Search Results for: My Bullied History, Part

Battling My Own Brain

Aspergers, Autism, Emotions

brain-tank Over the years, I’ve fought long, protracted war.  This wasn’t a conventional battlefield, though.  This war took place entirely within my own mind.  I had to fight tooth and nail (synapse and neuron?) to overcome some challenges and get to where I am today.  Meanwhile, I still have many challenges to overcome in the future.

Back in high school, I found my brain getting stuck constantly.  By this, I don’t mean that I wouldn’t be able to come up with an idea.  Instead, I would pour over every detail of a social interaction that I had made.  I would critique it in every way possible, berate myself for missed opportunities or for saying/doing the wrong thing, and would take situations completely out of context.  These "hindsight reviews" could last for days and would completely cripple me socially.  After all, if I was completely wrong in my actions in one situation (as judged by me later on) then how could I possibly be sure that I’d be correct in another action.  Combine in fear of bullying and the paranoia that it caused and it isn’t hard to see how my social development was stunted.

This "stuck brain" phenomena would also manifest itself when I worried about something.  As I went over the topic over and over again, the worry would grow more and more unmanageable.  Even if there was nothing I could do at the moment, my brain would focus on the problem and wouldn’t stop.  Thankfully, I eventually learned to segment my worrying and put aside items when there wasn’t anything I could do about them at the moment.  This can often be misinterpreted as me not worrying about something, but it is more of a self-defense mechanism.  If I didn’t put some worries aside, I could easily revert back into my worry-obsession behavior.

In college, I vowed to force myself to be more social.  I joined an organization whose sole purpose was the throw big parties – exactly the kind of social situation I wasn’t comfortable in.  It was my way of confronting my comfort zone and breaking through it.  However, while I made strides in my general social development, another battle raged on.  This battled was complicated because it involved the opposite sex.

College Me was living away from home for the first time and I found myself surrounded by all kinds of people.  As will inevitably happen to college kids, I developed crushes on some of my fellow students.  However, whenever I thought about acting on the crush, I found myself paralyzed.  I would go over a plan to ask a girl out, but could only think of the horrible things that might result.  I had just escaped high school – where I was made fun of mercilessly – and the specter of being mocked by my peers again haunted me.  Inevitably, I would over-think so much that the girl I had a crush on would begin dating someone else.  I had gone from doubting my actions after the fact to doubting my actions before I took them.  I might have won the general battle, but I was clearly losing on this particular front.  After college, I got a job and, a few years later, met B.  Unlike with all the other women I had tried to ask out before, everything seemed to come naturally to me.  Part of this was definitely due to a greater maturity and self-confidence due to being successful in my job.  A big part, however, was just that I could sense right from the beginning that B was "the one."

With that battle won, you might think that the war in my head was over.  It wasn’t, though.  Even in the present day, I tend to have two main "brain battles."  The first deals with Asperger’s.  Often I’ll get fixated on something, such as reining in the chaos that two young boys playing can cause.  Meanwhile, NHL will fixate on something else and we’ll have an Aspie-Aspie clash with B caught in the middle.

As hard as that is to deal with, there’s something else I deal with on a regular basis.  "Bad thoughts."  This is what I call it when my brain seems to try to interpret others’ motives in the worst possible light.  A voice in my head might try telling me that some people don’t care about me or that they don’t need me.  I’ve learned not to listen to this voice.  Though it always attributes the negativity to others, it is really the voice of self doubt.  It is the ghosts of the battles I’ve fought over the years coming back and trying to take hold once more.  I hesitate to call it depression – mainly because it never gets that bad and I wouldn’t want to minimize someone else who deals with actual depression.  From what I’ve heard online from people who have depression, though, this "bad voice" shares many of the same characteristics.  It belittles my accomplishments, attempts to sabotage my relationships with my friends and family, and convinces me to bottle up my feelings instead of opening up about them.  (That last one is made worse by my Asperger’s "Emotional Cage.")  When the "bad voice" is active in my brain, I will often sulk and stew over even the smallest of slights.  I’ll find myself unable to focus on other topics.  This is the one instance where a form of my "worry obsession" still overtakes me easily.

