Concert Impact

Thursday night, I attended the Queen + Adam Lambert concert in Madison Square Garden. I wrote a review from a fan perspective here, on my fan blog. I enjoyed it very much, but there were issues, both expected and unexpected, that caused a few problems.

Unexpected changes

If I have a complex but routine task to perform, I need to have an order in which I do it. The more complex and routine, the more I need that order. When I worked for the real estate agency a few years ago, I had a process for taking, entering and distributing listings. If that was interrupted or changed for any reason, even if the outcome was the same, I got very upset. Which was disturbing and probably confusing to those around me.

It can be managed. If I know that something will be changed in advance, I can game out the results, and if they'll matter or not - and how to make things work the way they should. I can also change routines if I learn a better/more efficient way of doing them. In fact, that can be fun. So long as I initiate the change or have advance knowledge of what the change will be or just that it will happen, I'm okay. A surprise is not a pleasant thing. Neither is not getting information in a timely way - or at all, as has happened. If my job needs this information, it's very frustrating when I don't get it. I want to do my job correctly.

Last week, I knew I had a shortened week because I was going on a weekend trip starting Wednesday night. I knew I had to make sure there was food to last until Monday for all the residents, especially for the diabetic individual dependent on me for everything. This, I knew, was possible.

Monday afternoon, I learned that this was not the fact. That all of the individuals would be going to the country for a vacation from Sunday to Wednesday, and therefore I would need enough of M's food to last until then. I learned this just as I was about to leave on Monday, and I was also LATE on Monday. If I'd arrived and therefore left on time, I wouldn't have found this out at all.

Now I had two days to do this sort of thing. Now, I actually was fairly on top of things, but it was still bad to learn this so late - presumably my house manager knew the week before. If not, it was really poorly done.

To make matters even worse, I got sick with a cold. My ability to function decreased. I slowed down. And I couldn't take any time off because of the trip. Tuesday was okay - just the beginnings, you know? Not bad. I was even able to drive 90 minutes to a neighbor's son's wedding. Wednesday, which was also the night we'd planned to drive to the country inn, I ran a fever plus my nose was on permadrip. I know everyone is different in this regard, but for me, that's the worst part of a cold. A runny nose just makes me totally miserable in a way that nothing else, even a bad cough or sore throat, can.

We decided to drive to the inn the next day, of course, and I took a car service to and from work instead of walking as usual. I could barely stand. My house manager merely told me to work with gloves (which I did, plus constant hand washing and purification.) And I was missing food. I'd taken out a lot of chicken to thaw the night before and it was GONE. It wasn't in the fridge, on the counter or even back in the freezer. I felt like I was going nuts.

I needed that food. I had some still frozen I could thaw in the microwave, but to lose food is just bad. I did take out the extra chicken. And then we found it. While I cook in one kitchen, there are actually two apartments, each with a kitchen. And it was in the other fridge because there wasn't room. And no one told me. And I was sick and non-functional and stressed and there was information I needed and I didn't have it.

I got through the day (I don't know if I made sufficient food for all the guys, but I did make enough for M) and got home and to bed, and was well enough (read, no fever and my nose had stopped running) to drive the several hours to the inn, and then another half hour to see my favorite Shakespeare comedy Love's Labors Lost, even if we took one of my least favorite people along with us. So it all worked well. And while we didn't get our normal room, we got a better one on the first floor. No complaints.

But I still arrived stressed and tired and determined to do nothing on Friday. And on Friday, I began to write this blog post on my phone using an app. And I lost the blog TWICE. Not only was this stressy and annoying but just writing about the events made me upset. Still happening. I've stimmed a few times while writing this. Not a relief, you see.

So, when I let this other person drive my car (and my husband and a third person) to a museum, and there were problems right away, I got very angry. I got even angrier later on, as I was helping in the kitchen, when my husband finally returned and it turned out this person got into a fender bender, scratching the car - my MOTHER'S car - and then, instead of going home, went to a second museum. I still cannot believe he did that. And he is NEVER driving my car again. He also spent all of Shabbat avoiding me, and when pressured (wanting a ride home, which he did NOT get as we had plans for dinner) gave a very unsincere apology. I'm over that anger, though.

I was very able to get a handle on that emotion.

Brain reset

We all get triggers, and you can't always predict them.

A few days ago, I got triggered slightly. A few months ago, I had a major meltdown - two days of tears and depression and extra therapy sessions. Horrible, horrible days that I try not to think about much. A similar event happened, but that wasn't the trigger. It was the reaction of my twitter feed to the event - pretty much what had happened the first time. And seeing it was a physical shock, much like what happened the first time except that instead of feeling like a gut punch, it felt more like a poke. I can't actually find better words.

