When choosing holiday decorations stay away from stimulating colors such as reds, oranges, and yellows. When everything else in the world is stimulating and overwhelming you will want to be able to go home to a sensory-friendly safe zone. Blues, deep purples, creams, greys, dusty pinks, and other soothing colors are good choices to help reduce stimulation for Autistics during the holiday season.
In the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven chose red and green for Freddy Krueger’s sweater because he had read in Scientific American that red and green are difficult for humans to perceive at the same time. This is due to green being a calming color and red being a stimulating color. Wes Craven used this to his advantage by dressing Mr. Krueger in his signature red and green sweater in order to induce discomfort in audiences so it enhanced the perception of anxiety and fear when Freddy Kreuger was on screen. You may be asking what the heck does that have to do with the holiday season, right? Well, the two colors that are associated with winter holidays the most are red and green. When we are exposed to these colors, whether or not it is in a horror movie, we still have a difficult time processing green, a calming color, and red, a stimulating color, at the same time and it increases our anxiety and discomfort during the holiday season. To help diminish the anxiety associated with the holidays ban red and green combinations from your holiday decorations at home. This also goes for other stimulating/calming color combinations such as red and blue, yellow and blue, orange and green, yellow and green, and other similar conflicting color combinations. Mix relaxing colors with each other such as grey and dusty blue or choose monochromatic decorations in a calming color.
Skip the metallics! We all love tinsel and glitter. We love the mirrors under candles and the sparkling table runners. Unfortunately, our nervous systems think otherwise. Shiny metallic decorations can increase stimulation, as do mirror ornaments, and other reflective decorations. The sensory experience they provide and the light they reflect can be disorienting and lead to overstimulation and rumbling. We may not even realize that may be the culprit of our stressed-out mood. Try skipping the shiny stuff in your holiday home decorating and you may see your anxiety go down.
Be super picky about the lights you choose to use on your tree or windows! Forget about the super bright LED’s. No Autistic needs bright blue/white light keeping them up all winter long. That defeats the purpose of winter! Instead, stay with lights that complement your calmer decoration colors. Once again you will want to stay away from contrasting colors so if you have a green tree shy away from red lights. However, oddly, red lights in and of themselves are not stimulating. It’s actually quite the opposite. Red lights won’t stimulate the brain at night and disrupt sleep patterns. Red lights are a good choice for around windows where light may shine into a bedroom window possibly keeping people awake. Good colors for trees are golden, clear, blue, and green lights all the same color or even intermixed with purple, orb style lights that give the tree more of a glow are also a good choice. Multicolor lights can add to increased stimulation when mixed with the colors of other ornaments and it may be wise to avoid them. Also, consider forgoing chasing or dancing lights.
Don’t stress about decorating your entire house. The point of decorating is for you to celebrate as you see appropriate. If all you want is a tree with clear lights then by all means just have a tree with clear lights! If all you desire to put up for the holidays is a wreath on your front door and nothing more then go for it! The point is to lessen your meltdown potential during the holiday season by making it a sensory-friendly haven for you. It’s all up to you and what your unique Autistic nervous system can handle.
Many of us with ADHD go from item to item, thing to thing, or/and wander about much to the dismay of out parents and the rest of society. We seem hyperactive and unruly when in reality we aren’t. So if we aren’t hyperactive, why do we do this? What the hell is going on in our brain?!
I can help answer that! When we first experience an activity, food, item, or other first time experiences our brains pump out more dopamine in order to assist in deciding whether or not we like an experience. This extra boost is specific to when we experience a new situation in life. First taste, first encounter, first experiences are a little boost in the chemical that ADHD brains are deficient in and that’s dopamine.
A person with ADHD will continually go from one first experience to the other in order to boost our dopamine output. This assists us in “calming down” and focusing. We aren’t compelled by being too active and energetic, instead, we are drawn to the boost of brain chemicals a new experience provides. We will go from on experience to another like a moth to a flame trying to correct the imbalance in our head. That’s it, that’s all I’ve got.
This post is brought to you by ADHD symptoms. I need to go find a new experience so I’m going to go now. Bye!
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!
BeautiDivergence 