I’ve seen NHL deal with this also.  If he is yelled at to stop doing something, he’ll often mutter to himself over and over.  When I listen to him, it frighteningly sounds like what my "bad voice" says to me.  Nobody loves me.  Nobody understands me.  The world is against me.  People are doing things to hurt me on purpose.

I’ve learned to suppress this "voice" so it doesn’t come out of my mouth – even when it is screaming in my brain.  NHL, meanwhile, hasn’t.  Perhaps this is a good thing, though.  Maybe I can use this as an opportunity to help him learn to deal with his own "bad voice" in his head so it doesn’t turn into a problem.

NOTE: The "brain tank" image above is a combination of "brain" by trubinial guru and "cartoon tank" by rg1024.  Both images are available via OpenClipArt.org.

Ultimate Blog Party 2014

Blogging

Techydad_Doctor_whoLast year, I participated in the Ultimate Blog Party for the first time.  When it came rolling around again this year, I decided to give it a go again.  So, for anyone who is new here, I decided to answer the question: Who is TechyDad?

This might be a long post.  Please make yourselves comfortable.

First, of all, I’m a husband and father.  My wife is B, aka TheAngelForever, my two boys are NHL (age 10) and JSL (age 6).  I’m a web developer by trade which is a good thing since I love making websites.  (I do it as a day job and am also available for freelance work should anyone need some website work done.)  I’ve been blogging and on social media for almost 6 years.

I’m a huge geek.  I love technology (and just wish I could afford more of it).  I’m a big superhero fan, as well.  I love Star Wars, Star Trek, Farscape, and many other geeky science fiction shows.  Most recently, I’ve become a huge Whovian.  So much so that I made my own fez and bowtie so I could "become" the Doctor.  Now if only I could find my TARDIS.

For a long time, I held my geekiness in check, but recently decided to explore my geekier side with an "Extreme Geekery" series.  The first one explored how much paper would be produced if you printed out a hard drive.

I’m a big fan of Disney also.  We all loved Frozen and we’ve been to Disney World many, many, many times.  (Here’s hoping we can go again soon.)

I’ve long written about my history of being bullied.  It took me a long time to fully come to grips with that and I was heartbroken when NHL was bullied in school.

Speaking of NHL, he has been diagnosed as having Asperger’s Syndrome.  Since his diagnosis, not only have we become Autism advocates, but he has as well.  He’s learned to stick up for himself when people expect him to "just act normal" as if Autism is a switch he can flip off should he decide to.

Furthermore, as we read the many, many books and articles about what Asperger’s Syndrome is, something became perfectly clear:  I’m an Aspie as well.  When I was a kid, Asperger’s Syndrome wasn’t diagnosed.  Children were just stamped with a "shy" label and that was it.  Unfortunately, getting a diagnosis would cost money we can’t afford to spend.  As it wouldn’t help NHL at all and as I’ve clearly learned my own coping techniques, I’ll remain an "undiagnosed Aspie" for the time being.

For more reading, I’d suggest my post for World Autism Day/Month which summarized and linked to a year’s worth of Autism posts.

Other things I enjoy doing are playing video games, cooking, and reading books.

You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram.

Thanks for stopping by!

Bullying

The topic of bullying has been on the news a lot recently.  I did a series of blog posts about the subject.  To help organize them, I’ve created this page.  So, without further ado, here they are: My Bullied History, Part 1 – Elementary School – Where I describe how some of my earliest bullying came from a surprising source.

» Read more

Don’t Let Amelek Win – NHL’s Bar Mitzvah Speech

Bar Mitzvah, Judaism, NHL

bitsela-7br-800x603During NHL’s Bar Mitzvah, he gave a speech, called a Dvar Torah, about the Torah portion that had just been read. I asked him for permission to reprint it here and he agreed. So, without further ado, here is NHL’s Dvar Torah:

In my portion, it says:

Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt – how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the lord your God grants you safety from all of your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a heredity portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!

Why Amalek? Why do we need to blot out the memory of Amalek? Why not other groups who have persecuted Jewish people throughout history? For example, why not the Egyptians who enslaved the Israelites for hundreds of years? Or other groups who attacked the Israelites on their journey through the wilderness? Why is Amalek singled out for this treatment?

