I wondered this for a long time before I officially started my telehealth appointments with my therapist; this was actually one of the very first things I told her I was going through.
Then I told her how I loved doing creative stuff all the time, with anything I can get creative with, and how I loved skillfully giving life to something i thought of or drew a picture of or otherwise somehow created... I told her one of those things was original characters with personalities that at least tried to relate to Autism in some way, I told her this was because my true lifelong dream is to send a message to at least some part of the world that Autism is not a made-up excuse for people to misbehave (in my early youth, I had to put up with a LOT of corporal discipline fanatics who just did NOT believe in the existence of any form of any mental syndrome).
So then, when I fully opened myself to her on the next telehealth session, I suddenly found myself talking about how painful my younger days were. I remember gradually, progressively becoming more and more visibly upset, not at my therapist but at hearing myself talk about all these things that brought me so much grief and before long I was simply a twitching, crying mess of mental agony, as if I were a stray otter who had just returned to its home with its familiar, covered in wounds and bruises, not knowing if it is near death or not...
"Okay, hang on, stop. Stop. Tyler... Hang on. Breathe. Breathe with me."
I did. And I kept doing so, remembering to be courteous with what she was doing and stopping and listening, like the etiquette i've been taught over the years... .
The next thing I knew, I was at this beach, a very sunny, cloudless day in particular here... I was just floating on my back out in the middle of the ocean and I was about to inform Pepper of my childhood fear of drifting too far out at the beach, but she was prepared...
"This beach, it is not quite like the ones we know on Earth... This place is a safe place, one where you always come back if you keep floating out..."
I suddenly realized, I wasn't even awake! I wasn't sleeping either... It then dawned on me that my therapist, Pepper, happened to be skilled in hypnotherapy! I knew exactly why she was doing it, too, and I didn't dare to stop her, all that mattered at that moment was that somehow, she knew what I needed most. Without me ever telling her, without me ever even dropping so much as a vague hint, she knew what I needed for my autism.
At one point when she still had me floating on the surface, while I was still under the spell of inactive Delta waves, I heard myself mumble a little, then say something before she continued:
"Nn... Ocean... Underwater.. I want to... See... Underwater..."
"Oh-- Okay, that can be done."
So, I dove down, further and further, swimming steadily further down toward the floor, until a gentle current caught me and steadily carried me where I was going; all i had to do was relax and float with the current....
When I was once again aware what I floated to, Pepper then turned my attention somewhere else.
She started to speak of a large, beautiful, dazzling pearl, as smooth as glass, and foggy with translucency. I was asked to swim closer to it, to reach a hand out to it, and i did, and there was this lightweight glow; it did not hurt my eyes or blind me, but when it cleared away, so did the pearl, and I saw what was in there...
It was my friend, Aloe.
