Published on 12, July, 2020
Dear Lovely Peeps,
Has anyone ever experienced autistic catatonia or sever shut down? If so, if you are prepared to talk about it, I'd like to hear. What brought it on? What did that look and feel like? How did you get out of it?
I'm a bit worried about me just now.
My mind is busy, oh so busy, on just one thing the up coming assessment and coping with the sensory and medical stuff in the meantime with a functioning alcoholic husband, who loves me to bits but is oblivious to what I need by way of support. I tell him but it's in one ear and out the other. It's the booze, not a lack of love, I know.
I am working from home and normally love my job, but concentration on that is very, very difficult just now. I long for some annual leave to sort out the mess my husband makes of the place (he is chaos personified, I have a typical autistic need for absolute cleanliness and order to function) and then engage with some of my interests to make me feel better.
But when I take leave, I struggle to get out of bed. I start to make a move but then feel completely overwhelmed by the size of the tasks in front of me and have to sit down again. My body has barely moved from the house in 18 months. In my head I tell my self I'll do this and do that and try to have a life, but then find myself just sitting and rocking in the corner or playing a bubble pop game on my phone over and over - I'm not even trying to win, just watch the bubbles pop. There are days when I'm barely able to get out of my dressing gown and into the bath. I put the TV on and can't follow the plot of whatever's on.
I have been through a couple of deeply traumatic experiences over the past couple of years. But I just seem to pick myself up from one thing, to be hit by another.
I don't want to be like this. And it isn't normal for me. I'm usually an active person. I want to be giving work what work deserves and doing the things I like in a perfectly ordered house. But I can't get going with the most basic things. I can bearly be bothered to eat. This has been really bad for the past 6 months.
I might just be torturing myself for no good reason, but this doesn't feel like depression. I'm concerned I'm going into some sort of state of involuntary inertia.
Could you start off with a small to do list i.e. a couple of things that are easy to do, when you complete them you may be so glad that you just carry on?
I try. But the jobs are just growing faster than I can try.
This would work for me alone. I've taken that approach before. But I can't do it in the face of someone creating them quicker than I can do them. It's been one step forward and three back to the point I can't even try any more.
The truth might be that however much I love, and am dependent, on my husband, I need to ask him to leave unless and until he can put down the booze. But I haven't the strength to go through that trauma.