How’s things with you? Hopefully good and if not, fingers crossed they will change for the better.
Some witty title to do with counselling
TL:DR – put your feed up, Anxiety Goblin, you’ve earned a rest, sweetie.
This week was my last session with the therapist. I think the best way to describe it was perhaps a closing episode. Not so much a goodbye, but more an agreement – from me, I should add, not the therapist pushing in any way – that things are a lot better. Better in that I feel I probably don’t need the regular help and guidance.
Ooo, isn’t that nice to say eh? 😸 That things are better! 🤘 Given that, perhaps time to draw things to a close. This is very much not an emergency stop or a cliff edge; quite the opposite. I think the last steady series of sessions were through Spring and then we took a break over Summer (employment contracts, I think), and all that was good too. I feel that if I’m at a good point, then it’s time to make way to give others who need a hand, their chance too.
To be honest – or, if I was -ahem- “down wid da kidz”: not gonna lie 😉- in terms of anxiety, things have been improving steadily for some time. As I said today, not exactly one single thing, but perhaps all the proverbial dials dwindling from 11 to more usual levels. I can cope with a few things in the red, but when it feels like nearly everything is all the time, well, yeah. 🎶There may be trouble ahead… 😁
I guess you could call that my good news of the week – perhaps even of the year? All that and I’ve been off the medication for a good few months. Plus, I can’t remember the last time I had a panic attack. Okay, I remember having them, but the event is so distant, I couldn’t put a date against it.
The sessions have been incredibly helpful and I felt brought an element of coaching as well as support into them. TBH, I’m not sure what the modern approach is as I can only base my experience on this, and some hit & miss CBT (no, not the rude type and not the motorbike one either 😝) which I may have tried too soon.
Phrases
Given the modern joke ‘too soon’, this brings me around to something we covered today. The idea of some type of phrase/inspiration board. J, the therapist spoke about something like this in a recent training event they’d attended (oh, a belated/sarcastic trigger warning for folk who can’t understand why I can say ‘they’ as a pronoun 🙃).
There are some phrases – or quotes – that I use a lot. I don’t mean just shared jokes and references, but turns of phrase from far wiser folk than I, that help give some way to think about things. I think what I’ll do over the next few weeks or so, is have a ponder about the ones that have helped me, and share them on here. If that’s not your bag – there’s a reference! 😉- that’s fine. I think I’ll aim to pop them up as their own thing, so you can ignore or view as you prefer.
Neurospicy
Eee, it’s all about the headspace today isn’t it? 🙂 Conversation drifted during the session and one of the things that came up was my occasional long pauses in talking. Interuptions caused by what feels like my mind is a big ol’ seaside arcade filled with the twinkling and jangling of slot machines all firing off at the same time. Too many thoughts, brain! 🤯 Now, while some of that can be fantastic from a creativity / improv / reflection point of view, it can be a bit wearing. Too much and I have to wait for things to settle.
But, coming back to Jo’s story, I remember – and hopefully I haven’t made this up! 😁- Joanna saying something about having read a book years ago about Autism and how – my words, so apologies in advance – “Meh, this isn’t right. It doesn’t match my experiences as a man.”. Followed by the realisation – post trans egg crack 🐣 – of “Oh. Now I get it.”
Perhaps like Joanna, when I’ve looked at ADHD related materials, the story for boys doesn’t quite add up to me. I don’t think I was ever hyperactive or any of those classic -ahem- ‘signs’. Plus, I grew up in the 70s, where there wasn’t any neurodiversity. People who couldn’t keep up were lazy, daydreamers, illiterate thickies, or ‘just awkward’. 🙄 Thankfully, we’ve moved on a bit since then!
(Update: this looks ace! The University of Dyslexic Thinking.)
