How My IQ Proves I’m Utterly Inept

I hear and read comments on IQ all over the internet that range from prideful (I have an IQ of 150!) to the defensive (You just think your smarter me.) to very disrespectful (You’re just stupid!) to blunt logical truth (You know your IQ doesn’t make you better, right?). The comments go on and on and things can get pretty tense between those with differing opinions. As someone with a higher IQ I want to set the record straight with this humorous anecdote on how completely unintelligent I can be but first a little background!

I am a late DX Autistic woman who was given an IQ test during my assessment. They do this to rule out intellectual disability that may be mimicking Autism. I was okay with that as it makes logical sense to rule things out that may be a differential diagnosis. During my ASD evaluation, I discovered that IQ is on a spectrum as well! My IQ at the time was 113-122 giving me a median IQ “score” of 118. 

It was explained to me that IQ can change in a person from circumstance to circumstance and it’s completely subjective. Since I had taken the IQ test during the Christmas Season (major stress), recently melted down from sensory overstimulation that the Holiday Season brings, and didn’t sleep the night before I possibly could improve the score if I were in a more optimal situation. (I have not attempted to do this and don’t intend to do this just for ego-boosting reasons if I am given one again for DX purposes, so be it!) However, I was also told that if I were put in a more stressful situation then I may score much lower. From that I know for a fact that IQ is never static.  

Now, in the recent past, my whole house (dogs, husband, and myself) had Norovirus. During this time in order to keep hydrated, I had gotten a bottle of Gatorade. When I was finished with the Gatorade I refilled the bottle with Mio and water and drank it. Refilled it and put it in the refrigerator to chill. I was being a responsible patient and doing what I needed to do, no problem, right? Wrong. 

I forgot about that water because my ADHD causes me to forget about everything and went on about my Autistic existence. A few weeks later I’m throwing up more than a puppy with motion sickness on a roller coaster. I ended up at Urgent Care on an IV and sent home with a pocket full of anti-nausea meds so I stopped throwing up. It was very worrisome as I had been fighting a UTI in the previous month. 

I got home and popped into a chat room to let some online friends know how I was and it dawned on me as I was talking to a medical professional in the group. I had drunk the water in the fridge on a particularly hot day after I had run out of ice. It was chilled and I didn’t think anything of it and I drank it mainly because I wasn’t thinking. I cringed! It was far, far from an intelligent thing to do but it made perfect sense as I was the only one to be reinfected in the house! 

I, of high average to superior intelligence, had given myself the worst case of vomiting to the point of dehydration with the full knowledge that the bottle of water was contaminated. I felt completely helpless and surprised I could even keep myself alive but I had simply forgotten because while my IQ may be impressive my section scores revealed more. 

My first section, Verbal Comprehension, was 114-125 which is Superior. I accredit my desire to communicate effectively on my high vocabulary and knowledge of what words mean. The second score I received was on Perceptual Reasoning was 104-117 which is High Average which probably is common in those that have a high pattern recognition in Autism. Now the bump in the road that took those two amazing scores down was my Working Memory which came in at a towering 83-96. This was the kink in the hose, the wrench in the machine, my Achilles Tendon. My working memory was Low Average. I take twice as long to learn something than my peer group.

My ADHD prevented me from getting a higher score and that was in a quiet office with no distractions. If I had taken the IQ test at a food court in a busy mall my scores could be drastically lower simply because of the overstimulation that would undoubtedly occur. My answers may be sound and intelligent but my response time and inability to ignore the surrounding noises due to Sensory Processing Disorder would make me seem like there wasn’t anyone home. Not to mention my ability to get the information out in an order way would be negatively affected.

Remember, that ditzy blonde that you make fun of could be a brainiac that can shame you under the table when it comes to “intelligence” and it’s only her ADHD that gets in the way. If you put her and you in a different environment you could easily be calling her boss. However, there may be a guy that doesn’t have much education or knowledge but his memory and ability to retain information on one topic could easily lead to the same outcome. That brilliant composer may be at a 10th grade reading level. You never know!

In a nutshell, IQ means little in the bigger picture, as long as you treat everyone with dignity and respect you are succeeding more than you will ever realize! It’s a hard thing to admit that I didn’t live up to my IQ but it needs to be said so people know the truth about what makes people intelligent and what doesn’t, like my attention span and memory! 

