A few weeks back, I had an email conversation with a friend about the difficulties of waiting—specifically, about waiting all day long for late-afternoon or evening appointments.
Today, I’m struggling with this difficulty, and it’s my own doing. I scheduled a 4:30 appointment with my therapist this afternoon. It’s the only one she had available today, and since my husband can drive me there, I took it.
Silly me. When will I learn? The entire day leading up to an appointment feels so compressed. In order to get anything done, I have to think backward from the scheduled time: “Let’s see, if the appointment is at 4:30, I have to leave here by 3:45. That means, I’ll need to get my workout done by 3:00, so that I can take a shower before leaving…” I’d like to go on, but my head feels like it’s about to blow a circuit. I have enough difficulty sequencing tasks in a forward direction. Trying to sequence them backwards makes me want to weep.
In any case, while I’m waiting, I feel like my engine is revving, but I’m not going anywhere. It’s very difficult for me to do anything when I’m waiting. Even on a day like today, when I’ve cleared my schedule, the anxiety has been steadily increasing with every passing hour. As my OT would say, my nervous system is trying desperately to get my attention and defend itself. It’s as though I’m having the following internal conversation:
Me: “Why am I getting so agitated?”
My nervous system: “Excusez-moi? Do the letters AS mean anything to you? How about SPD? Ring a bell, any of it?”
Me: “Look, I scheduled an appointment for 4:30. With my therapist. What’s the big deal? It’s not like I’m asking you to do ten different things today. One. Just one.”
My nervous system: “Okay, look, it’s hard being with other people.”
Me: “Why? What’s wrong with other people? What are you, a goddamned misanthrope?”
My nervous system: “Ooh, wow, a big word. I’m in awe. You know, if you take that tone with me, I’m just going to get more agitated.”
Me: “Okay, okay. For goodness sake, just answer the question. Please.”
My nervous system: ”What question?”
Me: “What’s wrong with other people?”
My nervous system: “It’s not that anything is wrong with other people. They’re perfectly lovely. You’re perfectly lovely. Everyone’s perfectly lovely. Okay?”
Me: ”So, if we’re all so lovely, what’s the big deal?”
My nervous system: ”In case you’ve forgotten our conversation of, let’s see, the last five decades, I’ll tell you what the big deal is. Other people are a lot of work for me, especially if I have to get in a car to see them, or they’re in some unpredictable environment where someone might be talking too loudly, or….I don’t even want to THINK about all the stuff that could happen.”
Me: “Oh, come on, you’re getting overdramatic. We live in crunchy-granola-ville, for crying out loud. The worst thing that could happen is that we’ll meet someone singing Kumbaya.”
My nervous system: “Are you not listening? It’s not about whether the people are nice. It’s about dealing with people. Period.”
Me: “Well, you used to be able to deal with people. All day, every day.”
My nervous system: “Oh, G-d, not this argument again.”
Me: “What argument?”
My nervous system: “You know very well what argument. The one in which you want to know why I can’t keep breaking my ass for you constantly, like I used to.”
Me: “Oh, right, that argument. Well, why can’t you…Sorry.”
My nervous system: “Apology accepted.”
Me: “So, what’s so hard about being around people? Everyone ELSE does it.”
My nervous system: “Look, I’m not everyone else. I’m me. And for me, it’s work. Work, work, work. And then some more work. And then even more work. And oh, I forgot. Some more work after that, too.”
Me: “Yeah, but why is waiting so hard? Why can’t you just get agitated when we get to the appointment?”
My nervous system: “Look, dealing with one person in the outside world is work. And now, because you thought absolutely NOTHING of what I might need, you’re going to make me wait ALL DAY LONG, in suspense, getting ready for the fact that going out and seeing another person is going to be a lot of work. Gee, thanks. I only allow you to think, breathe, walk, talk, and eat. But don’t worry about me. I’m not all that important.”
Me: “Enough with the guilt trip. And calm down. Take a breath. Be here now.”
My nervous system: “Who do you think I am, the Dalai Lama? I’m not. The Dalai Lama is a bodhisattva, and G-d bless him, but I am an Aspie nervous system, and I WOULD LIKE A LITTLE RESPECT.”
