Being Autistic Is Physiological
Sometimes I think about things that should be self-evident, and certainly are to me, that I wonder whether or not they are sufficiently self-evident to other people, especially those who are not themselves actually autistic. This happened again today, while I was at my regular brunch out.
Take a look at this photo of the main room at John Street Cafe here in the St. Johns neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. On either side of that archway on the right sits a table just big enough for one or two people. Those are my regular tables. The closer of the two is a mirror of the first, in that the unseen chair is in a corner similar to the far chair at the far table.
I sit at one or the other of these tables because of those corners. I sit with my back to the corner, walls on two sides of me, which dramatically cuts down on the risk of the so-called spotlight effect wherein you very much feel not just that you are being watched but that you are being judged by those watching. It doesn’t have to be true. It’s often just part of the autistic nervous system and its penchant for hypervigilance.
I’ve mentioned before, although maybe not yet here, that much as I’ve become fond of using the term bodymind, I’ve started to refer less to the autistic brain and more to the autistic nervous system because I think it better communicates to people what we talk about when we talk about being autistic. It’s not somehow “merely” a psychological state of being, let alone is that state “all in your head”.
My normal, resting heart rate (a thing I now know because of the refurbished Apple Watch) on average over the past six months is 67 BPM. Today when I arrived for brunch, both of those tables were taken. If you look at that photo again, you’ll see a shallow table beneath an arched window at the front of the cafe. Nowadays there’s a table there. That’s where I had to sit today: on display in effectively every direction.
My heart rate during the time I was there? Anywhere from 100 to 122 BPM. Some portion of that would have been accounted for by the fact that it was busier and therefore noisier, despite my earplugs, but on a more normal brunch outing (because just being out of the apartment and in public has an effect in and of itself) my heart rate would be somewhere in the 80-90 BPM range. My two regular tables are among the robust defaults that help keep my nervous system in balance.
This, among other reasons, is why I now take care to refer to my nervous system rather than just to my brain. Bodyminds are intricately connected and networked collections of parts and processes. Being out and about as an autistic person has real, physiological implications. Since being autistic (and not just being in autistic burnout) in large part is about having to engage in careful resource management, it’s important both that I know this and that other people know this, because being out and about as an autistic person doesn’t come for free.
What’s most frustrating, I guess, is that this sort of physiological impact of a disruption to my robust defaults means that the benefits of what’s meant to be a relaxing, midweek routine are tempered somewhat, often making me contemplate whether it’d be better, on balance, not even to have brunch out at all if I can’t have one of those two tables—a decision that then, in turn, would have an effect on my mood.
The daily calculus of being autistic can be deeply exhausting in ways that it’s very difficult to get people to understand.