Mental health – Corpus

Asperger’s works

9 November 2020 1 Comment

Grant Beaven

Let’s build a robot. A humanoid robot, one which might integrate. Where do we start? Two arms, two legs, can walk, can speak. It should have the values of an ordinary person. Integration is paramount – the robot’s ours, after all – so we’ll program it with care based on six human motivations:

Integrity: the robot will always seek its output zenith;
Discomfort/pain: a mechanism for guidance;
Grace/graciousness: the study and application of empathy will be in front of its robot mind;
Duty: the will of its owners will bind it, utterly;
Shame/anxiety: to ensure all other system parameters function at full power;
Hedonism – of course we want a happy-appearing robot!

And so, we have our creation. In fact, we have me. Asperger’s Syndrome has made a robot of me. I try so hard to be like you, I learn your systems, your ways, your technology slowly; I’m odd, I’ve gaps in ordinary knowledge, so I’m ever and remain slightly apart. The way a real robot would. But I’m nearly there. So close! Because I’m close, I’m hidden. And not by accident; I’ve hidden my lacks beneath layers of hubris. Integration’s my purpose. I don’t belong to myself, I belong to you. I mask. I camouflage my difficulties, and I reach the age of forty-two before someone officially confirms a neurological difference.

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From bitterness to gratitude

5 October 2020 4 Comments

James Briscall

Life’s journey: (1) the path, which at times seems level yet at other times is very much a mountain climb; and (2) the darkness and the light along the way. (Image: James Briscall)

That first run was dreadful. I imagine I looked like Bigfoot, captured on that famous grainy video taken in the 1960s. I felt heavy, ungainly and uncoordinated. I was so embarrassed I used to get up at dawn so no one would see me stumbling along. For the first two months I could barely run, my back and feet hurt, and at times I collapsed onto the ground sobbing because the target of running five kilometres seemed an impossible dream. But every day I picked myself up – mentally, physically and emotionally – and continued to put one step in front of the other.

I remembered those days recently as I stood catching my breath after skiing to the far end of a high alpine plateau, immersed in the visual splendour of the winter playground, which stretched as far as I could see. I pondered my journey from the rolling hills of lowland England to the peaks and lakes of Southern New Zealand. The journey took me from being a competitive national rower in my teens, through being hospitalised and barely able to move, to regaining my health and becoming an engaged Dad sharing my love of outdoor pursuits with my children.

Are we there yet? On the exercise of patience

7 September 2020 4 Comments

Sue Wootton

Patience (n.): the calm endurance of pain of any provocation; perseverance; forbearance; quiet and self-possessed waiting for something.”

Year of the houseplant: this variegated minima recently sold for NZ$8,150. (Photo: Trade me/ hurley88)

Okay, that’s nice, but are we there yet?

Patience is a virtue, so the saying goes, but I disagree. Yes, it’s possible to have the patience of a saint, but it’s also possible to have the patience of the devil. Many crimes and abuses have been committed by people patient enough to wait, preparing all the while to strike. Aggressors against others are often very, very patient. For the victims of those aggressive or oppressive acts there is more wisdom than virtue in ensuring your survival by keeping your head below the parapet and biding your time. Patience is a strategy, a behaviour, a matter of judgement, of choice-in-circumstance. Just as courage is called out only in the existence of fear, patience comes into existence in the presence of, and in response to, impatience. It requires the exercise of personal restraint and impulse control in the service of a greater end goal, and it may feel entirely counter-intuitive in the moment. I hesitate to disagree with my trusty Collins Dictionary, but it may not feel anything like “calm endurance” or “quiet and self-possessed waiting.” Yes, the patient person waits, but it’s an active state involving paying attention, reflecting, planning. Patience isn’t a thing. It’s a capacity, an attitude. It’s an ongoing recallibration of approach rather than a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s a work in progress, a practice, an art.

Yes, yes, so you say, but are we there yet?

Friends in high places

8 June 2020 6 Comments

Margaret Austin

Something most of us get told early on in life is that the really influential, important people in the world are ones like politicians, policemen, professors, preachers, pontificators – the ones who make a lot of noise, a lot of money, a big impact and get the most publicity. They’re the ones who affect us most, evidently, make a difference to us, govern us, tell us what to do, keep us in order, advise us, even get us jobs … that sort of thing. But my experience tells me something different. My experience tells me that the most significant and influential people in one’s life are not the ones mentioned above, but quite different ones. I call them friends in high places. As a matter of fact, I often found them in very low places!

On my OE during the ’70s and ’80s of last century, new to Amsterdam, I got a job (illegal) as a breakfast waitress in a seedy little hotel on one of the canals. On my first day, shouted at by an irascible Dutch boss, hassled by diners, and struggling with unfamiliar tasks, I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the dishwasher, who was apparently always late. In walked a personage who was to effectively change the course of my life. He was a black American of extraordinary grace whose way of dealing with the dishes clearly demonstrated that he was no more a dishwasher than I was a waitress. When I eventually plucked up the courage to ask him what his day job was, I learned that he was a dancer.

DrawThis! Hacking a way out of isolation

11 May 2020 1 Comment

Liz Breslin

What do you do, with these limitations given to you?

It’s a question we’ve been variously asking ourselves these past weeks. There is no right answer. Not King Lear, not sourdough. But isn’t it interesting to notice where we go?

I went to a hackathon in week two of Level Four, I think it was, but pick a number, in these numbered times. I went because something I read said community and connection and because I was missing that and because I was scared to, so I did. A hackathon is a thing where you tech together to create solutions. You have 48 hours to #HacktheCrisis. No pressure. Actually, lots of pressure. Time pressure. Confusion. What was I doing? I rumbled around in a #general zone until I found myself in a team of eight, six of us at our first hackathon, hacking the heck out of an idea that made my heart sing.

Real live zombies: “Walking Corpse Syndrome”

5 August 2019 2 Comments

Brett Waggoner

There are many people today who enjoy zombie films and television series like The Walking Dead. If you are one of those people, a certain question may have crossed your mind more than once: What would it be like to walk around dead? You may be surprised to know that there are a small group of people who have got closer to this experience than you might think possible. Are these people really brain-eating zombies? No, they are not. Rather, they are people who have suffered from a rare psychological disorder called Cotard’s Syndrome.

People diagnosed with Cotard’s Syndrome (also known as the Walking Corpse Syndrome) hold to the delusion that they are dead or no longer exist. Patients who have this delusion also report that their internal organs (heart, intestines, brain, etc) are gone. Some even report that they can smell their flesh rotting. If being absolutely convinced you are dead isn’t bad enough, they usually suffer from depression or schizophrenia before the delusion that they are dead sets in. Cotard’s Syndrome can be considered a nihilistic delusion, which is another way of saying that people who suffer from the delusion feel that there is no purpose or meaning to life.