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MakerPaul

Hi,

This is my first post here and I'm in a bit of a mess mentally and emotionally at the moment.

I'm a 56yo man living in the UK, married with kids. About a year ago I was diagnosed with adhd, and around 10 weeks ago I was diagnosed as high functioning autistic. Both of these were through the "Right to choose" system.

My journey to getting a diagnosis was a bit convoluted as autism and adhd was never mentioned to me until our daughter was born. My wife had a child before we met and my wife knew something wasn't right from the moment she was born. It took 5 years of back and forth with the Nhs to figure out her autism diagnosis. And thankfully since then she's had a lot of help with schooling and now life skills training.

However, when me and my wife had our daughter, my wife had similar thoughts about autism again, even though they were totally different behaviours this time. Once again autism was diagnosed at around 10y old. And she's been getting help ever since (around 4 years now and is doing amazingly well).

At this point my wife started questioning her role in the autism issue and she was diagnosed around 3 years ago. For her it was just to give her an answer to why she is the way she is and it's helped her figure herself out.

And then it was my turn to go through this because I've had a few mental health issues in the past but it was always put down to stressful situations (obviously now I realise it was burnout).

My entire life I've never been out of work, unless I've chosen to be so I could do other things outside of the job. I think I've had around 20 different jobs, everything from plastering to aerospace metalwork to car salesman and my current position of being a manager running delivery hub with 20+ staff and vans. But every job up until this point has ended the same. Something changes in me and my resilience to all the stress fades, I burn out and had to move on to the next thing.

Which brings me to the last 10 weeks of my life. The moment the doctor confirmed my autism diagnosis i felt a wave of emotions, anger, sadness, grief and understanding that I wasn't just a bit odd, there was actually something different about me. While on the call  the doctors asked me how I was feeling and I just said I felt like crying. I hung up and just broke down. And since then I've been questioning everything about myself and my past issues, things I've done and things I'm doing now. My emotional resilience is practically nothing and i find myself welliing up frequently. My ability to make rational decisions has also declined and I did something stupid at work yesterday that could potentially get me terminated from my job.

I'm also dealing with new neighbours that have damaged our home and and created a leaking roof problem, so I feel like I don't have a safe space at home at the moment either.

I've spoken to my wife about this, but she doesn't really understand why I'm feeling like this, because for her it was a lightbulb moment,  but for me it felt like an earthquake, I was always the one with a plan  the one that could figure it out, that could fix everything, solve the problem. But now I can't stop crying.

I've already spoken to my doctors and they're signed me off work for 2 weeks and upped my dosage of antidepressant which I have to collect this morning.

Right now my life feels like each part of it is a dish or plate and I've loaded everything into a washing machine and set it running and it's just smashing everything to peices and I don't know where to go from here.

If you're still reading this at this point, I'd appreciate any suggestions on what do do next.

Thank you

Parents

  • Hi MakerDave and welcome,

    As some have already said, it's extremely brave of you to come on here and describe your predicament.

    I fully sympathise with everything you have mentioned because reading it was like looking in a mirror. I turned 50 three weeks ago, but I've been conscious that something hasn't been right for some time. A lot of the things my wife assumed to be 'just me' have been getting worse recently, especially periods of non-verbal and muted behaviour when I've been unknowingly overloading. She's observed me having a lot of mini 'strops' and temper tantrums if I get disturbed from something I'm heavily invested in. She was worried it could be something like early onset dementia creeping in.

    I eventually caved in and got an appointment with my GP, which incidentally I had yesterday. He was very reassuring and listened carefully - he apologised as the call was quite late but he said he wanted to leave me until last as no doubt, we'd have a lot to talk about; we were on the phone for nearly 40 minutes! Prior to getting information from me about experiences, symptoms and other details, he mentioned about referrals but warned a lot of suspected autistic people can get turned down at the GP stage if they don't meet certain criteria. After discussing it at length, my doctor has now referred me onto the waiting list for formal assessment with Right to Choose.

