For those of us living in the United States and Canada, we are celebrating Labor Day Weekend. Memorial Day is the holiday that many note begins the Summer Season, where as Labor Day is the end of Summer with only two weeks until Fall. Many people love these holidays because they are a time for getting together with family and friends, barbaques, parades and noise, noise, noise.
For many Autistics, these holiday weekends are best used for recovering our spoons and energy. Summer can be a very difficult season for many Autistics, and I am one of them. The humidity and heat of Summer, along with the noise of lawn mowers, road construction, big motorcycle engines roaring down the road, air conditioners, the smell of freshly cut grass, and people being out and about can be very taxing on an Autistic's energy. We sometimes use the spoon theory to talk about our energy. The analogy is that we get 18 spoons for a day. Everything we do and/or go through means we use up the spoons until there is only one or they are all gone. That is why you might hear many Autistics and/or those with depression or anxiety disorders say "I am out of spoons." When they say that, they mean it. When they are out of spoons, all they can do is rest and recover.
My good friend Carole Jean Whittington from Mind Your Autistic Brain loves to use the analogy of peppers. Poblano Peppers are not too spicy and they are quite sweet. Carole suggests that when we have enough energy we are at poblano level and fairly content. When we are at burn out, we are at what Carole says is Ghost Red Pepper Spicy Hot. It means that we are completely out of energy.
Holidays like Labor Day weekend are for many Autistics a time to be alone and recharge all that energy. If you have an Autistic loved one in your life and they ask to be left alone for these holiday weekends, please don't take it personally and give us the time and space to be alone and recover. If an Autistic is the type that wants specific types of stimulation like spiked fidgets, or they want pressure, let them have that pressure and listen to them when they say enough is enough.
There is another reason why Autistics might use these holiday weekends to recover. The seasons of Summer and Fall are in transition. That means that routines are being uprooted and changed. Routine changes for Autistics can be very complex. The change of life being a bit hushed during the Summer months to becoming busy as the Fall comes, the weather changes, time changes, reorganizing our time schedules and such are more than just an inconvenience to many Autistics. They are a time of interior conflict with how our environments are changing.
There are other Autistics that cannot rest during a Labor Day weekend, because they may have lost a job and looking at homelessness if they cannot pay their rent or mortgage, and they are frightened from what is going on and what may be about to happen. There may be Autistics that cannot talk about what is going on for them internally, because they maybe alexithymic and may have difficulties with identifying, understanding and describing our emotions to someone else. It is quite possible that the Autistic has tried to tell someone in the past how they feel, only to have someone tell them that they have no right or reason to feel that way and dismiss and/or minimize our experiences. Really, people, stop doing that. It doesn't help Autisic people to hear that. Another set of words that people like myself have heard is "My neighbor across the street has a son with Autism who is much worse off than you are, so you have no excuse for feeling as you do." Again, if you are someone who says things like this to any Autistic person regardless of what their level of support needs might be, you are being very cruel. You are bullying an Autistic person if you say something like that to them. What you are doing is what you will hear Lisa Morgan say in the next episode of Today's Autistic Moment about Suicide Prevention for Autistic Adults. Dismissing or failing to validate an Autistic person and their needs is thwarted belonging. And it can breed a lot of resentment for Autistics towards themselves and others around them.
Let us have our holiday time to be alone and recover our spoons and energy. If we need help with some crisis we are in, and we ask for help, help us without making quality judgments. The more Autistic people can trust that you will respect our boundaries and validate us, the more we will learn to trust that you have our best interests at heart.
I hope that many of my Autistic friends will have the opportunity to rest this Labor Day weekend and recharge your energy and/or recover your spoons.