So, where am I going with this? It’s been a while since I put in my request around a ADHD diagnosis and I’m still waiting on that. What came up in today’s therapy conversation covered the steady increase in stories from actual ADHD LGBTQ+ people. Shocking eh? /S Fancy getting the community of people – yes people! – to be able to speak from their own lived experience. Call the cops, man. 😉
A look online and thinking about previous articles brought me to this and the words from Cate Osborn that ADHD doesn’t ’cause’ someone to question their gender. In her words:
“Rather, individuals with neurodivergence are predisposed to reject the rigidity of gendered expectations placed on them by society”
Thinking on the above, there’s been many times in my life where my brain simply goes but why? Partly the sort of people watchy, armchair philosophy, pseud’s corner guff I like to think on – and yes, I’ve just done that thing where I’m belittling my thoughts…. and realised I didn’t mean to do the same thing to Cate’s wisdom. Oh, pants.
Where was I? Ah, yes, further into the article, this:
People who have ADHD often experience social rejection, bullying, and criticism from both their peers and the authority figures in their lives. Because of this, many people with ADHD begin to perceive the world differently and come to realize that many of the expectations placed on them are arbitrary. They can tend to reject these rules in service of their own systems and behaviors that better support them and cater to their needs
Ah. That’s enlightening.
Do I have ADHD? I don’t know. At least, I don’t have a formal diagnosis. Listening to folk who do, we seem to share a commonality of experiences. My family certainly found great hilarity in me doing a long questionnaire on it.
As to the quoted paragraph above: yes, I grew up thinking I was an odd duck. I don’t mean this in a bad way, just… well, you accept that you’re not like the other boys. Not just the trans stuff, but just how my brain works (and doesn’t 😁). Bullied? Maybe, okay – yes – but isn’t everyone at school during the 70s/80s? As to anti-authority, perhaps not best to go there! ✊
I think the oddness – and I’m keen to point out (here comes one of those Lynnisms!) not better or worse, just different – sets you at odds or outside of the circle. At a certain point, you stop trying to get in. Perhaps that’s why As Ms Swift’s beautiful chorus, “You’re on your own, kid. You always have been.” stings and brings tears that need to be blinked away quickly.
But, there’s a bright side to this. A usefulness in having a leaning towards not following the rules. It’s a chance to try something new, to be something else, to think of what might be. To dream, and perhaps through that, live authentically and truthfully on your own terms. Maybe, just maybe, meet other folk walking a path and looking for community.
As to what next, a bit more reading around the subject and possibly an eye towards looking through a trans femme lens… if that’s possible.
L x
You have it a-right regarding the neurospiciness and my experience with reading ‘Aspergirls’ – where I rejected the notion of ‘gendered experiences of autism’ as all of the ‘feminine’ references applied to me. There’s a lot of evidence to support the idea that ‘gendered expressions’ of neurodivergence aren’t, or, rather, that social expectations shape how professionals engage with signs of neurodivergence in terms of gender. Furtrthermore, that those who count as neurodivergence have that extra insight into how arbitrary and (pardon me, dictionary definition) queer gender actually is.
Put another way, as you eloquently describe, those who are ‘different’ get used to not accepting the world as people describe it because they get used to being ‘outside the norm’. Thus such people tend to be more ‘open-minded’ generally and, as a consequence, better able to accept themselves being ‘outside the norm’ when it comes to other aspects of life such as gender. That said, being a bit of a rigid thinker myself, it took a lot for me to accept myself as being able to embrace things that I was perfectly happy to accept and understand in others – that is: to allow myself to be that which I admired in other people; part of the trans* umbrella.
Sounds like, for you, it goes the other way around, inasmuch as there is a shared journey. 🙂
Aspergirls – thank you, that element of our chat eluded me.
As to the queerness of gender – but not the LGBQ queerness (confused yet? 😁) – absolutely, yes. They seem this flexible – or more accurately, unstable – floating raft of concepts. A loosely formed mass that can giveaway at any point, and drop the transgressor in the water to flail around…. and that’s just the mainstream stuff. If you get into the toxicity of the -ahem- Sex Police, frankly, it’s insane.
“Thus such people tend to be more ‘open-minded’ generally….”
