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.
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.
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 :)