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This is hard to talk about

Katherine

I’m newly diagnosed ASD and there’s a lot I need to learn. There’s a part of my thinking that I’m ashamed of and it frightens me. I’m wondering if anyone in the community can relate or shed some light on it, please?

When I reach a point where I’m not coping then sometimes my feelings flip. For example I love my dog beyond measure. I find it difficult to be apart from him and we have our own language. However he has health issues which cause me a lot of distress. When he’s poorly I find myself thinking “well he’ll just die and then I can get a dog which doesn’t give me all this stress”. Similarly my husband has a grandson who I used to love to pieces. We went on holiday last year and I had a bad episode of burnout/ meltdown and we had to come home after only a couple of days. Now I see the little one as a threat and dread having to have anything to do with him. I can remember my previous feelings of love but not recover them.

Both of these examples make me feel like a monster. I guess I’m hoping for some reassurance, or maybe a way to challenge this thinking and find a way out of it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Parents

  • Hello Katherine and welcome.

    First of all: you are definitely not a monster (although it can feel scary to us when we experience such situations).

    I think what you have described might be known as "black and white" or "all or nothing" thinking ("This refers to the tendency to categorise things or people as entirely good or bad. Often there are many possibilities in between, like the different shades of grey between black and white").

    This type of thinking style can be quite familiar to our community as an Autism trait (we can be prone to this style of thought). 

    Over time, we can learn to recognise ourselves thinking this way, practice adding some questions to ourselves (to test the facts of the situation) and challenge ourselves to pause, reflect and have another go next time we spot that pattern of thinking in ourselves.

    This article explores these thinking styles:

    https://www.autistica.org.uk/what-is-autism/anxiety-and-autism-hub/unhelpful-thinking-styles

    Sometimes, I feel; this trait might be connected to both a measure of our anxiety over something, combined with our best endeavour to do something really well.

  • in reply to DormouseAtRest_25

    Oh wow. That's me. I'm going to give that a good read and see if I can at least ease some specific  issues I'm having right now. 

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