing today, its most likely because I know I’m right back to where I was with my chronic insomnia. Just when I finally began to no longer feel that adrenaline produced anxiety (which commonly accompanies the type of insomnia where you’re too tired to ever feel sleepy), along comes one trigger¹ to throw all that cautious effort to regain sleep right out the window!

I think I probably experience no more than a couple of dozen days in the entire year when I know I’ve fully restored my sleep deprivation. That’s why I’ve learned to be content when I’ve managed enough sleep to be able to function fairly safe with somewhat intelligence.

I already mentioned some of the effects that sleep deprivation has on an adult Aspie in my Am I ready or not? post, but one effect I forgot to include has to do with emotions. Neurotypicals take it for granted that they’re able to maneuver their subtle expressions of emotions in increments. This is probably why social game playing is so much fun for them. Aspies, however, do not typically have an incremental scale for each emotion. It would be like comparing an on/off switch to a dimmer dial on a light fixture — neurotypicals have an emotional dimmer dial while Aspies are born with on/off switches.

When I’m rested, my level of niceness and anger function more appropriately. As I enter into the condition I’m now headed, my emotional switch becomes more volatile. When that happens, it becomes a vicious cycle because few people understand what’s going on. Many (especially women) react by having fun playing mind games with me. It’s empowering to them when they easily detect I have no dimmer switch I can control to match theirs. As I become more aware of this emotional scale discrepancy between myself and neurotypical people, it only irritates the situation all the more (especially when I get told that they’re covertly laughing as their egos are inflating at my expense). The reason someone might think this is an exaggeration or unwarranted suspicion on my part is because he or she would have no clue what its like to live this way for over half a century.

The more angry I feel, the harder I try to be nice. Why? Because I know that once I let my anger loose, it isn’t pretty. Even if it were possible to become angry in subtle increments, it doesn’t do an Aspie any good. Such things may work for NTs, but when a typical Aspie tries to copy this technique, it does not have that same effect. Most Aspies need to let their fuse blow before an NT will take us seriously. My guess is that this is a learned behavior early in life. I doubt this is something comprehendible for anyone to understand who never experiences this.

Yesterday was horrible for me because I was bombarded with situations where I repeatedly failed to accomplish tasks involving situations with NTs in control of things all cue to my lack of the neurotypical syndrome’s social skills for (let me phrase it as my husband and daughter put it), “They’re jerking your chain.” Maybe you can imagine somewhat when thinking about dealing with the customer service of a company who does not care about customer satisfaction (only profits). It might be a bit hard to comprehend that I still have not succeeded in getting the dentist office, which took x-rays of my mouth on Jan. 6th, still has not called me back with the results! If anything will tick me off, its repeatedly hearing, “We’ll (or I’ll) call you back,” but yet it doesn’t happen! Anyhow, I’ve noticed that when my husband takes over an issue like customer service toying with me, then results happen. All I have to do is remind him that its his money they’ve wasted and him they are ultimately screwing over… then he gets mad and acts like Clint Eastwood when he said, “Go ahead, make my day.”

¹No, the trigger in my case now had nothing to do with not getting to serve on jury duty.

The National Autistic Society says,

Asperger syndrome is mostly a ‘hidden disability’. This means that you can’t tell that someone has the condition from their outward appearance. People with the condition have difficulties in three main areas. They are:

• social communication
• social interaction
• social imagination

Now let’s plug the above list into this scenario [neurotypicals happen to be the ones referred to inside the brackets here]:

While in a waiting room, a 34½ month old Aspie boy was playing with a toy phone that is made to look like it has eyes. Along comes a typical grandmother (stranger to the boy) to ask this boy if the toy he is playing with has eyes. What she didn’t expect was the reply, “No. The toy does not have eyes.” (I didn’t ask this boy, but I could imagine—judging from the way the boy responded—how he thought this well-aged woman must be mentally challenged to need to ask if the toy has eyes.)

“If you have [an opposing] syndrome, understanding conversation is like trying to understand a foreign language.” The elderly woman trying to converse with the Aspie boy could not understand why she was having a frustrating time over what should be a ‘normal’ conversation.

“[Those with an opposing syndrome] have difficulty picking up social cues, and difficulty in knowing what to do when getting things wrong.” Again, it’s the elderly woman who struggled with knowing how to pick up the social cues the Aspie boy exhibited. She had no idea what to do to correct her social blunder caused by mistakenly thinking that this boy would agree with her that the toy phone had eyes.

