Pain vs suffering

Some eejit on another blog has pontificated, as only those in the alternative sector can, about pain and suffering. Pain is transient, is a gift, connecting you with your authentic nature. Suffering happens when the lower mind resists pain.

When I see my mother in permanent pain, on morphine which does little to help, and then read 'pain lasts for a moment/suffering for a lifetime', I am suddenly glad that she has little lifetime left in which to suffer. To suggest pain lasts only a moment - and is a gift - is naive, thoughtless and insulting. And it's the reason why people in the alternative sector are typified as not living in the real world. (See William Bloom's latest discussions for more on that).

And thank God for the anonymity of this blog where I can squeal without risking vilification by the eejit's followers.

Crap!

All...or nothing at all...

Haven't had a row for ages but I was tired today so not communicating as clearly or carefully, and more prone to needing support and reciprocity.

He just cannot pick up the reins when I start to be busy with other things. I have to do ALL the deciding, shopping, cooking, cleaning - or telling what to do, or buy - or when.

I said something offhand that suggested I expected some response and it received such a look of amused superior incredulity that I wasn't prepared to put up with it again. "That's the sort of thing, I said, that people DO for each other, when they care. And I've had to live my life without it." And I've put up with it and been emotionally beaten by it because I thought I was asking and expecting too much. Well, I have normal expectations and am kind and strong for others. And I CARE. And I've had enough of people who don't care back. My son is more able to demonstrate care than my husband - who then gets all sniffy at the slightest indication that he doesn't.

Jeez, I'm so fed up with it all.

It's strange how he's always tired and less able to cope on the same days as me. I went all the way to Sheffield, had a business meeting and back in a day - and then up at 4.30am writing up some notes. I had a right to be tired. I think he just runs on MY energy. They ALL do. My son less so.

But I can't look after my son and do all the other things - run a business, run a home, look after my mother's difficulties - on my own.

So he gives me a choice. He does it all. Or I do it all. There's no half way mark, no support, no (but there wouldn't be, would there) reciprocity or team work, picking up where somebody else leaves off, filling in the gaps, being aware when other priorities are taking over.

"I was better off 40 miles away," he said. "You were the one who chose not to leave," say I. I'm back to enjoy my son but also deal with all the other stuff, too.

So I can have my son - or I don't. If I can't handle it all, I get none.

Fck!

The bitter end..

I've been back with hubby and son for nearly two months.

Two months away from Neatwich.

Much of my time has been spent writing a 20-page dossier on my mother's mental health needs and the difficulties with the care home. It was very therapeutic so it was time well-spent. And now I'm also an expert on NHS Healthcare Funding and Decision Support Tools. How many things could they get wrong? Pretty much all of it!!

It looks as tho the only good thing to come out of this may be money. And that's a sad thing. My mother will be dead before they get it all sorted out and give her the care she needs. Mind you...she does moan a lot!! She's not one to be stoical!! She certainly lets me know that she is dying in misery. How much sorry and guilt will I have to live with this time? And she WANTS me to feel it, unlike my father!!

I was reading the Nursing Times about compassion in nursing - apparently it's controversial (another 'c'!) cos nobody can define it!!! There are 5 'c's in nursing. They said mother needed nurses who could show competent confidence - they forgot to add another of the 'c's : compassion. Compassionate competent confidence : that's what's missing.

Having sent my dossier to the Mental Health Assessor, I've seen no replies to emails or requests for investigations or response to solicitors, just harsher treatment to cover their backs. Sigh.

They forced her to have some steroids applied yesterday. I had told her she has choices and could still refuse. She told me today that she has now capitulated 'like you wanted'. Always contrary. To the bitter end.

Where's the chocolate?!

I've updated Astryngia's Educational Explorations, my old home ed blog - a couple of posts to update the last two years!

I'm back with my Aspies and all I want to do is sleep and eat. I keep working through the sleepiness; chocolate and sweet things are off-limits. Hubby bought fruit from the farm shop as requested but left it in our new super-functioning cool bag with a load of vegetables for two days. Der? The amount of heat which must have been created in there!!

