First of all, my apologies to any friends who might have been worried about my long absence; the past month has been somewhat crazy for me.
My brother, sister-in-law, and younger niece (Julia) are moving to Toronto. They spent the past two weeks (until early Monday morning) living here with us… which, as much as I love them all, meant that there was a fair bit of noise about. (Julia’s recently turned five. She gets excited, bouncy, and the volume of her voice goes up. Not her fault, she’s a kid… but I have trouble tolerating it.) So I spent a lot of time hiding out downstairs in my room. Especially since the house felt crowded, with three extra people, a ton of extra stuff piled around (they’re driving to Toronto from here, so they had a U-Haul trailer that they kept rearranging the contents of), and two extra cats (who are here until they get a permanent place in Toronto, and then we’ll send them down by plane). Mew (the younger of Mom & Dad’s two male cats) decided he didn’t like the intrusion, and has been making it known. At this point, unless Imber is with me in the same room, or I’m witnessing the fight, I can’t tell whether the battle is between Mew and Cindy or Azrael, or Thor and Imber. *sighs*
I also changed psychologists; not because my previous one wasn’t good, but because she isn’t specifically trained in dealing with ASD and my new one is. They work together part-time, and there are apparently a reasonable number of patients that my previous psych. has recommended go see my new one because of her specific expertise.
My new psychologist has given me some things to work on each time I’ve seen her; I’ve seen her twice so far. Some recommendations she has seem quite good. i.e. For weighted clothing, don’t go to the expense of buying it somewhere for a huge amount, especially if money is tight. Get a vest and sew in weights yourself, or even get a set of ankle or wrist weights, and just drape them over your shoulders or something. That latter is what I intend to do at some point; just haven’t gotten around to it yet. (Like I said, I’ve spent most of the past two weeks in my room.) She also suggested that I try to figure out what my sensory overload threshold is: work for 15-20 minutes, take a short sensory break, then work for another 15-20 minutes, and see if that works, and if it does, start to stretch it a bit. Unfortunately, the situation at home (my depression and the huge number of people and amount of stuff around) hasn’t led to me getting that done yet. I am starting to feel better, and I’m hoping that I can get around to starting it at the end of this week or the start of the next.
We also discussed stims a bit, and I think we might more as well this week when I see her tomorrow; I’ll be posting a bit on that later on. (Possibly later on today, but I give no guarantees at the moment.)
And in other family news, I have a new nephew (brother to the older niece and [now older] nephew in Halifax) – Milo Ulysses. If you’re interested, I have a short post about him on The Other Blog. He was born Saturday afternoon.
I’ve also got some writing done, and am working on doing more. I joined a meetup group, NL Writers, and I’ve had a great time with them so far. Had two meetings, missed the third (last week) because of horrendous headache, but I’m going tonight. Fun stuff! It’s getting me out and meeting people who share at least one of my main interests, and I find that’s a very good thing.
The weather’s warming up here, and I should be getting out more, and getting more active (that’s a problem for me, and it’s one I really need to overcome). So hopefully I will also be posting more often.
I’ve also applied for the IL Internship (the job I had last year) again this year. First-timers are given preference, but I’m allowed to apply. Wish me luck!
‘Later!
😉 tagAught
I was thinking about you earlier this week, wondering if you were okay since I hadn’t seen you around. I’m glad to hear you’re recovering, if slowly. It can take a lot to dig out from under that much sensory overload and upset to daily routines.
I’m looking forward to reading your post about stims and anything else you share about working with your therapist (I’m still up in the air about the therapist thing).
Hey! Good to see you too! (I’ve still got to answer some of those surveys!)
Yeah, dragging myself out has been hard. Especially with insomnia kicking my arse as well.
Thanks, and I’m willing to share a lot. I’ve actually sent her posts from this blog, and what we did last appointment was go over what she picked up from them. It was interesting, and really got into some of my concerns.
With therapy… you really have to find someone who clicks with you. I had a psychiatrist when I was a teen, for depression and my problems with turning homework in, but there was a plateau we reached that we couldn’t get past. I suspect half of it was the ASD (which we didn’t know about at the time), and half of it was the fact that, as good a psychiatrist as he was, we just didn’t click. Not like I did with my last psychologist in Toronto, and my two here. So if you don’t click well, there’s a limited amount of help that can be given.
Assuming you do click, and they’re trained in dealing with ASD, and respectful enough of you to listen to you (which they should be, if you click with them! ;)), it can be helpful. There are techniques and workarounds for dealing with things that they know about because of their training, that don’t necessarily get passed around all through the ASD community. And they can help with emotional stuff as well; that was something my Toronto psychologist was particularly skilled in, helping me find ways to verbally work out what my emotions were at any particular point, and then how to deal with the core emotions.
But if you’re still up in the air, not ready for it, better not to go just yet. Therapy’s something that you’ve got to participate in (which I have failed a few times) and if you’re not ready to do that yet, it won’t really help you. *shrugs*
Hope that’s of some assistance in making your decision!
😉 tagAught
I hope you’re feeling better by now, I’ve truly enjoyed reading your blog so far and it made me feel so bad for you reading what you were going through with all the people and noises around. I had the same thing last month with someone “invading” my space, my counsellor suggested trying to think of one single thing each day that I enjoy and simply do it, no matter what. But since all I could think of that I enjoy doing was simply being by myself in my own house, that didn’t work. 😛