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Autistic Catatonia v shutdown: I need some help

Dawn

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.

Parents

  • 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?

  • in reply to BJS

    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.

  • in reply to Dawn

    Clearly your hubby has his own problems to battle too. Not least of which, he has an Auitistic wife who "shuts down" form time to time. (It's a little harsh but true if you think about it, and an equitable solution will require both of you to make changes, or quit teh relationship, and seek relationships that work better)

    When I first got my diagnosis I offered to leave, because frankly it wasn't what I sold my partner when we started, we aren't married, and it seemed a fair thing to do. We were not getting on very well, and now I knew I was unlikely to prevail, without assistance which she is unable to give me, and which I NEED in order to function acceptably (I.E. not like a depressed hobo, with a machinery fetish) I also privately elected to leave anyway if things did not improve, but to make damn sure that they did.

    Defining the areas where genuinely I am unable to function as expected helped enormously, to reduce HER frustration as well as my own. Improving and building on my strengths, and frankly pointing them out occasionally added value to me in her eyes now she wasn't just seeing the failures. The relationship is still not as joyful as I want it to be, but at least the arguments have reduced in severity and are MUCH less protracted, and we are starting to work together and understand each other a bit more. But the temptation to "give in to the diagnosis" is a new an unpleasant price to pay for the improvements I have so far wrought... 

  • in reply to I Sperg

    Thank you.

    I'm not Christian, but I do have a faith and I do throw it out to the Divine. But I'm not quite able to engage in prayer and meditation the way I used to before the trauma. Maybe it's part of the PTSD. I do think I'm heard though, I keep getting little clues to understand this. The Angels have brought me a long way in that regard.

    My husband doesn't do any "male" stuff either.  I can't carry both roles for two people when I'm vulnerable and need a little bit of care myself. It's the drink and I can't help him with that unless he wants to be helped, sadly. He's my oldest friend and I'd never want a divorse, but I do think that there will be a time when he needs to leave and live elsewhere. It might only be at that point that he might turn it around. It'll be a gamble. 

    You are right I think about the underlying causes. It's not psycho-babble at all. It's very insightful.  But that will only help when he wants it to. However much I love him I can't save him from himself. I can only pray he realises before I lose him anyway to health impacts of the booze.

    Meanwhile, dealing with it is standing in the way of my attempts to help myself. And I need to be better to deal with this. Bit of a vicious circle really. I know I need order, space and time to heal and I'm not really getting the first two. 

    I just have to trust that there's some other support for me round the corner to help me pick myself up off the floor and pray I don't slip into total shut down from the world while I try. 

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  • in reply to I Sperg

    Thank you.

    I'm not Christian, but I do have a faith and I do throw it out to the Divine. But I'm not quite able to engage in prayer and meditation the way I used to before the trauma. Maybe it's part of the PTSD. I do think I'm heard though, I keep getting little clues to understand this. The Angels have brought me a long way in that regard.

    My husband doesn't do any "male" stuff either.  I can't carry both roles for two people when I'm vulnerable and need a little bit of care myself. It's the drink and I can't help him with that unless he wants to be helped, sadly. He's my oldest friend and I'd never want a divorse, but I do think that there will be a time when he needs to leave and live elsewhere. It might only be at that point that he might turn it around. It'll be a gamble. 

    You are right I think about the underlying causes. It's not psycho-babble at all. It's very insightful.  But that will only help when he wants it to. However much I love him I can't save him from himself. I can only pray he realises before I lose him anyway to health impacts of the booze.

    Meanwhile, dealing with it is standing in the way of my attempts to help myself. And I need to be better to deal with this. Bit of a vicious circle really. I know I need order, space and time to heal and I'm not really getting the first two. 

    I just have to trust that there's some other support for me round the corner to help me pick myself up off the floor and pray I don't slip into total shut down from the world while I try. 

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