How do you get angry?

Greetings fellow reprobates and welcome to another musing,

The titular question is not as simple as it first appears, I want you to consider the actual process you go through when you get angry.

Let us first set the scene using a metaphor of high pressure pipes, switches and taps.

The task is to fill a bowl with water. 

There are two high pressure pipes, one with an on/off switch, the other with a tap, which do you choose?

I'm going to make an assumption and paraphrase what you are thinking: "The tap obviously, completing the task with the pipe with a switch is just too difficult to comprehend!"

Changing the scenario slightly, you take a new job filling bowls from the pipe all day, every day.

Your supervisor has a tap pipe and every day for a week you watch how they fill the bowl then have a go yourself. You watch them turn on the tap, fill a bowl, turn off the tap, get another bowl and repeat the process. 

When it is windy the work is a little harder and they have to hold the bowl closer to the tap, when it rains you pull on the wellies and overcoat and carry on. Each day is less productive than the previous, but your supervisor says that's okay we've done our best in the circumstances.

Friday is a storm and you are battling the wind, rain and mud, but all the strategies of holding the bowl closer and walking slowly through the mud work fine. Output is the worst it has been all week, but it is close to the target and your boss asks if you'll stay behind for a bit and help them hit the minimum target.

Monday morning you go to your station and find your pipe has an on/off switch. 

How do you fill a bowl without the water going everywhere? What strategies can you possibly employ?

After filling three bowls the ground is muddy and you are soaking wet so you put on the wellies and overcoat. Your output is the same as it was when it rained last week, but the supervisor shakes their head and says try harder tomorrow.

The next day is the same and the supervisor is looking upset with you, so Wednesday you stay behind and work extra hours unpaid just to hit that perfect day target.

Thursday it gets windy, the ground is already water logged from being soaked all week and your productivity take a serious hit. You are in storm conditions and you are on your own. You ask for help over the radio but the supervisor says they are too busy, so you start innovating. Even so you end up working late and only hit rainy day target.

As the weeks go on, you problem solve more and more, implementing strategies that work, scrapping those that do not. Eventually you can meet windy day targets alone even in stormy conditions, but your supervisor is never fully happy because you cannot reach that perfect day target you set together.

A few weeks later, in the middle of a storm, the supervisor's pipe bursts and you are called down to help with the deluge while he calls in the repair team. With the exception that the water cannot be turned off at all, this "emergency situation" is actually nothing new to you so you just crack on with filling the bowls.  By the time the repair crew have completed their work, you have hit the supervisor's quota for the day and they are dumbfounded how you have achieved it.  

You explain that your pipe has an on/off switch not a tap so you have had to develop coping strategies, but all they do is apologise and say that they will try to get you a tap but it could take a while if it is possible at all. 

They won't listen to the fact that all you want is some understanding of the situation you find yourself in day to day and the setting of appropriate and realistic minimum standards. 

 

From childhood I've repeatedly heard, and read, that anger can be described as a fire that builds gradually into a burning bonfire as the person becomes more and more infuriated with their situation. 

This is not my experience and I always thought there was something wrong with me.

Anger for me is a burning torrent that instantly floods every part of my body before coalescing as a churning that I then have to manage, rationalise and justify to find an appropriate level to openly present in the situation.

This is an example of what is termed as masking and one of the myriad of reasons that it is exhausting to function in a capitalist society.

Solely for the purposes of clarity I am going to use the simple binary of Allistic and Autistic in this brief explanation of differences in brain development. I am knowledgeable but far from an expert in this field and the spectrum of development in brain types is vast, so here is the layman's guide.

Allistics are those for whom the psychology label "neurotypical" applies and their brains develop along the familiar pattern. Dopamine and serotonin receptors will grow healthily, mirror neurons will active and form engrams copying the surrounding social patterns and the brain will develop filters to keep itself healthy, filters that protect the person from being overwhelmed by their surroundings. 

Everything from external auditory and visual stimuli to internal emotional responses from the amygdala pass through a series of processing protocols that filter extraneous information and allow the Allistic to focus on what they choose.  It is only in times of stress, illness and injury where these filters fail so, in the main, Allistics happily follow familiar and comfortable routines each day, are able to socialise and find commonality in others with ease, overlook injustices happening right in front of them and can flit between tasks and organise themselves.

Autistics (and please remember this is a simple binary explanation) do not develop those filters. 

Dopamine and serotonin producers and receptors are underdeveloped therefore they experience less reward for task fulfilment and find it more difficult to find moments of happiness. 

They have insufficient mirror neurons to efficiently encode social engrams at a young age so either do not develop social norms at all or never grow out of the mimicry stage.

Auditory and visual stimuli are constant and overwhelming, a conversation in a crowded room is impossible because they hear and process all the conversations taking place, bright lights are physically painful because the brain does not soften the signal.

Communication is virtually impossible with Allistics because Autistics actually mean what they say, usually in straight forward, clear, concise sentences. The only time Allistics use straight forward, clear, concise sentences is when they are being sarcastic.

This is why the double empathy problem requires very careful language to be successfully resolved.

It requires clarity and unambiguous statements without perceived emotional attachments.

It requires honesty and understanding.