Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi,
I’ve never posted on here before, I’m hoping someone will be able to share things that have helped/their experiences so I feel a bit less defeatist.
I’m in my late twenties and am on the waitlist for an autism assessment. I’ve been struggling badly with what I think is burnout for the past 6 months which was put down to anxiety/ various MH conditions for a long time.
Today I had a shutdown in public (at work) for the first time in a long time. I’ve had them for a long time, but they were usually referred to as either panic attacks or dissociative episodes, and I’ve gotten used to spotting them over the years and being able to take myself out of public situations in time. Today, everything went wrong and I feel like I’ve outed myself in front of my whole office.
It’s really shaken me, not being able to catch it quickly enough, and I’m feeling really overwhelmed now. I need to go back to work tomorrow, and not sure how I’ll face it.
Has anyone had an experience like this? Does this get better with diagnosis and support? I guess I’m just looking to hear if people have experienced this while waiting for diagnosis, this feeling of knowing this is probably what is causing all the distress (from sensory overload, constantly masking etc) in your life, but being unsure if there’s something coming that will make it easier at some point?
(sorry this is a fairly low energy post, I promise I’m less of a downer when I don’t feel like I’ve exploded my life in front of all my colleagues and manager)
From what I've seen from the more durable public figures and politicians, the more bizzarre your behaviour is, the less you need to acknowledge it!
So if it was really bad, you'd better practcie your poker face and pretend that nothing out of teh ordniary happened, adn if you can blame a colleague or deflect focus away from what YOU did and onto what someone else MIGHT HAVE DONE, you are golden!
If you are a wuss like me, then some sort of conciliatory repsonse where you accept responsibilty and admit weakness is on the cards, but there's still weak and strong ways of doing that. If you can do it with good humour, and a bit of embarrassment about your limitations or behaviour rather than coming across as a pathetic person it seems to work better.
I Sperg said:From what I've seen from the more durable public figures and politicians, the more bizzarre your behaviour is, the less you need to acknowledge it!
You know, this is a really insightful comment! I know some "eccentric" people who can behave any way they like and everyone finds it quite charming and says "oh it's just Bob, he's a character". One such person at work is about as close as I have to a friend and when I told him I was going through the autism diagnosis process he basically said of course you are, why do you need a bit of paper.
It's hard to reinvent yourself / behave differently and more authentically in a job or social group where your masked self is already established, but perhaps with a new job or social group we should become that eccentric charming person that we know we are deep down.
That’s a nicer way of looking at it - I guess I don’t always see eccentric behaviour as being terrible, it can often be charming. Thanks for reframing a bit for me