I would like to think so too, yes. To have been on the outside – starting from being excluded/shunned, to choosing to not bother to fit in from that exclusion – yeah; umm, how can that not affect your lived experiences and indeed the common experience of Othering?
( That’s before you get into the ADHD quirks of high sensitivity to rejection 🙄 )
If I was a clever person, I might be able to spin something up about intersectionality 🙂 Interestingly there was a comment on the radio, I think, in which a gay activist said of the past, something like they weren’t black or brown, but the people hating on them, were the same people hating on queer folk – so, solidarity (baby) ✊
Perhaps it’s a thing about generally nonconformist groups and cultures, ones that don’t ‘fit in’ or feel uncomfortable around ‘normal’ people [add your own definition of normality here], whether they are ADHD/Asperger spectrum, goths, punks, 70s flower children, that one you start challenging one aspect of the culture, the rest seem equally wobbly and unstable as well. Which is why so much effort is spent trying to keep them propped up.
Good to hear that the counselling was helpful to the point you can start to let it go.
I wonder if such groups need to be alternative/subculture? Mind you, I quite like the idea of a nonconformist knitting group.
At to the anxiety, I’m hoping it continues to lessen and dwindle to acceptable levels.
I’ve read your post several times as it’s rather meaty (mmm, meat 😋). Glad you feel you’re on a more even keel again.
I’m not grateful that you implied there was more to CBT than therapy. My Ultra-Kompleet Maximegalon Dictionary of Every Acronym Ever gave me the gen. Well, really! I had a polite upbringing, you know! Anyway, I’m sorry the Chicago Board of Trade wasn’t able to help you as you’d have liked.
I had the misfortune to work in Whitehall for a bit and I left once I realised that most laws and the people who cook them up and the officials who implement them are madder than a box of frogs on coke, and considerably more antisocial and dangerous. The same for religions and their practices. So arbitrariness is part of every official public thing and it terrifies me. If you can escape in a world of your own then that may help. I guess I do so more mechanically rather than instinctually, by reading a lot, enjoying the arts and treating what I can as a joke.
I see being trans as nothing to do with neurodiversity but as an inevitable consequence of evolution, sexual selection, meiosis and other biological processes. Too much time on the subject is devoted to what psychiatrists and the chattering classes think of us than actually noticing that being trans is normal in any age and culture. The effects on our psychological functioning, though, can be severe thanks to society’s opposition and judgment.
Sue x
“…Chicago Board of Trade…”
I can’t help but think of Calamity Jane or the Blues Brothers with it comes to Chicago. Maybe I need to get out more 🙂
“…trans as nothing to do with neurodiversity but as an inevitable consequence of evolution…”
I think people have always been varied in terms of sexuality, gender, and neurodiversity. The question of if they’ve been free to admit that or live their true self, well quite.
Personally, I think there’s a lot of overlap with neurodiversity and gender/sexuality. It’s not that one causes they other. It’s more than a person is who they are, however, those folk who question more and/or look at the world slightly differently, may arrive at different conclusions about themselves. It’s not a “better or worse” thing, just different. Perhaps in the same way that someone who’s highly knowledgeable about history or art, might see works/stories that make them think differently about certain topics.
Sorry! Not always easy to explain via text.
Sorry, I should’ve drafted my last para more clearly. I meant that cis influencers often think being trans is all in the mind, i.e. one manifestation of neurodiversity, but I doubt that. The same biological and environmental processes that create a trans or cis person also create the type of brain they have.
Sue x
No problem. I think I got what you meant and then got confused as I often do! 😣
Yes, completely with you on not agreeing with “well, you’re only trans ‘cos you’re an auty/ADHD/neurospicy”. That last bit has a strong whiff of “the poor darlings aren’t in a fit mind to truly understand”. GTFO with that BS ✊
Not to be awkward, but isn’t all of human gender and sexuality in the mind? 😉 I mean, these cis-het folk, maybe they’ve just not found the right same gender partner, the perfect outfit, or they’re just in a phase 😁