Seeking Guidance?

“Rumination involves repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative feelings and distress and their causes and consequences. The repetitive, negative aspect of rumination can contribute to the development of depression or anxiety and can worsen existing conditions.” (American Psychiatric Association)

Every autist I have ever met (adult or child) seems to have some strengths (if that’s what they are) in this area. A fellow autist has said of herself “Oh my! I reckon I have the equivalent of a PhD in it!” and I feel similarly to her. What’s also amazing is how we can be experts at rumination in pretty much any context or situation. What a skill! Or is it, what a nuisance? Maybe it’s a bit of both.

Why do we do it? I’m not sure there’s a simple or linear answer that covers each context and scenario (and we must never forget we remain fully individual within the categorisation of also being autistic, right?), but the fact is many of us are as persistent as a dog who needs to stop biting at a sore paw but just cannot leave it alone.

Maybe it’s a good idea to not panic about the fact that we can’t just ‘stop’ doing it. I am reasonably confident that most of us will have been told by those who want to help us (if indeed we have let them know what we’re up to in our heads) that we just need to stop doing it. They might advise that it isn’t doing us any good and they might also identify that it’s causing us more grief than whatever the initial issue was. In purely logical terms, they are not wrong.

However, if I say to you, stop thinking of a red double decker bus, is not the first thing that pops into your head a double decker red bus? Telling us to stop doing it will not work.

If you want to help us navigate the excessive rumination, it might be wise to settle yourself down (grab a drink of whatever kind) and be prepared to hear us out. Whether or not our worry is reasonable is an irrelevance. Whether or not our rapidly evolving conspiracy theory about all the steps that the person/organisation took to get to this point is based in truth or internal fiction is also irrelevant. Whether or not the injustice is as bad as it feels to us is (you guessed it) irrelevant.

Can we find a way past injustice? There’s a tricky one that will need to be a piece on its own. But in short, no. Not easily. With that in mind, my advice to anyone truly wanting to support an autist with their excessive rumination or worry is to properly listen to them. I’m going to add in some considerate warnings here, for your good and the good of the person who is about to spout at you. Please be careful about this listening process because I don’t mean the kind of listening where that person has Googled how to listen well and is then following a pattern of listening behaviours as described by Google’s associates. No. Please don’t do that. It will be fully and utterly counter-productive. Only potentially further issues will ensue.

I realise non-autists (for want of a better term) often share the insights I’m about to write about and there isn’t a fully established ‘way of being’ whatever label or not we have (as we remain fully individual as humans). My comments are more about how, as autistic people, we can turn our incessant pursuit of truth or justice or sense on ourselves and start thinking it is because we are in some way broken. Our approach to our (some might say) over-analysis can be more intense than the Muggles, and sometimes we can then add it to our internal self-attack as we metaphorically hit ourselves for being how we are because it isn’t easy to manage. What if how we are is a good thing (in some ways, even relating to the rumination matter)? What if we are simply going into huge detail to help us understand? That’s not a bad thing, is it?

Let’s get to some of the matters for potential consideration by those who are going to listen to us process verbally. How can they best help?

I have an allergy (in my persona rather than a literal rash inducing one) to counsellors who have patterns of demonstrating to me that they are listening. Oh my. I only ever spoke to a few when I was younger, and then had one encounter with another recently (not in a counselling context), but to develop the heads up about what response you might get, it’s probably best you are aware ahead of time.

Sitting with body posture facing and relaxed posture because you’ve been taught it’s the right thing to do will (likely) wind us up (as it does many people who know it is a taught thing, autist or not). The same posture because it’s what’s natural, won’t. Weird, huh. But remember our highly attune BS monitors? We’ll see through the learnt behaviours when it’s hitting us as a kind on controlling behaviour because it’s about us opening-up to you. I can’t speak for all of us, but I’ll be telling you nothing because I will already be feeling controlled and manipulated.

Doing the nodding and uh huh-ing to ‘demonstrate’ you are listening? Please don’t. We’ll (likely) be able to tell if you’re listening by the fact you’re listening, not because you’ve been told to encourage us to keep going (by doing the uh huh-ing). Your established routine of nodding and uh huh-ing is, frankly, annoying. If we need to check if you’re hearing what we’re saying and are understanding, we can ask.