When Amalek attacked, they did not attack the Israelites’ military. They did not single out the strong fighters or other military targets. Instead, they went after the weak and defenseless people straggling behind the group. Other groups attacked directly instead of aiming for innocent civilians.

The Torah says that we should blot out the memory of Amalek. However, the Torah also says not to forget. How can we do both? If we blot out their memory, doesn’t that mean they would be forgotten? And if we do not forget, doesn’t that mean that we have not blotted out their memory? While it is true that blotting out their memory means eliminating them completely as a people, we also must remember what they did because other people can do what Amalek did.

There is a famous saying by Spanish-American philosopher and poet George Santayana. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Sadly, Amalek was not unique. There have been many other events in history that mirrored Amalek’s actions. Haman tried to kill all the Jews in the Persian Empire by using power over them from King Achashverosh. In the 1930s and 1940s, Hitler tried to kill many different people, including the Jews, using Germany’s military might. During the Sudan civil war of 1985, Salva Dut was around 11 years old when he was fleeing to Kenya though the Akobo Dessert. Looters from another tribe stole everything that the people traveling with Salva had including their clothes, food, and water. Then, they killed Salva’s uncle – the only family Salva had with him – right in front of him.

So why is it so important to remember? Won’t these tragedies still occur even if we recall each and every one of them? Do we have any power to stop them or are they inevitable? The Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” We can make a difference if we act and it is easier to act when we remember what has happened before.

Mordechai and Esther led the charge to stop Haman. Their actions stopped Haman’s plot and saved the lives of many Jews. During the Holocaust, Oskar Schindler helped save 1,200 Jews. Schindler ran a factory that employed many Jews. When the Jewish people were being sent off to the Concentration Camps, Schindler bribed German officials to protect his employees and their families. This was very risky for him to do. If Schindler did nothing, he would have been just fine because he was a member of the Nazi Party. If Schindler was caught, he would have been killed for defying the Nazis. By the end of the war, his employees and their families were safe. Schindler had spent his entire fortune and had to rely on support from other people including the Jews he had saved. Schindler was named Righteous Among the Nations and was buried on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. He is the only member of the Nazi Party to receive this honor.

Another example of people standing up for what it right no matter the risk was the Underground Railroad during the nineteenth century. The members of the underground railroad helped escaped slaves get to Canada where they could be free. This was very illegal at the time. Armed bounty hunters and federal law enforcement agents were hunting the escaped slaves. If the escapees were caught, they would be taken back into slavery and anyone found assisting them would have gotten in huge trouble. Despite this risk, the people running the Underground Railroad still hid, fed, and provided shelter for the escaped slaves.

So, does this edict to not forget only apply to Jews? After all, some might say we should only look after our own people. What business is it of ours if other people suffer? Pastor Martin Niemöller was an outspoken opponent of Adolf Hitler. He spent 7 years in Nazi concentration camps and is most remembered for the following quote:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

His point was that if you do not stick up for others when they need help, there will not be enough people to speak for you when you require assistance. Therefore, we should concern ourselves with the plights of others, even when it has no impact on our day to day lives.

So, what kinds of situations does this apply to? It is easy to say “I will definitely stand up if another Holocaust happens.” But do we? Time after time we turn the other way when groups of people are persecuted. We do nothing because we believe it has nothing to do with us or we convince ourselves that we have too many problems of our own to deal with. Sometimes we remark about how awful the situation is and how somebody should do something, after which we do nothing and just continue with our day to day lives. It can be very easy to say you will act, but hard to break out of your average routine.

The bigger tragedies can seem overwhelming, but what about day to day injustices? Surely those are more manageable. And yet we still find it all too easy to look the other way if we see someone who is being bullied or someone whose life has taken a bad turn. For example, someone that is homeless and is asking for money to feed their family. While it may be easy to walk away and think that this has nothing to do with you, how would you feel if you were the one being bullied or that was homeless. Wouldn’t you want people to help you?

Fighting against indifference and taking action can be very difficult. Oftentimes the urge to do nothing is overpowering. However, this is all the more reason why we need to heed the Torah’s words and do not forget. So the next time you come upon someone who needs help, don’t let Amalek win. Do everything in your power to help those in need.

