Hello.
I am 57 years old and was diagnosed as autistic 2 weeks ago.
I have Complex PTSD as a result of childhood abuse, marital abuse and 2 assaults at work when I was a nurse.
I also have alexithymia to make life even more difficult.
I am a bit lost and feel empty at the moment. I don't know what to do next and was looking for some advice.
Can anybody help?
Hi Samcro Samcro
I'm 62 and was diagnosed 4 years ago as autistic.
I too experienced childhood abuse and although not diagnosed with Complex PTSD for this i and others have a reasonable suspicion that this is part of my mix too.
The assaults I have received are probably more psychological than physical - I have a health care background too, but also gained black belts in martial arts before going into that career so the physical side of things has been less a risk I guess for me.
As regards the alexithymia - yep I have experienced that very profoundly too - especially around the time of diagnosis myself and I completely recognise that lost and empty feeling.
Advice is pretty much a personal thing and we are also bounded by the limitations of this forum and those of safety w/r/to medical advice of course.
As a fellow health care professional I would say that for me taking a "bio-psycho-social" view of my situation was and still is useful.
On the biological side I made sure that I validated the diagnosis by getting handle on the hard scientific evidence and the implications of it for me as an autistic person - this helped me get over any lingering doubt of my being autistic and helped me start to drop the "mask" most importantly from my own analysis of myself - getting over the "imposter syndrome" perhaps in relation to the psychological aspect of it. Biologically I made a point of starting to try to interpret what I was feeling by using how my body felt for feedback on that - it and a mirror, and luckily although perhaps distressingly for all concerned the feedback from family, friends and trusted professionals. Objectively "scoring" my capabilities and activities and how I was doing things gave me an insight into how I was feeling to.
Further on the psychological side of things I learned that I had been running on "fight/flight/fawn" from high stress for so long (despite me believing myself to be something of an expert in meditation and down-regulation of physical evidence of stress...) that the more subtle nuanced emotions and the changes of them were beyond my reach. I started to acknowledge that running my mind and body as some sort of machine that was trying all the while to "hack" ways of resolving (predominantly social and behavoural) differences with neurodivergent me and neurotypical society, its members and its expectations, was an enormous energy cost - and it was one i could no longer sustain.
That last bit touches on the "social" side of things. - Getting my head around the "dual empathy problem" led me closer and closer to realising that the biggest empathy problem I had and probably still do have is in empathising with myself. For this reason the best but perhaps hardest advice I personally have had to take is to be kind to oneself - picking up on what Bunny recommends. All those years of internalisng that I was a problem - that if only I could do this instead of that - from neurotypical society - that was effectively expecting a metaphorical fish to climb a tree...
All this is to say I have had to put some of the hardest work in my life into getting better from the muddle I found/find myself in - so the best advice I have for that is that learning to "do something by not doing something". And as both Bunny and Oscar have highlighted - permit things to take time...
Naturally as a health care professional I was drawn to consider rationally what may also be other health issues that effect how I feel and look to resolve them too - a holistic, balanced approach is important I have found.
My best wishes to you for a happy and fulfilling future Samcro
Phased
Hi Samcro Samcro
I'm 62 and was diagnosed 4 years ago as autistic.
I too experienced childhood abuse and although not diagnosed with Complex PTSD for this i and others have a reasonable suspicion that this is part of my mix too.
The assaults I have received are probably more psychological than physical - I have a health care background too, but also gained black belts in martial arts before going into that career so the physical side of things has been less a risk I guess for me.
As regards the alexithymia - yep I have experienced that very profoundly too - especially around the time of diagnosis myself and I completely recognise that lost and empty feeling.
Advice is pretty much a personal thing and we are also bounded by the limitations of this forum and those of safety w/r/to medical advice of course.
As a fellow health care professional I would say that for me taking a "bio-psycho-social" view of my situation was and still is useful.
On the biological side I made sure that I validated the diagnosis by getting handle on the hard scientific evidence and the implications of it for me as an autistic person - this helped me get over any lingering doubt of my being autistic and helped me start to drop the "mask" most importantly from my own analysis of myself - getting over the "imposter syndrome" perhaps in relation to the psychological aspect of it. Biologically I made a point of starting to try to interpret what I was feeling by using how my body felt for feedback on that - it and a mirror, and luckily although perhaps distressingly for all concerned the feedback from family, friends and trusted professionals. Objectively "scoring" my capabilities and activities and how I was doing things gave me an insight into how I was feeling to.
Further on the psychological side of things I learned that I had been running on "fight/flight/fawn" from high stress for so long (despite me believing myself to be something of an expert in meditation and down-regulation of physical evidence of stress...) that the more subtle nuanced emotions and the changes of them were beyond my reach. I started to acknowledge that running my mind and body as some sort of machine that was trying all the while to "hack" ways of resolving (predominantly social and behavoural) differences with neurodivergent me and neurotypical society, its members and its expectations, was an enormous energy cost - and it was one i could no longer sustain.
That last bit touches on the "social" side of things. - Getting my head around the "dual empathy problem" led me closer and closer to realising that the biggest empathy problem I had and probably still do have is in empathising with myself. For this reason the best but perhaps hardest advice I personally have had to take is to be kind to oneself - picking up on what Bunny recommends. All those years of internalisng that I was a problem - that if only I could do this instead of that - from neurotypical society - that was effectively expecting a metaphorical fish to climb a tree...
All this is to say I have had to put some of the hardest work in my life into getting better from the muddle I found/find myself in - so the best advice I have for that is that learning to "do something by not doing something". And as both Bunny and Oscar have highlighted - permit things to take time...
Naturally as a health care professional I was drawn to consider rationally what may also be other health issues that effect how I feel and look to resolve them too - a holistic, balanced approach is important I have found.
My best wishes to you for a happy and fulfilling future Samcro
Phased
