#VSS Extra Ordinary

I've always known I was different in some way, though I never really understood what exactly it was about me that made it so. From the outside, I look pretty normal. I would say I am reasonably friendly, pretty confident in myself and I can hold a decent conversation with pretty much anyone. However, I would consider myself akin to Marilyn Munster, in that my weirdness isn't quite on display. I have always felt like I am on the outside looking in. I'm not so bothered that others don't understand me, as that is understandable, as bothered by the fact others fail to accept or believe how my world works differently. That people don't trust I have such a difference or that those differences impact my life. Or worse, they are threatened or scared by it. 

As a youngster, I just figured my being considered "a bit weird" was because I was rather tall and wore glasses. I towered over everyone else and wearing glasses was a stigma that people today have forgotten. I am also left handed. I remember one incident at Primary School where kids from another class saw me and one shouted "she's the devil!" before they all screamed and ran off. I thought it was a bit odd but dismissed it as them being silly. As an adult, I now understand that they must have just heard a bible reading and had noticed my handedness. 

It isn't the only time my handedness has caused me issues with how others perceive me. As an adult, I took a new job that required skills in veterinary nursing and surgery. After a week of training, it was clear my instructor was becoming  increasingly frustrated with me and my progress. Nothing seemed to go right and I was trying as hard as I could. It transpired that my handedness was the issue. To perform surgery left handed is not just a mirror image of a right handed surgeon. You have to learn left handed techniques and require left handed tools. As soon as this was discovered and the correct provisions put in place, my progress flew. As a novice, there was no way for me to know my handedness was the problem. I trusted my instructor but my instructors opinion of me was made; I was difficult. Their opinion of me never changed after that, the entire time I worked there. 

To make matters even more complicated, I also have aphantasia, which means I am unable to create images and sounds in my mind. My "minds eye" is blind. Instead, I feel or know, what I know. If I was to "count sheep" I am just counting, knowing the numbers are supposed to represent jumping sheep (I also have to trust others can see sheep, which they can count). Learning surgery and having to mirror the instructor and reverse his actions in my mind, was difficult. I don't possess that ability, I had to work through it via repetition and trial and error. Aphantasia is a way of mental thought that the scientific community has only understood recently. So at the time, there way no way for me to be able to explain why his instruction was difficult for me but it was a combination of my handedness and my aphantasia that confused him. My neurodivergence and our lack of understanding of it, the source of the frustration. 

Another area that has a big impact on my life and my ability to be "be normal" is that I live with Post Traumatic Stress Injury (also known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD) as a result of a medical trauma. PTSD is an injury to parts of the brain that regulates the "fight or flight" response and occurs as a result of experiencing sustained and/or extreme stress or trauma. PTSD is poorly understood by many, including professionals in the field of therapy (this is because it is a medical injury and not a mental health condition regarding conscious thought processes). One of the main treatments for PTSD is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). 

EMDR relies on talking through mental scenarios and imagining calm scenes and places, it is useful as a type of exposure therapy to recondition negative experiences, using the mind as a safe and controlled environment. It is not possible for someone with aphantasia to follow such instructions and new research shows our eye movement and processing may be slightly different than for those without aphantasia. I cannot imagine sitting on a calm beach, I cannot imagine the waves ripple in a crystal blue sea. You can give me the information and I can only hold it as a point in my mind, knowing what that information is (or if I have experienced it, I will already know it). As with the surgery instruction, my EMDR therapist felt I was being difficult. That I wasn't trying. Thankfully, by this time, more about aphantasia was known and after he had time to research my points, he understood why the sessions were not the same benefit for me as it might be for other patients. He was able to understand where his frustration with me was coming from. He then ended the sessions. 

What might work better for aphants is real exposure therapy, in real controlled environments. 

For someone with aphantasia, which also comes with a SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory), PTSD is a bit different. There are no visual flashbacks, there are no thoughts going round my head. My memories, my past, is just known. The trigger is environmental (sight, sound, smell, situation) and the response is an instant reflex (I visibly begin to shake and talk rapidly), it takes a few split moments before I can try calm the response down and explain to others what is happening. I am aware that my reactions to fight or flight situations, whether real threats or conditioned trigger reflexes, has an impact on others but can't really explain it. New research states that PTSD can change our vibration, the pulse from the amygdala. I believe that "other brains" in the vicinity also pick up on that electrical vibration and respond in kind. If there was a real threat, this collective behaviour response would make some sense. If no threat is perceived, you may find yourself confronted as the source and people may start reacting in fight or flight as a result, unaware of why their defense systems are activated - or yours. 

Figuring out my weirdness has helped me to understand myself and others a whole lot more. Generalizations are necessary, but when you are the outlier for lots of areas, be it; being too tall for women's clothes, having to sit at right handed desks in exams or having to "visualize" in therapy sessions, you understand they are a tool, not the rule. I am not ordinary, I am extra and that is OK. It just means we might need to do things a bit differently, you might find it's worth it.