Blurry-eyed boy
These days, if you catch me after I’ve been busy for a while, you may find me to be initially unresponsive. Many people over the years have commented that I seem to be away in a little day dream world.
From my perspective it’s no day dream, its more of a shut down.
Let me explain what it feels like:
My eyes lose focus. This is perhaps the single biggest clue that I can read these days to let me know that this sort of shut down is happening. I can cause my eyes to lose focus at will, which feels very calming, but typically when the sort of experience I’m describing happens, it happens automatically.
Despite my lack of visual focus, my eyes will still be looking at something. Something – anything – will be the centre of my vision. This un-focussed focus will move over time from object to object within my sphere of vision.
I will typically be still, and I’m often seated. If not, then my reactions will be distinctly dulled and slow.
My usually very sensitive ears will stop hearing the noises around me.
My brain will be still. Instead of the usual stream of thoughts that race through my head, I’ll find that I’m not really thinking at all. Indeed, I’m not really interacting with my environment at all.
All of this happens automatically, and without me realising it is happening. It feels comfortable, calm and safe. A strange blank contentment fills me.
So, when it looks like I’m day dreaming and you come and ask me a question, its perhaps no surprise that you don’t get a coherent or quick answer. Before I can fully comprehend you, all of my sensory and thought processing has to restart itself, and that takes a few seconds. Indeed, my ability to think sometimes seem to take a few minutes to re-engage properly, almost like I have been asleep.
It isn’t like being asleep though. I’m still aware, to a degree, of the unfocussed world around me. My body has just chosen to shut itself down.
The cause, of course is too much sensory input, and perhaps too much stress on occasion. Rather than face a continued onslaught that my body has started to find uncomfortable, it quietly shuts down, without consulting me.
Whilst my introspection on this trait is new, my experience of it isn’t. I’ve always experienced the blurred eyes, and people have always told me that I appear to be off in my own little world.
In my current world of intense self-discovery, this feels like a wonderful relief. It can be easy to worry that by turning inwards, I’m making my symptoms worse – a self fulfilling prophecy of autistic cut-off from reality.
The blurry-eyed boy has become a blurry-eyed man.
My autism is just the same as it ever was, I can just see it for what it is so much better these days.
Does sensory overload cause you a similar feeling of shutting down? Have people always told you that you appear to be off in a day dream?
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4 Comments to “Blurry-eyed boy”
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Isn’t day-dreaming when you have conscious control and go into other worlds (usually imaginative: yours or somebody else’s), not only the world of shutdown, which isn’t really a world at all, or the real world and very dulled (as you have said)?
This shutdown thing is like a computer having a screen-saver on and then somebody moves the mouse or taps the keyboard. And of course we have to shut them down properly so that the hard drive and BIOS can work, and the RAM can process.
There was a really excellent site explaining shut down in an autistic sense.
http://www.shutdownsandstressinautism.com/
Look on page 2 and see if that sounds like you. And also Appendix 2 of the Shutdowns and Stress paper (the non-academic one) describes reactions from adults – at least a dozen.
Hi Adelaide,
Yes – day dreaming is exactly as you’ve described it. I think you may have misinterpreted me a little.
I was trying to explain that other adults have often commented that I appeared to be day dreaming, whilst my own experience of how I was feeling was very different.
I’ve not come across the site you mention before. I’ll check it out.
James
Hi James,
I’ve never experienced what you’re describing, and I’m very envious. It sounds quite lovely. My shutdowns usually happen when I’m past meltdown and into complete exhaustion. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it’s like being buried under a very heavy weight. I used to call it depression, but it’s really not. It’s just my system grinding to a complete halt.
I’ve heard many autistic people say that they’ve been told to stop day-dreaming on a regular basis, but that hasn’t been my experience. I seldom day-dream. In fact, I’m at the other extreme. If I can’t focus on anything in particular, I’m hyper-vigilant about everything. I’m certain that it derives from being an abuse survivor; in my childhood, there was no room for day-dreaming. I had to pay attention constantly, just to protect myself. Fortunately, I don’t suffer much from the hyper-vigilance anymore. I’ve had enough years of safety that much of the fear has been worn away.
Hi Rachel,
The shutdown feeling isn’t as great as it may appear, unfortunately. Yes, it undeniably feels nice, but it really interferes with every day life. I go into the state pretty much automatically, and often don’t see that I’ve done it. Much time can be lost due to it.
Of course, this is most likely my body telling me that I need to take it easy and recover for a little while, which will be doing me good. If I’m in the middle of a busy day and need to get work done, it can be really annoying.
I’m not complaining – just trying to show how it can be as much of a nuisance as it can be a good thing too.
James