Theme
7:38pm May 29, 2014
Anonymous asked: On your other blog you mentioned using the scarf to maintain your hold on reality. May I ask how you use it that way?

I use a lot of symbolic objects for things like that.  I have an easier time attaching a concept to an object and then relating to it through that object, than I have relating to the concept on its own in my head. 

So the concrete, physical, sensory experience of the scarf, stands in for the abstract, idea-based, intellectual idea of being connected to reality.  Those abstract ideas involve taking a lot of mental steps.  But I represent them with the scarf and the s

I also have a stone that a friend gave me that helps me feel safer when I’ve been having nightmares, and makes it easier for me to go back to sleep again afterwards.  Just by holding it in my hand.

Donna Williams talks a lot about the way that autistic people who have trouble holding complex thoughts in our heads (or who do so with some amount of effort and pain involved) often end up holding those thoughts in objects, and that makes it easier for us to represent the abstract as something concrete.  

But I think even nonautistic people, and autistic people who think more abstractly, can do things like this as well.  There’s something very powerful about using physical, tangible reminders of things, people, and ideas.  I do it all the time without even meaning to.  All the things I create  have complicated relationships with me, and many layers of meaning and personality to them.