Static Cling

“We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.”      William Hazlitt

Have you ever heard the allegory of the centipede which, when asked how it knew which of its hundred feet to use when, found itself unable to move when it started to think about it?  Well, this is me.  Obviously, I don’t mean that I’m a centipede, or that I’ve got a hundred feet.  No: but the minute I think about how to do a thing, you can guarantee I find myself unable to do it.  

Case in point.  I don’t know whether you’ve noticed but, for the first four months of this year, I managed to be extremely consistent and post two blog articles every month.  Amazing, what?!  And I don’t know whether you’ve also noticed that, for the last two months, I haven’t published anything at all?  (Nothing like going from one extreme to the other).  So, what the devil happened?

Well, it wasn’t ‘the devil’, much as I might want to blame it on someone or something else (some supernatural distracting force that body-snatched me, and put a stop to my literary musings).  

To put it simply, ‘I’ happened.  ‘I’ did it.  And the question is, how did I do it?  Well, it wasn’t with a spanner, in the library, with Professor Plum, that’s for sure.

No, it was far easier and simpler than that.  ‘I’ noticed how consistent I’d been, and so ‘I’ started thinking…  

Rather than continuing on with what was working (which meant just going with the flow,  spontaneously writing whenever I had an idea, and not thinking about the logistics of how to do it), I started to worry about how long this would last, and to plot how to ensure the continuation and improvement of this happy state of affairs (meaning posting more blog posts every month, ‘cos I have an obsession with the idea that more is better), I decided to stick my oar in and tinker, once again, attempting to set up a routine for my writing which would maintain and improve my productivity.  Concrete thinking here we come!

I really do have a problem with rigid thinking, and wanting everything to be written in stone, even though you can guarantee that I’ll change it at some point (whether it be sixty seconds, sixty minutes, sixty hours, or sixty days later).  This seems to be one of the areas where the autistic and the ADHD in me clash and/or overlap.  My personality is geared to wanting such tight control of everything, which just exacerbates the rigidity: and vice versa.  

And then there’s what might be the trait of spontaneity (the jury’s still out on whether I have any of this) which longs for freedom, but which possibly transforms and manifests as the flighty impulsivity due to my insistence on attempting to nail it down.  ‘Cos that’s what I do to myself - construct a solid concrete prison, which I call routine, rather than a wooden framework that can easily be altered, dismantled, rebuilt, or added to as necessary.  I don’t so much flow as clunk through life.

So, point in question - writing.  Having unfortunately noticed the longed-for consistency, I determined to set out a routine (set of rules) for my writing that I believed would help me continue with this novel concept which I seemed to have inadvertently stumbled upon.  In short, I got caught up in the minutiae, yet again.  

This meant questioning everything involved in the process of writing - when’s the best time for me to write; how long/how much should I write (eg should I do it in short bursts to accommodate my ADHD, even if I find myself happily focused and wanting to continue beyond the allotted time); how often (daily, every other day, weekly, three times a day, every hour); best place to be (living room, bedroom, kitchen, outdoors); best position (on the sofa, at the desk, at the dining table, on the bed); seated, standing, reclining; on paper or the computer, or rough draft on paper and then computer; one draft or more, rough outline/plan, or leap straight in; what to write - blog article, short story, poem, novel, peace treaty!?  Who knew there was so much to the art of writing, before you even set pen to paper?  Now I see why I often resist doing it!   

And amazingly, as you can see from the evidence, all of my attempts to formalise and formulise my writing has produced miraculous results - I haven’t managed to produce a sodding thing!

Yet I still insist on trying to exert control.  Why is that?  Well, apart from the fact that I just naturally like to be in control, it’s partly because I retain the persistent (but misguided) belief that I can’t be trusted to do anything unless I’m forced into it, using the timeworn method of rule enforcement; and also because, having read copious amounts of info on the subject, I now find myself copying.  Unfortunately, most of the stuff I’ve read (and taken personally and literally) incorporates the concepts I’ve mentioned above, such as disciplining yourself to write daily (another way of saying forcing yourself), etc.  