So all the fruit went mouldy and he discovered the veg had gone off, too. Not that it stopped him cooking it for lunch. Yellow broccoli! But he'd gone out to replace the cauli because it had rotted so much that he couldn't actually lift it out of the bag! Horrible lunch. Horrible, horrible. He used to cook a nice Sunday lunch - I don't know where it went wrong. Nice roasties. :-)

Son hasn't been in a good mood today; and both our PCs have ceased working properly since I tried to install Registry Booster on my laptop and a new photo printer on his. I bought it for him two Christmases ago and nobody bothered to get it out of the box in my absence even tho his ordinary printer was working only intermittently. Sigh!

WHERE'S THE CHOCOLATE!!!!!

Look for the joy

Son is amazing. He's so independent. I admire him, find him interesting. He actually comes in for a cuddle occasionally. His thinking works better when enclosed in a smaller 'hug-space'. Perhaps it's about safety and confidence giving him the space to process, think and share. But his processing skills cause problems when he is resistant to checking out his understanding of what's required, when the input all goes just too fast.

Husband is resistant to 'getting a grip' of his anxiety. He's either unpleasantly nasty for no good reason or a bag of nerves.

Mother is reverting to three telephone calls a day of increasing petulance, belligerence or pathetic-ness if I don't hop to it and call back NOW. Even after all her needs have been met and David has passed messages on. Presumably her needs aren't her needs after all and are just a ploy to get me on the phone again.

She says I'm her backbone. She doesn't realise that she doesn't have a right to mine. I need it for myself and it's already not working very well. As the farmer in the field said : the notice to Pick Your Own Strawberries was an invitation to 'pick your own' and not his!!!

Background of difficulties with work colleagues and the people supposedly looking after my mother.

Look for the joy, says the lifecoach.

The one source of joy is my son - I do so hope that I never use him like my mother has used me.

Normality resumes

I've struggled out of my breakdown...but for what?! More of the same! Nothing has changed while I've been away with the fairies ;-)

One thing I do know...(do I?) What I've lived through in the past few months is what I experienced when I was two years old. Social workers 'separating' me from my mother with a closed door - it broke my spirit. That's what it did. It's what has driven me all my life. I feel a terrible angst, a pain in my chest and throughout my stomach - and behind the pain is terror, tears - great gasping wrenching sobs. Confusion, rage. All held in, painfully.

I've developed an umbilical hernia. Oh my - how the mind affects the body. My weak spot is that place where I was originally joined to my mother. Due to be severed by an operation. Except I've already severed the connection to my mother. Dutifully shut the door between us. To please care home and social worker.

But what new tosh is this? She says 'I put you on a pedestal, you know'. I didn't take too much notice but...now I'm thinking this must have come out of her conversations with the mental health worker. Wot insanity now?

Once I woz an adult, my mother metaphorically beat me black and blue. Never had a good word for me. Undermined me rather than supported me. Hated me for separating; envied me for a life. Suddenly she's full of admiration for me? And now I'm back to normal size for her - since I'm now 'only human' in her eyes?? She spent my life trying to undermine me and bring me down to size. And now it appears others have been successful on her behalf.

Oh - how do I stop myself being manipulated and meeting other people's needs. I don't think I can stand much more of being manipulated but I don't know what to do about it. Whatever tack I try, my pain gets rekindled. I have been able to 'let go' with my husband. I let it be. And he crept back into my life in small doses. But I have to keep interacting with these other people. Sigh!

I'm tired of the struggle. I really am. I don't understand why I'm having to suffer so much - so much pain, so much confusion, so many years. I think the people I am having to deal with in my life have AS. And nobody will believe me. But I'm also setting myself up to be disbelieved.

I'm tired.

Becomingness

I learnt today to think in terms of 'becoming'. To forget regret and past hurts in order to realise the 'becomingness' in which we live.  In the midst of mucho despair, feeling I'll keep dragging along til I die, it gave me a better perspective. 

Sometimes I think : Wouldn't it be better to die amongst the drama and bittersweet regret of parting from cancer?  It's almost a become a lifestyle of choice what with scarves as our uniform and the in-group of 'survivors', 'living with' rather than 'dying from'.  You live a more cared-for life with cancer, that's for sure.  Start to get better and the vultures descend.  Destructive behaviour, pecking your eyes out.  Would they prefer I died??!