“[Those with an opposing syndrome] have trouble working out what other people know” (in this case, the ‘other people’ are Aspies). I had no trouble with knowing how the course of events would unfold between this elderly lady and young Aspie boy. To me, it was obvious; but that wasn’t quite so apparent to the other woman. It didn’t take long before she was at a loss for words.

People with [an opposing] syndrome [like the elderly NT woman mentioned above] sometimes find it difficult to express themselves emotionally and socially. For example, they may:

• have difficulty understanding Aspie gestures, facial expressions or tone of voice
• have difficulty knowing when to start or end a conversation and choosing topics to talk about (the matured NT lady knew when to start the conversation, but not anything beyond that)
• use complex words and phrases but may not fully understand what they mean (I know more NTs who do this than Aspies who do)
• be very literal in what they say and can have difficulty understanding jokes, metaphor and sarcasm (people who say what they mean and mean what they say have trouble understanding those who don’t)

For example, a person with neurotypical syndrome may be confused by the phrase ‘How are you?’ when an Aspie asks, because most likely the NT doesn’t realize that the Aspie actually cares and wants to know. For an NT to reply by saying, “Fine” (especially when the Aspie knows the NT isn’t fine) but nothing more, would offend some Aspies. It can feel like the NT doesn’t find you worthy enough to confide in.

There is so much more I could say on this topic, but the main idea I want to get across is that neurotypicals have just as much of a ‘hidden disability’ when it comes to them knowing how to be socially correct among the Aspie culture. I clearly see that people in my Asperger group have no social skill difficulties when it comes to our understanding each other.

As I wait day by day to see if I’m called for jury duty this week, I think upon what justice is all about. That makes it good timing for me to write about this topic:

The biblical principle of eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, is grossly misunderstood by almost everybody. That’s what happens when one looks through the flip side of rose-coloured glasses and is blinded by his human nature. It actually proves an evil heart is misinterpreting what God is saying. Its beyond mostly everyone’s comprehension to understand how anyone can intentionally kill another human being [by capital punishment] without the motivation of malice; plus, to do it in a spirit of love and charity! Human beings, without the Spirit of God abiding within, will interpret everything from their own self-centered perspective. This is why God warns mankind in Isaiah 55:8, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD,” and in Ezekiel 20:44, “And ye shall know that I am the LORD when I have wrought with you for my name’s sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, saith the Lord GOD.”  

Until the genuine experience of learning what God’s grace is becomes a personal one, it will be impossible to grasp a proper understanding of what forgiveness is. Forgiveness does not automatically mean eliminating the consequences. Godly forgiveness comes from the heart and its what brings peace. Eliminating capital punishment and/or war is not the way to achieve peace, because those things are symptoms of corruption; not causes. 

Most who know the bible will debate what is being said here by referring to Matthew 5:39, “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” That verse has also become twisted. There is no contradiction between not resisting evil by turning the other cheek and applying Exodus 21:23-25, “And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

In chapter 5 of Matthew, what Jesus is saying about loving your enemy has to do with living life in the Spirit of God. Personal revenge (with hatred towards your enemy) is sin, but God’s vengeance can be accomplished through man’s actions without it necessarily being sinfully done. The Holy Spirit is not intellectually driven, but rather a heart condition. Mankind by nature (using his own will power disconnected from God) cannot accomplish what’s said in Matthew 5:44, “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”

Subconscious guilt creates ungodly fear. This is usually buried so deep that it’s impossible without God to even be aware of it. People mistakenly think sparing the lives of dangerous criminals (terrorists included) is an example of mercy and is what will bring peace. That kind of thinking brings comfort to those who fear seeing mankind the way God does.

To enforce law by way of death should be done with the humble spirit of therefore but by the grace of God go I. All people should have the same spirit as those who survive a plane crash that kills most others aboard. Survivors like them usually feel guilt for living when they know they could have been among the dead passengers. Imagine how hard it would be for them to execute criminals!… but change the perspective a little and suddenly it isn’t so difficult to imagine. Think about United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11th, 2001. If you were on that flight with your family, would you appreciate it if those courageous men, who were willing to apply deadly force to stop the Islamic terrorists, succeeded to rescue that flight from destruction? It’s possible (by way of a miracle ONLY) an Islamic terrorist might repent and never again attempt an attack like that, but think about the risk and odds. If and/or when one does repent (in the way God demands¹), death is no longer the horror imagined; instead, death becomes a state of sleep where one awakens to eternal life.  A dead terrorist is 100% safe, but a live one can live to repeat murder.