The fact that most of these people are talking about writing for a living, writing full-length novels, and that they aren’t catering to autistics with ADHD goes completely over the top of my head.  Their motivation is completely different to mine, yet I find myself adopting theirs, which results in writing losing its pleasure for me.  And once it does that, once I start writing from a distorted sense of necessity and fear, then my well of inspiration dries up completely.  Kind of like God saying, “I’m sorry, Lisa, but I don’t want you to write for money or fame or any of those other  materialistic motives: I’d just like you to write for the pure joy of it.”

And it’s not only my writing that I’ve picked apart just lately: I’ve done it with art, too.  Well I would, wouldn’t I?  Once I start doing it with one thing, the trait takes over and spills into everything.  It’s not the individual thing that’s the problem, but me, and there’s no point trying to focus all my attention on fixing the object or situation, in the belief that once I’ve done that then I’ll cease to worry, ‘cos it doesn’t work.  I’ve tried, and failed - numerous times.

So, for example, when I start worrying about one thing, I’ll then find other things to worry about, until I end up in a permanent state of worry, where the focus of my anxiety becomes completely irrelevant.  It’s like setting a time bomb ticking, and letting it run until it culminates in one massive explosion - an autistic meltdown.  Unless, of course, I have the wherewithal to remember to turn the timer off, rather than running around like a loon, trying to manage a live bomb, doing silly things like trying to bury it when it’s still active.

As to art, all of my paintings so far are done by copying from photos.  But a few weeks ago I had a sudden inspiration for something I could do from my imagination.  Of course, it almost scared me to death - I mean, I’ve never been able to draw from my mind (at least, nothing decent: they always resemble the scribblings of a two-year old with hiccoughs, in my opinion), and yet here I was, on the cusp of some great change.  Not only that, the idea I had was abstract: I don’t do abstract.  Obviously God must have been at work, overcoming the confines of my limited imagination, gently nudging me forwards to try something different: especially as I have been saying for a while that I would like to be able to produce my own original work.

But saying it and doing it are two different things.  So what did I do with this spark of an idea?  I obsessed about it, talked about it, did a brief sketch, and then abandoned it in favour of going searching for ways to practice playing and having fun with my art - ‘cos that’s what I decided was what was holding me back, the problem being that I take it all too seriously.  Which is true.  But, basically, my solution was a way of procrastinating about trying something new, and in itself involved trying something new.  How dumb can you get?!  

Which is how come I ended up spending hours trawling the web, looking first at art therapy (I thought it might help me to express myself!?), and then landing on art journalling, which I was convinced was the answer to my prayers (and a way to combine art and writing, so becoming consistent at both at the same time).  I even bought myself a ‘proper’ artist’s sketchbook, with thicker watercolour paper, for the purpose (not thick enough, as it turns out: the pages buckle on contact with the paint.  Sheesh!).  Fortunately it only cost me about £3, and it turns out it’s not the answer to anything, really, other than avoiding doing art.  Which I have successfully managed to do.  As was my unconscious, fear-driven, intention.

You know what I find really strange about all of this, though, and which gives me cause to wonder whether I do, in fact, have the innate ability to be spontaneous (despite my seeming autistic genetic resistance to the whole concept)?  I don’t recall having this problem when I was a child.  I would write stories when I wanted to write, draw pictures when I felt like it, and launch myself into trying things like handstand (and succeeding with persistent practice - something I’m not now well known for) without prior instruction, because that’s what my body wanted to do.  

I didn’t question whether it was possible or not, but simply believed that I could do it, and so just did it.  Whereas now I think I have to have a fucking step-by-step guide to how to do the simplest of things because I’m afraid of getting it ‘wrong’.  Which leads me to wonder whether the problem lies not with a lack of spontaneity, but with having absorbed the idea that there’s a ‘proper’ way to do everything, and that you can’t just decide to do things, willy nilly, without having someone teach you first.

The question is, how did the first people learn how to do everything when there was no-one to teach them?  It’s something my best friend asks me whenever I insist on going off to look for instruction on the internet, clinging like a limpet to the static idea that I need someone to copy, to tell me what to do.  And then I ignore them, or alter the instructions.  So it’s a bit bloody pointless anyway.    

