Published on 12, July, 2020
I was diagnosed 2 weeks ago at the age of 31 and I definitely wasn’t expecting this huge sense of imposter syndrome!
What I find confusing is my issues didn’t really start to come to light until I was 17/18 and started having panic attacks (they generally happened in busy environments or around flashing lights). After that it was down hill from there and my ability to function just got worse and worse.
Prior to that though I was so good at hiding the things that made me anxious and I never really shared my emotions. I don’t recall having panic attacks and coped reasonably well with flashing lights etc. While especially in my teen years I always felt different for no particular reason, I still managed to get by with no obvious issues.
I did stim as a child and teen but very subtly (scalp picking, picking the skin around my nails, swinging on chairs, smelling things, rubbing my feet together when in bed, dancing, moving about a lot etc) but as I went into adulthood and I became more educated about stims I definitely started doing more obvious stims (rocking, ticing, singing, swaying from side to side, rolling of the eyes, nose scrunching etc) I sometimes feel I started doing them due to being influenced. Yet I now can’t stop doing them because they make me feel so much happier. This whole thing is confusing to me.
Why do you think a lot of adults who get diagnosed late seem to have got by with no obvious signs until something big happens to them as they get older? Why do you think as we get older we can’t seem to cope as well? I would love to know other people’s thoughts on this because it blows my mind that I had this my whole life yet managed to get by and function.....
10-15 years ago, lighting really started changing from natural sources (filament heat inside halogens/incandescent) to far more unnatural lights: CFLs, LEDs. And while Fluorescents have been around for a while, they were usually tempered in shops or locations with natural lighting. For those of us with light sensitivity, it's become increasingly difficult to drive at night, go out at night, deal with shops without natural light. The change in society is forcing a biological response in those who feel attacked by these changes. And since covid, most public transport and station toilets have these installed lights which are absolutely blindingly painful.
Society is changing and it isn't helpful for those of us with very sensitive sense-perception. There's also a noticeable change in sociological structures in the west. The guardian just released an article about behaviour at concerts: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/14/behaviour-music-gigs-live-shows?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR3duCI9Ba-AZDryy2lnRdIJkJ_6i4dhn7gipz314BqgMXSNOgAMjMERuuI#Echobox=1694683181 I'd even be inclined to say there's an Americanisation of the West changing fundamental values on the whole. Humans can be easily influenced by what they're exposed to. To an extent.
So as you've been growing up, the world has been changing in ways that I believe are become much less easy for autistic thinking and being to inhabit. But, there's a few other factors. One is Autistics mature slower due to language differences. We don't use vocabulary as a fluid representation which is subject to change. In fact, we often rely on words having a stable function or underlying interpretation, and when they don't can be accused of being too pragmatic or worse, pedantic.This difference has an incredible impact psychologically on how most create Defence Mechanisms, which are an aspect of 'civilised behaviour' one matures into. If we were raised with good values in a supportive environment which didn't change, we may have felt acceptance to some degree, perhaps we were 'quirky but kind' and when peers have the time to get to know someone with - even middle class values, let's say - one might not think much of your differences.
But when there is sudden change, transitions in life, a great many things which once were overlooked may suddenly become noticeable. When I was younger I was taught that stress and hardship is where we learn much about ourselves. Or as one mentor said, the dark room is needed to reveal the image.
“Stress and hardship is where we learn much about ourselves” Possibly but I’m not sure how you do it if your reaction to stress and hardship is clinical depression.
From my understanding the key knowledge is learning about our capacity for growth, where our limits sit and if they're healthy boundaries (appropriate responses emotionally) and if our instincts and work with reason at these thresholds.
Now there is a point where on-going stress is not productive. Something has to change or the human spirit will break. "At a certain point, stress becomes toxic" https://news.uga.edu/some-stress-is-good-for-brain-function/
Clinical depression, though (and not misdiagnosed depression, which is common) is definitely something I'm not well enough read up on. The more original understanding I have is Depression as the opposite of the Will to live, the survival instinct. A mechanism responsible for helping the human body embrace decomposition, and return to the earth. We can only hope to be helped in this capacity and not struggle against death when the time comes. But I can't say I know more than this.
The thing is, we don't live in an easy time. Many of us have experienced moments or longer of a sense of desolation or resignation, hopelessness. And it's defeating. Mother Theresa talks about going through a time of feeling isolated, lost and it wasn't that she did anything to get to the other side of it. There are dark nights of the soul, and so many others who talk of these journeys. Perhaps they were all periods of depression. But the world today is too much for too many, I do know that. x
This is one of the reasons why one of the most important set of skills parents can teach their children is problem solving skills. You can’t avoid problems in life but the more and stronger problem solving skills you have the less likely you are going to be depressed by them.
The best illustration of the effect of stress I have seen is it’s a bit like walking closer and closer to the edge of a cliff as you get more stressed. If you don’t do something - exercise is good - to de stress and move further away from the edge of the cliff, then eventually you will walk over the edge of the cliff and fall. While the fall doesn’t have to kill you it’s unlikely you are going to escape unharmed.
Your understanding of depression is certainly original and not one I have come across before or agree with.
My understanding is that depression is a coping measure for some people when the find themselves in a situation which they can’t cope with and don’t have the knowledge, skills, support etc to get out of. Basically instead of coping the body just says I can’t cope with this and shuts down.
I’m not even sure I agree with Mother Theresa. One of the problems with depression is that other people can’t stop you being depressed - the only person who can stop you being depressed is yourself. At some point therefore something must have changed in her thinking for her to get to the other side of it or she would still be in it. (Unless I suppose the circumstances which caused her to be depressed changed drastically)
The people who survived the Holocaust were not the best and the brightest. The people who survived were the most adaptable (or luckiest) and people who could still function despite the ridiculousness of the situation they found themselves in.
Most people who have been seriously depressed come out of it bitter and disillusioned. Bitter that no-one helped them even though no-one could have helped them and disillusioned that despite having been seriously depressed they then still have to continue to suffer all the things that life brings. If they are not bitter and disillusioned then personally I question how depressed they really were.
If you are interested the best book I have read on depression is A Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. Frankl was an Austrian Jew who survived the Holocaust and his book was written shortly after the war. (A lot of what I have written above paraphrases Frankl)