However, I've made a 'lifestyle choice'!!  I'm not dying from OR living with cancer.

But how I wish 'living' were made easier than adrenal fatigue allows. Struggling to come to terms with the hurts creates the stress which plummets me back into exhaustion.  It seems I am 'becoming' stressed and fatigued.  Everything pulls me down and defeats my willingness to get back on my horse.

Wrong horse perhaps.

But when I declared my hand : I'm leaving, I found new strength to throw on the saddle.  Only to fall at the first hurdle.

So what am I becoming?  Ill, just ill and incapacitated.  And this is where the sorry cancer saga began. But I can't go back.  Cancer took me to cancer care.  But closed doors are part of the becomingness, too.  It's not the same and never will be.  There's no going back, not even to cancer. 

Onwards and upwards...energy healing and SLEEP, replenishment, refreshment, nourishment. 

I HAVE to learn ways of not being thrown by other people's bad behaviour.

What's the point in 'becoming' if you don't have the energy to share it?

Coming back to normal - I think!

Fabulous book : Betrayal in Psychotherapy and its Antidotes

"X dismissed what Y was saying as a fabrication. She had made it up. It hadn't happened, and so there was no response to be made."

As usual, a book arrives from Amazon, I open it and find the meaning of the whole book encapsulated in a single sentence which leaps off the page at me.

That's exactly what the care home 'did' to me - denied my reality. It was also what they were trying to do to my mother as well (when they denied the 'man in the room' experience).

It went on...

"Y's bearings began to waver. She had seen what her eyes had reported to her and had faithfully reported that to X in clear agitation. But rather than supprt and action, there was denial and accusation. Rather than something wrong in the world, there was something wrong with the observer. It was her perceptions that were wrong, not wrong behaviour that her perceptions had correctly recorded..."

Of course, this was also my life at the hands of my mother.

Something began to unravel in Y. Some vital link with reality and perception. Maybe things were not what they appeared to be after all, maybe there was other information not available to her that needed to be taken into account in order to construct an accurate model of the world...Y was adrift on a sea of self-doubt...Who was this person after all who could so easily be doped into believing into existence things that never existed?"

Thus were sown the seeds of problems in reality testing, the roots of hallucations and psychosis. "If an individual is punished for correct perception of the outside world or of [the] self by a significant other (eg a child by a parent), she will learn to distrust the data of her own senses" Watzlawick, How Real is Real, 1976. This is what R D Laing described as 'mystification' which "induces confusion in the sense that there is a failure to see what is 'really' being experience, or being done, or going on, and failure to distinguish or discriminate the actual issues".

R D Laing wrote extensively about schizophrenia - I've read some of his cases where staff lived alongside psychiatric patients. I heard him speak at Alternatives. Reflecting back, I wonder how often he was actually dealing with people with autism - or people suffering at the hands of people with undiagnosed autism. I wonder how much autism figured in his own life...I find myself regretting on his behalf that high functioning autism was so little known during his lifetime.

There is even some thought now that autism will prove Freud got it wrong!!

Discography

I discovered the iPod soon after I was diagnosed with cancer - I spent much time nestling into the past, gathering old favourites, reliving my teens and twenties. I've been doing some 'cataloguing' over the past few days : fascinated to discover how many songs I've collected from the 60s and how each decade since has fewer and fewer songs associated with it until music disappeared from my life entirely!

But perhaps it was only 'my' music which disappeared. My husband's taste was 'intellectual classical' so I listened to 'his' music (I still wonder why I had no music of my own!? Perhaps I was happy exploring 'his' tastes. I guess he had no interest in exploring mine - or perhaps we both stood still in our interests, satisfied, complacent). But I acquired the family piano and began to play 'Piano Classics' again.

