Abuse circuit breaker – part 2

I’m going to use an analogy inspired by one of my latest obsessions that helps me immensely with regulating my anxiety – woodworking. While working with a drill, if you are against a difficult bit of wood or if you are working the drill at a slow speed, you can see the drill bit twirl. That specific movement (aside from being hypnotic) has given me an important key to understanding and shifting interpersonal dynamics that don’t serve my commitment to being whole and healthy.

Don’t stop, instead, face away: If you can, imagine that you are a drill bit, or perhaps just yourself, spinning. When you’re standing still, imagine that you are facing your aggressor, your abuser, the person you need to shift your dynamic with. Now, as you begin to spin, and your face turns away, if you’re like me and object permanence is decided by a person’s visible presence in your life, this momentary turning away switches off your trigger circuit. Now, slow down the process so that that spin takes forty minutes for a full spin, which means that you have at least 20 minutes facing away. This has been my baby step towards finding the strength to disconnect or asking that the aggression stop. Twenty minutes is my unique magic amount of time because typically, one’s bodily stress response should let up in that amount of time. You can play with this and discover what your magic period of time needs to be.

The next part of the drill bit exercise is its spin- copying it lets me stim! Whether it’s curling up into a tight ball and rocking or twisting and spinning and allowing myself deep pressure and cutting auditory stimulus, this is one of my keys to regaining control over my own body and mind.

As soon as I am aware of the nature of a destructive relational pattern, if I have the luxury of being able to “do the drill”, I, therefore, earn back some precious internal resources to break the circuit of an unhealthy interpersonal dynamic that I might be caught in.

Let me know if this sounds like senseless drivel, and I’ll see if I can explain better. Till then…

Abuse circuit-breaker – part 1

Autistic people are often accused of lacking empathy. I’m not going to dignify that shit, but instead point to this recent paper on the ethics of autism. If you don’t wanna read it (but why?!) the summary is: yeah, nah, we have truckloads of that empathy thing y’all bang on about. Now, mix in some other neurodiverse qualities such as not always being able to understand social cues and masking, and you’ve got yourself in a sticky pickle.

I was thinking about this today and wondering how many of these pickles in my past fermented out of my neurodiversity or from my co-dependency (recovering). I couldn’t really separate the threads. Instead I came up with a circuit diagram for my unease that begins in an interpersonal relationship (or sometimes even professional circumstances) when I’m stuck in the cycle of overextending myself and burning out. The lowest common denominator for the development of this cycle is an imbalanced locus of control. In other words, I have been unable to reign in my Aspie mirroring, masking and codependent doormat-ing in some situations and dynamics. So historically, if I have been engaged in a dynamic with someone who has been dismissive, patronising and / or abusive, I have bent myself out of shape till I’ve burned out, melted down and shut down. Spectacularly. So here’s my little circuit diagram.

The process of articulating it helped me separate myself from this automatic process, and the involuntary compulsion of needing to overextend myself despite being uneasy. I’m hoping this resonates and helps anyone else who might be in the same boat. Lemme know what you think?

Now, to progress to breaking the circuit…

PS: I’m stopping with the podcast experiment. Figured I’m not comfortable with the medium of sound. There’s another abandoned project. Meh. Oh, well. Onwards and upwards!