And my brain wouldn't let it go. I could even feel the same emotional reaction building. But, maybe because it was much, much less of a reaction, I could deal with it. I could reset my brain.

I turned off Twitter - turning off the app entirely so I wouldn't even see notifications. Then I walked to work - I have a fifteen minute commute on foot, one of the things I most love about my job. On the way, I stopped to do a little shopping. When I got to work, I went right to it, chopping onions and setting water to boil and so on. An hour or so later, I was in a very different place, and so was Twitter. The discussion had moved on, and the physical activity calmed me down.

I'm not sure what those emotions were - anger, maybe. Frustration. Feelings of isolation - I do not like when my reactions are negative when Twitter is positive about something because I feel very alone. It's something I recognize but I'm not sure how to manage given that since it's all emotional, there's a tag to it and not ignorable. However, I have learned something - how to reset my brain. Maybe that will help.

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.

Naming Names

Emotions are funny things to me - they just take over, sometimes out of nowhere. Even when I know WHY I'm feeling something, even when it's positive, it can sometimes be too much to handle.

The other day, we discovered that one of my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan operettas was going to be performed in a couple of weeks here in NYC. Since my husband is also a G&S fan and had never seen Yeoman of the Guard, he went on line and found ORCHESTRA seats. I've never had orchestra seats to a show, and it's been decades since I've seen a Gilbert and Sullivan and I was tremendously excited. So I bounced on the bed. Yes, like a small child, and probably for the same reason. Children jump around and bounce and so on when they're excited because they are overloaded with energy and it has to go someplace. Adults know how to handle that energy (and maybe are too jaded to get so excited. I don't know.) BTW,I didn't stand up and use my bed as a trampoline. I just sat and bounced. I feel the need to say that. I haven't used a bed as a trampoline since I WAS a small child. I don't need to break furniture or myself.

I didn't need to figure out what I was feeling then, just that it was good. If something is good, why worry about what it is? Yes, I was a bit overloaded but the outlet was fun and the reason was happy and it didn't matter. I probably could name the emotions if I needed to, but happy is enough, right?

Today, though. Today was something else. Things to note - I was feeling pretty good. Nothing was irritating me physically, I was comfortably in my own home with a good book and no responsibilities beyond making sure Shabbat lunch was warmed up in time. I skipped shul so I could decompress from the trip we took over New Year's weekend. Even my blood sugar was cooperating.

At the end of lunch, and more or less general chatter, I happened to see one of my Chanukah presents - a critical copy of Love's Labor's Lost, one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. I was explaining WHY I like this relatively obscure and rarely performed play - that the ending totally transforms the play from a farce into something else and that feels very modern and interesting to me - and I paused at what was to me a dramatic moment. And my husband chose to fill that with an out-of-context and distracting quip. And I got disturbed and told him why and...instead of letting it escalate he stayed quiet. Only that didn't help. At that point, though, nothing he did would have helped.

I got more disturbed, even through the long grace after meals. I went to our bedroom alone and tried to sort it out - tried to put a name to what I was feeling and to see if that would make a difference. Because I so much...stuff inside my head that thinking was hard. There's only so much room in my head, and it can get crowded in there. I couldn't concentrate on my book, either. And putting a name to emotions is not an easy job. I cried a little and I hit the bed and then the names came.

I was angry and frustrated (two emotions. Even worse.) I had been interrupted, my point had been lost and I felt belittled. I had words for the feelings and for why I felt that way. So I started talking to myself - telling myself this is what I was feeling and the equally frustrating thing that I had no outlet - I could not figure out a way of defusing them.

And I could say so out loud, and Jon heard and said he understood why. He'd apologized earlier but I literally didn't hear. Entirely possible with all the noise in my head. And he offered to let me hit him (not that I would have at that point.) But the noise started to fade. All the things I needed to do earlier didn't seem meaningful. And I could read. And a few minutes of reading later, it was gone - all the anger and frustration defused ITSELF. I probed for it in my mind and it wasn't there. I could and can remember it being there, but it wasn't there anymore. It was QUIET again.

This was NOT a meltdown. This was just being angry over something maybe worth being angry. I don't know. I certainly hope so. But I could have fed it, obsessed over it, made it bigger. I've done that. By naming it - you know those stories? Where true names have power, so magic workers (good and bad) hide them? How the miller's daughter vanquished Rumplestiltskin by saying his true name? I found the true names and they left me alone.

I've always known emotions had names. I just didn't know how to apply them.