 

NOTE: The Bar Mitzvah Torah Reader image above is copyright Bitsela, used courtesy of free-bitsela.com.

Feeling Excluded

Aspergers, Autism, Parenting

excludedNOTE: I wrote this post this past weekend with the event fresh in my mind.  I originally wasn’t sure if I was going to post this, but it felt good to get it all out.  After a few days, though, this still bugged me and I decided that I needed to publish this.  Hitting publish isn’t going to help my child, but it might get people thinking about how children with special needs can be excluded from events.  I’d also like to thank JSL for loaning me his rubber duck collection for a quick photo shoot (even if he was asleep when I borrowed them).

Today, my heart broke.

As many of you know, I was bullied as a kid.  (If you didn’t know this, read My Bullied History to catch up.  The rest of us will wait.  Done?  Ok.)  Anyway, due to bullying and Asperger’s (undiagnosed and definitely not known about when I was in school), I always felt like the outsider.  I longed to communicate with people, to have friends like the other kids had, and (once I was in high school) to maybe even have a girlfriend like many of my schoolmates had.  Unfortunately, I always felt like everyone was judging me.  Every word I said, I immediately wished I could rewind and delete from existence.  Friends?  I had one.  He was a great friend (still is), but I wanted a huge social network of friends.  Not a ton of acquaintances and one good friend.  As for the girlfriend front?  Not even close.  (Those embarrassing details I’ll save for another post – and trust me, they are incredibly, scar-you-for-life embarrassing!)

Anyway, when NHL was born, I knew many things I wanted to provide for him in life.  Love, food, shelter, an encyclopedic knowledge of Star Wars, a love of Looney Tunes.  You know, the essentials.  But there was one thing I didn’t want him to ever experience:  Bullying or feeling left out.  When we got his Asperger’s diagnosis, it broke my heart.  Not because we knew he had Asperger’s.  That was fantastic knowledge that turned helping him from "stumbling in the dark" to "action plan that would make Hannibal from the A-Team proud."  Instead, it was the actual report.  There were lines about kids rolling their eyes at NHL.  Girls moving their chairs away from him.  In short, kids were looking at him as if he were a pariah and an outsider.  NHL was blissfully unaware of all of this, but we knew it was only a matter of time before it struck him.

Today, my heart broke again.

We went to temple like we do on many Saturdays.  NHL is getting ready for his Bar Mitzvah and it’s important for him to be exposed to the whole Shabbat Service experience as much as possible.  Pulling in, I noticed a lot of cars in the driveway.  This is odd as our Temple isn’t usually packed.  Oh well, I figured there must me some event or celebration going on.  I even looked forward to it because these events usually mean a good Kiddush afterwards.  (For you non-Jews out there: After services, there’s a "Kiddush" where we all eat and socialize.  It’s a practically a contractual obligation in Judaism that any celebration needs to be accompanied by a metric ton of food.  And, yes, I’m shameless about motivating NHL to go to temple via promises of attending the Kiddush afterwards.)

As we walked in, we realized that it was a Bar Mitzvah.  Not only that, but it was the Bar Mitzvah of someone in his class.  Someone who hadn’t invited NHL to his Bar Mitzvah.

I didn’t feel weird walking in on this because Bar Mitzvahs are public affairs.  Yes, you invite family and friends, but anyone from the temple can attend the service and Kiddush afterwards.  So we would attend as "members of the Temple", not as "invited friends of the Bar Mitzvah boy."  No biggie.

As we sat down, I noticed a huge group of kids in the crowd.  Again, not a big warning sign.  It’s the boy’s Bar Mitzvah and many invite every friend they have from school.  I didn’t recognize most of the faces so I figured they were from his regular school.  We did notice some kids from his Hebrew school but it’s not a requirement that you invite EVERYONE.  We certainly hadn’t been planning on inviting every kid in NHL’s Hebrew School class to his Bar Mitzvah.  So we stayed until services were almost over.

That’s when it happened.