    I went in to speak to my wife about it, and suddenly locked up non-verbal. I couldn't utter a word, but my wife took it wrong and said "You just do what you normally do and don't talk to me won't you?" I walked into the dining room as my phone pinged - it was my wife with a WhatsApp from the room next door saying "If you can't speak to me face to face, message me on here". I told her I was physically unable and she responded by asking me to come back in the room. I did just that but as soon as I entered the lounge, I broke down in floods of tears. I was just so emotionally overwhelmed, and those were the first tears since my gran died when I was 17.

    But on the other points you've mentioned, I agree with them all and you definitely aren't alone in your experiences. There will be lots of people on here experiencing the same. Burnout builds over time and just when you think you can control it, it overwhelms you. I am absolutely exhausted for 70% of most days and I've always blamed the tablets I'm on (for an unrelated health condition). The doctor I spoke to yesterday rubbished that when he asked me to cast my mind back to before the tablets - did I feel exhausted before using them, and of course the answer was yes. The doctor concluded that it was almost certainly autistic burnout causing the exhaustion.

    So at the moment, I've been advised to self-diagnose as the doctor says all the evidence points to some sort of spectrum diagnosis, and then subsequently made my referral.

    But please don't try to fight this alone! We are all here for you to air your concerns and emotions to, and can help and advise where possible.

    Take care.

Reply

  • Hi MakerDave and welcome,

    As some have already said, it's extremely brave of you to come on here and describe your predicament.

    I fully sympathise with everything you have mentioned because reading it was like looking in a mirror. I turned 50 three weeks ago, but I've been conscious that something hasn't been right for some time. A lot of the things my wife assumed to be 'just me' have been getting worse recently, especially periods of non-verbal and muted behaviour when I've been unknowingly overloading. She's observed me having a lot of mini 'strops' and temper tantrums if I get disturbed from something I'm heavily invested in. She was worried it could be something like early onset dementia creeping in.

    I eventually caved in and got an appointment with my GP, which incidentally I had yesterday. He was very reassuring and listened carefully - he apologised as the call was quite late but he said he wanted to leave me until last as no doubt, we'd have a lot to talk about; we were on the phone for nearly 40 minutes! Prior to getting information from me about experiences, symptoms and other details, he mentioned about referrals but warned a lot of suspected autistic people can get turned down at the GP stage if they don't meet certain criteria. After discussing it at length, my doctor has now referred me onto the waiting list for formal assessment with Right to Choose.

    I went in to speak to my wife about it, and suddenly locked up non-verbal. I couldn't utter a word, but my wife took it wrong and said "You just do what you normally do and don't talk to me won't you?" I walked into the dining room as my phone pinged - it was my wife with a WhatsApp from the room next door saying "If you can't speak to me face to face, message me on here". I told her I was physically unable and she responded by asking me to come back in the room. I did just that but as soon as I entered the lounge, I broke down in floods of tears. I was just so emotionally overwhelmed, and those were the first tears since my gran died when I was 17.

    But on the other points you've mentioned, I agree with them all and you definitely aren't alone in your experiences. There will be lots of people on here experiencing the same. Burnout builds over time and just when you think you can control it, it overwhelms you. I am absolutely exhausted for 70% of most days and I've always blamed the tablets I'm on (for an unrelated health condition). The doctor I spoke to yesterday rubbished that when he asked me to cast my mind back to before the tablets - did I feel exhausted before using them, and of course the answer was yes. The doctor concluded that it was almost certainly autistic burnout causing the exhaustion.

    So at the moment, I've been advised to self-diagnose as the doctor says all the evidence points to some sort of spectrum diagnosis, and then subsequently made my referral.

    But please don't try to fight this alone! We are all here for you to air your concerns and emotions to, and can help and advise where possible.

    Take care.

Children
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