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I feel nothing

aurelis

I’ve recently come back from holiday, and I’m back home. I feel nothing. It’s interesting because I’ve slowed down a lot and tried not to run as fast as I did in the past in trying to keep up with everything else. But now I feel nothing, I have nothing to share and open with anyone, nothing that I want to anyway, and feel as if I’m existing as a vessel. I have loving people around me and still feel nothing. It’s the thing that I’ve always been afraid of and now I’m face to face with it and I can’t run away anymore. It hurts, that I feel no purpose towards anything, and I really don’t know if I did. I feel as if all my friendships consisted of me listening to the other person rather than being able to share my thoughts, and now my thoughts are really jumbled.

The holiday made me slow down and soak things up more, and I’m trying to seek time of slowing down and doing nothing. But I’m scared that by doing that, the thing I’ve been chasing most of my life (wanting to feel connected and feel meaning to life) will completely disappear and I’ll lose myself entirely. I really want to genuinely feel, but I can’t genuinely generate that feel.

Parents
  • aurelis said:
    now my thoughts are really jumbled

    When I feel this way I get out some sheets of paper and start dumping the thoughts on my head onto post-it notes then laying them on the paper, then when I have got all the thoughts down I can look at them, see where they connect and arrange them to see where the gaps are and these are the thoughts I'm trying not to thing about.

    I'll focus on these as hard as I can to nibble away around the issues until I can see what it probably in then give it a whole sheet of paper to itself with all the bits of thoughts laid out around it - it often helps me build up a better picture of what I'm afraid to think about and to drag it screaming and kicking into the light.

    It isn't easy and certainly isn't comfortable but getting those thoughts stuck down and made manifest helps me tremendously.

    Another advantage of the capturing process is that it stops the thoughts buzzing around as it they are afraid of being forgotten.

    At the end of the day you now have something to talk about as well - this is a variant of the mind mapping process and it can be used to help you achieve quite remarkable things when used properly.

  • in reply to Iain

    this seems really useful, although I’m pretty bad at committing things to paper and following up on it.

    however, I have been confronting a lot unpleasant thoughts that I realised I had, and now really horrified that I have some thoughts (in terms of the really unhelpful and crippling ways I think and perceive the world) and sitting with them a lot more.

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  • in reply to Iain

    this seems really useful, although I’m pretty bad at committing things to paper and following up on it.

    however, I have been confronting a lot unpleasant thoughts that I realised I had, and now really horrified that I have some thoughts (in terms of the really unhelpful and crippling ways I think and perceive the world) and sitting with them a lot more.

Children
  • in reply to aurelis
    aurelis said:
    I’ve got a counselling meeting next week - never had such a thing before, so I’m completely new to it. I don’t know if it’s the same as therapy,

    Counselling and psycotherapy are closely related. Psychotherapists are typically more educated (no insult to theraists but the qualification requirement to be called a psychotherapist is normally quite high) and are more likely to have been trained on autism and its treatments.

    I would start the session with asking the counsellor what their training on autism has been and how many autistic clients have the successfully helped. A vague response would indicate they possibly don't know their stuff.

    What do you want from the therapy? I would start with writing down the issues you have that you want help with. Start with a few words on each until all the big issues are written down then for each add a sentance that starts to explain it.

    Cycle through the issues until you have nothing more to add then write these up into a list of bullet points to talk about and have them re-written in a way to explain them to someone.

    Think about which ones you want to stop, change, be accepted, understand etc - try to hold the issue up to the light and see what it means to you and how you want it to be in future.

    That is how I would do it anyway.

  • in reply to Iain

    I’ve got a counselling meeting next week - never had such a thing before, so I’m completely new to it. I don’t know if it’s the same as therapy, but I did get it through my mental health service at work. I asked for someone experienced in autists.

    They asked me to prepare what I want to get out of the sessions. Any thoughts about getting ready for first session?

  • in reply to aurelis
    aurelis said:
    I have been confronting a lot unpleasant thoughts that I realised I had, and now really horrified that I have some thoughts

    I think this is actually pretty normal - ask any therapist and they can confirm this.

    If you have a therapist then they are the one to guide you through the process as taking shortcuts or avoiding it are all too common deviations we take. If you don't have a therapist then I strongly recommend getting one - just make sure they are experienced in helping autists as I've met a few who didn't know how we "tick".

    There is nothing worng with having the odd terrible thought but the issues start when you begin to voice them to others or act on them. This point of escalation is when you need to get help.