The rabbi invited all of the Bar Mitzvah boy’s friends and family up on the stage.  NHL started to rise, but I stopped him.  This was for the people invited to his Bar Mitzvah, I reminded him.  We weren’t invited to be there.  We were just there as temple members, not as his friends.  So NHL got the "wonderful" experience of seeing all these kids get up on the bimah (the stage/platform where the service is led from) while he was excluded.  Did I mention that there were a lot of kids?  It took a good three minutes for all of them to get to the stage and get up the stairs.  When it was all done, the Bar Mitzvah boy was surrounded by friends/family and NHL was alone.  (Yes, I was there but I know enough to know that your dad never counts in these mental equations.)

NHL excused himself to go to the bathroom.  There were only three prayers to go in the service, so I stayed while I let him go.  I couldn’t pray, though.  My insides were wracked with nerves.  Was he really that upset?  (A combination of NHL not being good at showing his true emotions and me not being good at – and doubting my ability at – reading emotions didn’t help.)  Should I race after him?  Should I stay here in case he comes back?  Will he be coming back?  I was paralyzed.

The second services ended, I raced out of the room.  Thankfully, I can be single-minded to the point of ignoring social protocols at times.  I didn’t get caught up in any hand-shaking or "how is your family doing" moments.  I just barreled out of there and headed right to the bathroom.  NHL wasn’t there.  My next guess was that he finished up and went right for where Kiddush would be held.  I went down the stairs, dodging people who had caught up to me after my brief check-the-bathroom side trip.  I was a man on a mission and nobody was going to stand in my way of making sure NHL was alright.

Sure enough, NHL was there already saving a table.  I asked him if he was alright and he assured me that he was.  He was upset only that I prevented him from immediately digging into the food that was laid out.  I felt that social protocol demanded that we at least wait for more people to arrive instead of just piling on food and stuffing our faces.  (Not to say that piling on food and stuffing faces didn’t happen, but it happened when more people were doing the same.)

NHL seems fine now, but again there’s that whole hiding his feelings thing.  He seems to have inherited a really bad habit I have.  He takes his most horrible feelings and covers it over with an "I’m fine" attitude.  He’s perfectly fine until that moment when the veneer crumbles and he lets everything spill that he’s been holding in.  And then he replaces the veneer and is "fine" again until the next crumbling.

I, on the other hand, am definitely not fine.  I’m not sure how I appear on the outside.  I probably seem fine.  Maybe a little quieter than normal, if you really pay attention.  Still, the sickening feeling is sitting right in the pit of my stomach.  I know this feeling well and can even predict how long it’ll be there for.  I’ve seen this kind of thing affect people who aren’t on the spectrum and they seem to get over it quickly.  A day later and it’s ancient history to them, or at least not something that they seem to obsess about internally for hours on end.  For me, though, I’ll be reliving every second of this event for the next three days, at least.  I’ll replay the scene hundreds of times, each time pausing it and criticizing my decisions.

"Now, see.  Right here?  Where you did A?  You should have done B!  How could you be so stupid as to have done A?  What were you even thinking, considering that A was an option?!!!  Sheesh, you’re such an idiot."

Yes, I will insult myself also.  I’ll let my internal critic rip my self-worth to shreds.  Ironically, I’ll self-exclude myself from social interactions because engaging in them means crawling out of my own head and this will seem about as easy as scaling Mt. Everest.

"Sure, I’d love to have a conversation with you.  Let me just get out some ropes and scale this sheer rock wall, first."

Eventually, I’ll get over it.  Where "get over it" means I’ll internalize it enough to not think about it and will "be ok" until the next event pushes me back into my self-criticizing hole.

The worst part?  The feeling that NHL is going through this too.  Maybe he’s perfectly ok.  Maybe he had his upset moment and moved on.  If so, I seriously envy him.  Or maybe he’s secretly ripping his self-confidence to shreds as well trying to think of what he could have done to have been a better friend so he’d have been invited.  Maybe he’s thinking back on every "wrong" action he’s ever taken (regardless of whether he was really wrong or not) and criticizing himself about it.  And, if he is doing this, then I have no clue on what to do to help him.  How do I help my son defeat a demon that I myself have yet to slay?  One that, right now is sitting on my shoulder telling me that I’ve failed as a father and obviously have never helped my son with anything ever.  (A complete lie, I know, but the demon is persistent and says it until I begin to believe it.)

How do I make him feel ok with being excluded when I still feel that pain of being left out?

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