Going off to camp

Post Reply New Topic

I need some suggestions for dealing with camp. I'm going to be gone for 13 days.

I've been to camp before, I almost never have problems with homesickness.

However, I always have problems socially with camp.

Every year, for the past three years, I've gone to a three week sleepaway camp. These tend to be more academic than outdoors (I went to JHU-CTY (http://cty.jhu.edu/) in 2007, and SIG (http://www.giftedstudy.org/) in 2008 and 2009.

The first two or three days are decent, but I have trouble coping by the fourth or fifth day due to there just being too. many. people. around. This is usually due to too many people coming into my room, invited in by my roommate. Last year, I got fed up on the eighth day, and broke down in a stairway.

The camps themselves are wonderful. However, after a few days, my roommate makes friends. She then proceeds to invite them over to her room. I can't get any personal space whatsoever, and I just break down.

I don't think it's a "meltdown" like I get when I don't play with my "squishies" but it's something. It starts to all pile up on me and then I just can't take it anymore, there are too many people and I just can't take it and I want to scream. I feel like this in class sometimes, when everyone starts yelling. At school, I ask to go to the restroom, and take a few breaths in there, then calm down. Except for that one time before class when I hid under a desk.

Back to camp.

Then, I go somewhere quiet and cry with a blanket for an hour or so. This cycle, once started, will repeat in a stairway somewhere every day until camp is over. (Or a closet. One day, I couldn't get to the stairs so I locked myself, a booklight (for light) and a blanket, in the walk-in closet for an hour)

It's going to be worse here, at this camp. Most camps, my space doesn't get invaded in the first week, since my roommate will still be meeting others. This camp is school run, so everyone will already know everyone (except for me, I just came in this year from the US) and will already start being social.

Hopefully, I'll be able to be a bit more open with my roommate, since I already know her and she's gotten used to my quirks, to a point (she won't comment when I start playing with squishies to calm down, and she won't try and invade my personal space) so maybe she'll be willing to leave me alone.

The camp won't be the same, though. This is a two week language immersion program. The language is Chinese. My new school, her in Hong Kong, is dual language, so every other kid in my grade has studied Chinese for two to ten years. My roommate has been learning for seven. This is my first year. Therefore, I won't be able to communicate, since for everything except basic survival skills, we'll be instructed in Chinese.

Anyone have any coping strategies/tips? I'll be leaving tomorrow morning, but I just thought I'd ask.

I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions, but I wish you luck.

I have about the same problem!
(At this point I am performing a dance of recognition )

But no, seriously, this is exactly the problem I have, only from your explanation I think you react heavier to it than me.
In my case, I just HAVE to be alone after a day or three, in order to calm down. If I do not get the opportunity to do so, I will become pissed at everyone with very little reason very easily, I become depressive far quicker than normally and will be even less able to socialize with other people, even with the ones I know quite well.

I see it as a kind of breakdown of my mental immune system, which normally keeps me together and consciously tries to correct many of the aspie-deficiencies (the negative sides of asperger's). When I don't get time to talk to myself and order the past events and process them, this system fades, and eventually I will get something like a meltdown. And even if I don't, I will notice the effect for many weeks after the camp, still.

Maybe I could think of some advice, if it were still needed, but at this late hour I can't seem to think of anything. (1:00 Sunday morning )

I have, over time, developed somthing very much like 'instant meditation', which enables me to make use of very small breaks to keep myself together - which unfortunately requires me to be quite concentrated in the first place. So as quick as I lose it, I'm lost anyway, so to speak...

I know how you feel. Camp is beyond my abilities.

Can you go elsewhere mentally even as your physical space is being invaded? Are there enough bathrooms to regularly lock yourself in one? What about an area nobody likes to go?

I can't help but feel that this will fail miserably for you, as you describe its having done in the past. However, perhaps there's a way to make do with less space. Can you hide under the covers? Lose yourself in a book?

Oh yeah, just to add something.
Scarlet, I expect you'll be seeing this sometime. Surprised? Anyways, you're pretty much the first person I've told, please keep my life private. I'm still me, but you have to admit that this explains a lot.

To everyone else, Scarlet is my roommate here. I told her that if she ever gets curious, go on wrongplanet; it'll explain everything. I figure she deserves an explanation, she's been completely awesome these past two weeks.

Thank you so much for everything, I hope you feel better. (Scarlet got the flu or something.)