Soup, God, Writing

“When you wake up first thing in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”

“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh.     (From Winnie the Pooh, by A A Milne)

This is the order of importance in which my mind regularly places things – food first (and/or numerous variations -  computer, reading, yoga, etc), then the state of my soul, and creativity last.  Often it’s more a case of food first, last, and all the time, which just represents the level of my obsession. 

I would like to tell you that this isn’t true, that like a good, recovering, spiritual person (the one I aspire to be) I actually do put God first.  But that would be a lie.  And what would be the point of lying anyway?  To impress other people?  To appease my conscience and God (which suggests that, contrary to what I supposedly believe, or tell myself and other people that I believe, that God is still synonymous with punishment, fear, and a demand for absolute obedience, who will withdraw all help if I don’t get it right all the time)?  To compound the illusion I have created for myself, which would enable me to continue in this way - placing my obsession with, and dependence upon, food above all else, especially God?

My aim is to put God first, especially as my life goes a lot more swimmingly, and I feel so much better, when I do follow Good Orderly Direction: and sometimes I do manage it.  But, as with all else, I never get it perfect, which is as it should be (though I’m hard-pressed convincing my rigid mind of that fact a lot of the time).  So I often start the day really connected to God, and then drift off, and then come back, and then drift off...  It’s a bit like a dance, where I keep forgetting the steps and letting go of my partner’s hand, or wandering off to dance with other people, with whom I find myself distractedly fascinated, but ultimately incompatible (they keep treading on my toes, or bumping into me, and taking up way too much of my personal space).  Or, just as likely, I gravitate towards the refreshments, where I can be found stuffing my face with, or looking with longing at, all the food that’s on offer.

But it is ‘progress not perfection’ that I aspire to practice (to borrow from the Big Book of AA), which in this case would mean spending more of my day consciously aware and in contact with God, so reducing the amount of time I fritter on my favourite occupation, procrastination – something at which I excel, and have developed into an art form itself.  Plus, being guided by God (or conscience, or soul – whatever you want to call it) is far better, and more conducive to a stress-free, productive, joyful life, than being driven by self-will.  Kind of makes me wonder why I don’t try it more often.        

The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

“If you don’t go within, you go without.”

From ‘Conversations With God’ by Neale Donald Walsch

“God is in every breath.”

It’s remarkable how I can completely miss the obvious.  I astound myself sometimes, I really do.  I’d bypass the point even if my life depended on it.  Take breathing, for instance...

The first thing I learned in yoga was how to breathe properly.  And the first thing I forgot was how to breathe properly.  Phenomenal, isn’t it, what an autistic mind can misplace when left to its own devices?  And that, unfortunately, is what I was left to – to try to learn yoga by myself, with only the aid of a book for me to work through and attempt to understand, and no-one to keep reminding me of the salient points: like the need to focus on the breath.

So of course, once I’d read the section on breathing, I promptly forgot most of it in my excitement and impatience to move on to what I viewed as the REALLY important bits – the asanas (that’s postures or poses to you non-yogis).  Plus, I probably knew that trying to rein in my mind to pay attention to what I was doing was going to be a bugger, so I conveniently consigned that part to the ‘inconsequential’ pile, possibly to be attempted at a later date – when I was able to focus better.  Yes, I imagined that simply doing yoga postures, without specifically practicing concentrating on the breath or on what my body was doing, would somehow miraculously teach me how to focus - whilst I continued to let my mind wander wherever it wanted.  This is what I call the autistic version of multi-tasking: I appear to be able to do two things simultaneously, but one of them is suffering badly from a lack of attention – and it isn’t the thinking.

At this point in the proceedings (just over nine years ago) I hadn’t yet discovered that I was autistic, or had ADHD to explain the decided lack of anything resembling an attention span.  But when I did find out, I came to the erroneous conclusion that this explained why I hadn’t been able to attain any measure of control over my mind (thereby completely circumventing the fact that I actually hadn’t tried very hard either, it being excruciating, like trying to keep a jack in a box when the lid’s broken); and that the book was written for non-autistics, so this definitely meant that I was not going to be able to do it at all, thus letting me off the hook.  I thought.

