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Look Me in the Eyes

Eye Contact – Linda Hanson Denmark

Look Me in the Eyes

“Are you listening to me?
Look me in the eyes when I’m speaking.”
It hurts
But I can look at your eyes
Blue eyes with lots of gray
Dry eyes that never cry
Like my eyes are crying
Because you hit me
So I will look at your eyes
So I will hear what you are speaking
But I can’t hear you
When I look at your eyes
It hurts

By Linda Hanson Denmark

Humans are supposed to be able to read other peoples eyes. I have no idea what exactly they are supposed to be reading in the eyes. I am not wired for that. I can make eye contact but with quite different results.

When I was a child, eye contact was forced. I was afraid of the consequences if I did not look at my parents eyes. The result? I had a great fear of blue eyes most of my life because of my abusive father’s blue eyes, which made looking at any blue eyes extra difficult. My mom had hazel eyes, with very interesting colors and patterns. Her eyes made me squirm and I had to focus on the colors. I decided that she had turtle eyes. Eye contact hurt and never did help me understand anything better.

When I first look at someone else’s eyes, I always focus on one eye, then wonder if I should be looking at the other eye instead. I can’t for some reason, look into both eyes at the same time. I may look back and forth rather quickly until I settle on which eye to look at. Then begins an in depth study of colors, patterns, eye shape, condition, small veins showing on the white of the eye, size of the pupil, etc.

I study the colors in the makeup if it is a female wearing makeup, making a mental palette of the colors whether I like them or not. Loose eyelashes, eyelash color, length, thickness; nothing is missed. It sometimes feels like artificial intelligence in action. Scan, scan, scan, record.

If the other person is wearing glasses it gets even more complex. I study the lens to see if it is convex or concave, tinted or not; study the frames, and am absorbing and making mental images for my already very full library of memories.  Meanwhile, the words spoken by the person I am attempting eye contact with are gone. I usually have to ask the person to repeat what they said and briefly look away while I listen.

Some people believe that eye contact can be taught. If the neurological wiring is not there for reading whatever we are supposed to be reading, I think trying to teach eye contact to an autistic might be about as effective as teaching a blind person to make eye contact. The blind person may be able to learn to look in the direction the voice is coming from but they will not see.

Could the person demanding or expecting eye contact feel that without eye contact the autistic is not listening? The opposite is true. Could it be that the person expecting eye contact is uncomfortable not being able to read the eyes of the person to whom they are speaking, like the eyes can somehow mirror back their words to see how the hearer is affected by the words? That won’t work if the autistic person can’t do the looking and the hearing at the same time.

Is eye contact really for the benefit of the autistic person? Is it so that we will look less autistic? Is sameness a requirement of being human? Am I less human because I can’t hear the words and look in the eyes simultaneously?

Define human.

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Complex PTSD and Autism

Quote from Wikipedia:

“Adults with C-PTSD have sometimes experienced prolonged interpersonal traumatization as children as well as prolonged trauma as adults. This early injury interrupts the development of a robust sense of self and of others. Because physical and emotional pain or neglect was often inflicted by attachment figures such as caregivers or older siblings, these individuals may develop a sense that they are fundamentally flawed and that others cannot be relied upon.”

Complex PTSD becomes even more complex when the abuse happens to an autistic child. Coping mechanisms that neurotypical children have may not work at all for an autistic child. In our family, the father was abusive and the mother enabled and assisted with the abuse, and sometimes just ignored it. Never did she step in to protect her children. Three of my sisters, two biological and one adopted, developed multiple personality disorders from the abuse and have required years of therapy to help them make somewhat normal lives for themselves. One of my adopted brothers has an alcohol problem and the other became an abuser himself. I also spent several years in therapy years before the autism diagnosis was made. I was at that time (1990s) diagnosed with PTSD, Selective Mutism, Recurrent Depression and Disassociative Identity Disorder. I went through extensive testing several years ago and the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder were added. So yes! It is complex indeed!

