Bad night

Counselling can sometimes leave me with a busy head, and its not necessarily busy with the issues brought up in counselling. Its the old favourite odds-and-ends of music, rag-tag bits of conversation I’ve had throughout the day, thinking about the books I’m reading at the moment, of course there will be something to do with what was discussed.

Part of the problem might be that counselling is late in the day – six-thirty in the evening – so I don’t get time to decompress afterwards. I am finding that if I follow my sleep routine, that I can get off reasonably well; however, if I have a busy head that may well wake me in the night.

I woke early feeling headachy and already I was sensitive to light and sound. I immediately felt that I was going to have a migraine and was afraid that I wouldn’t make it through to the end of the day. I took a sumatriptan for migraine, popped on my sunglasses, and turned all the noise off that I could in house, and later in the car. I drove in as close to silence as I could to the office (I was too late to drive).

I didn’t turn the lights on in the office. The woman who usually comes in and turns them straight on realised that I wasn’t comfortable. She left them off.

Surprisingly, the headache shifted after an hour or two. I took a pair of codydramol. After that, I was largely OK for the rest of the day!

---

Am I drawn to neuro-divergents?

A good colleague came into the office today. This person is someone whom, aside from my boss, that I regard as a friend. At lunchtime I suggested that we go for a walk and grab a coffee from the café in the park.

As we walked, we started by discussing the relative pitfalls and benefits of Microsoft Windows, Apple, and Android operating systems.

I think I mentioned my migraines and my sensitivity to noise and light, and specific sounds and lights that can bring them on or increase my general sensitivity. I think he had an inkling for a while. Today, after I said that I thought I was ASD, he straight out told me that he was! His parents paid for an assessment when he was in sixth-form! The school identified that one of his brothers might be on the spectrum. When the school told his parents, they thought that this friend of mine was also somewhere on the spectrum!

I hadn’t a clue about this friend, but things about him made more sense once I knew.

We chatted for nearly two hours about how we experienced the world – in a remarkably similar way. We talked about the variability of our sensory issues, troubles with spoken language – except within our special interests. Problems with our partners understanding, and unusual insights that they have. For example, his wife realized that his daughter (who is also ASD) needed a bathing routine. This routine helped her tolerate being bathed. I expressed my own need for routines. I also shared the difficulties my husband faced with them.

We talked about the bloody awful way people just phone us and expect us to handle the sudden change in what we are doing. One person in particular was mentioned, whom we both had a similar problem with. Developers (and testers) usually message to ask whether they could have some time. They ask because they are either considerate or they need that time themselves. Project managers phone and just expect us to deal with whatever they say.

This friend understood the irrational rage that I feel when I’m interrupted. They also understand the steps I take to even out my mood. I try to avoid acting out on it. This is so difficult to explain to somebody who isn’t ND themselves – such as my husband. My husband thinks that I can the therapized out of these feelings. Nope.

I explained that its like I have one set of hardware that doesn’t support the neuro-typical way of communicating. To interact with NTs on their terms, I need to load extra software. This software processes the inputs and outputs required for any exchange with NTs. He laughed at the analogy and completely understood it.

He said that software development is an excellent place for neuro-divergents to hide: exactly what I have said.

I find it fascinating that I count so many people with some kind of neuro-divergence as friends.

Its like we are drawn together somehow.