All murders are killings, but not all killings are murder. Would you call a chicken farmer a murder because he kills his chickens for others to eat? Maybe if you’re a PETA person (not all who endorse PETA are against the eating of meat). Temple Grandin is an animal lover, but yet she has made a career out of helping those who slaughter livestock. She would not think of cattle ranchers as being murders. 

There is a reason why punishment must fit the crime. When it no longer does align properly, justice can no longer exist. The whole bible is a law book. Trash (or misinterpret) God’s word and expect chaos. This world was created in perfect order. I doubt too many people would think our world is in perfect order these days.

¹John 12:24, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” (If you don’t understand this parable, most likely you’re not that corn of wheat which fell to the ground and died, at least not yet anyhow.)

I don’t know if I’m ready to be back online writing again, but if I wait until I’m sure that I am, the time might never come. I guess it’s a matter of determining whether my writing is a passion or compulsive (or a compulsive passion?). I do know that I can obsess over communicating with the world, but that seems normal for someone who feels like a social misfit as much as I do. I hope I don’t need to say I’m really no different from any other person when it comes to the nature of humans. Even though I still have my human nature after receiving a new nature from our creator, it doesn’t mean that I don’t fall prey to my old nature’s deceptive lure. That’s the catch… it’s deceptive!

[I suspect that my brain is still suffering some degree of fatigue, so please forgive me if its difficult to follow what I'm saying in this post.]

Stress may tire one out, but a faulty reaction to stress is what brings fatigue more than anything else. Its logical that fatigue can easily create a vicious cycle, because of its ability to increase things like: obsessive/compulsive behavior, forgetfulness, indecision, confusion, insecurity, insomnia, anxiety, emotional upset, etc. Naturally, it’s the weak who are easy prey. As the population of those who lose inner-strength increase, the demand for an external health industry has to increase along with it. Then as that demand increases, more people will gravitate towards wanting to be on the ‘supply’ wagon (by being a nurse, doctor, pharmacist, psychologist, psychiatrist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, etc.). You can’t expect otherwise when you don’t get to the root cause of things. No one will go to the core if he has not been broken to the core.¹

As soon as I realize (by the grace of God) how I’m fooling myself, then whatever fatigue producing thing it is that I’m doing ends. It sounds simple, but unless someone knows what I’m talking about (by way of personal experience), it really isn’t easy to stay away from self-deception. This trickery doesn’t just happen spiritually, it also happens physically. I’ll start with a physical example and end this post with a spiritual one.

Here’s a physical example:

How insomnia affects me provides a good example of the way a brain can fool the body. It’s not unusual for someone to not feel sleepy while laying in bed at night during a bout with insomnia. During such times, the sufferer is advised to get out of bed to go somewhere else and do something relaxing. I haven’t read anywhere the suggestion to stay laying in bed and wait for sleep to come. I know that when I am able to feel sleepy, my insomnia is diminishing. Severe insomnia totally destroys my ability to feel sleepy. The worst part is that the only time I can feel sleepy during chronic attacks of insomnia is when I’m driving on the road (that’s why I refuse to drive when I don’t get sleep). My guess as to the reason for that is because of how safe I feel when I’m in the driver’s seat and alone in a car. If it wasn’t for my being able to lock myself in my car, as fast as I did, and drive (back in the early 70′s), I would have been murdered (I had already been physically assaulted). One intense episode like that is enough to create the permanent conditioned response of relaxation to driving (provided I’m not driving in heavy traffic where you can get killed by aggressive drivers).

My point is, it is not normal for me to feel sleepy before I fall asleep when I’m dealing with insomnia. That’s what makes it so wicked and deceptive! I can EASILY stay constantly awake for even as long as one week because the longer I go without sleep, the less likely I will feel sleepy. What happens then instead is my ability to think shuts down. As my thinking ability shuts down, I live on auto-pilot.² Auto-pilot wouldn’t be so bad if my memory wouldn’t start scrambling up. If I attempted to drive in such a condition, my brain could do such things as think green means stop and red means go. Here’s the most unbelievable part which might scare some people: I can be in that chronic of a state with insomnia without other people noticing it! I can appear ‘normal’ and ‘okay’ (unless of course someone catches me doing something bizarre like locking myself out of my house while getting the mail) not only to other people, but also to myself.

