Published on 12, July, 2020
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?
It is a big shock when you are diagnosed and a really confusing time so I get where you are coming from but you seem like a strong person to me so I'm sure you will get through this. I'm still having repercussions of my diagnosis now at work, as you know, but I'm still glad I have my diagnosis.
Thank you Bookworm. I'm still a bit up and down and I suspect that that will continue for a while. I do consider myself a strong resilient person, I've been through a lot of bad things in my life and always managed to pull myself through the other side. I make no secret of the fact that I have a co-morbid brain injury that I acquired nearly 12 years ago. The process of grieving and loss and adjustment that I had to go through after that was absolute hell on earth. It's the episode of depression that I've had where I've not been able to see the light at the end of the tunnel, it was so horrible, I actually ended up 'in' for a couple of weeks (informally) for that one as I was at absolute rock bottom. But, I did get through the other side emotionally, it will take more than being hit on the head by a large recycling truck to keep this girl down :-) So now, yes I have to go through a period of adjustment after my Aspergers diagnosis. But, it won't be as bad as after the brain injury, I haven't lost anything, I don't perceive that I need to grieve, I just need to rejig my cognitive schemas a bit to accommodate knowing that I have Aspergers and get to understand how that affects me. I'll get through this ok, of that I am confident. This up and down, anxious phase is just something that I have to go through to get to being ok again.
Sorry to hear that you have also had tbi, I used to call it tbi but now call it abi (acquired brain injury), how long ago was it? I was lucky in that I didn't lose consciousness but you are definitely right it does make certain Aspergers symptoms worse (fixed thinking, obsessions, perseveration, lack of facial expression, lack of variation of tone of voice, etc) as well as giving you a few more symptoms too. How are you coping with yours?
Ah so you too have had TBI (traumatic brain injury) - mine was 2 weeks unconscious and I have been much worse since. I feel the aspergers symptoms are made worse by the poor brain frontal lobe function, and now 3rd n palsy with diploplia as well.
I have to be honest, I don't think any of us on the spectrum will ever find it easy but we may just get better at finding ways around our problems. Well I hope so anyway lol