Autistic communication — a pressure cooker

More and more of my interactions are becoming highly pressurised.

Communication has felt increasingly pressured for me, with damaging consequences (image courtesy of Mika Luoma via Unsplash)

It is perhaps my own fault that I decided to bleed a faulty radiator on a Sunday early evening, without knowing for certain that I could repressurise the boiler afterwards.

Discovering that the pressure had dipped right down, I thought I would routinely repressurise the system, having done it plenty of times before in other homes. But on this occasion, I found that there’s a nut missing which is needed in order to release fresh cold water into the system.

In a normal world, I think you call for help, get help and move on. In my autistic world, you do follow those steps, but with an enormous amount of frustration and pain mixed in.

Finding help is increasingly difficult, with fewer and fewer tradespeople seemingly available. As an autistic, I’m just not prepared to phone through people in the directory, so I have to use online search engines and service sites. In return, I end up paying a bit of a premium because there are fewer opportunities to negotiate a fee. And even if there were, would I really negotiate when it’s against my nature?

Getting help is always a disaster. Today, I had to explain to the boiler repair guy what the problem was. He fixed it and then…