What happens with my C-PTSD is that rather than there being just one trigger or a few triggers, there are many unforeseen triggers. The reaction when triggered is like a reliving of the original experience, whether it was a rape, having my neck broken, being strangled, or being shocked with the stock prod. I feel exactly what I felt when the original trauma happened and it is often incapacitating. If I am in a public place, it can result in quite a scene as I experience what happened all over again. I can taste the blood in my mouth from having been hit across the face with my father’s belt for refusing to lower my pants, just from observing a child about to get a spanking and resisting. I can feel the waves of electric shock go through my body and collapse as silent screams resonate through my mind, from hearing someone mention using a stock prod. It goes on and on because I am not even able to remember all the traumatic events that happened during the seventeen years of living with my “parents”. Often I have to go through several episodes of a recurring memory, reliving it over and over until my adult mind can convince me that it is not going to happen again, that it is over. Then I can have a brief respite until something else triggers a reaction. This is Complex PTSD.

Often I will express myself with poetry while working through a remembered trauma. An interesting observation I have made when looking back at my poetry is that it seems to be written by a child at the level of development I was at when the trauma happened. I attribute this to the raw power the memories had to return me to the actual incident, as though having to go through it all over again.

The following poem was written after my husband suggested getting a stock prod to control a particularly mean buck goat we were having issues with.

The Stock Prod

When I think about the stock prod
I think about the pain
Of never knowing when our dad
Was going to strike again.

He’d often catch us unawares
Or if we turned our backs
He’d jab us from behind and
We just never could relax.

Sound sleep was impossible
With shocks to start the day
It made him laugh to see our fear
To him it was just play.

An instrument of torture
For kids and livestock too
‘Til the animals all trembled
When he stepped into their view.

One day old Babe, the milk cow
Was so consumed with fear
That when he tried to milk her
She just wouldn’t let him near.

She fought and kicked and trembled
In fear of Master Jack
So he picked up a two by four
And broke the milk cow’s back.

She needed a good lesson
Or so our father said
It didn’t teach her anything
‘Cause then the cow was dead.

So then instead of milk to drink
We had half a ton of meat
They ground her up cause she was tough
We kids declined to eat.

And then out came the stock prod
We cleaned our plates up quick
While daddy sat there grinning
As he jabbed his power stick.

So if you think the stock prod
Is a necessary tool
And the goat needs a good lesson,
Can’t we just send him to school?

By Linda Hanson Denmark – 2003

I often communicated with my husband through writing or poetry. Because of my difficulties expressing myself because of my autism, I usually was unsuccessful in explaining things or making a good case for something I felt strongly about. After my husband read this poem, he abandoned the idea of getting a stock prod and agreed to let me sell the offending goat and get a nicer one.

Child abuse when inflicted on any child can cause Complex PTSD if it occurs on multiple occasions. However, the same abuse on a child that has autism, can complicate and increase the difficulties the child already has to face every day for life. All child abuse is wrong. How wonderful for all the autistic children who have loving parents who cherish them and are helping them through all the daily challenges! I hope that in some small way, sharing my story may help even one child. Perhaps even one parent can speak up and protect her child.

Complex PTSD does not go away.

Autism does not go away.

One of these can be prevented.

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Communication

Communication One

They said that communication is words.
Spoken
Written
Ink and vocalizations filled to the brim with
meanings explicit and hidden.
But they mustn’t be laboured.
You mustn’t be slow.
You mustn’t scream.
Wail
Cry
Use your words they said.
But not those words,
and not like that.

Communication Two

They said that communication is about eye-contact.
But not all the time.
There are rules, and they concern;
arbitrarily intermittent durations,
expressions, extents of openness,
frequency of blinking.
Not an exhaustive list.
“You look me in the eyes”
But it hurts.
But then I can’t hear the words
But then I can’t use the words
you told me to use
the way you told me to use them.

Communication Three

Next they said that communication is about
body language.
Gestures that communicate
part of what isn’t spoken
part of what is spoken.
“Why do you do that with your hands?”
“Don’t just point, say something.”
It’s like the words, not like that.
Don’t move like that.
Don’t hit yourself.
Why was hitting me only ever for you?
Why is communication never about understanding?

-INSA
Elizabeth
Its_not_schrodingers_autism

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Be a Cat!

Be a cat.

Accomodation for still-smouldering rubble:

In the middle of an autistic burnout?
Quiet. Patience.
Acceptance of frequent intermittent
nonverbal periods.
Plan, because my broken brain
screams if it’s asked.
Maybe check that I’ve eaten
because my appetite doesn’t function.
Use the floor-lamp
not the big light.
Leave me alone about not wearing a bra.
Be a cat.