The funny thing is that once I started to progress in my yoga practice, I found myself wanting to be able to attain what was promised in my books, which drove me to make time to include the practice of breathing and meditation techniques.  And, remarkably enough, they started to work.  I actually found myself able to sit still and do nothing, other than breathe and try to focus, for longer than thirty seconds.  Okay, so my mind was still rampantly running amok, but it was no longer dictating what my body should do – a bit like sitting still in the middle of a war-zone, with people yelling at me that I should move out of the way.  Not a lot of peace, but I wasn’t going to shift until I decided it was time.

And then I discovered that, even though I still couldn’t seem to control my mind, which insisted on attaching itself to every thought that came my way (the opposite to what you’re supposed to do, which is to let the thoughts flow in and out – totally not autistic!), I felt calmer, and my mind was quieter: it was like someone had finally managed to find the volume control and turn the noise down.  I wasn’t reacting to every thought that entered my head, trying to analyse and talk myself out of having them.  It had finally clicked that the moment I engaged in any way with my thinking, was the moment when my mind had won the battle to get my attention, thereby diverting it away from what I was supposed to be doing, what was really important – focusing on the breath, and being in the present. 

The irony is that my best friend has been telling me this for years, with regard to the rest of my life.  It’s one of a number of phrases she has to keep repeating to me, parrot-fashion, until I get the meaning.  “Stop analysing, stick to the plan, focus on what you’re supposed to be DOING, and ignore what you’re THINKING and it’ll go away.”  Unfortunately, I was always too busy listening to what my mind had to say about it all, and analysing what she’d said, to actually follow her advice. 

And I basically did the same when it came to reading my yoga book which, coincidentally (or not), contained almost the exact same advice: “Just enjoy what you are doing, give it your full attention, stay present in what you are working on, and keep focusing on the breath ...”; and: “The mind loves to wander to the past or the future; try and stay in the present moment when you practice.  Keep the mind on the breath, observing what it’s doing and how it feels.  By doing this the mind stays in the now.”; and one more time, just in case you missed the point (which I did, repeatedly): “Thoughts will begin to slow down and you will find yourself simply observing their flow, without grasping at them or becoming attached to any of them.”

So, what is it that is so special about the breath?  Well, in yoga they consider it to be the essence of existence, so that when you inhale you not only take in oxygen, but the energy of life, out of which everything in the universe (including us) is made.  Another name for it is God, which I personally prefer: it’s a lot less of an abstract concept to have to deal with, especially when it comes to the question of talking to It.  “Good morning, energy, please help me stick to my plan today,” would make me feel rather as if I were talking to nothing in particular,just a lot of air – or myself.  Whereas the word God denotes that I am talking to a friend.

I also find it amazingly symbolic that in the Bible it tells of how when God created man, He breathed life into him.  Yep, breathing is probably the most effective way of connecting with God (or your spirit, soul, or higher Self, whatever you want to call it), and it doesn’t cost a thing.  You just have to learn to slow down in order to be able to listen, not just talk, otherwise it’s like asking someone for directions to somewhere, and then walking off before they get the chance to tell them to you; which is the kind of relationship I have frequently had with Him.  Fortunately She’s never taken the hump and walked off when I’ve returned to talk at Her.    

When you breathe deeply, into your tummy, you slow down the breath, and when it slows down the mind slows down too.  And if you practice enough you can actually shut it up completely (for a while, anyway): it’s almost as if it gets bored when it’s not being listened to.  But you have to practice A LOT – this thing, this mind with its plethora of thoughts, is persistent, patient, and has had a great deal of practice at running the show: and it requires the exact same attributes in order to take back control.  Attributes with which an obsessive/compulsive autistic, with ADHD, is not exactly naturally endowed.  I can spell them, and I know how to use them in a sentence, but the Three Ps have left me frequently perplexed when it comes to applying them in my life.

