I don’t know if I’m ready to be back online writing again, but if I wait until I’m sure that I am, the time might never come. I guess it’s a matter of determining whether my writing is a passion or compulsive (or a compulsive passion?). I do know that I can obsess over communicating with the world, but that seems normal for someone who feels like a social misfit as much as I do. I hope I don’t need to say I’m really no different from any other person when it comes to the nature of humans. Even though I still have my human nature after receiving a new nature from our creator, it doesn’t mean that I don’t fall prey to my old nature’s deceptive lure. That’s the catch… it’s deceptive!
[I suspect that my brain is still suffering some degree of fatigue, so please forgive me if its difficult to follow what I'm saying in this post.]
Stress may tire one out, but a faulty reaction to stress is what brings fatigue more than anything else. Its logical that fatigue can easily create a vicious cycle, because of its ability to increase things like: obsessive/compulsive behavior, forgetfulness, indecision, confusion, insecurity, insomnia, anxiety, emotional upset, etc. Naturally, it’s the weak who are easy prey. As the population of those who lose inner-strength increase, the demand for an external health industry has to increase along with it. Then as that demand increases, more people will gravitate towards wanting to be on the ’supply’ wagon (by being a nurse, doctor, pharmacist, psychologist, psychiatrist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, etc.). You can’t expect otherwise when you don’t get to the root cause of things. No one will go to the core if he has not been broken to the core.¹
As soon as I realize (by the grace of God) how I’m fooling myself, then whatever fatigue producing thing it is that I’m doing ends. It sounds simple, but unless someone knows what I’m talking about (by way of personal experience), it really isn’t easy to stay away from self-deception. This trickery doesn’t just happen spiritually, it also happens physically. I’ll start with a physical example and end this post with a spiritual one.
Here’s a physical example:
How insomnia affects me provides a good example of the way a brain can fool the body. It’s not unusual for someone to not feel sleepy while laying in bed at night during a bout with insomnia. During such times, the sufferer is advised to get out of bed to go somewhere else and do something relaxing. I haven’t read anywhere the suggestion to stay laying in bed and wait for sleep to come. I know that when I am able to feel sleepy, my insomnia is diminishing. Severe insomnia totally destroys my ability to feel sleepy. The worst part is that the only time I can feel sleepy during chronic attacks of insomnia is when I’m driving on the road (that’s why I refuse to drive when I don’t get sleep). My guess as to the reason for that is because of how safe I feel when I’m in the driver’s seat and alone in a car. If it wasn’t for my being able to lock myself in my car, as fast as I did, and drive (back in the early 70’s), I would have been murdered (I had already been physically assaulted). One intense episode like that is enough to create the permanent conditioned response of relaxation to driving (provided I’m not driving in heavy traffic where you can get killed by aggressive drivers).
My point is, it is not normal for me to feel sleepy before I fall asleep when I’m dealing with insomnia. That’s what makes it so wicked and deceptive! I can EASILY stay constantly awake for even as long as one week because the longer I go without sleep, the less likely I will feel sleepy. What happens then instead is my ability to think shuts down. As my thinking ability shuts down, I live on auto-pilot.² Auto-pilot wouldn’t be so bad if my memory wouldn’t start scrambling up. If I attempted to drive in such a condition, my brain could do such things as think green means stop and red means go. Here’s the most unbelievable part which might scare some people: I can be in that chronic of a state with insomnia without other people noticing it! I can appear ‘normal’ and ‘okay’ (unless of course someone catches me doing something bizarre like locking myself out of my house while getting the mail) not only to other people, but also to myself.
People who don’t understand my insomnia are the ones who tell me things like, “Go take a nap,” or “Go take a sleeping pill.” The effect of almost any pill on me is worse than what it’s supposed to relieve. Maybe that’s the consequence of being properly sensitive? I say that not in arrogance, but in consideration of the possibility that true health demands balance to be maintained from an internal source rather than external aids. I believe, the more the body relies on outside help, the less it can adjust itself on its own (generally speaking). I do not typically allow myself to think, “What pill could I take to bring me relief?” I’ve learned that a sleeping pill would make my insomnia last longer. An anti-anxiety pill would make me more anxious. An anti-depressant would depress me. I can only tolerate pain relief meds on occasion, but the price I pay for not waiting out a headache is more trips to the bathroom since it weakens my bladder.