Not in the middle of autistic burnout?
Be a cat.

-INSA

Elizabeth  – its_not_schrodingers-autism

 

Continue reading “Be a Cat!”

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Cherry Blossoms

Photo by Elizabeth aka its_not_schrodingers_autism (Instagram)

I ventured out
into the world this evening.
I found the popcorn cotton candy
trees putting on their annual show.
Their spindly decayed branches
appeared resurrected
in beautiful bright
magenta and pale hues.
As in every year
I hope this happens to me too.
Renewed at the end of hardship
into the bright magenta
and pale hues
of the popcorn cotton candy trees.

Written by contributing author Elizabeth
aka its_not_schrodingers_autism (Instagram)
aka INSA online

See Contributing Authors page for bio.

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Paper Horses

Read White Rubber Boots before reading Paper Horses

Paper Horses

Sony hovered over the small still form propped up on a pile of pillows on the couch. Sony was playing nurse again. She did that every time anyone was hurt or sick. Somebody gave her a play nurse kit and that just encouraged her all the more. Now she had another patient while Wendy was recovering.

Wendy had been sleeping or dead for two days. I wasn’t much good yet at telling sleeping from dead. Take that rabbit last winter for example.  I thought for sure that when whisker man had skinned it out it was dead. Then it got up and started hopping around the room with no skin on. Whisker man thought it was funny. Sony started crying, mama started yelling and the more they got upset, the harder he laughed.

Whisker man put that rabbit right out in the snow, bare naked with its meat showing. It only had fur on its feet and its head. I was glad when our collie dog caught it and killed it. I was feeling real bad for that poor little rabbit outside with no coat on until I almost felt like I had been skinned naked inside.

So there was Sony now, watching over Wendy, hoping she could make her feel better. Mama wouldn’t let anyone touch Wendy because she would start screaming right away. If she wasn’t propped up she was struggling to breathe. Mama and whisker man were even taking her in their bed at night, propped up between them, to make sure she kept breathing.

Wendy woke up sometimes now, so I knew she wasn’t dead. Mama had washed all the poop and mud off her, but she still looked terrible, all swollen up and ugly colors. It hurt me to look at her but my eyes still wouldn’t cooperate and I kept looking at her until hot tears were running down my cheeks again. She couldn’t move even a little bit without crying and then mama and Sony would start fussing over her and whisker man would start cussing the horses again.

Whisker man had told mama that Wendy had climbed up on the rail fence while he was in the barn milking old Jenny. He said she fell right in amongst the horses and that by the time he got out there, they had trampled her.

I was getting really confused because that wasn’t what I remembered happening. To reassure myself, I looked over where the boots were and sure enough, there were Wendy’s little white boots with mud inside and out and some horse poop on them too. I sure didn’t understand about the horses.

Sometimes I wished I could talk better and ask mama things. I could tell her what I saw if I could use words better. Maybe it wouldn’t help though, because sometimes Sony tried to tell mama things and mama would always say whisker man was right and Sony must be mistaken. So she’d probably tell me that I didn’t see what I saw and then I would be worse confused than I already am. It isn’t that I can’t talk. I just can’t talk like everyone else talks. I can think OK in my head but it doesn’t come out right when I try to talk. Then sometimes whisker man hits me and mama gets upset with me too. It’s better to just be quiet.

Whisker man was cutting paper over by the table and mama was watching over Wendy. I heard her saying “Bad, bad horses! Poor little Wendy! Those bad horses did this to you!”

Whisker man motioned to me “Come over here, Lin. I have something for you.”

He unfolded the paper to reveal a whole chain of paper people holding hands. I felt a glow of happiness as I took the chain of paper people from him. The rest of the world disappeared as I joined the people into a circle so everyone was holding hands all the way around. I could make them dance around and around until I was in a world where there was no whisker man.

”Lin,” and the spell was broken.”Lin, take this over to Wendy,” commanded whisker man.

Before me he unfolded a chain of paper horses, joined tail to tail and nose to nose. I felt that warm glow again as I gently took hold of the chain of paper horses.

