Published on 12, July, 2020
For me, the two seem effectively the same so its hard to know what I should do when I'm in this state. I've seen a venn diagram online showing the seperate symptoms of each with a few overlapping ones but as someone who finds it impossible to distinguish feelings anyway, that venn diagram isn't all that useful to me. I know I have physical symptoms like wanting to sleep all day, low energy, no motivation to do things or just feeling in general "off", but how do people with the same sort of struggle with identifying emotions know what state they're in to then know what to do?
Yeh it’s hard I mean it’s quite a deep topic in general, but I would say it is subjective and everyone is different. I don’t know why autistic people are so depressed to be honest. Chemical imbalance in the brain maybe is the cause. Not enough dopamine perhaps maybe that explains the link between autism and ADHD, tremor, tics, sleep issues and stimming. Nobody knows though I wouldn’t worry about the deep explanation for why you’re depressed. Just focus on what works for you and do that. Forget what everyone else wants to do just do you.
As much as I appreciate that sentiment, I feel it might be important to finally understand or at least get a minimal understanding of my feelings because I'm now in therapy for a drug addiction and my mental health because I've always used something whether it be food, my special interests (to the extreme i.e. not eating, sleeping or drinking) or as of the last 8 months, opioids to numb intense feelings because I've got no idea how to interpret them and I feel the best thing to do is silence whatever emotions I felt at times of intensity
Getting to the root of understanding my own emotions not just autistic burnout or depression, I feel would really help alot given I've developed very unhealthy habits, addiction and an eating because I've associated intense feeling to "I don't know what this is, therefore I don't like it so I must do something to get rid of it". If I knew that certain sensations mean feeling x and this is how a person with feeling x deals with it, then that would help at the very least alleviate the usage/need to use food or drugs. Sorry this turned into a long-ish response.