2 posts tagged “stress”
Is autism the next step on the evolutionary ladder for mankind? I've been thinking a lot about this lately. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
Humans were not meant to live the way most of us do. We started out as cavemen, just hanging out in caves. No alarm clocks. We slept when we were tired, ate when we were hungry, and hunted and gathered our own fresh food. Did cavemen have stress? Certainly not as much as we do on a daily basis.
Now look how we have evolved so far. We're stress machines. Everything we do is done to please someone else, not ourselves. Why do you get up when you do, eat what you do, do what you do? We do most of the things we do to please a boss or a spouse, or it's convenient and we're in a hurry. How do our lives today resemble how human existence began?
What do most of us do every day?
- We have to use an alarm clock to wake up
- Commute to work
- Spend 8 hours or more sitting at a desk
- Commute home, run errands
- Stand in lines to buy prepackaged foods that have been stripped of their nutrients
- Little time spent with family
- Rush through evening chores
- Go to bed, never really accomplishing anything satisfying to our souls
Think about this: Autistic people have a hard time dealing with a lot of background noise (from electricity, fluorescent overhead lighting, clocks ticking, etc.), bright or flashing lights, loud noise, a lot of commotion, too many people around, and being too hot or too cold. Whatever is bothering them in their environment must be dealt with or they have difficulty functioning. Human beings have been trained to ignore our own basic needs. How many times have you had to go to the bathroom but put it off for a minute and then forgot about it? We don't sleep enough or eat when we're hungry. We don't relax when we're stressed. My sons have shown me that autistics do take care of their own basic needs, or they see to it that someone does.
Autistic people also have a low tolerance for stress. If they experience even a small amount of stress, they cannot function very well. One of my sons shuts down completely and stares at a blank wall for hours if he becomes stressed. So, autistics have to work through this stress before they can continue on with their day. What do most of the rest of us normals do? We hold it in, push it down, forget about it, and blow up later. That's not very healthy.
People with autism also self-soothe some of the stress they feel by rocking and flapping their hands and with repetitive movements, even with shutting down. Think about that for a minute. How soothing is rocking in a rocking chair? Or swinging slowly on a swing? There was a video posted by Dirty Penguin a while back comparing soothing activities of normal people and those of autistics. Check it out, it's very interesting.
I think somewhere along the line between the caveman and us, we made a wrong turn. Now Mother Nature is trying to make things right by forcing us to take care of ourselves and our world. Think about it, 1 child in 166 has been diagnosed somewhere on the autistic spectrum. 1 in 166??? Does that really sound like an epidemic or evolution? How many people were diagnosed with autism 20 years ago, 50 years ago, or a century ago.
It's something to consider, don't you think?
Addendum: I was just listening to the ABC Radio broadcast that Dirty Penguin has on his site. John Constantino of Washington University School of Medicine said If both parents are in the upper 25% of the distribution for autistic traits, it raises the likelihood that one of their children will be in the clinical range for an autism spectrum disorder by tenfold. "These traits are highly genetically determined. They are continuously distributed."
He also said that from the study, there is also preferential mating for the traits of autism. It is viewed as a preliminary finding at this point. At the end of the interview, where I left off, he was talking about how they had to find the genes responsible for autism to treat it.
Curiouser and curiouser...
My son turns 18 today. I feel so old!
In order to minimize stress from my sons' autism, we handle holidays and birthdays a bit differently.
See, any change in routine is incredibly stressful for both of my sons. That even includes happy changes, like a birthday party, waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve, or even a change like Daylight Savings Time. They all ended in meltdowns, rages, and shutting down.
To celebrate birthdays, we have a birthday week or couple of weeks. That way my sons don't get stressed with anticipation. We have a small family meal with a cake on the day of their birthday. We treat it just like any normal family meal, except we do sing Happy Birthday. No big fuss. My sons choose their own presents as we are out on regular shopping trips during the few weeks leading up to their birthdays. I don't make them wait to open their presents on their birthday. That way they don't have to deal with the stress of anticipation. I may cook a few special meals for them and pamper them with little surprises during their birthday week. Logan got buttermilk pancakes for breakfast yesterday, and he's getting Chili's baby back ribs tonight.
We handle Christmas sort of the same way. We have a family meal with their grandfather and uncle. This year we didn't even put up a tree or decorate because it was too stressful for one of them. We handle Christmas presents the same way we do for birthdays. I don't make them wait until Christmas eve or Christmas day. Again, no stress from anticipation.
It's very liberating to not live by the retail norm for holidays.
As a matter of fact, it's interesting to watch what goes on when you're not a part of it. Think about it... who came up with candy and cards on Valentine's day and chocolate on Easter? The meaning of many holidays has been lost to commercialism.
