Feeling Fragile

Hi everyone, sorry in advance for moaning. I'm feeling really fragile these last few days. I don't like admitting to not coping, as anyone that knows me would tell you, I'm a coper, I just pull my socks up and get on with whatever life throws at me. 'S£$% happens, you've just got to get on with it' is one of the many life quotes that I live by. But I'm struggling at the moment. For years I've spent most of my time feeling nothing, and that's been a comfortable way to feel, better than feeling sad. Following my diagnosis I still felt nothing, I thought that I'd taken to having ASD like a duck takes to water. I was aware of an accelerated amount of cognitive processing happening but no emotion. Now the emotion has decided to hit me and my anxiety level has gone through the roof. I just feel like tiny, insignificant, pathetic excuse of a human being. I'm overwhelmed with the amount of processing that I'm having to do: forming new cognitive schemas of myself in line with having ASD, thinking over everything that has happened all through my life; thinking about all the symptoms of ASD that I have been aware of since early child that are now amalgamated into the single entity of having ASD. There's far too much reshuffling of concepts and ideas going on in my head at the moment. Following diagnosis it felt as though everything in my new life as a woman on the spectrum started happening really fast, it's snowballed, there's too much to process and too little time. How have other people coped with the adjustment phase and how long does it last?

Parents
  • Very interested in responses to this as I'm in the process of seeing a psychologist. Initially I wasn't bothered about the diagnosis, but starting the process sent me down the 'cognitive overload' process you describe ... I had kind of a 'shutdown' last Wednesday, but telling my wife I was struggling, going for a hard running session and letting my psychologist know (ahead of a session on Friday) pulled me round.

    I've now decided I want to know 'a' diagnosis - even if it's just "years of low/moderate trauma combined with standard male-pattern repression of emotion"... but I really don't know how that's going to affect me and/or those around me.

    Keep your chin up , lean on anyone you have, keep talking to us...

Reply
  • Very interested in responses to this as I'm in the process of seeing a psychologist. Initially I wasn't bothered about the diagnosis, but starting the process sent me down the 'cognitive overload' process you describe ... I had kind of a 'shutdown' last Wednesday, but telling my wife I was struggling, going for a hard running session and letting my psychologist know (ahead of a session on Friday) pulled me round.

    I've now decided I want to know 'a' diagnosis - even if it's just "years of low/moderate trauma combined with standard male-pattern repression of emotion"... but I really don't know how that's going to affect me and/or those around me.

    Keep your chin up , lean on anyone you have, keep talking to us...

Children
  • It would appear that the 'cognitive overload' process is quite a common phenomena then! I'm glad that you managed to pull yourself out of your shutdown. Is your wife understanding? I tried talking to my husband the other night, to be fair trying to talk to him about anything after he's had a few beers is pretty pointless, I should have waited until the morning, but I really needed to talk, I started talking, he decided to play me a u-tube clip of a child chanting 'millwall, millwall, millwall, eff you' because it was supposed to lighten the mood apparently (drunk logic!) It didn't remotely lighten my mood and just annoyed me so I went for a drive instead. Honestly, I can't talk to him about anything, that's why I'm always on here chatting to fellow people with ASD! 

    I think it helps to get an assessment, to know one way or the other, it saves a lot of 'what ifs'. With regards to how it will affect you and those around you. I don't know, but as you just said to me, lean on people here, keep talking to us :-)