CAT McGILL

I've chosen noise as my next topic to explore as it's one that fascinates me, and I haven't quite got my head around it fully yet.

I have a very mixed relationship with noise. I'm a musician by trade, and a music teacher. I LOVE noise. When I was teaching secondary music I could quite happily sit at my desk surrounded by a class of thirty kids playing keyboard while I marked my A level essays, and still be able to pick out the ones who were hitting the demo button instead of doing their work. My classroom was noisy and chaotic, and I loved it.

On the flip side, sitting in a restaurant trying to have a meal I can literally lose the ability to speak, because I can't process the level of noise around me. Or maybe it's the type of noise - people speaking, glasses clinking, plates and cutlery, waiters walking around... I remember feeling a complete failure because every time I would go out for a nice meal with my ex-husband we would sit in silence. I found it really hard to hear what he was saying, even though he was only just across the table, and it was such a gargantuan effort to me to get my thoughts in order to think of anything to say.

So here goes, the start of a self-exploration of what autism means to me. In this first blog I'm going to talk about stimming.

The term 'stimming' refers to self-stimulating behaviours that are often used by people with autism or other developmental disorders. The most common one you're likely to think of is flapping your hands - my son does this a lot when he's excited! Some people rock, some people jiggle, hum, bang their head, make noises; there's really no end to the variety of stims possible.

Yesterday was tricky. I was doing a new thing that I'd never done before, and which necessitated me being around lots of noisy children for a prolonged period of time. (Tap dancing in a showcase, if you're interested.) When we got home, I told my husband that he was not allowed to talk to me until I came out from under my duvet.

Up until now, my duvet has been pretty much my only coping strategy, and as life is going through a difficult phase I feel like I'm using it all the time. Often I get home from work and go straight to bed. I've been eating meals in bed. I've been working in bed. It's good, because it does help me feel better, but it's quite limiting, and it's affecting my relationships with my family, particularly my children.

We had planned to go out for a family walk yesterday afternoon, but for one reason and another I ended up walking quite a lot of it by myself. I was feeling stressed out and overwhelmed. My brain was going at 100 miles an hour. I started to wonder - had I remembered to take my antidepressants this morning? Was I due a replacement hormone patch? Why on earth was I feeling so bad?