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Till Death Do Us Part

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Today, I am compelled to the keyboard with a heavy heart. We once again have “mercy killing in the name of love”. A mother, to use the term loosely, killed her son because she was stressed and overwhelmed by his Autism. In the past years, there have been increased news reports of parents killing their Autistic children. Why?

Now I’m not one to simply say it’s just an increase in occurrence, just like I’m not one to believe that “compassion murders” haven’t happened before now. They always have happened but the reported frequency has been increasing in recent years. I would like to say this is because we have more awareness of this insidious behavior but the responses that have always been the same from the ableist, typical, non-disability crowd have proved otherwise. That is overwhelming compassion for the murder(s) because they had it hard as a parent or caregiver. Nevermind the fact that the disabled person is the victim of abled egoism and homicide! Oh, think of the horror to perish at the hands of the only person you trust on the planet! The general public romanticizes unsolicited mercy killings, but at what cost?

In a very tongue in cheek way, I am going to say it’s my Autistic Empathy that reasons that when a person engages in consenting acts of sex with the intent to reproduce, the lack of concern if they are to conceive offspring because they feel that they are ready to be parents or even just accepting you are pregnant and choose to keep the pregnancy, you enter a covenant with the child/ren that you have conceived (or adopted in some cases). It’s an eternal agreement with nature and whatever higher power you may believe in, whether moral, ethical, the universe, or religion, that you help that child thrive. In times where the child is born disabled, it’s a covenant that we all should honor until we leave this Earth.

We have an entire section of society that frowns on terminating viable pregnancies even if there is a disability found prior to birth, however, this pro-life outrage is often absent in the wake of a mercy killing. If one is not for terminating a pregnancy on the basis that it is still a human why are we okay with killing a postnatal 10-year-old with a disability? The answer is simple and can be explained with the boiled frog metaphor.

A “Cliff Note Explanation” for those who did not click the link! There is a myth, or fable if you prefer, that if you put a frog into a pot of hot water then that frog will jump, fight, and try to flee for its life but you put a frog in a pot of frog friendly tempered water and gradually heat it up the frog will allow itself to be cooked to death.

This is exactly what is happening with society in regard to mercy killings! We relate and feel bad for the first one we heard that made national news, often it’s a romantic expose on a husband that killed his wife “out of love” and not being able “to see her suffer”. The next one, well, it’s not as bad as the first or it may be worse than the first, either way, you reason, they were under stress as well and people act out of character under stress. You understand how someone would kill an adult child that was afflicted such as theirs was. The disabled adult is in a better place now. Soon, we learn of another carer snapping under duress and murdering a loved one, a child, and we feel for them, relate, empathize. You reason that the other two were acceptable and so this is as well. You can see yourself in their position and your heart aches for them, that they had to make that decision.

Years, go by and we keep hearing of these heart wrenching decisions. All of the abled society deems it necessary that these are acceptable murders that should be forgiven. You’re consider yourself pro-life and against abortion and assisted suicide but thoughts turn to the disabled in your own family. The last time you attended a March for *Insert Hypocritical Cause Here* or convention your Autistic child made it impossible to be there. They were clearly in extreme distress and you just “can’t watch them suffer anymore”. Instead of doing what is rational and logical in the name of love which is adapting to them being in your life by adjusting your lifestyle to enable them to thrive, your mind turns to murder for mercy. You’re a martyr in your plight and God and society would understand! You focus on your perception of quality life, you don’t consider that this person, this human that loves you and trusts you to cherish them and help them live may not even perceive themselves as in need of death to escape. All they know is that when you enter the room their heart soars. 

I will end this entry there because without saying the people that have allowed themselves to be peer pressured into seeing the murder of the disabled as acceptable are incorrigible monsters. We may have a disability but at least we aren’t morally inept.

Until Death Do Us Part may we all join hands and enable each and every human to survive regardless of life circumstances.

Extreme Stims During An Autistic Meltdown!

