Published on 12, July, 2020
Since I got my diagnosis a few weeks ago,, (aged 51 female for those that don't know me) I'm not sure who i am. I have struggled always, masked most of the time an had catastrophic mental health problems but also raised a family of 5 children got a degree and held a professional job for 20 years untill i became too ill.
I don't know how to be me. How to not mask, I can do all of nothing, mask or curl up in a ball. Stay in bed or up but I'm my nighty or go out and be that ever coping mother/ house wife etc. This is not working for me it messed with my head being the super masked woman, I need to not be her, but how do I be someone else that isn't just a fat blob in a bed rocking.
I'm NOT feeling suicidal at the moment, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of point to it all.
How do I become me?
The question I have repeatedly asked my therapists is "What is a real sense of self supposed supposed to feel like?", as I honestly don't know. For as long as I can remember, the inside of my head has just felt like an algorithm that adapts to my environment. I can't remember ever having a single consistent 'Inner Voice', just a committee of fragmented voices who frequently disagree.
Being on my own isn't too bad if I am busy trying to solve a problem, as I often have several sets of ideas & opinions to choose from. My 'Internal Commitee' has a sense of humour & often adapts to what I am doing, so for computer programming, my thought patterns become more mechanical & it uses voices & sound effects from 'Star Trek Next Gen'.
Isolation without something to keep me busy is disastrous though, as my head gradually turns into something more like a 'Courtroom Trial' where I am forced to relive every negative event in my life & being found 'Guilty' for all of them. Eventually, it becomes so unbearable that I will do anything to escape it. In the past I have often just sat in a pub or cafe & read a book, since even being around people I don't know seems to have a calming effect.
When I am with people I know well though, everything changes as I seem to acquire a 'Temporary Sense of Self' based on the persona that I have evolved in that context. For the most part ,the more negative aspects of my 'Internal Committee' fall silent too, almost as if they lose their power to hurt me when other people are around.
For the last four/five years I have been on anti-depressants & also had unsuccessful Psychotherapy on the NHS (which lead into my ASD diagnosis as my therapist thought that might be why I was so resistant). My Doctor has asked me to research forms of therapy more tailored to people on the Spectrum, but since there is so much variation in expression, I am not sure how that would even work.
I have read quite a lot about different forms of talking therapies & have pretty much come to the conclusion that they all depend solely on belief. My previous Psychotherapist said that I can't allow anything to help me unless I can see how it works scientifically, but the more I read about different techniques, the more they all just seem like 'Mental Placebos'.
I know that my problems are most likely some form of amalgamation of bad childhood & lifetime experiences combined with ASD, but that knowledge does not suggest any potential solutions & I am increasingly worried that there is no way of repairing the damage. Sorry to have rambled on too much, I'm just not mentally in a good place & haven't been for quite some time.