Wendy was awake as I stretched out the chain of paper horses for her to see. Her eyes filled with panic as she pushed back into the pillows.

”No, no forshees, no, no, no!” she screamed.

Mama grabbed the paper horses, crumpled them and threw them into the fire.

”No more bad forshees,” said mama. “We won’t let the bad forshees hurt you ever again.”

I noticed about then that whisker man had a satisfied smile on his face as he watched mama and Sony trying to get Wendy settled down again. That confusion was coming over me again. I gathered up my paper people and moved as far away from all of them as I could get in that small house. I joined the hands of my paper people into a circle within which I could escape the confusion as I danced them around and around and around.

 

 

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White Rubber Boots

White Rubber Boots – Part of an artistic installation by Wendy Hanson Hoffman

I leaned tightly into the corral post, trying to be as still as possible without being noticed. I knew Wendy was going to get it. The red whiskered man had told her to stay out of the puddles. There she was, with mud right up over the top of her boots and running down the insides, her pudgy little arms sticking too far out of last years sweater. She was just singing to the sunshine and enjoying the sweet pleasures of a muddy puddle on a warm spring day.

I listened toward the barn for the singing sound of the milk going into the bucket. As long as he was still milking old Jenny, Wendy still had some time to get out of her predicament. She seemed oblivious to the dangers though, and was now reaching into the mud up to her little elbows trying to get one of her boots unstuck. Nice new white rubber boots. Boy was he gonna be mad!

All at the same time, it seemed, the milking sounds stopped and Wendy plunked down on her butt in the mud and started wailing. I grabbed onto my post even tighter and held my breath.

”Stupid little Wurpet! I told you to stay out of the mud.”

Whisker man wasted no time getting from the barn door to the mud puddle, cussing and yelling at Wendy all the way. She wailed even louder as she tried to get up and fell back in the mud again. He yanked her up by an arm and raised her high above his head, then flung her to the ground, right into a pile of horse poop. He commenced to kicking her with his big boots, just kicking and kicking until it really started to bother me that he was getting horse poop all over her, even in her hair. She had stopped crying and wasn’t even wiggling now. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t breathing either. She must be dead.

I hung onto my post and tried to get my eyes to shut but they just wouldn’t cooperate. I just wanted him to stop kicking her and getting more poop on her. I tried not to make a sound.

Then, as suddenly as he had started, whisker man stopped kicking her and picked up her limp little body, cradling it as though she was his precious baby and something terrible had just happened to her.

”It was the horses,” he was saying, as he headed for the house with his precious cargo, yelling for mama and cussing the horses, using all kinds of bad words my ears didn’t like to hear.

I glanced around to see where the horses were. They were grazing peacefully on the far side of the pasture. I stood there, still clinging to the post and trying to make sense of it all, while hot, silent tears streamed down my cheeks.

”That was real dumb on Wendy’s part,” I thought. “Real dumb!”

You could never tell what was going to get you in trouble with whisker man, but she should have known to listen to him when he said to stay out of the mud puddles. Now last week, when I got a good punching, that was different. I was still figuring on that one.

Whisker man had been driving down the lane in his pickup truck, me riding alongside of him, standing up so I could see out the window since I was a little small for a five year old. All of a sudden a bunch of sheep ran into the road in front of the truck. He hit the brakes hard and my head hit the windshield hard. A big crack went all the way across -the windshield- not my head, though my head wasn’t feeling too good right then either.

He stopped the truck and grabbed me before I even got the first sound out, punching me and cussing at me for busting the windshield.

Well, I’d sure try never to do that again, though I wasn’t exactly sure what it was that I did that I should never do again. Life is hard like that sometimes. Just so hard to make sense of things.

Epilogue

The accuracy of this memory has been verified in two ways. While my sister was undergoing unexplained rib problems and attributing it to something whisker man called “rabbit punches”, she was also working on a sculpture exhibit, which was based on white rubber boots. We lived thousands of miles apart and this was nearly thirty years ago, so we communicated by snail mail. When I shared with her the memory I had upon which I wrote the above story, she went for xrays and sure enough, had several unexplained healed broken ribs.