When something goes awry with either my physical or mental health, I want to remember to ask myself, “Now where is the faith that God gave me not being practiced [exercised]?” I’m not saying that all sickness is because of some sinful behavior done, but I will say that any sickness can be a temptation to not trust and obey God. Its also can be a symptom of not having confidence in His word and humbly surrendering to His will.
Here’s a spiritual example:
Unless I publicly confess where my thoughts are, no one could know what I’m dwelling on. Even I may not realize when I’m not heeding the wise advice in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” Rather than magnifying the LORD and His wonderful promises, I recently slipped into focusing inward upon examining my own behavior, so much so that I ended up stuck in that mire. Just like a person caught in quicksand will sink the more he tries to escape, I ended up becoming fatigued by trying to save myself. The more fatigued I got, the harder I tried. The harder I tried, the more fatigued I got. Just like I said in my post Weird Depression, I wasn’t aware that I was focusing on the symptom rather than the cause. As soon as that spiritual deception was uncovered, I was back on solid ground — tired and exhausted, but no longer trapped in fatigue!
Yes, being an Aspie in a neurotypical world is stressful. That’s no reason to be ungrateful for Aspergers. The world is too egocentric to know how much it needs its Asperger population.³ Its how we Aspies respond to our challenges that will determine how healthy and strong we become or how vulnerable and beaten down we can get. Even though neurodiversity exists among mankind, we’re all subject to the same spiritual battles.
¹Whether or not one believes that mankind is born with a depraved [unwholesome] nature does not change why God says in Psalm 34:18, “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit,” and in Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” That’s also why He said in Matthew 9:22, “…thy faith [the faith of Christ] hath made thee whole [wholesome/healthy].” Stay in the faith of Christ = Stay healthy. Deviate from the faith of Christ = Deviate from health. The only exception to this law of God (found in Exodus 15:26, “…If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee [the true children of God], which I have brought upon the Egyptians [nonbelievers; including false Christians]: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.”) is when God has His own reasons (for which He owes us no explanation for) to use sickness for His purposes. God is not evil; Satan is the evil one. God is able to take that which is evil and use it for His own glory, but without His faith gifted to us, Satan will always be able to deceive natural man. If you don’t like these words, its not me you’re hurting; its yourself. I’m only a messenger. I’m not the author of life.
²My last insomnia attack lasted through the week of January the 19th. After that Monday, I did not begin to reverse that insomnia (the 1½ hours of sleep Friday morning wasn’t enough to reverse it) until Sunday morning around 2:45 am (that’s when I slept for four hours). Each night after that, I was able to enjoy a little more time sleeping. I took advantage of that extreme exhaustion to experiment with a change. For years, I thought I needed some type of background noise to sleep (like a fan, the radio, or rain). Because I saturated my brain that week with overexposure to electronic stimulation from things like television, radio, computers, artificial lights, etc., due to not being able to sleep, silence (combined with avoiding anything electrically powered) began to physically hurt my head. On Sunday, Jan. 25th, I quit cold turkey to using anything electrically powered on to help me sleep while I am in bed at night. I also went back to using my ultra-warm heavy oversized down comforter (Aspies relax under that kind of weight). I’d sleep, but wake up periodically throughout the night feeling like its time to get up and start the day. The time on the clock would tell me it wasn’t possible that I could be rested, even though my brain and body were lying to me. I ignored everything except for the time. Experts will tell you to ignore the clock when you can’t sleep, but for me, that’s what helped me to redeem sleep! I don’t know if that will always work, but I don’t care right now because what’s important is that it worked.
Read more about how I deal with insomnia in my Sleeping With Insomnia post.
³If Aspies where the majority, I’m sure the reverse would be true. Adult Aspies could just as easily think that the world would be better off without neurotypicals. Just because we think so differently doesn’t mean we can’t function harmoniously together. The problems aren’t really from the head… they come from the heart.
