Feelings, functioning, and self-management.

 Over the past few months I’ve had a number of interesting conversations which have brought me to the realization that all my resources and personal strategies around self management focus on functioning - but the vast majority of resources for helping autistic children are feelings based. And at least one of my young relatives finds the feelings based ones impossible to use.

(I have no neurodivergent diagnosis, but I do have a number of autistic and/or ADHD traits, and lots of relatives and close friends with autism and/or ADHD diagnosed or awaiting diagnosis).

This got me thinking. I am lucky enough to find identifying and understanding my emotions quite easy. So why I have I gone down such a completely different route to dealing with some of my issues that are common in autism? (overwhelm, sensory overload, speech shutdown, information processing issues etc)

What I write below is purely personal. It is my experience of the way my brain processes – or doesn’t process. I am sharing it in case there are other people who function similarly and can benefit from my ‘processing out loud’.

If emotions are the foundation:

For me, emotions are transient and dependent on immediate circumstances. They may be an indicator of whether my functioning matches the task/environment/situation, and are worth taking note of – but are of limited use in decision making. Just thinking about it theoretically actually makes me start to feel panicky and confused!

For example: Lets consider a time when my functioning level is low with respect to information processing and social interactions – perhaps recovering from a busy day, noisy event, or lack of sleep.

Situation 1: Sat in my safe space, with familiar safe food, familiar low-brain activity. I would feel safe, positive, and altogether feel that life is good.

Situation 2: A visitor arrives and starts asking me lots of questions – suddenly needing me to engage my brain and plan a project/solve a problem, processing lots of information ….I’d probably burst into tears and curl up in a ball – or go hide my room. I would feel utterly wretched, useless, angry, frustrated, stressed, and upset.

Lets consider a time when my functioning level with respect to information processing and social interactions is much higher:

Situation 1: I would still feel safe, positive, and altogether like life is good.

Situation 2: I could do it - it would be tiring, but totally doable. And afterwards although I'd feel tired,  I’d also feel useful, constructive, connected, and very proud of myself for managing it.

If I go by feelings, how do I know, as I sit in situation 1, whether I should say yes or no to moving to situation 2? I feel good….but should I risk moving out of my comfort zone? If I’m going by my feelings I end up in a convoluted mess of complicatedness. And that scares me.

If functioning is the foundation

But if I go by functioning, it becomes a completely different experience:

Sat in situation 1 I can answer a few questions around functioning and come to an answer:

How does the thought of situation 2 make me react? The answer can be identified feelings, but it can also be unidentified feelings or gut reactions. For example:

A reaction of  ‘ARGH RUN AWAY’ – it’s probably a massive mix of different emotions, but the essential ARGH immediately gives me the key info I need: I am not functioning well enough to cope with situation 2. If, when I get an ‘ARGH’ type reaction, I was to then try and identify the detailed emotional elements, I’d just get even more overwhelmed and panicky that my lack of identified emotions means I can’t tell what I need to do, and I cannot find a way forward, a way out. But allowing the ARGH to feed directly into my decision means I can make a sensible decision with far less stress – and more confidence.

Sometimes when I’m at ARGH, I decide that it is a no, and instantly feel better/my brain un-freezes/decompresses. I might then ask myself, now that the pressure is off “Why was that an ARGH?”. Again, not feelings based, but the practical ARGH factors – things like too much people, or noise, or concentrating, or the wallpaper there makes me dizzy, or I’m too tired to manage it or in too much pain. It helps me to understand myself, and be able to explain it to others. And occasionally it flags up that a specific strategy would turn it into an OK thing – and then I can change my decision if appropriate.

A reaction of ‘hmmmmm’ or ‘dunno’. This unlocks a different route. The chances are I may well cope with it – but I’m going to need to be a bit careful. So the Hmmmm puts me on the path to “What can I do to improve my capacity to cope with this/make this possible” – perhaps using strategies like wearing something sensory-comforting, or putting a time limit, or using a stim toy, or making sure I eat and drink first – lots of possible options. For me, the ‘hmmm’ reaction is a slightly higher level of functioning than ‘dunno’. These ‘middling’ reactions again allow me to go straight to practical solutions/strategies that will maximise my ability to function, reduce the chances of meltdown or shutdown.

A reaction of ‘Yes! That sounds lovely’ – then the chances are it will actively meet a need. However, I do treat this with a bit of caution in that my body and brain have many conflicting needs (need for social interactions vs need to rest). So this reaction puts me on a pathway of 'this is definitely a possibility' - but I may need a few more questions before I make a final decision.

Am I doing essential recharging? – If I am actively recharging from recent sensory/information overload, or a meltdown or shutdown, or lack of sleep etc, then I may need to stay within situation 1 for a bit longer to recharging to the level that I need. Even if situation 2 might be doable before then it will be draining and set my recharging back. So depending on priorities and key things I need to be able to do, the need to recharge might have to override a ‘Yes, that sounds lovely’ reaction sometimes

If it's not already a complete no, are there any easily foreseen challenges that I know I'll need to deal with?

If I have a pretty good idea what a situation will involve, I can ask myself relevant practical questions to help me identify if there’s anything I’ve missed, or strategies that would be useful:

How sensitive to noise am I at the moment?

How well can I process information at the moment?

How easy do I find talking at the moment?

How well can I make decisions at the moment?

And where ever I identify a likely problem area, I can ask “how can I help myself here” (Which I guess is one factor in why autistic people do so much better with lots of information in advance - it lets us plan how best to manage.)

Fact-based checking in with myself

Even when I’m checking in with myself because I’m generically feeling ‘off’, I tend to base it on facts rather than feelings.

So to check whether I’m hungry, I don’t ask myself whether I feel hungry, I check the time and ask “when did I last eat?” and “is it nearly a meal time?”. This is because I know I need to eat regularly, but I can feel hungry because I am hungry – but also because I am exhausted the sugar high gives a temporary boost then drops me into a crash later (in which case a nap or recharging time is much more effective.) And I can feel not-hungry because I’m not hungry – or because I’m stressed, or too tired. So although feelings can influence and inform my decisions, they aren’t a reliable foundation for my self management process.

In conclusion...

So while I’m all for understanding emotions – and I can completely understand how for some people and some conditions, feelings are a key part of decision making - for me, decisions around managing my hypermobility, PoTS and neurodivergence will always focus on functioning. And that’s OK because it works for me.