I discovered Debussy and played Clair de Lune to my son in the womb. I continued with the quiet, tranquil theme to help him calm down for sleep (it didn't work) and counteract the hyperactivity; I sang lullabies (stretching my limits with Sandman and the Skye Boat Song!); I learned the Teapot Song and searched for happy children's music. I put my heart and soul into learning the theme tune to Pokemon - it did not impress my son!! He also hated all that beautiful tranquil music I found to help him sleep - African lullabies, Julian Lloyd Webber's cello lullabies. He seemed to fear the quiet. He never really joined in with the nursery songs.

When he was 9 or 10. I finally 'broke' and bought a massive Queen compilation. It was such bliss to make NOISE again as I gradually learned that I had really loved ROCK music all along!! (Moi??! Innocent little moi???) I learned that my son actually wanted LOUD!!! Loud made him happier than quiet, even tho it must have hurt his ears. But what do I now discover? He has tinnitus and always has done. No wonder he wanted 'loud' - it would have helped cover up the constant buzz.

The popularising of classical music had its impact. I've always loved Jacques Loussier and The Swingle Singers. Sports fixtures drew on the classics with a robust rendition of Nessun Dorma. The Three Tenors raised money for charity. I discovered Amici Forever and Katherine Jenkins.

The story continues with a return to peaceful music to calm mind, body and soul for recovery from cancer. I have quite a collection of reflective music, with earthy drums, monastery bells, singing bowls. (!) I really entered into it for a while, preparing for a tranquil death - but life beckons, I guess. Or should I say life decided to shoot me out of the water!! The only way to live in calm in this world is to have cancer and make everyone tread quietly around you - and I don't wish to keep the cancer so I guess I'll have to join the human race again and put my energies into keeping my castle walls intact : oriented towards the outer rather than the inner.

In between all this, my son started to take an interest in his own music, introducing me to Chemical Romance, Chris Cornell and some very nubile young women! I discovered Yusuf Islam, Duffy, K T Tunstall - even Amy Winehouse.

Recently I've discovered some 'modern standards' through the X-Factor and similar programmes where music is belted out with great passion. It's the artist who makes the music. People who sing without passion (eg on compilations) can kill a song dead. Yet someone singing with passion can make the most uninteresting song into something I'd like to hear again and again! And it's always lovely to hear a singer so competent that you don't get subconsiously anxious about their attempts to hit the high notes.

I've enjoyed my explorations into the past. Where is the future?

Great place to find the 20th century history of song : http://www.discogs.com

La Vita Nuova

And now it is that, centre court, Betrayal strong stands
Arrogant, narcissistic, impervious to charm
Forget personality disorders, psychological musings and angst
It's simple, sharp, bare and stark
Betrayal begets betrayal dark
Parent betrays child
Child betrays parent
Partners betray each other
Friends grow silent
Souls bleed in silence from
Invisible wounds

The Road Less Travelled
The Life Less Lived
The Bitter Pill
Swallowed
The Hero Within
Being writ
Moves on

I have discovered 'Boo'

And Twitter.

It's amazing : if you find a celebrity, it opens up all sorts of other celebrity nonsense. I'm now on the trail of celebrity twitterings. And finding all sorts of interesting things en route.

Boo is audio blogging - I think you're supposed to do it via an iPhone.

I've just discovered two totally cool people via Boo

And ended up hearing all about the new underground movement of 'home restaurants'. Cool. Thanks pixie's mum for Mrs Marmite Lover at marmitelover.blogspot.com who cooks on an Aga in a terraced house and opens up each Saturday and exchanges a lovely dinner for a cash donation.

I miss London for the opportunities to get together - wasn't there an organisation in the old days for University graduates to get together. I guess my age leaves me with the Women's Register. Truthfully, I'm not really quite old enough for the U3A.

Molecular psychiatry, autism and genes

A French team back in 2004/2005 found a region on chromosome 16 - PRKCB1 - which appeared to be linked with autism.

