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.
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.
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