Finding glimmers of light

throughout the fluctuating darkness of autistic perimenopause.

My recent glimmers!

Photo descriptions: Top left: A shelf with my Napoleon Dynamite figurine, a plant pot I made in a recent pottery class, a fidget toy in a brass coloured dish. Top middle: a frozen pizza inside a box (my son's safe food). Top right: Taskmaster on TV with a packet of prawn cocktail crisps in my hand. Middle left: Toby, my one year old seal point Ragdoll. Middle middle: Harry, my two year old blue point Ragdoll. Middle right: a Monarch butterfly I photographed whilst hanging out laundry. Bottom left: My spider plants with lots of tiny spiderlings! Bottom middle: my watch displaying a sunny local weather forecast. Bottom right: a reupholstery project I have completed this week.

Full disclosure: I am struggling to compose a piece regarding, ironically, my own struggles, and how I have asked for help. I have been listening to podcasts on the topic of overcoming writer’s block, so here I am - just writing to move through the immense anxiety I am facing from my innate demand avoidance. When the only thing I want to do in life is advocate through writing, my mind is sent straight into panic mode and my hands refuse to comply with my desire to write or type something. Anything!

So I have been thinking about a different topic - one that can boost our spirits and temporarily relieve us of our day to day stresses. Well, hopefully distract us from them for a moment at least…

Autistic glimmers are wonderful things - intricate details we see in the world that can spark joy and bolster emotional safety within our overloaded and dysregulated nervous systems. Perhaps they are the opposite of triggers for us?

Our capacity to see things that others miss is an enormous strength of our neurology. Evolutionarily speaking, whilst the neurotypicals were all sitting around the campfire getting lost in their banal small talk, we were busy watching over our shoulders for the next impending threat, and alerting everyone to danger. I like to think this would have made us well respected within the group, since our heightened alertness (now pathologised in many autistics as co-occuring anxiety disorders) would have been essential to the survival of many.

Unfortunately my tendency to see things non-autistics miss, or choose to overlook, results in being told that I am an “over thinker”. This comment is usually a criticism, but I take it as a compliment. It is certainly preferential to me than the alternative trait of “under thinking”.

Looking for glimmers in every day life could be likened to the toxic positivity movement of looking everywhere for opportunities to express gratitude. For example, “Oh, I am so grateful to have this enormous mountain of laundry to deal with - it shows that I can clothe my family.” (Urgh. Meanwhile my executive functioning capacity shrinks before my eyes, and I just regard the mountain as a new geological feature within my home. For which I shall also refuse to see gratitude.)

Rather, autistic glimmers can be visual things we can see in our environment. I love to see one of my cats stretched out on a sunny strip of carpet. I love to walk past my Napoleon Dynamite figurine I have had for twenty plus years and press the button to see what he has to say: “gosh!”, “lucky!” and “but my lips hurt real bad!” Gratitude practices are sub-optimal for my autistic perimenopausal brain fog. Getting to the end of another exhausting day and having to list all the things I am soooo grateful for is a fruitless task. I can barely recall my own name, never mind how I have been so #blessed today. *insert eye roll emoji*

Glimmers are great for autists because we can spot them in the moment, they can delight us without us needing to share our joy verbally, and they don’t rely on object permanence or working memory. They are both instantaneous and fleeting. We don’t need to know anyone else’s opinion on them, nor share them on social media (only feeling validated if we receive enough likes). They can be private and niche, related to our “spins” (special interests”) or not.

Any spontaneous experience can offer up a glimmer: when the shower is set to the *perfect* temperature, freshly applied oestrogen patches not yet sticking irritatingly to my clothes, saying the same word/phrase over and over again just because it feels good to say and hear. Listening to the same song over and over and over and over and over and over again. Replaying a podcast and laughing at it yet again because autistic perimenopause has rendered me devoid of any recollection of dialogue and punchlines (this is also why I have had to take a break from performing stand up comedy…).

But wait! There’s more: standing on a particularly soft and springy rug. Having a clean strip of floor to pace. Getting into a good groove whilst rocking/swaying. Okay, now my list appears to be overlapping with my most go-to stims (self-stimulatory actions), and I certainly believe my stims are delightfully glimmerful!

Glimmers aren’t all down too chance. They can be engineered within your home by having favourite photos or artwork on display that always cheer you up. Cracking open the window to listen to the soothing sound of rainfall (although this only works when it’s raining). Washing your favourite mug ready for every hot drink, if you are having a particularly low day. Writing on a fresh, crisp page of your daily gratitude journal (ha, just jokes! *insert vomiting emoji*)

I would love to know in the comments what your favourite autistic glimmers have been lately. I wish you a glimmertastic day!