Labels.
Not the mean kind. Not the kind that put you in your place, or that demystify you for others.
The kind found on shirts, couches, dishtowels, and bedding.
I’m feeling agitated just writing this. This is difficult for me.
Labels. Tags. Those scrunched up, scratchy pieces of paper with random, coded information on them.
Always in weird places. Always not where you want them. Always where they don’t belong. I don’t think they belong anywhere.
I hate labels. They freak me out and upset me. And I react to them badly.
There’s nothing good I can do with them. No quick way to make the panic better, to deescalate the volcano erupting inside me. Even if I rip them off, they’re in my hand, and I feel the horridness touching me. It creeps me out. I run to throw them out and bury them under layers of trash so that I don’t accidentally see them. And then try to forget they’re there. But I can’t remove or hide all labels, at least not entirely. Like the kinds embedded in the seams of clothing. So, I create rules that make certain labels somewhat bearable. Few labels receive this leeway.
I was four years old when I discovered the label sewn onto our couch, the part that’s visible when you remove the seat cushions. I panicked. Something was very wrong. The label, this strange little piece of paper, shouldn’t have been there. It was creepy, from another dimension, and I wanted it to disappear. I had no words to explain my racing heart, my emotional turmoil. I quickly replaced the seat cushion and tried to forget the sight, but the couch was now tainted.
Like a nut allergy, the first exposure didn’t produce the full-blown reaction. Dread simmered in me. Labels. Under-couch-seats. Weird, upside-down worlds. I was gasoline waiting for a match.
I haven’t changed. Labels still freak me out. They disgust me and create unexplainable panic. This panic can escalate to rage (now, maybe tears) in seconds if the label is not immediately eliminated.
I cannot tell you why I hate labels. Why they profoundly distress me. Why I can’t look at them or get rid of them quickly enough. Something about them feels arcane or even occult: not from this world. They are things that you shouldn’t see because they belong to somewhere else, a dimension that can be reached only through a secret, hidden portal.
Labels do not follow the Earthly order of things. They are wrong.
If someone were to be around me when I see a label and unintentionally blocked me from panickily removing and tossing it, I might yell at them to move. I can’t calm down, and you cannot rationalize with me when I feel this way. If I were a child, I might have a meltdown over not being able to make the label go away. But I’m an adult, and I try my best to act in an “age appropriate” manner, even when I’m emotionally overwrought (I’m not always successful). Fortunately, I usually have some ability to act quickly enough to eliminate or manage the label before it causes a major disruption that seemingly comes out of nowhere and that no one understands.
I doubt that anyone could fathom how something so apparently unobtrusive and dull could produce such an explosive reaction. I can’t explain it myself. I can’t tell them why.
Labels.
But not only labels.
The smallest, lightest accidental touches on my skin, especially when I’m already on edge, overstimulated. They feel like lightning bolts. The surprise upsets me. It registers as physical pain, and the pain angers me. I think, “How dare you hurt me like this” (the “you” can be human or material, e.g., clothing brushing my arm). I feel like gouging out my skin where I was touched. I can’t explain the rage I feel. I know my behavior is not normal. The amount and quality of upset I feel is extreme. But I can’t stop it, and I can’t tell you what you did wrong (so that you feel guilty, bad, and never do it again) because there’s nothing to say. I have no words to say. But you should have known. My agony is your fault. (I recognize the illogic of this statement, but it’s what goes through my mind).
When I’m focusing on something—something I’m doing, something I’m watching, something I’m thinking—and you interrupt me. You ask me something, invade my space. You don’t know what’s going on, and you don’t see that I’m busy, perhaps working on something that isn’t obvious to you and isn’t going to plan. That I’m concentrating, lost in my own world. You need me to be part of yours. I don’t like this. I don’t like being drawn away from my imaginings to cater to your needs, especially if you’re bothering me about something I don’t want to know about, to think about, or perhaps something that breaks one of my rules. I’m more tolerant of these invasions of my space now than when I was younger, and I might now just express some mild frustration (if anything) rather than become overtly agitated, but I still don’t like to be disrupted when I’m busy (I’m almost always alone now, so this isn’t especially an issue for me anymore). If I could be less reactive, if I could speak, I would say, “Please leave me alone.” I just want you to go away.
If I remember or if I see something upsetting. If something I’m thinking about or doing triggers an unpleasant memory, or if I see something that I don’t like (a wide range of possibilities), I can become quite agitated. The darkness overwhelms me, and my mood can change quickly and without warning.
When something “normal” is modified or altered in the slightest way. I find this creepy and unsettling. I’m not sure if I’m in our “Big Bang” universe or if the world around me has changed in some intangible, almost imperceptible way, and I’m now in a “Twilight Zone” universe. A parallel universe that tried to copy our universe but got the little details wrong. I feel like I’ve lost touch with the world (which is particularly difficult given that I already have a tenuous grasp on reality). I don’t like things changing, but tiny changes are sometimes the hardest ones to accept. Price tags in supermarkets, bus route numbers, someone making voices (not funny—I’m not sure if you’re still who you say you are/are supposed to be). Everything is the same except for one small detail. The weirdness scares me, and I can become emotionally unregulated.
These are some of my triggers that other people would have no way of knowing, of understanding, of predicting.
So many of my triggers are things that no one else would notice or foresee because they’re so negligible, so irrelevant to “regular” people.
My outbursts seemingly come out of nowhere because there’s no obvious indication of what went wrong and when. You can’t say, “I shouldn’t have done that” or “let me avoid this or that” because it’s not always a concrete action that causes the behavior. Sometimes it’s just my brain, something going on in my own head. And you don’t live in there.
I have predictable or “obvious” triggers, too. But these are associated with rules. I know the rules, and I can tell others about them (e.g., not separating things that belong together). Even if other people don’t understand my rules, I have some control here. I have more ability to act to avoid any, or any significant, emotional consequences.
It’s the random triggers that are tricky. The triggers without clear, “written” rules. I can’t explain them. I can’t exactly explain any of my autism triggers, but these take on a particularly murky quality. Maybe they trigger me because I’m expected to come out of my world and join a world other people have created. A world I don’t understand or want to be part of. A world of sensory overload and one of irrelevance, triviality (to me).
I have more discipline over my behavior now than when I was a child. I have more words (even if they don’t always emerge or are insufficient in depth), and I have more ability to solve problems. So, the chances of an “unexplained freak out” occurring are significantly decreased. But my old haunts still linger.
I still hate labels.
Rhonda Cheryl Solomon, MSc, PhD (cand.), at the University of Toronto can be reached at rhonda.solomon@alum.utoronto.ca or (416) 820-9654.