Which is why it’s only taken me just over nine years to work out that I’ve been missing a bit in my yoga practice.  That it just happens to be the essential bit is par for the course for me.  And the final irony is that the word ‘yoga’ actually means ‘to unite, combine, yoke’, which translates to meaning that the body, mind, and soul all end up working in unison through the practice of yoga.  Mine have all been doing what they always do, going their separate ways, whilst I have questioned whether yoga is really as effective as I’ve read that it is supposed to be.  After all, it’s only been going for about three thousand years!

Get Out Of Your Mind

“Be empty.  Think of who created thought!  Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?”

Rumi

“We should take care not to make the intellect our God.”

Albert Einstein

I would have told you that I loved thinking, not so very long ago.  It was something that excited and interested me, stimulated my mind, and gave me an adrenalin rush - so I wasn’t any too keen on giving it up.  The idea of being empty used to scare the shit out of me.  What would I do with all that space in my head?  What thoughts would I have if I wasn’t the one choosing what to think?  Would I become bland and boring, without a single idea of my own?  And how would I figure anything out if I didn’t think about and analyse things?  What was the purpose of my mind if I didn’t use it?  How would I fill the time that was taken up with it?

And then came the very, very, very gradual realisation that it’s not that I love it so much (at least, not all of it), but rather that I am addicted to the rush, and that it serves as a distraction from what I am meant to be doing.  I could spend whole days just sitting (or wandering around aimlessly), lost in my own inner world, avoiding doing anything in this one: it’s easier than having to force myself to have to focus, and practice discipline and self-control.  And besides, I don’t always care too much for this reality, so drifting off into another world is just another way of escaping. 

With the rush, though, comes the over-stimulation, and with that comes the inevitable crash: thinking wipes me out, physically as well as mentally.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that I am left in a state of such tiredness that I am able to go to sleep for hours on end to recoup: that would be too convenient.  Instead I find myself catapulted into a state of something that almost resembles suspended animation – my body and mind have slowed down so much that I can barely think or function, and yet my whole being is thrumming with an overabundance of nervous energy that makes it impossible for any part of me to be still.  It’s a bugger.

I had also started to recognise a while ago that my thoughts are actually rather repetitive – obsessive I think is the word (God forbid that I should be called obsessive!).  So much so that even I was remembering having had them before (and sharing them with my long-suffering friend), on an all-too-regular basis.  My mind has learned the very neat trick of being able to take the same thoughts and repackage them, so that I never quite recognise that I’m just replaying the same stuff: I’ve had more repeats than you get on television.  Rather than being the free-thinking intellectual I thought I was, it turns out that I am often extremely boring, and my thoughts can be terribly tedious.  I’m bored with them, so they must be bad ‘cos I usually think they’re so riveting, and important, that everyone wants to hear them. Again.  And again.  And again.  And again...

The other, major problem with my thinking is that when it gets going I am controlled by it: I just don’t seem to know when, or how, to stop; and even attempting to slow it down is almost impossible.  And as to imagining that I can control the kind of thoughts I have – it’s a delusion.  It’s as if I am not really choosing them at all: not consciously, anyway.  It’s like plugging into a television set, where all the controls are stuck so you cannot switch it off, change channels, or adjust the volume – I am simply bombarded by the myriad of random images and sounds being projected at me, and it feels like I’m being pinned to the sofa, unable to move, a passenger in my own life.  And anyone unfortunate enough to be around when it’s happening invariably gets steamrollered by my verbiage.

But even when I do get a truly inspirational idea, one that doesn’t originate within the narrow confines of my maze of a mind, but which comes to me from my higher Self (God, as I like to call it, though some people get bent out of shape about the word), there still remains the problem of what I do with it – namely, sit and admire it from every conceivable angle, talk about it at depth, and bask in the glow of wonderment that I’ve finally seen the light (again).  And the moment I do all of that, in order to attempt to control, understand, and keep hold of it, I move into obsession, and off we go again.  Different thoughts, same behaviour.