For their study, the French authors looked at 116 families where at least one member had autism. PRKCB1 is expressed in granule cells in the cerebellum of the brain. Its associated protein is involved in transmitting signals from the granule cells to the Purkinje cells. Both these cells help relay messages in and out of the brain. Researchers have already found a decreased number of both granule and Purkinje cells in the brains of people with autism. The French team from IntegraGen SA hoped to have a working risk assessment test on the market by the end of 2006. (No announcements since that time).http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4697057.stm

A few days ago, it seems attention has moved on to chromosome 17 : In Los Angeles, analysis of the DNA of 1,046 members of families with at least two sons (and no daughters) affected by autism revealed that a variant of the gene CACNA1G, located on chromosome 17, was consistently associated with autism. This variant of the gene, which helps move calcium between cells, is present in about 40 percent of the population. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_84530.html

For the latest on Molecular Psychiatry : http://www.nature.com/mp/index.html

Now...this is interesting : http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v14/n6/abs/mp20092a.html

Cassandra'd again

Thanks to madbaggage for a post way back in 2005 which, oddly enough, was based on a post of my own. Thanks! Nice to know that giving out still has a way of coming back.

Thank God for Astryngia and her miraculous way of digging up the sort of vital information that parents of Aspies need...Anyhoo, that's how I know that this all encompassing frustration, this urge to become squeaky and tearful in pained disbelief is called being Cassandra'd.

Son has a new teacher...I have just had to challenge her assumptions, ask her bluntly whether she sees the points I raised in an email as an attack on her (excellent) school, or, as I intended, as concerns that Son's differences can disrupt the flow of even an excellent school, and cause him distress as much as anybody else. Its about the boy being too much for the system, not about the system being below par. There are such fine lines to tread.

Thank God this school actually has been excellent for a good few years since he was diagnosed; that he wasn't written off. Thank God I have experienced being treated as part of a team who all want the same thing, because the sensation of shrinking in height was tangible, the dark pit of chaos and fear. The old, pre-diagnosis feeling of being treated like some sort of weirdo pushy mother who should be dismissed condescendingly as an annoyance and disruption. It flooded back in a split second and threatened to overwhelm me.

Catch 22 is if you let them see your total frustration, become squeaky or red faced or apologetic or even angry, if you become a gibbering wreck in response to their cold blindness, you only underline their original conclusion.

I have Parentlink on my side. Well, correct that, on my child's side, but part of that support for him requires that his mother is treated with due respect and not reduced to a quivering wreck of no use to anybody.

That is it - exactly it. Why does autism bring that out in organisations and 'professionals'?????

Voiceless AGAIN

Image by Joana Roja - hectic life right now, catching up via Flickr

It's a full two months since I went on my retreats - constantly fighting with and struggling to fight my way out of breakdown and depression. Mind and body waaay out of control. I've spent a few days back on the voicelessness forum and written myself into exhaustion. I'm grateful to three people being willing to listen and support me.

Everywhere I go, I write - badly : forum, blog, emails. I've lost my intensity and clarity. I throw paragraphs and whole columns without pulling out the essential meaning and creating more meaning. My brain aches, my body aches, my eyes are swollen - as tho I've sobbed every hour of every day.

Sleepless, fearful, crashed and trashed.

I was completely relaxed at my last reflexology session - limbs dead, mind dead, in another world, not conscious. Her chair made a slight noise and my limbic system came alive. It wasn't 'flight or fight' because nothing attempted to move. The fact that my body is reacting at such a primitive level is worrying - I'm clearly in a very bad place just now. Perhaps it's just the effect of long-term stress on the adrenal system - but I know now how my nearest and dearest experience the world.

The social worker stuck a pin in the balloon with her call - there has been some correspondence again with the solicitor and her today. But he wants more money and SHE had the temerity to say she was too upset to speak to me on the phone!

If she can't cope with ME being upset - why on earth has anyone expected me to cope with my mother without support. Indeed, I'm expected to cope with her AND get kicked around by the care home while social worker only manages to be complacent and patronising.

And how come I'm still being needed to provide support for my mother's 'distress' - they've had an open field : why haven't they taken over the burden and replaced me as the strong dependable one? Could it be she doesn't trust them - or that they don't actually understand her. Or that they are too unpredictable for an Aspie (which they refuse to accept).

Poor brain, poor conflicted psyche. It was all too much. Finally. Broken.