Me: “Why are you shouting at me?”
My nervous system: “I try to ask nicely. I really do. But then, after all the many, many conversations we’ve had, you still insist on scheduling late-afternoon appointments, and it’s hard on me. I’m shouting to get your attention.”
Me: “Sorry. I’m doing the best I can.”
My nervous system: “Me, too.”
Me: “Friends?”
My nervous system: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I’d better go do my workout and get my nervous system to calm down. After all, we’re working on our relationship, and I need to do my part.
© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg
oh. my. goodness. you did it again. you got inside my head. I get so antsy about timings and tend to focus on the one Big Appointment to the detriment of all else. I need an appointment for myself & kids with the family doc, so it has to be after school hours, and it has to be soon because we’re taking a trip. I am already thinking well I can’t do B that day because I have to do big fat A at 5:15, and dinner will be a disaster or very late or non-existent that day, and I hope the waiting room won’t be crowded or contain screaming babies/people yapping loudly and/or harrassing recalcitrant contractors on cell phones, and that the wait won’t be too long but who am I kidding??.. …
When are you writing a book? I think you could write THE definitive female aspie book!
My daughter, today, got anxious about going somewhere where she had “one” (the last time we went) bad experience. I hadn’t realised that we would have that problem, and that she would be filled with dread.
We had to explain that the conditions should be different tomorrow, and that in any case, we were going to take her feelings into account and do our best to make the situation tomorrow bearable, and then she calmed down.
I’m really glad that I took her feelings seriously and didn’t belittle her reactions. Your blog entries have made it possible, that I can relate to her better.
Thanks!
that was me!
i don’t think i could have that cogent a conversation with my nervous system, but i do get the same concerns sometimes, especially giving myself a hard time. most of the time, i find myself anticipating the disapproval of other people, and so want to get there first. i don’t really expect regular people to understand or sympathize with my particular difficulties. but i take every chance i get to show off my super powers, like my super-observation, super-smelling or super-sense of touch.
Me too!!!
Thanks for putting my life in words, once again.
wow that was great!
I like later aftternoon appts tho. I am totally not functional until late in the day. Id rather have an appt late in the day and less of the day left to react to how horrible it was then have it first thing in the day and ruin the entire day so I obsess about how horrible it was all day
lol
we’re all different
Kate
Apologies to Tom Petty:
Oh brain don’t it feel too heavy right now
Don’t it feel like the time will never come
Yeah I’ve only known it just like this
Don’t it feel like acting “normal” again
We know better than to try and pretend
Brain no one could have ever told me ’bout this
chorus
The waiting is the hardest part
Every day is like the same retort
You wanna be accepted, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part
Well yeah I might have tried too hard to fit it
All it ever got me was down
Then there were some that made me feel good
But not as understood as I feel right now
Brain, you’re the only one that’s ever known how
To make me wanna live like an Aspie right now
chorus
Don’t let it kill you, brain, don’t let it get to you
Don’t let ‘em kill you, brain, don’t let ‘em get to you
I’ll be your therapist, I’ll be your advocate
Don’t let this go to far, don’t let it get to you
chorus
You do have an amazing knack for cutting it all right down to the quick. Great job on what it’s like to live in our world in the afternoons!
Oh, wow! This fits me to a T. This is why, even though my work schedule varies day to day, sometimes by 12 hours, I ALWAYS try to time going to sleep so that I wake up no more than 2 hours before I have to leave. This gives me just enough time to go through my “morning” routine of getting up and getting ready without leaving time to think about actually having to go to work and deal with everything and everybody there.
Hi Craig,
So glad the piece resonated with you! You have a great strategy for dealing with this kind of situation.
OMG, that could have been me after my routine gets disturbed, usually because of an appointment or a family thing that pops up.
Visual schedules with little picture icons (eat, exercise, shower, etc) work wonders with autistic kids, so it might be worth a try for adults too. Make up some icons with notes of how long certain things take next to it.
I do the same panic thing too, and it usually screws up my digestive tract. I’ve had some luck with 5-HTP and Valerian to take my anxiety down to a managable level. Because I tried everything else and have a billion things to do in order to take care of my little ones.