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What could be wrong with me?

Laddo

Firstly, I'm just going to say that I don't think that this is an alternative to seeing a doctor or psychiatrist. I just want some advice.

Along with Asperger's and ADHD, I have suffered from depression and anxiety since early childhood. Now I am beginning to think there is even more going on in my head. I have very frequent mood swings where a very good mood could be totally ruined at the slightest thing. In fact, my mood only seems to get really low following a really high point. The past three years in a row, I have gone through a crippling period of extreme anxiety, social phobia and depression around April which will last until June or July. During these episodes, I try to reach out to all those closest to me for help but it never feels enough to me and I begin to lash out at them. I always regret it afterwards - it's like I become a different person when I melt down. Most of the time the advice is no more than 'Things will get better' etc which is pretty useless advice but I know they are just trying to help. I will also be chronically unmotivated with tiny bouts (usually when I'm trying to sleep) of feeling very motivated.

So many different diagnoses seem to fit what I'm going through - sometimes I think I might be bipolar, sometimes borderline, sometimes PTSD with repressed memories - but whenever I express these concerns with a doctor, I ALWAYS get the usual 'Oh, I'm sure you're just depressed. Let's put you on some anti-depressants and see if they work. Don't be too alarmed if they make you want to kill yourself'. I never get referred for counselling. As well as this, when I'm going through an episode of social phobia, the last thing I want to do is have to keep making endless appointments with my GP just to be put on another type of anti-depressant. I hate doctor's surgeries, can't stand sitting in the waiting room. It always feels like the other patients are staring, which then makes my social anxiety worse and by the time I get to actually see the doctor (usually at least 15 minutes later than my appointment time which makes me even more nervous) I am in full fight-or-flight mode and want to get out of there as soon as possible, which in turn leads me to completely forget most of what I wanted to say to my doctor. It's an endless cycle and it's really bringing me down. Five years ago I was pretty happy. Now I'm just a mess of emotion.

Any suggestions as to what could be wrong with me, then? Any tips to be taken more seriously by the doctor?

Parents
  • Former Member
    Former Member

    Hi Laddo,

    My understanding of your/our ASD situation is as follows.

    We have two problems that contribute to this mix of mental issues.

    a) Social interaction difficulties.

    b) Dichotomous thinking

    The social interaction issues cause us to have a stream of diasagreements, misunderstandings and disputes. This leads to a life of stress and anxiety as we continually live in a state of apprehension about what will go wrong next and a state of misunderstanding about why things keep going wrong.

    The dichotomous thinking bit makes us too black/white good/bad, brilliant/catastrophic etc etc in our analysis of our own thoughts and in our analysis of events that impinge on us.Another way to look at this is that we come to unreasonable views about things. Dichotomous thinking makes us more logical or Spock-like than NT people. Unreasonable thinking is a recognised source of depression.

    Both of these factors create depression, anxiety, mood swings. If we continually catastrophise about things (i.e. we see more black than white) then we simply get depressed. If we see black one moment and then white the next then this will get confused with bipolar. (It is common to misdiagnose bipolar in ASD sufferers) If we continually come into conflict with other people then this will push us further into the black and we then obsess about how awful our lives are.

    I've wondered about the PTSD thing too. My analysis is that a life of continual stress will put us into a PTSD state. The stress arises from the 2 factors above and I can easily recognise the continual unmitigated stress in my own life (pre dx) and others on this forum.

    There are two things to remedy this situation.

    1) Be on the lookout for when you are being unreasonably dichotomous. Question your decisions that things are black and try and work out whether your thoughts are reasonable. Replace the black and white with the occasional compromise. This is a CBT approach but, given the difficulty of getting CBT, it is reasonable to do a bit of diy/reading/self analysis or work with friends such as the rest of the community on this forum.

    2) Learn how to be better at dealing with other people. This doesn't come naturally to us so we have to make special efforts, read books etc where a NT person would just pick it up as they go along.

    Does this make sense to you? I've been trying to figure it out for my own benefit but I'm sure that other people will have different thoughts too.

Reply
  • Former Member
    Former Member

    Hi Laddo,

    My understanding of your/our ASD situation is as follows.

    We have two problems that contribute to this mix of mental issues.

    a) Social interaction difficulties.

    b) Dichotomous thinking

    The social interaction issues cause us to have a stream of diasagreements, misunderstandings and disputes. This leads to a life of stress and anxiety as we continually live in a state of apprehension about what will go wrong next and a state of misunderstanding about why things keep going wrong.

    The dichotomous thinking bit makes us too black/white good/bad, brilliant/catastrophic etc etc in our analysis of our own thoughts and in our analysis of events that impinge on us.Another way to look at this is that we come to unreasonable views about things. Dichotomous thinking makes us more logical or Spock-like than NT people. Unreasonable thinking is a recognised source of depression.

    Both of these factors create depression, anxiety, mood swings. If we continually catastrophise about things (i.e. we see more black than white) then we simply get depressed. If we see black one moment and then white the next then this will get confused with bipolar. (It is common to misdiagnose bipolar in ASD sufferers) If we continually come into conflict with other people then this will push us further into the black and we then obsess about how awful our lives are.

    I've wondered about the PTSD thing too. My analysis is that a life of continual stress will put us into a PTSD state. The stress arises from the 2 factors above and I can easily recognise the continual unmitigated stress in my own life (pre dx) and others on this forum.

    There are two things to remedy this situation.

    1) Be on the lookout for when you are being unreasonably dichotomous. Question your decisions that things are black and try and work out whether your thoughts are reasonable. Replace the black and white with the occasional compromise. This is a CBT approach but, given the difficulty of getting CBT, it is reasonable to do a bit of diy/reading/self analysis or work with friends such as the rest of the community on this forum.

    2) Learn how to be better at dealing with other people. This doesn't come naturally to us so we have to make special efforts, read books etc where a NT person would just pick it up as they go along.

    Does this make sense to you? I've been trying to figure it out for my own benefit but I'm sure that other people will have different thoughts too.

Children
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