I tested two photographs with the pendulum. I was shocked at how clear the response was - a positive response to the photograph taken when I looked happy and strong and such an incredibly strong negative response to the photograph taken on one of the retreats. A great feeding ground for cancer cells. Scarily depressing.

When a jerk's a jerk (Passive-Aggressive Behaviour

I have difficulty with a work colleague. We've been dancing the same 'dance' for 8 years now. Every now and then we call 'time', discuss it, promises are made. And then he starts the tango again and ultimately we end up in the same hostile patacake. I wondered out loud about Passive Agressive behaviour, even autism : he agrees it might not be a million miles away from home but still he acts oblivious of his effect. I think the relationship is at an end. I've avoided being manipulated into a row on one occasion and noticed just a little too late that I'd been 'controlled' on another. I can only withdraw. I can't fight any longer. Insight is pointless.

As they say on The Straight Dope (very amusing and very interesting) website :

...Merely being passive-aggressive isn't a disorder but a behavior--sometimes a perfectly rational behavior, which lets you dodge unpleasant chores while avoiding confrontation.

It's only pathological if it's a habitual, crippling response reflecting a pervasively pessimistic attitude--people who suffer from PAPD expect disappointment, and gain a sense of control over their lives by bringing it about.

Some psychiatrists have suggested that PAPD be merged into a broader category, called negativistic personality disorder. Diagnostic criteria: passive-aggressive plus (a) mad at the world, (b) envious and resentful, (c) feels cheated by life, and (d) alternately hostile and clingy.

We'll let the specialists work out the details. For now, though, we lay folk should strive to use the term "passive-aggressive" more precisely in everyday life.

Say for instance that a coworker cheerfully agrees to refrain from a specified uncool act, then does it anyway. Is this passive-aggressive behavior? No, this is being an asshole. Comforting as it can be to pigeonhole our tormentors with off-the-shelf psychiatric diagnoses, sometimes it's best just to call a jerk a jerk.

So...just as I used to say to my hubby - either you're an Aspie or a shit - you choose!!

Energy Psychology and Energy Psychiatry

Yes, energy treatment is even entering the psychiatric world.

And there's a useful (self-promotional of course) association collecting all the proponents under one roof. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose?

http://www.emofree.com/cousins/acep.htm

Doesn't seem to include Reiki amongst its ranks

Energy Psychology is a family of novel mind/body interventions that have been consistently clinically observed to help with a wide range of psychological concerns, through explicitly, directly and methodically treating the human vibrational matrix. This matrix includes the biofield that envelops the body, the energy centers (chakras), and the energy pathways (meridians and related acupoints).

Positioned on the shared frontier of Psychology, Biophysics and Spirituality, these experimental treatments show promise in:

1) Assisting people who are stuck in their life or who are unresponsive to usual psychological or medical treatments;

2) Alleviating psychospiritual & mind-body distress, such as traumas, anxiety, phobias, stress, limiting beliefs, addictions, compulsions, allergies, personality disorders, etc.; and

3) Promoting high-level psychospiritual/mind-body health & peak performance, including the physical, mental and creative realms.

Is mammography all it's made out to be?

By the time a mammogram spots a problem, the cancer is already around eight years old, according to Dr Samuel Epstein, a world authority on cancer.

Mammography is crude, picking up many benign tumours that would do no harm if left alone. This can falsely raise the incidence of breast cancer by as much as one-half (Lancet, 1992; 339: 810).

Routine screening could be behind the huge increase in aggressive treatment of ductal carcinoma in situ (40,000 cases in the US alone). This ‘cancer’ spreads, at most, in 20 per cent of cases (Breast J, 2000; 6: 331-4) and some pathologists report that it simply burns itself out.

(Yoo-hoo - did I actually even need the medication that put such a strain on my body and marriage?!)

Is it safe? No. Screening raises your risk of . . . cancer. Just four breast films (the usual for one session) expose you to 1 rad (radiation-absorbed dose) - about 1000 times more than a chest X-ray.

In addition, if cancer is present, the extreme compression during a mammogram can help cancerous cells to spread (Lancet, 1992; 340: 122) (Yeah - especially when they put the corner of the x-ray plate in the middle of the tumour! Talk about irresponsible!)