I have pondered the question, long and hard, of how to deal with this obsessional thinking.  It especially confounded me when I discovered that I am autistic, and that being obsessive is a common trait.  Did this mean, then, that I was condemned to have to live with this constant stream, never having any respite from it?  Was I going to be at the mercy of my ever-cogitating mind?  If that was the case, was it possible for me to choose to be obsessed only with positive things, and to channel that into constructive pursuits?  This appeared to me to be what people like Temple Grandin have done, and she has only two major obsessions, as far as I’m aware.  Was this the answer?

Er, no - to put it bluntly.  Perhaps for some autistics it works, but it hasn’t been a great success for me.  Of course, I have no idea whether Temple Grandin is still plagued by random obsessive thinking, in amongst her consuming focus on her special interests.  All I know is that trying to only be obsessed with my special interests, to keep at bay all that uninvited, negative crap that enters my head at random and then refuses to leave, doesn’t work for me. 

For one thing, I have more than just two particular interests – yoga, writing, art, craft, Sanskrit, calligraphy, reading, and dancing.  Which means that deciding to be obsessed with one of them (writing, for example) simply results in my being distracted from doing the others.  I end up with my head full of story titles and bits of poetry, all demanding to be taken notice of and written down – except that it happens at the most inopportune moments (in the middle of yoga, for example), which means that I can’t do anything with them because that would mean abandoning my plan.  Of course, the minute I get to my writing time the whole bloody lot has disappeared, or I’ve lost interest because they’ve been replayed in my head so many times that it feels like I’m just rehashing an old tale.  And there’s nothing more boring than having to write up a twice-told tale.  Especially when you’ve heard it being retold in your head a lot more than just twice! 

Or, I just can’t make a decision as to which one to go with first because my head has been flooded with too many ideas all at once.  Plus, not only has my enthusiasm for writing been spent, but I’ve also in the process lost interest in everything else that I haven’t been able to focus on doing during the day because I’ve been lost in my head.  And part of the purpose of my weekly plan is to help me practice disciplining my mind to focus on what I’m doing.

So, once I’ve worn myself out with my initial over-enthusiastic ruminations, and got bored with them, my mind is happily primed and ready to assail me with any thought, positive or negative, that happens to be lying around: after all, one obsessive thought is no different to another – as I have found to my cost.  Yep, I’ve basically opened the door and invited them in.

I have realised that I’m probably never not going to think in an obsessive way, when I do think.  I cannot help but move from one theme to the next, in a rigid manner, and to have a relatively limited set of topics at any one time, which I have a tendency to return to regularly.  Spontaneity is not my thing, no matter how much I might wish to be, or try to be – my brain just isn’t designed to be able to accommodate this particular trait, and it’s pointless railing against it.  

But what I’m discovering about myself is that this doesn’t have to mean that I can never enjoy moments of peace; nor learn to be able to focus my mind on what I am doing; or acquire the ability to slow down my mind and ignore my thoughts, and not be at the mercy of it and them.  Can you imagine having peace in your head, and not being overwhelmed and controlled by the constant stream of noise raining down on you, like being in the midst of a bomb attack?  Well, I’ve found a way.  The irony is that I’ve been doing it for nearly ten years but completely missed the point, until now.  And it’s all in the breath. 

Follow That Plan!

One thing you could never accuse me of being is balanced. I don’t “do” balance. It’s not in my nature. I lonnnnnnnnnnnnng to be balanced. I strive relentlessly to achieve it. I have obsessed myself out of balance trying to work out how to get it, why I can’t seem to do so, and why it doesn’t last when I have momentarily hit it only to find myself skidding right past it again on my pendulum swing either up or down. I’m just not wired up to be balanced, and my frustration stems from the fact that I cannot (as yet) accept it.

It doesn’t compute – at least not for longer than the time it’s taken me to analyse my way into a sense of understanding, and out again! And if a thing doesn’t compute then I don’t accept it: it’s like it just doesn’t stay in my memory long enough to be fully digested. The story of my life – I am a recovered bulimic!

At the moment I’m not feeling anywhere near balanced. In fact I feel completely out of whack. It all comes from not following my plan.

