child_of_the_air | More on Autism and Sensory Stuff

My last post was about autism and some of my sensory stuff: https://child-of-the-air.dreamwidth.org/6372.html

I have a couple of things to add to it:

Relationship to Circumcision Dysphoria

I think this way of relating to senses and the world is at least partly to blame for why I’ve found it so traumatic to be missing my foreskin. Naturally enough, the model of the shape of the world that my mind makes extends to my own body, and includes the feeling that something is “wrong,” is missing there.

As usual, the model persists even if I can’t see the thing, so long as I remember it, and every time anyone mentions anything related to the topic, or I have to use the bathroom and see my scarred, incomplete genitals, it’s reinforced.

And, unfortunately, this is really something unhealthy I need to figure out a way to deal with in the long term. It’s one thing to maintain my anger that people intentionally do this to their children, and that society refuses to acknowledge that any wrong was done to us victims.

On the other hand, focusing on the wrongness of my body does me no good and, in general, bodily wrongness isn’t due to some great societal evil. I’m lucky that my body is largely healthy and undamaged, but it isn’t entirely so, and it is likely that it will become less so as I age. So I really need to learn a way to deal with bodily wrongness better.

Although, it’s worth noting, the other bodily wrongnesses I have—a deviated nasal septum, ill-aligned teeth, pectus excavatum (though I mostly perceive that as normal)—mostly don’t seem to upset me nearly as much. So perhaps the connection to what I see as a great evil is a major part of why this one bothers me so deeply.

Relationship to Place

On the other hand, it’s occurred to me that this way of processing senses is perhaps relevant to the way, or the reason, I perceive places as sacred in the way I do, and why I find visiting them important.

If interacting with things and places makes an imprint on my mind that persists afterward…wouldn’t it make sense to imagine that things that interact with a place make an imprint on it in the same way? At least, that seems to be what my subconscious thinks.

And, in the same way that touching something with my mind again and again makes the impression more permanent, as does touching it in stressful conditions, places I’ve been a lot, or at important times...feel like something stays behind in them from my interactions.

This, I think, is what I mean when I say I’ve left part of my soul behind in a place, and I think it may be the best way to explain this bit of my spirituality.