If you need to have a lump checked out, a safer alternative without the dangers of radiation is ultrasound screening or thermal imaging.

Linking vs ranking; cooperation vs competition

This is from Elaine Aron's newsletter for the Highly Sensitive Person (click on the title for the website) and relates to my problems with the care home and the attitudes of the people in it - and also to many other aspects of my life!

When people are given the power to manage, teach, parent, or govern, they usually try to use it for the good of others in some way, even if they themselves benefit as well. Indeed, if a leader does not serve his or her followers, the followers generally stop following. When power is used without any concern for those it affects, it becomes abusive. You would think everyone would favor linking and use the power they have in the service of others.

Pure ranking and cutthroat competition does not feel good. Only one person can be the best. The others have either to accept defeat or constantly plan how to take over the top spot.

Even in games and sports, being a good sport--linking with your opponents--is essential for having fun. Again, this is part of why you have chosen to manage in a linking, collaborative way. As you say, 99.99% respond much better to this.

Still, you have noticed that some people do insist on focusing on ranking, or can't help it. So if you are the boss, they have to try to outperform you, make you look bad publicly to reduce your influence, or run you down behind your back.

People focused on ranking can also feel hopeless about competing, a problem because they do not perform up their abilities because they undervalue themselves, fearing they will make a mistake or express an idea others will disagree with. But that's another problem.

What they have in common is that they have often been victims in the past, so they tend to feel victimized even when there's no reason. In their eye you may have already snubbed or shamed them so that consciously or unconsciously they are seeking revenge in one way or another.

Above all, the constant rankers are easily put on the defensive--for example, blaming someone else or trying to make themselves look blameless before blaming is even an issue. So in meetings they may be trying to protect their status by trying to look super bright with their questions and make others, like you, look dumb.

Their philosophy, again not always conscious, is that "the best defense is a good offense."

All of this makes you feel that you have to be careful with them all the time. You are the Boss to them and nothing else. To handle these sorts, first you need to have some idea of why they are doing it.

Mostly those fixated on ranking are deeply afraid of defeat and shame. Usually they have suffered humiliating defeats while growing up. In their family, a ruthless attitude was encouraged. School can also be a ruthless ranking environment.

The risk of shameful defeats does not end in adulthood. Some workplaces are not very different from seventh grade except that everyone is being more polite on the surface and skilled at subterfuge.

You may not be able to know someone's history or even do much about it if you do know, but you can appreciate how hard it could be for them to change and that your own difficulty with them is not due to some flaw in yourself.

What about the Normal Jerk?

Some people have bad manners, of course, or have an attitude about being collaborative--often that it is not "masculine." Then there are people who are fond of intense competition for a higher rank because of their innate temperament, which gives them a need for the excitement of the risk that goes with standing up to the boss or taking over a meeting, but basically they respect your integrity. It could be that your quiet style just leaves them in the mood to shake things up a little. They have assumed, as we all tend to do, that others are just like them, and perform best when the stimulation is high.

Since theirs is another "extreme" yet basically normal trait, like high sensitivity, you cannot ask them to change very much. Rather, use their trait. Give them more excitement and challenge. If you can enjoy a little debate, they will love it and usually not hold a grudge if you stand your ground.

So you will have to make a distinction between "loud" non-HSPs, those with bad manners or an attitude, those with an innate tendency to be impulsive and take risks, and those who have been damaged. These last, whose power focus is abusive or constant, are harder to deal with.

Above all, don't let them make you feel weak due to your high sensitivity. About 20% of rhesus monkeys are also highly sensitive, and when raised by skillful mothers, they become the leaders of their troops. So being a leader is right where you as an HSP ought to be. We just have to maintain our natural ranking instincts.

It's difficult to face the fact that ranking is always going on, especially in the work place, but in fact it has to be that way. So your followers are always watching, consciously or not, for how well you are meeting their needs and responding to challenges that could hurt them as well as you. Again, most people are more productive and happier working in an environment where ranking is minimized, and you are meeting their needs the most when you are handling the ranking aspect of work skillfully.

I'm not like you...