The rabbit punches happened to whomever was allowed to sit by whisker man in the truck. He chose. While driving along, without any warning he would suddenly elbow the child beside him in the ribs. Hard! It was similar to the hot spoon torture. You did not have to do anything to deserve it. Just be there!

The second way the memory was verified was when I told our mother about it. She remembered the horse having trampled Wendy and that they had to keep Wendy sitting up even at night because she couldn’t breathe lying down. They did not take Wendy to the doctor.

I am unable to explain this incident except to say that abuse does not just affect the child it happens to. It also affects the children who see what happens. I was unable to tell my mother what I saw and did not completely understand what happened. I could not comprehend dishonesty. The communication difficulties of autism along with being easily overwhelmed made it extra hard to make any sense of these happenings. My response was to retreat into my own safe world.

Coming next: Paper Horses

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The Tree

The Tree

The tree,
deformed and
scarred by life,
did not choose the ground
where it would grow.

The tree,
whose seed was put there
or fell there
in that barren, rocky place,
was forced to struggle.

The tree,
branches at odd angles
like arms pleading help,
was alienated amongst
buildings and concrete.

The tree,
arching backward,
peeled back its skin,
exposing the black cavity
within its twisted trunk.

The tree,
a monument
to the will to survive,
stands graceful
in its death.

By Linda Hanson – 2001

I sketched this tree and wrote this poem while sitting in a parking area in front of an arts center waiting for my daughters to finish a class. Often I am unable to tolerate being inside a building for more than a very short time because of my reaction to fluorescent lighting. Not only do I jerk and make noises when exposed to fluorescent lighting, but the sound of the lighting is often overbearing. Fluorescent lights have an effect on my brain that takes hours to recover from if the exposure is more than a few minutes. So I try to minimize exposure and spend lots of time waiting outside. If I have paper and a pen, waiting outside is not difficult at all because I can enjoy the clean air and whatever there is to see, even if it is a dead tree.

Although I had not yet been diagnosed with autism at the time I wrote this poem, I had been living with it my entire life. Much like the tree, I did not choose my circumstances in life. I could only make the best of the circumstances I was born into, even when it was a struggle.

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Captive

Captive

Screams inside me
screams of horror,
depths not searched
where total horror
holds a captive
still in tears
held hostage more
than fifty years.

By Linda Hanson Denmark – 2003

Children with autism often have difficulty communicating so in effect, if there is no one looking out for their well being, they are in a hostage situation. The effects can last a lifetime. It doesn’t end when it ends.

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Picassoul

Picassoul

My father used to cut out
little pieces of my soul
and stick them back
in odd places
where they didn’t belong
as my mother watched
and when I cried for her
she’d turn away
until after awhile
I stopped crying for her
while my father
kept cutting out
little pieces of my soul
and sticking them back
in odd places
where they didn’t belong
until I was like
a Picasso painting
and now I look in the mirror
and try to figure out
where all those pieces
were supposed to go
and maybe one day
I’ll see the picture the way
it should have been
before it was cubed
or maybe ———

I should just paint a new picture.

By Linda Hanson Denmark – 2003

I had previously posted this poem on Facebook as my own “Me too!” statement since the abuse came in many forms including sexual abuse. However, the theme of this poem can also be applied to my autistic self and probably many others like me.

When my autism diagnosis was made, my brain signals showed a lot of scrambling, where a signal was sent from one part of the brain to another and then to yet another and finally some part of my brain that would not normally process that info would handle it. The cognitive tests showed results all over the chart, from four percent in visual stamina to straight across 100% in the part of my brain I use in processing language from brain to hand.  Not from brain to mouth though!

Other areas in the cognitive testing showed impairment. I am unable to determine emotion from facial expressions of others. I have problems with auditory retention, which means that I retain only pieces of a conversation and often can’t make sense of it. If I get the same information in written format, I retain it very well, to the point where I could ace a test by reading the textbook the night before the test.

Before others can accept autism and show some understanding, we first have to accept ourselves. After I was diagnosed I initially felt a bit of dismay mixed with relief at finally having an answer. I began researching and reading everything I could find concerning autism and now have a whole shelf of autism books and continue to read all I can find online as well. What I began to notice in myself was an acceptance happening. I have to accept that I have these weak points and strong points and work with the materials I have available in order to paint that new picture.