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.
RE: Shutdown
You are describing my life for the last 5 years (substitute alcoholic husband for a wife with profound mental health issues).
When my wife goes to stay with her sister, I spend the first 2-3 days in chemically assisted "relaxation" and then sober up and start to feel my old self again... first perhaps the dishes, maybe a load of washing. The next day I might pick up one of my long forgotten interests or projects. After a week, I may even be able to call my friend or brother for the first time in months.
I suggest you firmly ask your husband to piss off for somewhere for 2 weeks and see how you feel... if you feel good after the initial "don't know what to do with myself" period, I kindly suggest you will have to make some difficult decisions.
RE: Alcoholism
My limited, but intense, personal experience with alcoholics is that:
An alcoholic in your life can be damaging on many levels - not least of which is the trauma of watching a loved one slowly kill themselves.
You are right of course. I have asked him to leave, (It was ME that bought the house), three times. He refuses to go. But yes, I know it would help pick me up just to have the feeling that cleaning and organisational efforts were not in vain. And yes, I know you shouldn't "enable" them. But if I don't pick up the debris and solve the problems, the only one who will suffer is me. He won't even notice. It's such a shame, I'm losing the one I love the most - not to another woman; he'd never do that, but to beer, right when I need him the most.
But I do also know it's an illness and in asking for the very basics of a decent life, I'm asking for something he can't give.
Meanwhile, I've no clue how to get up off the floor when I'm being driven half way crazy with the sensory issues and medical phobias, only to face more mess and problems to sort. :-(
is your wife the autistic one ?