‘Life’ as a Perfect Storm of Train Wrecks

While low-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder seems to be more recognized and treated, higher-functioning ASD cases are typically left to fend for themselves, except for parents who can finance usually expensive specialized help. But a physically and mentally sound future should be EVERY child’s fundamental right, especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter. And not being mentally, let alone physically, abused within or by the educational system is definitely a moral right. 

In the early 1970s, my Grade 2 teacher was the first and most formidably abusive authority figure with whom I was terrifyingly trapped. I cannot recall her abuse in its entirety, but I’ll nevertheless always remember how she had the immoral audacity — and especially the unethical confidence in avoiding any professional repercussions — to blatantly readily aim and fire her knee towards my groin, as I was backed up against the school hall wall. 

Luckily, she missed her mark, instead hitting the top of my left leg. Though there were other terrible teachers, for me she was uniquely traumatizing, especially when she wore her dark sunglasses when dealing with me. 

But rather than tell anyone about my ordeal with her and consciously feel victimized, I instead felt some misplaced shame: I was a ‘difficult’ boy, therefore she likely perceived me as somehow ‘deserving it’. I was much too young to perceive how a regular-school environment can become the traumatizer of susceptible children like me; the trusted educator indeed the abuser. 

Perhaps not surprising, I feel that schoolteachers should receive mandatory ASD training, especially as the rate of diagnoses increases. There could also be an inclusion in standard high school curriculum of child-development science that would also teach students about the often-debilitating condition (without being overly complicated). 

If nothing else, the curriculum would offer students an idea/clue as to whether they themselves are emotionally/mentally compatible with the immense responsibility and strains of regular, non-ASD-child parenthood. 

It would explain to students how, among other aspects of the condition, people with ASD (including those with higher functioning autism) are often deemed willfully ‘difficult’ and socially incongruent, when in fact such behavior is really not a choice. It would also elucidate how “camouflaging” or “masking,” terms used to describe ASD people pretending to naturally fit into a socially ‘normal’ environment, causes their already high anxiety and depression levels to further increase. 

Of course, this exacerbation is reflected in the disproportionately high rate of suicide among ASD people. 

As for relationships, I can be quite attracted to a woman [or girl, in my earlier years] and yet have a purely reactive, abnormal response of pulling away if she takes the unexpected initiative of getting close. It's strange and therefore can be quite embarrassing.  

Today, at age 56, I’m still non-diagnosed due to its price tag, though that status means little to me. My autism-spectrum disordered brain is, at least for me, an obvious condition with which I greatly struggle(d) while unaware until I was a half-century old that its component dysfunctions had formal names. 

I’m sometimes told, “But you’re so smart!” To this I immediately agitatedly reply: “But for every ‘gift’ I have, there are a corresponding three or four deficits.” It’s crippling.

Besides the ASD, my daily cerebral turmoil mostly consists of a formidable combination of adverse childhood experience trauma, autism spectrum disorder and high sensitivity, with the ACE trauma in large part the result of my ASD and high sensitivity. More recently, I’ve discovered yet another and perhaps even more consequential coexistent psychological condition — “core shame” — that’s seriously complicating an already bad and borderline bearable cerebral-disorder combination. 

A core shame diagnosis would help explain why, among its other debilitating traits, I’ve always felt oddly uncomfortable sharing my accomplishments with others, including those closest to me. And maybe explain my otherwise inexplicable almost-painful inability to accept compliments, which I had always attributed to extreme modesty. 

It would also help explain why I have consistently felt unlovable. Largely due to ASD traits that rubbed against the grain of social normality thus were clearly unappreciated by others, my unlikability was for me confirmed. My avoidance of social interaction and even simple smiles at seemingly-interested females was undoubtedly misperceived as snobbery. The bitter irony was that I was actually feeling the opposite of conceit or even healthy self-image/-esteem. … 

Such coexisting conditions, or what I self-deprecatingly refer to as my perfect storm of train wrecks, are real and cause me great suffering. ACE abuse thus trauma, for example, is often inflicted upon ASD and/or highly sensitive children and teens by their normal or ‘neurotypical’ peers — thus resulting in immense and even debilitating self-hatred and shame — so why not at least acknowledge that consequential fact in a meaningfully constructive way? 

It indeed would be very helpful to people like me to have books written about such or similar coexistent-condition life tribulations. 

Largely as a result of the abovementioned, I’ve suffered enough unrelenting ACE-related PTSD thus hyper-anxiety and depression to have known and enjoyed the euphoric release upon consuming alcohol and/or THC. However, the psychologically self-medicating method I utilized for many years was eating, usually junk food. 

Many, if not most, obese people self-medicate through over-eating. I utilized that method during most of my pre-teen years, and even later in life for a couple decades after temporarily ceasing my use of intoxicants. ... I hope not, but someday I might return to over-eating as a means of no longer self-medicating via two glasses of wine every night.  

It all typically makes every day a mental ordeal unless the turmoil is treated with some form of self-medicating, which for me is alcohol and prescription, since the latter is only partially effective. 

It’s a continuous, discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly I will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires. The lasting emotional/psychological pain from such trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside the head.  

It is solitarily suffered, unlike an openly visible physical disability or condition, which tends to elicit sympathy/empathy from others.