Ah yes – The Plan. I don’t think I’ve mentioned The Plan yet, have I? Much like I hadn’t written about yoga until my last blog entry. And yet both of them are crucial to my life. But then that’s the way it is with me: I get distracted and obsessed by the minutiae, and the important things get overlooked. Ho hum!

Between them they give me the nearest thing to balance that I can get, which is a sense of order and rhythm, a structure to my day. They make the difference between me living my life to my full potential, and existing in that chaotic, sensorily overloaded world of the directionless, terrified autistic, trying to make sense of, and copy my way into, a life which is not my own. I’ve lived both: I know what I’m talking about. There is no contest. Life with a plan is a thousand times better than without.

Unfortunately there is one teeny problem to this plan business: it means DISCIPLINE (or disciplan, if you will!), the ultimate anathema to an autistic, especially one with the added bonus of ADHD and obsessive/compulsive disorder!

I love plans - the idea of them. I have done for as long as I can remember, and especially since my secondary school days where I discovered the wonderful world of the timetable, which told me EXACTLY what I was supposed to be doing, where, and when. Unfortunately I’m not very good at making them, or writing them down. I get the idea in my head, but then something happens during the process of trying to transfer it onto paper. Rather than solidifying into a coherent whole, it all gets rather vague, complicated, and decidedly “wobbly” (to use a Poohism!)

Another “flaw in the plan”, as it were, is my unwavering propensity for losing interest once the initial enthusiasm has waned, and the time has come for me to really apply myself to the nitty-gritty of actually having to follow it. If it hasn’t produced miraculous results within two days (sometimes even two hours, or two minutes, is just too long!) then I become despondent and convinced that it’s not going to work, and I resort to one of two methods that I have for dealing with it – I either abandon the plan altogether; or I tweak it. And tweaking, as my friend Dee knows, is my favourite occupation when it comes to plans, and the bane of her life when trying to get me to stick to one!

We’ve been road testing this plan business for quite a while now, fine tuning it along the way. I say “we” because, even though I’m the one who has to follow the thing, the whole business of designing it has been a sort of joint venture, with a large proportion of that aspect falling on Dee’s shoulders. Without her I would still be making notes – incoherent ones at that!

Plus she was the one who first proposed the idea, having witnessed my futile attempts at trying to manage my life “spontaneously”, without any discernible structure (even before the recognition of my being autistic). Despite having toyed with the idea on numerous occasions of wishing I could revisit the days of having a timetable to follow, I’d dismissed it as being ridiculous, something that I was supposed to have grown out of by now. How wrong can you get?!

It has become apparent to us that one of the absolutely indispensable tools for enabling autistics to function better is to have discipline and structure in their lives. My friend Dee used to manage a residential unit for those on the low functioning end of the spectrum, which is where she initially witnessed the benefits of implementing a consistent routine, which helped to calm the residents. We didn’t know at the time just how relevant this experience was going to be for me: back then I was still simply a neurotic, with a lot of odd habits!

When we started, about three years ago, I still had no recognition of my condition, but it was very noticeable that I could not manage my own life. I’d have spates of “getting it together”, creating order (this translates as manically cleaning my home!), and making promises to myself to keep it maintained. But inevitably it would all go to pieces, very quickly, and the sum total of my life came down to my obsession with trying to keep my home clean and ordered. There wasn’t much room for anything else: as I’ve mentioned before, I can’t multi-task (I prefer the term multi-function since it covers a lot more than just action-oriented behaviours); and, boy, am I obsessive/compulsive!

And so “Enter The Plan”! Initially it was a very loose structure, just basically a list of things to try to include in my day (including creative tasks like writing, drawing, etc: anything to break up the predominant obsessions at that time - cleaning, television, and reading!), with no time strictures, except concerning meals and yoga. These were the only two things which had definite times, and around which the rest of the day was built. And, to a greater extent, they still are. However, what we found was that this “looseness”, which equated to giving me the responsibility to decide each day what I would do, basically meant that hardly any of it got done: unless I happened to hit upon one of my infrequent “good” days (this meant I’d got enough energy and enthusiasm to do more than the bare minimum.)

