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Working out what you need after a life of suppressing

Fast_and_the_curious

Hi everyone, I thought I'd make a thread on how you started to discover what you really needed after getting a diagnosis or realising you are autistic.

For me, I feel like the last 6 weeks since my therapist suggested autism I have been getting "more" autistic and noticing things that I never noticed bothering me before. I have been reassuring myself I'm not crazy, not making it up, but simply allowing myself to really see what bothers me instead of dismissing the cause as ridiculous, because NT's don't seem to be bothered by it. 

Did any of you experience this? How did you deal with it? 

And further, how did you start to identify and address issues? Did you have to practice allowing yourself to stim? Did you start to work on undoing some of the "passing" behaviours you've developed? Or did you keep them? I think a lot of my anxiety issues are from suppressing the urge to do things that help me, or leave situations that stress me, but I'm not sure if I am making things worse by now allowing myself to leave instead of sticking a situation out. 

Discuss! Slight smile

Parents

  • Yes, yes, yes, yes!

    After crashing into Burnout in 2017 and then realising that ASD explains my life 100%, it was as if the part of my brain filling in for the inner Aspie just gave up, lied down, and went to sleep, leaving Aspie me fully present and in charge. So I became fully aware of my sensory sensitivities, fully aware of how they stressed me for the first time, gave myself permission to remove myself from stressing situations where previously I would have soldiered on, and even noticed myself stimming.

    The stimming is a funny one for me, because I never consciously noticed anything before (though if I think back maybe there are some memories) and occasionally it seems like I'm almost "putting it on" - but even in these cases it feels natural and comforting.

    Honestly reading parts of your post reads as if I had written it, especially your second paragraph.

    I can add to the list executive function problems that I now see for what they are. Ironically there was another point to add here that's just disappeared into a working memory hole.

Reply

  • Yes, yes, yes, yes!

    After crashing into Burnout in 2017 and then realising that ASD explains my life 100%, it was as if the part of my brain filling in for the inner Aspie just gave up, lied down, and went to sleep, leaving Aspie me fully present and in charge. So I became fully aware of my sensory sensitivities, fully aware of how they stressed me for the first time, gave myself permission to remove myself from stressing situations where previously I would have soldiered on, and even noticed myself stimming.

    The stimming is a funny one for me, because I never consciously noticed anything before (though if I think back maybe there are some memories) and occasionally it seems like I'm almost "putting it on" - but even in these cases it feels natural and comforting.

    Honestly reading parts of your post reads as if I had written it, especially your second paragraph.

    I can add to the list executive function problems that I now see for what they are. Ironically there was another point to add here that's just disappeared into a working memory hole.

Children
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