Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello all; I’m 21 years old and I’m on the spectrum. Last two years I’ve been struggling to deal with myself and my behaviour has gotten really bad, I’ve started to get really aggressive and defensive over it and I can’t keep control of myself during difficult times and places. I’m reaching out for some help as I can’t carry on the way I’m going. I feel the label of Autism is taking over my life when I should embrace it and not let it get in the way of everyday life. I need to take action to improve my wellbeing and overall happiness, what steps should I take to move forward?
Hi - I'm sorry to hear you're struggling at the moment.
Have you been formally diagnosed as autistic? I'm 25 and decided to get myself on the waiting list, as I feel I need some autism-specific support with certain aspects of my life.
It might also be worth trying to get some support with your mental health. I self-referred to my local NHS mental health service and they were hugely helpful to me. I went through cognitive behavioural therapy for OCD, but I'd had some support with anxiety prior to that.
How did the cbt help you? is it something thats useful for a long time?....
The CBT helped me to change my patterns of thinking so that I no longer believed the OCD fears and didn't have to follow-through with my compulsive behaviours. I went through exposure and response prevention therapy (ERPT) as part of the CBT, and that helped me to desensitise me to the things that used to cause me a huge deal of distress. At the start of my therapy, I was able to fill several pages of A4 with a list of my OCD routines, but I've now managed to stop doing them. I still occasionally get intrusive thoughts and sometimes catch myself trying to neutralise them (e.g. with thoughts or routines), but this is very rare now and I know how to deal with it. I've only been out of therapy for 2 months, but in OCD terms, it's been incredibly successful and I haven't relapsed so far.
I'm still struggling with depression and anxiety, so I'm going to tackle those next, but OCD was absolutely taking over my life and CBT put a stop to that.
Thanks
Rest well