Growing Up in High-Rises and Related Aspie Nightmares

Post Reply New Topic

I spent my early years, from age 0 to 10, living in a 10-story condo building. It had an elevator that I was mildly afraid of. It was so old, it still had wood paneling, mechanical non-lit buttons with elegant numbers, and a hinged outer door that you had to open. (The inner door was mechanized.) It also broke down a lot, which I heard plenty about. Although, I could never understand what exactly broke, because all outer doors looked intact.

I was friends with three boys in my building, so by age 6, I was allowed to use the stairs alone to visit them. And by age 8, my parents also started letting me take the elevator by myself. (Which I rarely did, even when going 5 floors, due to my low-level fear of it.) The open staircase (no doors, just stairs connecting floors) wasn't much to look at, but nothing really scared me about it, either. My fear of the elevator persisted in a mild form until after 3rd grade, when my family moved across the country. (Into a four-flat, which had no elevator.)

With the backstory out of the way, on with the real reason for this thread. I clearly remember having frequent nightmares involving elevators and stairs. Here are some examples:
1) I'm inside the elevator, and instead of one control panel, there are two. The first one looks normal, the second one is smashed, with wires sticking out, and it's making static noises.
2) I'm standing on my floor, pushing the call button. When the elevator arrives and I open the door, there's nothing inside; only pitch blackness with sporadic white sparkles resembling stars.
3) I'm standing on the first floor, waiting to go up. The stairs are blocked off with a rope and a sign "STAIRS CLOSED". The elevator never stops, even though you can clearly hear the car moving.
4) I'm in the building's hallway. My front door that's normally brown on the outside is now white, and strange markings appear around it. My parents tell me "it's because of faulty wiring", which makes no sense to me. The nearby staircase looks ominous for no apparent reason.
5) I'm taking the stairs, up or down, to a specific floor. But they go on and on. And on. And on. And on. None of the lights are working. I never reach the desired floor. On some occasions, there's a telephone ringing from an unknown location.
6) (mild example) I'm going between floors, by elevator or by stairs, but the walls are painted the wrong colors, and the floors are numbered out of sequence. I get creeped out by this, even though some colors look really cool.
7) (least frightening) I'm on the first floor, waiting to go up. The elevator is out of order. The stairs are barricaded, because fruit vendors are selling fruit right on the steps. People are milling about. A friendly salesmen pitches apples, pears, etc. I get into a conversation with him.

Those nightmares are clearly aspie-ish, because they have no stereotypical monster/chasing/fire/destruction themes that NT children's nightmares usually consists of. They're the kind an adult might have. Or, of course, an aspie child. Like me. But either way, all of them have elements from a high rise: an elevator and a tall staircase, things you just don't find in houses or even four-flats. Clearly, living 50 feet off the ground is unnatural for humans (although Navajo cliff-dwellers are a notable exception), and can be fear-inducing. It seems like children are closer to their natural instincts than adults, so when they live in a high-rise, their mind can react the way it does. Especially so for aspie kids, whose nervous systems are already rattled by anxiety, due to a hostile world in general they live in.

Now, last but not least, the real reason for this thread: Is it common for a child growing up in a high-rise, to have nightmares about this subject matter? If you lived in a high-rise as a child, and had nightmares about it, please share your experiences.

While I never lived in a high rise growing up, this was a constant problem with the dormitory I lived in my freshman and sophomore years in college. When you're packing as much weight as me, climbing 5 stories of stairs can be a bit challenging.

My current living situation is my nightmare now. I can't afford to pick and choose, so I'm in social housing and my building sits directly on a main road, a heavily used thoroughfare that everything from London buses to giant articulated trucks, to massive airport shuttle service coaches roar down.

My windows are double-glazed but so old that the frames themselves let all the noise right through. I live with the constant roar of traffic, even with all my windows closed and locked shut. Even through the night, as it's the kind of road people use 24/7.

The situation here is also toxic in terms of the people -- tenants and a warden who deliberately try to get people into trouble. I've been bullied here and even received an anonymous poison pen letter filled with abuse and hate, because I'd been feeding some birds and had already gotten into trouble because of it.

I stopped, and still got this anonymous hate note even after I'd stopped. It's a hateful atmosphere in which to live, but I can't find housing as cheap without leaving the area, which I have ties to now both for work and emotionally.

.

Just want to clear up something: by "nightmares", I meant scary dreams, not bad situations.

I actually kind of enjoyed living in a high-rise, since back then, I didn't see a connection between living there and my dreams about elevators and stairs. Plus, I had 3 friends in my building; that's not common for aspies.

Double-post, sorry. This thing kept giving me those "could not obtain topic watch information" errors.

I have a fear of elevators and doors in general. I will only go in an elevator with someone there for support. I had a lot of trouble in one high rise I stayed in. We were on the 13th floor and I used the stairs because I was going out by myself. When I got to the bottom, the door closed behind me and I saw that there was no lock on the outside, so you could only go up again by elevator. I was too distressed to go anywhere after this so I had to call someone to come down and get me. It was like a waking nightmare. Only goes to show how treacherous doors can be.

When I worked in Silicon Valley with a very high-end vibration-analysis software business, I (fortunately and unfortunately) learned too much about how most buildings are poorly built and will over time, degrade and risk collapses even without Earthquakes. The 1989 San Francisco quake proved much of what our software modeled for us. I cringe everytime I enter a budget-determined building, new or old. Still, I admit that they still seem to hang in there.

I had an incident at age two, three or something like that when I was a little impatient, called for and entered an elevator in a rather large seniors complex or hospital, I can't remember 100%. The doors closed when I was in it alone and preceded to take me to the basement I think. It was under construction and I was all alone until someone figured out where I was and came to retrieve me.

Elevators became scary then and became not scary when I learned shortly after how to use the rest of the command panel. Where I did continue to have issues as far as fear on elevators was that I always had feelings of almost throwing up when it moved and then stopped on the floor I was trying to access. I was sure I would one day lose my lunch on the floor of an elevator.

Other then that they were kind of a novelty and a technological mystery to me so in a way they were fun.

If I had to live in a high-rise I'd keep a parachute in the room just in case, that's a post 911 coping strategy.