Published on 12, July, 2020
I’m jai/jaidan, i don’t have a preference on the name lol. i haven’t been diagnosed, but i’m working on it. i’m pretty unsure of some things and i don’t really know how to explain it but i’ll try my best. so i’ve always felt off. i got tested at an early age (i was in 2-4 grade) for just any neurodivergency, but the doctor could only tell my mom that i am neurodivergent buttt it was too early to determine for me any specific diagnosis. i also have always acted more mature than i am or have always kinda been emotionally intelligent. i went to a GT school starting in second grade too. i have a horrible memory so i can’t quite recall any early signs of autism in myself but i got burnt out of that school very fast. i know i’ve almost never been good with change and loud noises or overwhelming environments. i just feel like one day everything reset and now i have more of these things popping up. has anyone else experienced this? honestly i think mine may be due to trauma, like my “reset”. so much has happened to me in the past two years which resulted in me getting PTSD. i feel like my brain barriers got torn down and i kinda imploded from trying to conform to others for so long that now i can barely function. have any of y’all felt this way or experienced this thing? i’m sorry if it’s not a good explanation btw, i don’t know how to best organize my thoughts on it rn. i also experience things like getting extremely overwhelmed easily, not picking up on social cues, strong sense of justice, trouble controlling body temp/heat regulation, parroting, lack of empathy, trouble with routine change, and things like that.
That does sound like a lot but you will make it through, Jai. I hope your next session goes Ok. Take care and be kind to yourself.
i’ve only had my ptsd for two years but my body barely leaves fight or flight and it’s almost always on my mind. i have ptsd episodes and it’s sometimes hard to tell those apart from a meltdown. i don’t want to get too personal abt it but the only difference i can tell is that with ptsd episodes i can feel my abuser on me. it’s not like that for any meltdowns that result from overstimulation. i def think they feed into each other though and it’s scary!
im happy i joined this forum too. i feel like it’s another step forward to helping me figure myself out
I think that I also have both PTSD and autism. At the beginning it was so hard to tell them apart. It still is. It's not a great mix specially when a trauma trigger creates all the anxiety and fear which then adds overstimulation and "explosion" in my case. I think even professionals could mix those symptoms and their diagnosis because of how much they overlap. I think that mostly you can tell but you probably need to keep an eye "more awareness" of yourself, thoughts, body and so on will eventually, slowly make things clearer. It's great that you joined this community because it's very inspirational to read about experiences of others to be more aware of your own. There are somethings that I couldn't notice about myself before and I slowly realised that "oh, I do this and that!". I've never noticed because it has been my way all my life and never noticed anything odd about it or I was pushing it to the background and forcing "normal" things to appear on the surface. Take your time to find such a complex answer.
not really, not personally. The only real difference I saw growing up was the obvious puberty stuff.
sorry the questions were kinda mixed into it lol. so i’m just wondering if anyone else has experienced feeling suppressed traits until they got to a certain age and everything just came to the surface and they started showing way more traits. that’s kind of how mine happened, but it was triggered by a period of trauma that completely broke me down. so i feel like the stripping of myself is what revealed all of it, if that makes sense
i’ve been in therapy for my trauma for almost two years, but it is a very long process. i think my next session is when im actually supposed to start reprocessing and forgiving myself for the original events, and i have a lot of anxiousness surrounding that. im worried that my autistic traits and ptsd symptoms feed into each other. or sometimes i cannot tell them apart. i mean friday i was at work and i started getting so overwhelmed that it triggered my ptsd and i started looking for the person involved in it to make sure i was safe. it’s a weird thing and a lot lol. thank you for your help, i’ll definitely check out some more websites :)
i’ve also been labeled as having social anxiety because of how i act and how i acted when i was younger. my problem is also that i can’t tell if my ptsd is causing me to get overwhelmed easily or if the ptsd and autistic traits feed into each other. i have therapy for the trauma stuff and i just hope that’ll help me figure it out.
Welcome to here.
That sounds a lot like what I went through. I coped enough up to a certain age that no one picked up on it being autism; all my difficulties around people were just tagged as social anxiety disorder.
Then kinda suddenly things just fell apart. I started experiencing sensory overload in a way I never had before where everything felt totally overwhelming and all my autistic traits came to the front. Building routines became the most important thing for me to rebuild my sanity. It was still years after that (slowly recovering) before I was told it was autism.
I hope things get easier for you soon.
Hi Jai! Welcome to the community.
It sounds like you have Autistic traits to me. You can do some online quizzes on embrace Autism which really helped me to figure things out. I'm waiting for my initial GP appointment for referral to be diagnosed.
https://embrace-autism.com/autism-tests/
I have definitely something similar to what you describe but I had no idea I may have Autism at the time. My reactions, the slow healing process have started to make much more sense now. I had several years where I didn't act 'myself' and I think now there was an intersection between the aftermath of trauma and barriers/ masking breaking down and the trauma exacerbating my Autistic traits.
I'm sorry to hear aboutyour trauma and experiences though, it is truely very difficult to go through.
Private therapy has really helped me talk through my experiences and reflect on them. I didn't have agood experience with the NHS unfortunately.
Welcome that’s a cool username. You didn’t actually ask a question there though so what advice are you actually looking for?