So said someone to me when I was on a retreat for the healing of cancer. It was said as a kind of put-down but it didn't reach me because I saw in her somebody who would die of her cancer. In fact, she was already on her second bout of cancer. I was changing my life, standing up for my emotions and my right to be heard. And some people didn't like it. Even tho they were there for the same purpose : they were too involved in what I had rather than what they could have.

I was just listening to the founder of Time Therapy about 'why people don't heal'. It was difficult to follow his thread - he has a strong accent and difficulties with the English idiom. Getting on with 'living your life' and 'attitude' ie how you deal with life, seem to be the most important. Know your qualities, know what you need, deal with illness with dignity. Forget your illness and leave fear behind.

I did the right thing by leaving behind me so many frustrating challenges that I could not change.

But whatever happened that I stepped right back into the dog poo????!

Wasn't I looking where I was going?

How could I not notice?

Did I think that I was strong enough - or SHOULD be strong enough??

Other people, coercing (manipulating) me to do what I 'should' do. And me, so naturally looking forward to all that approval which must be in the offing; me, begging to be 'let off', unable to leave until given permission!

Yet I know now that other people have/take absolutely no responsibility for what happens to me next. If I don't play their game, I am but a speck of dust in their lives. It's not nice to know one is so unimportant, just a plaything.

Does that mean I should treat them as a speck of dust, as well?

If so, what are relationships all about?

Why is loyalty misplaced?

Can one really live with 'loyalty but only for as long as I feel like it'?

No touch, no talk, no eye contact

I love watching The Dog Whisperer. He bases his methods on an intuitive understanding of how dogs work within a pack and replicates that behaviour, encourages the human to act as pack leader, thus preventing the dog from being the one in charge and creating mayhem for the 'humans'.

It suddenly occurred to me that the methods he suggests are those I've used successfully with my son (and other people with an ASD)

For example, I was sat at dinner with a small group of women, next to one who definitely has an (undiagnosed) ASD. I turned enthusiastically towards her to listen to something she was saying and she almost went into shock. I realised what I had done and immediately took the (sensory) pressure off by taking away all eye contact and turning to face inwards towards the centre of the group. She was fine again. Amazing.

Temple Grandin says that people with an ASD are indeed like 'animals of prey' - think fawn or rabbit - they take off at the merest sniff of danger.

The Dog Whisperer also encourages owners to create 'calm, submissive energy' in their dogs, by using their own energies as 'pack leader' (head up, take no notice, be calm and centred) ie if you (believe that you) know what you are doing and keep your inner energy centred and unafraid then everyone will follow your lead naturally.

On a walk, 'we want them paying attention to us, being challenged by keeping aware of us, not the floor or the other dogs or something interesting in the distance'

I certainly used my 'superior energy' with my son over two things and however unwilling or 'independent' he was over many things, those two things remained sacrosanct : my spectacles were off-limits and you get fastened in with a seat belt when you're in the car. I had no confidence about food or bedtime but specs and seat belt were things I was absolutely definitely sure about. Yet I heard many stories of mothers who simply could not belt their children in.

This higher energy also held me in good stead the first time he went to attack me. That sounds awful 'attack me' but it is a phenomenon amongst young people with an ASD. I drew myself up taller and stronger and said 'you never hit a woman'. And he never did.

I surprised myself with my reaction - it was so calm and confident! I'm glad I was 'ready' to deal with it (my early experiences with men seemed to put me in a position where I was often 'asking for it' but I had learned a lot by reading about abuse of all kinds and learning the concept of 'tough love'!!) Another mother of an Aspie did not have that self-esteem; she had been hit constantly by her father as a child, so she cowered and her son kept on hitting her whilst also begging to be helped NOT to hit her. At least we never faced that situation. I am proud of myself and of my son for that small mercy.

I notice that it is mostly society's rules which have helped me. I was certain because society is certain. I don't seem certain of much else (these days?) How can you be certain when life has been ripped apart and everything you thought you knew has been turned upside down by a diagnosis of autism.

Nobody, but nobody, can imagine what it is like unless they have 'been there'. THAT is now certain for me.