(no subject)
Jan. 9th, 2010 07:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jame_alecI have no idea why (maybe my body is trying to tell me to sleep more?), but both times I've got my shot my mind has been muddled for 2-3 days after the shot. Takes a bit more time to process things, react to things, talk to people, etc. Probably entirely coincidence and not T giving me the dumb, I just wish it would stop because the day before yesterday I ended up $20 short on the register and had to put it back out of pocket. Bleh.
Acne has not yet appeared any more so than usual. I'm sure my next shot (which is the first regular dose I'll get; the past two have been half) will bring it on, since it always loves tormenting me any other time I'm hormonal.
I don't want to come out to my friends or family. I really don't. I know I have to... I do want to keep seeing them and talking to them, and it's hard to explain away the changes T brings. I just don't want to come out. I'm not sure if it's my hardcore aversion to confrontation, internalized transphobia, or both.
I'm currently reading Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships by Temple Grandin and Sean Barren (ty Maesi <3). I've already encountered several things that made me go OH! It puts forth 10 rules to help autistic people understand social interaction and their own reactions to social interaction (with the caveat that everyone's different, no rule is absolute, etc).
So far I've read the sections on rules 1 and 2.
Rule 1: Rules are Not Absolute; They are Situation-based and People-based.
It took me a while to get that as a kid. I don't think I understood it until middle school, really. Which isn't to say I never broke rules or misbehaved. But in general if an authority figure told me I should do something, I did it, no questions asked. And I got upset if other people didn't do the same. It was not uncommon for me to get told off for telling other students or my younger sister what to do. My sister was probably the most frustrating to me, since I acted differently than her when I was her age and had different rules applied to me, it drove me nuts that she did not have the same rules that I did.
I also had some very literal interpretations of what I thought were rules. I remember once in second grade we were cutting dinosaurs out of green construction paper. The instruction sheet that came with our paper said to cut on the line. The lines forming the outline of the dinosaur was very thick, so I thought "Oh, this is easy! The lines are so thick I won't have to be careful!" and cut pretty sloppily but still within the lines. When I turned it in to the teacher, she teased me about needing to learn how to cut neatly. I got very upset, because in my mind I had cut neatly; it said to cut along the lines and I did! Even though it was a mess, since the line was thick and I had cut on the line, to me it was neat. I don't think I even realized why she said that to me until a few years ago. I just thought she was picking on me.
Rule 2: Not Everything that Happens is Equally Important in the Grand Scheme of Things.
This still happens to me. I'll still get very upset, if not have meltdowns, over something minor not happening like I thought it was going to happen. We're not having spaghetti for dinner? But we always have spaghetti on this night! You didn't tell me we weren't having spaghetti tonight! It doesn't matter that we're instead having delicious pizza, we were supposed to have spaghetti! And now my night is ruined and I feel awful. I've tried becoming more aware of it when it happens and walking myself through why it's okay that something didn't go as expected, but I still freak out over little things like this.
I think a large part of this is that in order to do many things I spend a lot of time rehearsing them before I do them. If anything deviates from my rehearsal, I freeze up and either don't know what to do or am afraid that because something deviated things will go wrong and it will be my fault for not rehearsing what to do if that happened.
I am really glad that I have a boyfriend as understand as he is. For the first month we lived together he would have no idea why I would lose it if he mentioned something offhand and then didn't follow through. Which I think goes back to the first rule, as well. I feel like the amount of pain I'm in also greatly diminishes my ability to handle when something changes or goes wrong. I feel like my mind is so focused on handling the pain I can't allocate any resources to dealing with something minor changing, and I just have a meltdown.
Acne has not yet appeared any more so than usual. I'm sure my next shot (which is the first regular dose I'll get; the past two have been half) will bring it on, since it always loves tormenting me any other time I'm hormonal.
I don't want to come out to my friends or family. I really don't. I know I have to... I do want to keep seeing them and talking to them, and it's hard to explain away the changes T brings. I just don't want to come out. I'm not sure if it's my hardcore aversion to confrontation, internalized transphobia, or both.
I'm currently reading Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships by Temple Grandin and Sean Barren (ty Maesi <3). I've already encountered several things that made me go OH! It puts forth 10 rules to help autistic people understand social interaction and their own reactions to social interaction (with the caveat that everyone's different, no rule is absolute, etc).
So far I've read the sections on rules 1 and 2.
Rule 1: Rules are Not Absolute; They are Situation-based and People-based.
It took me a while to get that as a kid. I don't think I understood it until middle school, really. Which isn't to say I never broke rules or misbehaved. But in general if an authority figure told me I should do something, I did it, no questions asked. And I got upset if other people didn't do the same. It was not uncommon for me to get told off for telling other students or my younger sister what to do. My sister was probably the most frustrating to me, since I acted differently than her when I was her age and had different rules applied to me, it drove me nuts that she did not have the same rules that I did.
I also had some very literal interpretations of what I thought were rules. I remember once in second grade we were cutting dinosaurs out of green construction paper. The instruction sheet that came with our paper said to cut on the line. The lines forming the outline of the dinosaur was very thick, so I thought "Oh, this is easy! The lines are so thick I won't have to be careful!" and cut pretty sloppily but still within the lines. When I turned it in to the teacher, she teased me about needing to learn how to cut neatly. I got very upset, because in my mind I had cut neatly; it said to cut along the lines and I did! Even though it was a mess, since the line was thick and I had cut on the line, to me it was neat. I don't think I even realized why she said that to me until a few years ago. I just thought she was picking on me.
Rule 2: Not Everything that Happens is Equally Important in the Grand Scheme of Things.
This still happens to me. I'll still get very upset, if not have meltdowns, over something minor not happening like I thought it was going to happen. We're not having spaghetti for dinner? But we always have spaghetti on this night! You didn't tell me we weren't having spaghetti tonight! It doesn't matter that we're instead having delicious pizza, we were supposed to have spaghetti! And now my night is ruined and I feel awful. I've tried becoming more aware of it when it happens and walking myself through why it's okay that something didn't go as expected, but I still freak out over little things like this.
I think a large part of this is that in order to do many things I spend a lot of time rehearsing them before I do them. If anything deviates from my rehearsal, I freeze up and either don't know what to do or am afraid that because something deviated things will go wrong and it will be my fault for not rehearsing what to do if that happened.
I am really glad that I have a boyfriend as understand as he is. For the first month we lived together he would have no idea why I would lose it if he mentioned something offhand and then didn't follow through. Which I think goes back to the first rule, as well. I feel like the amount of pain I'm in also greatly diminishes my ability to handle when something changes or goes wrong. I feel like my mind is so focused on handling the pain I can't allocate any resources to dealing with something minor changing, and I just have a meltdown.