Published on 12, July, 2020
I've been struggling for both for a while. My stress levels have been heightened for a while too so it's perhaps unsurprising that I'm so sensitive to pretty much anything.
My mum can't tell me to do anything now (I'm 26 and still living at home) without me feeling like I want to break something. I've had so much pressure put on me with regards to finding work that I want to run away from any discussion of it.
I fear someone lecturing me/screaming at me all the time. I've basically become so much more hypervigilant than I was.
I have been considering finding something like a rage room or anything I can do to release that frustration that continues to build up but I don't know what I can do.
I turn to watching comedy or something as a distraction but it's only a short term fix. The issues are still there, even if I calm down a bit.
Has anything worked for you?
I logically tell myself I've probably asked for this reminder to do whatever it is and therefore it is my idea to do it, and not theirs so yes I can do it primarily for myself and not for them, even if they secondhand benefit from me doing the thing.
That's interesting. I'm guessing it feels a lot better this way.
I think so, changing my perspective on it is still a work in progress some days, if I am feeling tired or feel like the reminder is derailing something equally important I already had planned or am doing it can be a bit of a gear grind with the autistic inertia which makes the PDA feel worse.Something else I found that helped is to use soft/flexible deadlines for stuff whenever possible so it's an option to put it off until I find my own natural gap in stuff to do to fit it in. And for the hard deadline stuff to put an old school calendar on my wall and get myself and others to put all the things I need to do on there with at least a week time of notice so I can mentally prepare myself for the day my routine is a bit different.It's important that people know I need a certain amount of notice, and that anything short of that they should just do themself if they think doing extra stuff at short notice is so easy. That's something I had to get my other half to agree to as a hard rule to help me manage better executive function.Another reason that might help is I found the silent adding to calendar much better than if I got verbally (socially) interupted whilst I'm in a focus tunnel on something else because having people tap me on the shoulder to talk to me when I have headphones on is like an innertia nightmare for me. I am not super angry anymore these days but I think I understand what you mean by "My mum can't tell me to do anything now (I'm 26 and still living at home) without me feeling like I want to break something." I still feel the shock of that derailment, I had one derailment feel like it fried my brain as I got booted out of my focus tunnel far too quick and I couldn't get into people talking mode on that click of a switch speed so my own verbal reply bottlenecked and sounded like an old dial-up noise tbh. As far as your parents are concerned maybe try to reach some agreement, say you'll really try but you need them to meet you in the middle and do it in a way that you can build up that ability slow and steady over time, an analogy I used to help people understand better has been to say it's like when people are in too much of a rush to pull away that they come off the clutch too fast before the gas is at the bite point and it causes the car to stall. you can't pull out of the drive until the bite point is all good.
I understand this logic to long term get away from people being negative, but really it is difficult to run a home on a single wage or just on benefits alone, it's not like it was back in the day. I had to try keep a roof over my head at 22 on a 0 hour contract and unstable benefits, it was a living hell, I already had bad mental health before that point but the struggle to go it alone made it all x100 worse. Youngsters now need a lot of support in place if they are eventually going to land on their feet sucessfully independant.