People who don’t understand my insomnia are the ones who tell me things like, “Go take a nap,” or “Go take a sleeping pill.” The effect of almost any pill on me is worse than what it’s supposed to relieve. Maybe that’s the consequence of being properly sensitive? I say that not in arrogance, but in consideration of the possibility that true health demands balance to be maintained from an internal source rather than external aids. I believe, the more the body relies on outside help, the less it can adjust itself on its own (generally speaking). I do not typically allow myself to think, “What pill could I take to bring me relief?” I’ve learned that a sleeping pill would make my insomnia last longer. An anti-anxiety pill would make me more anxious. An anti-depressant would depress me. I can only tolerate pain relief meds on occasion, but the price I pay for not waiting out a headache is more trips to the bathroom since it weakens my bladder.

When something goes awry with either my physical or mental health, I want to remember to ask myself, “Now where is the faith that God gave me not being practiced [exercised]?” I’m not saying that all sickness is because of some sinful behavior done, but I will say that any sickness can be a temptation to not trust and obey God. Its also can be a symptom of not having confidence in His word and humbly surrendering to His will.

Here’s a spiritual example:

Unless I publicly confess where my thoughts are, no one could know what I’m dwelling on. Even I may not realize when I’m not heeding the wise advice in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” Rather than magnifying the LORD and His wonderful promises, I recently slipped into focusing inward upon examining my own behavior, so much so that I ended up stuck in that mire. Just like a person caught in quicksand will sink the more he tries to escape, I ended up becoming fatigued by trying to save myself. The more fatigued I got, the harder I tried. The harder I tried, the more fatigued I got. Just like I said in my post Weird Depression, I wasn’t aware that I was focusing on the symptom rather than the cause. As soon as that spiritual deception was uncovered, I was back on solid ground — tired and exhausted, but no longer trapped in fatigue!

Yes, being an Aspie in a neurotypical world is stressful. That’s no reason to be ungrateful for Aspergers. The world is too egocentric to know how much it needs its Asperger population.³ Its how we Aspies respond to our challenges that will determine how healthy and strong we become or how vulnerable and beaten down we can get. Even though neurodiversity exists among mankind, we’re all subject to the same spiritual battles.

¹Whether or not one believes that mankind is born with a depraved [unwholesome] nature does not change why God says in Psalm 34:18, “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit,” and in Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” That’s also why He said in Matthew 9:22, “…thy faith [the faith of Christ] hath made thee whole [wholesome/healthy].” Stay in the faith of Christ = Stay healthy. Deviate from the faith of Christ = Deviate from health. The only exception to this law of God (found in Exodus 15:26, “…If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee [the true children of God], which I have brought upon the Egyptians [nonbelievers; including false Christians]: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.”) is when God has His own reasons (for which He owes us no explanation for) to use sickness for His purposes. God is not evil; Satan is the evil one. God is able to take that which is evil and use it for His own glory, but without His faith gifted to us, Satan will always be able to deceive natural man. If you don’t like these words, its not me you’re hurting; its yourself. I’m only a messenger. I’m not the author of life.

²My last insomnia attack lasted through the week of January the 19th. After that Monday, I did not begin to reverse that insomnia (the 1½ hours of sleep Friday morning wasn’t enough to reverse it) until Sunday morning around 2:45 am (that’s when I slept for four hours). Each night after that, I was able to enjoy a little more time sleeping. I took advantage of that extreme exhaustion to experiment with a change. For years, I thought I needed some type of background noise to sleep (like a fan, the radio, or rain). Because I saturated my brain that week with overexposure to electronic stimulation from things like television, radio, computers, artificial lights, etc., due to not being able to sleep, silence (combined with avoiding anything electrically powered) began to physically hurt my head. On Sunday, Jan. 25th, I quit cold turkey to using anything electrically powered on to help me sleep while I am in bed at night. I also went back to using my ultra-warm heavy oversized down comforter (Aspies relax under that kind of weight).  I’d sleep, but wake up periodically throughout the night feeling like its time to get up and start the day. The time on the clock would tell me it wasn’t possible that I could be rested, even though my brain and body were lying to me. I ignored everything except for the time. Experts will tell you to ignore the clock when you can’t sleep, but for me, that’s what helped me to redeem sleep! I don’t know if that will always work, but I don’t care right now because what’s important is that it worked.

Read more about how I deal with insomnia in my Sleeping With Insomnia post.

³If Aspies where the majority, I’m sure the reverse would be true. Adult Aspies could just as easily think that the world would be better off without neurotypicals. Just because we think so differently doesn’t mean we can’t function harmoniously together. The problems aren’t really from the head… they come from the heart.