Unbridled Passion

When I was young I used to throw my temper a lot, and it wasn’t just my temper I threw. On a couple of occasions my Dad came home to find the remains of the alarm clock from beside my bed strewn over the driveway. I also remember throwing a large horseshoe magnet at my sister when I got cross with her once. Fortunately for her she ducked. Unfortunately she was sitting in front of a large plate glass window.

Tantrums were a feature of my life up until I was about 11, after which time I learned to bottle up my anger and keep it inside, much to everyone’s relief. Not having the ability to manage or properly express anger is one of the things that goes with Aspergers; and by express, I mean to verbalise so that others can sympathise and so that steam is let off. People used to delight in teasing me at school so I would get angry. I would fly into a completely uncontrolled rage and, by the time I reached 11 – I was big for my age – it needed a small team of people to hold me down. Once I remember throwing a boy across a classroom where he hit his head on the lockers and had to go to hospital and have stitches.

My reaction after that time to things that upset me was to go and hide and disappear inside myself (and preferably go to sleep). It is only relatively recently that gained the ability to express how I feel in words, and this has happened since I was healed.

I remember going on a marriage seminar (before I was healed or knew I had Aspergers) where they gave out a sheet of paper entitled “How do you feel today?”. On it were cartoon faces with words underneath that named the feeling depicted by the face. To me, this was about as useful as a Russian-Chinese dictionary because neither the faces nor the words actually meant anything (to a large extent, not completely so). This I found really depressing, along with the rest of the course. Thankfully, I now instinctively understand the faces depicted, and so the words can take on meaning.

But anger and other negative emotions weren’t the only things that didn’t get proper treatment and attention. I used to view the world as a set of extremes: good or bad and nothing in between, no shades of grey. Also the usual feedback mechanisms that go on between people to limit what I call the sins of the heart didn’t work very well. By sins of the heart I mean pride, jealousy, selfishness, resentment and so on. For example, when I was 8 I did my first Maths exam at school and came top of the class with 92%. I went round telling everyone just how brilliant I was, not realising that one just doesn’t do that kind of thing. I remember this because one boy kept saying, “You’re boasting. Stop boasting.” He kept on until I eventually cottoned on.

This whole way of being didn’t really win friends or influence people. In fact one person remarked that I must have been overlooked when God was handing out tact and diplomacy, and that was not that long ago. I have always tended to call a spade a spade and be quite direct. This can be advantage in many situations, and I am still learning when that is, and how to be more diplomatic when it isn’t.