I am unable to regulate my emotions and I ruin everything. Please help

If I were your mother and knew this was hard for you, I’d have you take the photos or ask you to do something in the kitchen while I take a photo so to not openly disclose a private matter. As a mother, I find this matter disturbs me a little. 

It sounds to me that for whatever reason you’re being dismissed by the one person who should understand. Now, we all have limits to what we can handle but events don’t need to be so special that this much pressure is put on everyone. It sucks the specialness out, as far as I’m concerned. 

Hiding emotions is a thing one might learn in a theatre class. Internally, we quickly improvise a different script so we can pivot externally. I don’t believe this is easy for Autistics as we can be caught off guard due to not being able to anticipate social nuance let alone make sense of it most of the time. So here’s a way to navigate:

It’s time to learn to self-care. To learn your roles and responsibilities. To learn what is reasonable to expect from others, and what’s reasonable to expect from yourself. And then what’s painful and what should hurt. 

From what I’m hearing, this is not so much a matter of feeling unattractive, but being dismissed for knowing that we are judged on our looks and if female it can affect our livelihood or chances of security in life. And a photo is no longer safe in a family book, but our worst moments can be publicly displayed without our consent- and we can even be ridiculed for protest. When I was young (growing up in the States), I learned it was a severe offence to “Steal someone’s image” in the First Nation community - you should always ask if you might take someone’s picture. All over London signs are posted reminding us that “Staring” is a crime. A photo exists to be stared at.

But I’m hearing other things in this as well. Someone told you “you ruin everything”.  And yet who has helped you learn to identify how you’re feeling and what happened to trigger this? Many of us have what’s called “Alexithymia”, an inability to identify with a term or a word what we’re feeling, which compounds already difficult emotions. And being autistic, we have a biology which doesn’t filter out impact like our Typical peers. So we feel everything far more intensely. We are slower to mature due to rarely encountering practical advice on how to create healthy Boundaries or steps to understand ourselves or to connect in real ways with the world around. Often we can experience being overlooked, treated unkindly and isolated.  One should cry this out. I feel for you, for others and even younger “me”. 

The more you understand, the more control you will have. Perspective can shift how we respond. Perhaps your mother has her own growing up to do, but you don’t have to allow yourself to be in situations that push you to a breaking point.

I’ve recommended it here before, but if you can, get a copy of The Artists Way. Xx

If I were your mother and knew this was hard for you, I’d have you take the photos or ask you to do something in the kitchen while I take a photo so to not openly disclose a private matter. As a mother, I find this matter disturbs me a little. 

It sounds to me that for whatever reason you’re being dismissed by the one person who should understand. Now, we all have limits to what we can handle but events don’t need to be so special that this much pressure is put on everyone. It sucks the specialness out, as far as I’m concerned. 

Hiding emotions is a thing one might learn in a theatre class. Internally, we quickly improvise a different script so we can pivot externally. I don’t believe this is easy for Autistics as we can be caught off guard due to not being able to anticipate social nuance let alone make sense of it most of the time. So here’s a way to navigate:

It’s time to learn to self-care. To learn your roles and responsibilities. To learn what is reasonable to expect from others, and what’s reasonable to expect from yourself. And then what’s painful and what should hurt. 

From what I’m hearing, this is not so much a matter of feeling unattractive, but being dismissed for knowing that we are judged on our looks and if female it can affect our livelihood or chances of security in life. And a photo is no longer safe in a family book, but our worst moments can be publicly displayed without our consent- and we can even be ridiculed for protest. When I was young (growing up in the States), I learned it was a severe offence to “Steal someone’s image” in the First Nation community - you should always ask if you might take someone’s picture. All over London signs are posted reminding us that “Staring” is a crime. A photo exists to be stared at.

But I’m hearing other things in this as well. Someone told you “you ruin everything”.  And yet who has helped you learn to identify how you’re feeling and what happened to trigger this? Many of us have what’s called “Alexithymia”, an inability to identify with a term or a word what we’re feeling, which compounds already difficult emotions. And being autistic, we have a biology which doesn’t filter out impact like our Typical peers. So we feel everything far more intensely. We are slower to mature due to rarely encountering practical advice on how to create healthy Boundaries or steps to understand ourselves or to connect in real ways with the world around. Often we can experience being overlooked, treated unkindly and isolated.  One should cry this out. I feel for you, for others and even younger “me”. 

The more you understand, the more control you will have. Perspective can shift how we respond. Perhaps your mother has her own growing up to do, but you don’t have to allow yourself to be in situations that push you to a breaking point.

I’ve recommended it here before, but if you can, get a copy of The Artists Way. Xx