Now, contrary to what many in the non-autistic world seem to think is best for us (which appears to be that we need less rigidity and more flexibility, which will help us to become more spontaneous – as if!), my plan has actually evolved from a loose list of activities into a highly structured timetable which maps out every moment of every day, and now very definitely resembles those school timetables I used to look back upon so wistfully. It keeps my life from falling apart, my nervous system from overloading with the strain of too much stimulus, my obsessional tendencies in check (I’m not allowed to focus on doing only one thing – no reading all day long, or twelve hour yoga sessions!), and my brain from exploding from the stress of having too many decisions to make. My ADHD is also catered for – most tasks only last for half an hour, a time limit which is just about as much as I can deal with in having to sit still and focus on one thing at a time.

It also allows for the process of change to occur, albeit at the pace of an inebriated tortoise (I seem to take one faltering step forwards, then stagger a couple of paces back!) But change has, and is, occurring, which is a major miracle in itself for an autistic for whom change signifies disruption, and is to be avoided at all costs. Perhaps this is also why I hate discipline so much - I innately know what it leads to!

And the ultimate irony of it all is that now that I know what it is that I’m supposed to be doing, every moment of the day, I am finding that I am learning to be able to be “flexible” and adjust my timetable to allow for those spontaneous events that inevitably crop up!

"She's Got It, She's Got It, I Do Believe She's Got It!"

Just to continue on with the “My Fair Lady” theme (another line from a song from the film, as sung by Rex Harrison’s Professor Henry Higgins, which is also rather apt in the circumstances!)

Well it’s now official – I have aspergers. In fact I have aspergers with ADHD. How lucky can you get?!! The psychiatrist I saw did a bloody good job, and I am very grateful to him for doing in two hours what the NHS psychiatric service was going to take probably two years to do – and with no guarantee that they would even manage to get the diagnosis right!

I did try them initially – one frustrating and fruitless forty minute interview, where I ended up shutting down (and the doctor never noticed!), was enough to convince me that I couldn’t go through that ordeal again, which is what it was going to take – months of interviews for them to make an assessment.

So I went private, and it was worth the £440. And he did it without the aid of any background information on my childhood, other than what I was able to give him, because both my parents are dead. But my friend, who went with me, has always maintained that he would only have to sit in a room with me for five minutes to know that I have it!

It’s now two weeks ago since I went, and I don’t think it has sunk in at all. I had convinced myself beforehand that, logically, it shouldn’t make any difference to be told officially. After all I’ve known for a year now, and what should it matter what a complete stranger to me believes? The important thing is that I know it’s true, along with my best friend – surely? Plus, if he had said he didn’t believe that I’d got it, and he’s considered to be one of the foremost experts, where would that have left me? Which is probably why I was trying so hard to convince myself that his opinion didn’t matter.

And yet it seems it does, and it has done something, though I’m not sure what yet. I’ve been too busy being distracted and obsessed by other things that have been happening in my life just recently to allow the information to properly digest. I keep telling people that I’ve officially got it, and I keep telling myself that I have it, but this doesn’t really aid in the process of acceptance. It doesn’t fully compute yet: it just seems so surreal.

Of course my inclination is to immerse myself in all things aspergers and ADHD now, to read up on and learn everything there is to know about the two things – basically to set off yet another obsession that will distract me from getting on with my life and the routine that I have discovered helps to keep my life ordered, and my nervous system calm enough for me to think more clearly and function better. I just hate discipline! At least I now know that there is a physiological reason for it, and that it isn’t just the disinclination of a wilful and lazy child to buckle down.

But along with that too comes the knowledge that discipline and a plan are therefore absolutely essential for me – that there is no other way, no “easier, softer option” (it’s a quote from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous), no pill I can take that will turn me into a joyful discipline-junkie (just a junkie!) And the worst of it is that, because I am a full-grown adult woman, the responsibility for enforcing this routine lies with me!! I feel like the parent to a child, and I’ve never wanted children!