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Most would agree that the Autistic Meltdown is the most notorious symptom related to Autism. An Autistic Meltdown is when the Autistic Nervous System reacts to being overwhelmed by environmental stimulation. These can range from external reasons (such as bright light) to internal ones (such as panic when plans change abruptly). Often this reaction manifests in an apparent display of intense feelings. Passion, Rage, or Overly Silly and Giggly. Meltdowns manifest in many ways. Which makes sense because humans overall are creatures with feelings and our emotions lead to their display. As with NeuroTypicals, the NeuroDivergent comes in a plethora of variations.

When Melting Down the Autistic Nervous System is being overstimulated and is interpreting that overstimulation as pain. It will do whatever it can in order to stop that pain. This is where Extreme Stimming comes into play.

During an intense Autistic Meltdown, Autistics both young, old, male, and female may engage in Extreme Stims commonly referred to as Self Injurious Behavior (SIB). I prefer the term Extreme Stim because the stimming isn’t intended to cause injury or harm. It’s meant to flip the figurative kill switch and bring you out of fight or flight mode. When Melting Down the Autistic Nervous System is being overstimulated and is interpreting that overstimulation as pain. It will do whatever it can in order to stop that pain. This is where Extreme Stimming comes into play.

I’ll explain but first I’m going to explain it to you in a smaller, more understandable, and way more relatable, way. I’ll use baseball as a life reference. 

Baseball in and of itself is a painful experience and I’m pretty sure most people were unreasonably forced to play baseball (or some form of sports that included a ball in school). When you or someone else was hit by the ball either you’d instinctively rub the area or your gym teacher or another kid would tell you to rub the injury and rubbing where the ball hit would surprisingly help the pain even though it makes no sense at all, or does it?

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In a nutshell when you get hit by a ball the signal that you were hit by the ball travels up the nervous system to your brain. The brain sends signals back and produces pain. When you gently stimulate the injury by rubbing, shaking, or “walking it off” it sends a signal up the same nerves and interrupts the nervous system process and signals from the pain and this helps make it feel better.

The same thing goes for the nervous system pain during an Autistic Meltdown. As I said before during a Meltdown the Autistic Nervous System interprets overstimulation as pain and reacted as though it’s on fire. It panics and senses impending doom. (I’m not being overly dramatic this is how an Autistic Meltdown feels psychologically and you can’t control it at will, you just go along with it because you have no choice!) In response, the nervous system does the only universally wide instinctive thing that we all share. It seeks out and applies stimulation that will stop that pain. Since the nervous system is on fire and in panic it seeks out stimuli that are more extreme than the environmental assault the Autistic Person is going through. Head hitting, screaming, rocking, head banging, pulling hair, stabbing oneself, etc. are all ways that this can be done. These extreme stims help calm the nervous system by stopping the pain with alternative simulation very much like rubbing an injury.

Extreme Stims also provide enough stimulation that activates the Endorphin System which is the body’s natural pain killer. There are many studies on Endorphins and Autism including evidence that Autistic’s naturally have Endorphin Deficiencies. Which would explain why our nervous systems panic in the first place! That’s for another article though.

Helpful Hints:

If you, or someone you know, experience Extreme Stims that are dangerous, potentially dangerous, or life-threatening you can learn replacement activities that will produce the same neurological reaction when applied when you are still in the rumbling stage and still maintain control over yourself. Replacement Stims may or may not prevent or lessen a Meltdown overall. If you have the opportunity please consult an Occupational Therapist or other Expert in Sensory Input.

You will want to focus on things that get your endorphins flowing. I have had luck with running and sprinting. (If you do take your stimming outdoors make sure you take a sedative that will calm you but not put you to sleep just in case you do sense a loss of control approaching while out but it’s even better if you have someone with you. I suggest both. These are precautions in case you encounter negative attention.) Throwing soft objects. Rocking. Pounding my legs with my fists (up to hard enough to bruise but not so hard as to cause swelling). Vigorously shaking my hands. Pacing. Sex. Jumping and coming down with force. Slapping a firm surface with an open palm. Applying pressure to my temporal nerve until uncomfortable. Hot shower. Basically, anything that may overwhelm the environmental overstimulation and produce Endorphins with little to no injury is the best. If you can match it up with the type of sensory input you crave, even better! Do this from the beginning of rumbling and throughout the Meltdown. I wish you luck!