Everything I needed to know about autism began with chocolate.
Differences in perception are important.
When my younger brother was little he was upset by the color brown -- milk chocolate brown, and shades that were close to milk chocolate brown.
This would seem to be very irrational without an additional bit of information -- my brother is red/green color blind. Although this is very common people often don't realize that people who are color blind see colors -- just not the ones we do. The world to them looks complete, valid, and fine -- nothing seems missing. Lots of people -- including people who find color to make a living -- are color blind too. http://www.virtualsciencefair.org/2005/jauc5s0/facts.htm
People who are male and color blind (the most common variety) "see" milk chocolate much the same way he "sees" blood. I am very fortunate(and much, much rarer) in that I'm a color blindness carrier with enough of the X's shut down in my retina that I can see patches of my brother's perception of the normal world as well as the version that most everyone sees.
In most of my vision I can see a bright red truck in the site below. But if I close one eye and look off to one side, I see what my brother sees, and if you push the "protan" button you can see his way, too.
http://www.tsi.enst.fr/~brettel/DaltonDemo/DD02.html
Since he had nosebleeds and he knew from the big reactions that the sight of gore makes everyone upset, certain shades of the browns he sees ~~could be~~ blood.
He believes that he is color blind. He understands that this means that pretty much everyone else sees a dramatic color with blood (and pretty much blood and nothing else) so he looks to other people to see if it's blood, or chocolate.
It took a lot of convincing and some maturing to persuade him that *other people* had red/green sensitivities -- but without that understanding finding brown to be disturbing is valid and it's rational to affirm that.
My husband, my son, I and Dan "see" disturbing reactions from other people that most of the time are simply "chocolate". We have enough self awareness to know that it's probably "chocolate" and that other people can sense"blood" -- really troublesome reactions that are outside of what we can percieve. We have people we trust who can affirm if the word "chocolate" is slipped into conversations that what we are picking up is harmless, even friendly and advantageous. Who shake their heads subtly if there's real trouble and help us out.
It's a frightening power to give to other people -- like Commander Data the Star Trek android not wanting other people in general to know he has an off switch. But like my brother trusting other people to see if hamburger meat is fresh or not, giving this trust to other people is a real anxiety lowerer. Being autistic is like a form of emotional color blindness.
One case of food poisoning (one bite of a bad hamburger can put you in the hospital for a round of intestinal agony, catheters and needles even if you spit it out and rinse your mouth) and you're a very wary eater from then on -- unless you choose to have people around you that you give your trust. It's not paranoia if you've ever experienced full-round e-coli food poisoning, nor if you've ever been at the backside of the nightmare of human taunting. Without understanding that other people can help you it's 24/7/365 caution for the rest of your life.
Or, you can share the responsibility with others and lower your guard back to what it was before you had your crisis event.
Because most of the time, it's simply chocolate.
Differences in perception are important.
When my younger brother was little he was upset by the color brown -- milk chocolate brown, and shades that were close to milk chocolate brown.
This would seem to be very irrational without an additional bit of information -- my brother is red/green color blind. Although this is very common people often don't realize that people who are color blind see colors -- just not the ones we do. The world to them looks complete, valid, and fine -- nothing seems missing. Lots of people -- including people who find color to make a living -- are color blind too. http://www.virtualsciencefair.org/2005/jauc5s0/facts.htm
People who are male and color blind (the most common variety) "see" milk chocolate much the same way he "sees" blood. I am very fortunate(and much, much rarer) in that I'm a color blindness carrier with enough of the X's shut down in my retina that I can see patches of my brother's perception of the normal world as well as the version that most everyone sees.
In most of my vision I can see a bright red truck in the site below. But if I close one eye and look off to one side, I see what my brother sees, and if you push the "protan" button you can see his way, too.
http://www.tsi.enst.fr/~brettel/DaltonDemo/DD02.html
Since he had nosebleeds and he knew from the big reactions that the sight of gore makes everyone upset, certain shades of the browns he sees ~~could be~~ blood.
He believes that he is color blind. He understands that this means that pretty much everyone else sees a dramatic color with blood (and pretty much blood and nothing else) so he looks to other people to see if it's blood, or chocolate.
It took a lot of convincing and some maturing to persuade him that *other people* had red/green sensitivities -- but without that understanding finding brown to be disturbing is valid and it's rational to affirm that.
My husband, my son, I and Dan "see" disturbing reactions from other people that most of the time are simply "chocolate". We have enough self awareness to know that it's probably "chocolate" and that other people can sense"blood" -- really troublesome reactions that are outside of what we can percieve. We have people we trust who can affirm if the word "chocolate" is slipped into conversations that what we are picking up is harmless, even friendly and advantageous. Who shake their heads subtly if there's real trouble and help us out.
It's a frightening power to give to other people -- like Commander Data the Star Trek android not wanting other people in general to know he has an off switch. But like my brother trusting other people to see if hamburger meat is fresh or not, giving this trust to other people is a real anxiety lowerer. Being autistic is like a form of emotional color blindness.
One case of food poisoning (one bite of a bad hamburger can put you in the hospital for a round of intestinal agony, catheters and needles even if you spit it out and rinse your mouth) and you're a very wary eater from then on -- unless you choose to have people around you that you give your trust. It's not paranoia if you've ever experienced full-round e-coli food poisoning, nor if you've ever been at the backside of the nightmare of human taunting. Without understanding that other people can help you it's 24/7/365 caution for the rest of your life.
Or, you can share the responsibility with others and lower your guard back to what it was before you had your crisis event.
Because most of the time, it's simply chocolate.
posted by JulieB at
5:21 PM
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