Chipping in by either repeating what we’ve just said or using different words to say the same thing, to ‘demonstrate’ understanding is also intensely annoying. We might shut up talking if there’s too much of it, especially if we are on a roll and in full swing (which are stupid terms, as we’re unlikely to be rolling anywhere and full swing in which sport? Any, I guess). If we’ve chosen to begin any kind of articulation of our thoughts, that is a demonstration of a level of trust (which is an achievement for you to have gained) and is also a cue to let us keep going until we’ve stopped.

Adding your thoughts or experiences or even questions, (that may or may not be relevant or similar, but in your head are those things), is also going to need to wait…at least in an ideal world, which I realise this isn’t. Yes, it might mean you have to hold things in your head that you want to ask or clarify or share, but please can you try? I did attempt a ‘kind of system’ with someone once where he'd cross his fingers when there was a thing to raise or comment on or ask. It didn’t work because then I was simply distracted by the fact he was going to comment or ask because I was aware of his fingers being crossed and my brain (whilst articulating whatever it was out of my mouth) was also exploring (internally) what it would be from him so I could attempt to pre-empt my response. In short, not a ‘system’ I can endorse (and by the way, it didn’t work for him either), but it might work for you and the autist to whom you’re listening. Maybe.

Putting words into our mouths or steering us by using phrases like “I think you might be feeling…” has the potential to be met with internal shut down or anger. Those types of phrases probably won’t cause us to respect you. Again, I can’t speak for all autists everywhere (and this would anger many other brands of human too, I’m sure), and I only speak for myself and for those who have indicated to me that they respond similarly to me. But there has been enough commonality in this to cause me to write it here. We’ll all respond in our own ways, just like the Muggles do too. All these little (potential) insights are just general heads ups (I didn’t know he was coming. Who? General Heads-Up. Oh Dawn. Stop.). They are just so you can choose how you approach the art of listening to us.

When I mention it might help if you could please listen to us, I mean the kind of listening that is genuine listening. Genuine listening because you are prepared to hear us out no matter how many avenues we may venture down in our thinking, or how many times we might seem to contradict ourselves (that won’t happen often and if it does, we’ll likely notice). Genuine listening no matter how fast we might speak. Genuine listening even if we pause for slightly longer than would be accepted in a social context (one which we will be forever trying to fathom out the rules and etiquette expectations). Genuine listening because you actually care and appreciate us for exactly who we are and not who anyone thinks we should be.

How will this genuine listening help us with our rumination/worry? We need to process whatever is going on, and many of us find doing that by speaking what we’re thinking (or by writing it down) helpful. I do both of those (as will be evident by now). We learn (more clearly) what we think as we process by talking or writing. This then helps us to see the sense in how we will choose to respond to whatever has happened that was the initial fuel for the rumination or worry. Is this any different to any human? Probably not. Is the extent we need to do it or the details we need to go into, or the potential dead ends we need to explore the same as all humans? I think that’s where there might sometimes be a difference. We cannot leave any stones unturned (and there we have another ridiculous phrase. Why would I want to turn all the actual stones over? There are likely to be spiders underneath. Weird). But we do often need to explore as many routes of thinking as we can. Your genuine and proper listening helps us to do that.

For the ‘over-thinking’ autist, a message for you: Please try to accept this tendency as part of how you are and how you function. You’ll find ways to navigate it, but thinking it’s a fault in you isn’t going to help you. It will make you feel like there is something wrong with you. And I’m not sure that your superpowers are something that is wrong with you. Yes, they need a level of management. How you cope with them becomes important, yes, but you’ll find ways. Talking or writing it all out might help you clarify your own thinking. Distractions of exercise or focussing on things that take full concentration from you, may help too – although probably only for a short time until you are able to explore all the thoughts you need to, to then be able to ‘put down’ whatever it is. Some people meditate to still this in their mind (I cannot yet get anywhere near this approach helping me). All kinds of things may help you, but I suggest the biggest help you can give yourself is to not see your need of high-level processing as a fault in your make-up. It is a gift (albeit on that can sometimes be intense).

As soon as we believe there is something wrong with us because we think and function with excessive rumination, it becomes a bigger barrier than it truly is, I believe.

Our ability to think in so many ways and on so many levels (often as learnt processes we’ve picked up along the way because these processes help us to navigate the seriously confusing world in which we live), is a huge strength. This strength can result in us often being able to see things differently or make steps in whatever areas of life or science or music or people analysis (not a definitive list) where the Muggles often can’t. Maybe.