Irritation

This is my big new emotion name.

It's not as intense as aggravation, not as mild as annoyance. Or maybe it is. I'm not sure.

It's not actually a physical irritation - the feeling of a label on the back of the neck, or a bunched-up nightgown, or maybe something in a shoe, although it's probably similar.

Just a note here. Many people with Aspergers are hypersensitive to touch. Temple Grandin talks about this for herself in terms of clothing. She has to wash her clothes many times before wearing them, and she wears whatever she can inside out. New clothes are too stiff and seams are an irritation. I am NOT like that. Seams and labels have never been a problem for me. Clothing has to sit right, but I have to assume that's true for everyone. Touch is important to me - very important - but it's on a normal level, I think.

A big part of this is exploring how I'm NOT different from the neurotypical. That feels very important to me.

Anyway, it's a mental irritation, I suppose, although it FEELS physical. It's a pressure, a tension, in the middle of my chest when things get irritating. A pressure I feel a great need to relieve even though I know that doing so might make things harder or hurt someone's feelings, and I don't want to do that.

It can be a habit of my husband's that suddenly bothers me even though it never had before. It can be a perfectly innocuous comment by my mother or mother-in-law. Or it could be the constant "thank yous" by one of the counselors at work. I'm glad to be appreciated - really - but it's my job to make sure his guy - ALL THE GUYS - get fed appropriate and tasty food that they will eat.

In fact, repetition can be the worst kind of irritation. This is a real problem on my favorite social interactive network, Twitter. There are days when everyone I follow seem to be repeating the same thing over and over again. Or when certain groups just keep making the same complaint. Or when the political pundits I follow make the same jokes over and over again, or make me realize that I don't agree with them about every thing.

And the pressure on my chest tells me to say something. To show them that they are WRONG or stupid or something. I don't interact much with the political twitters, so there is less temptation for that, but nothing to prevent me from saying something in general - nothing but ME.

The results are usually not pretty - because what I am doing does not relieve the irritation but just makes a fight. But the other choice is to feel the need to say something and just get more frustrated. And angrier. And that can lead to overload, but at least it's not in public (my poor husband, though.)

I am learning to not give in anyway - to write tweets and delete them unsaid. When I do that, it's difficult but I don't hurt feelings, I don't pick fights and I don't hear ugly things about something I care about. So it's better, but I'm also frustrated because I don't want the consequences of saying what I think, but I very much want to speak. I'm not bad with words, but somehow, using them at that point is never good. And this, too, is irritating.

It did pay off in December when I didn't allow myself to say anything much about the monster holiday that eats all in its path. :) I actually found myself calmer just because I didn't pick any fights. It wasn't easy but it was the best December I'd ever had. So I know this is the best strategy right now.

Some of you are probably asking why I don't just ignore those things? Most people do, I'm told. There are things I can ignore. Innocuous things, like talk of football or movies or tv shows I don't watch, or musical groups I don't follow. Things in which I have no emotional stake, I think. Or haven't given an emotional tag of some kind.

Emotions are pesky things. Vulcans are wise beings.

But if I've tagged it with an emotion, I can't ignore it. At all. I can't ignore Christmas. I can't ignore mention of a certain guitarist. (Or of a certain singer but I WANT to pay attention to that.) I can't ignore Israel. Some are important to me, some are irritations. And I can't filter it out because once it gets my attention, it doesn't lose it.

I believe shades of gray exist, but I don't experience them. It's on or it's off and there's no off switch. There's only covering my eyes maybe. And so sometimes I sign onto twitter and I'm hit with a series of things that irritate me.

There's a solution. It's called leaving. Turning it off. It's not easy - twitter is an addiction. But since I can't control what irritates me, or make people stop talking about things they're interested in, I can at least control when I see it.

It's also irritating, but I'm not going to blow up over it.