Feeling like a failure

I’ve had a difficult few months and recently I’ve felt like such a failure. I’ve been thinking about my life and all the struggles I’ve had just to cope with normal life - stuff that so many other people seem to breeze through and cope really well with - and I’ve just had this awful overwhelming feeling today of feeling like such a failure. I know now that much of my struggle with day to day life is due to me being autistic (and also my childhood with parents who were very flawed and emotionally distant) and most of the time I try to be positive. But these last couple of weeks I’ve found myself experiencing a lot of self hatred and feeling like such a failure.

I realise this sounds like self pity - and maybe it is! I don’t want to be thinking like this and I know it’s self destructive. 
But how do other autistic people come to terms with the fact that they’ve spent their lives struggling so much with day to day life, and living with a lot of anxiety etc? When I was younger I think I felt better about myself - I enjoyed being different and unique. But now I find myself looking at other people who have had more conventionally ‘successful’ lives and friendships and feeling like a failure in comparison. I think being autistic has made life very difficult for me. 

How do other people come to terms with being accepting of these sorts of thoughts and feelings? And how do you keep positive about the way being autistic has impacted on your ability to really engage with life and achieve things? 

I want to be more positive but am struggling today. Does anyone else sometimes feel this way? And how do you deal with it? 

Parents
  • I've just watched this ted talk and thought you'd like to see it (and other people would too).

    It doesnt give practical advice but has very positive messages https://youtu.be/A1AUdaH-EPM

  • Thank you - I’ve just watched it - it’s excellent isn’t it?! It’s a brilliant approach and I agree with her. There are some environments I’m really suited to things like deserted Moorlands and mountains even when it’s wet and cold and windy - environments that many people would struggle with. I can happily manage without much food for ages, or modern luxuries like hot water or dishwashers or fancy clothes. What I struggle with are things like parties and busy shops! It’s just difference - it’s not necessarily ‘less’ or worse. 
    Good heavens though that statistic about life expectancy she gave is horrendous. Just appalling. I can totally see why though - I feel worn out with stress and anxiety over decades, and I have a lot of difficulty accessing healthcare due to anxiety. So it sadly makes a lot of sense.

    Thank you for sending this to me - I feel her message is ultimately very positive and important. 

  • Yes, it does get to the heart of the matter and a paradigm shift is what's needed. 

    I think my husband would have also liked somewhere isolated, wet and windy for his work but, instead of becoming a lighthouse keeper or a weather station monitor or anything like that, he went into teaching, with disastrous consequences for his mental health.  So earlier information about neurodivergence and other possiblilities could have really helped.  

    And these days we just avoid shopping centres and parties.  A cuppa in the back garden, a good book or a walk somewhere remote is much more appealing.

    If you haven't already done Kieran Rose's course, I would also strongly recommend it.  Obviously we needed it decades ago, but better late than never.  So much better than some professionals assessing me for all my deficits!

    theautisticadvocate.com/.../ 

  • Yes, I always felt like a two headed alien, and somehow as if my brain was melting so this sounds like a similar experience to your son's.  And I now know that I'm almost allergic to the corporate world. 

    And I agree, maybe developing a few small streams of income online would be a good way out.  Like yourselves, I don't think we'd be looking for great riches, just an alternative that makes life more enjoyable for us and keeps us afloat. 

  • Go for it! I’m sure these paintings would be extremely expressive! 

  • I agree with your comments about work and the lack of autonomy. My son found being forced to be with people he felt alien to day after day after day really unbearable. And doing work that he didn’t actually care about and wasn’t excited by - almost impossible. To spend hours everyday on stuff that didn’t ultimately matter seemed pointless and depressing. 
    I think your approach re a family business is a great idea. And working from home - also excellent for many autistic people. I was just looking at a website of someone who makes lovely clothes at home and sells them online - such a small concern but what a great thing to do. I buy all my clothes from small companies run by individuals now - I buy almost nothing from the high street or big online shops. 

  • Ah I do need to let go more but the artist in me actually wants to draw on some of the terrible experiences.  I often feel a Gerald Scarfe approach would be most suitable for this.  Plenty of angry splats around the forms and figures too.   :)

  • Oh no!  Biff and Chip!  We had to throw these to one side because our sons were reading full novels and magazines on, say, the Egyptians or the occult.  I once had to field a call from a concerned librarian about one of my sons taking out books on the occult and had to explain that we talked it all through together and he was just fascinated.

    Every job he has had he has ended up absolutely hating. 

    Unfortunately ths sounds all too familiar.  The careers advice and guidance given at school and beyond are woefully inadequate and fails to take into account the full person.  I once got a full profile done, as part of a redundancy package from one of my accountancy jobs (guess why I was somehow at the top of the redundancy list again!) and the careers consultant wondered why I wanted it because I seemed to have a very good job.  But he completed it for me anyway and unfortunately the most suitable careeer for me came out as "accountant"!  I was aghast until he explained to me that the program tended to align with certain skills and aptitudes rather than interests and inclinations.  And I then wondered what the point had been.   I believe my employer paid quite a lot for this profiling too, so it just goes to show you have to be very careful on that score.

    I now believe that, irrespective of the kind of work, some of our distress is about the lack of autonomy and that we're generally better off working for ourselves, again, on our own terms and engaging with the world when we feel able, not when someone insists that we do it right now.  So we're thinking more along the lines of family businesses or investments (once we get some money together!) and anything that involves working from home, which might now be easier after Covid.  

    We definitely need our own community but recently we've started referring to our home as "the hermitage" and this reflects our needs.  Maybe we'll expand the hermitage and eventually offer a couple of holiday lets for like-minded individuals?  A kind of materialistic option that operates in a very non materialistic way, if that's possible.   

  • Have just had to Google hyperlexia - I had not heard of this word before. 

    Sounds similar to my eldest. Hugely advanced at school (tried to explain this to his teachers but they didn’t get it - they were giving him ‘Biff and Chip’ books and he was reading full length novels at home. In the end I had to take in a book my son was reading about Horodotus to convince his teacher that he needed something more challenging. 
    Like you he went on to get a great degree (he got a place at Oxford Uni) but improving into the workplace has been an entirely different matter. Every job he has had he has ended up absolutely hating. 
    Completely naively I thought:  ‘he’s going to Oxford - he’s going to have a great life and an enjoyable career’  but it’s really not that simple. I just want him to enjoy his life - I don’t mind what job he does. So many jobs are  dull and unethical - it’s so find something that really ‘fits’ when you’re autistic. I’m hoping he’ll find something he can be happy doing in time. I worry about the financial side things too - mainly because life’s basics are so ridiculously expensive (rent especially). He’s not materialistic at all - so that’s not a problem. 

    maybe autistic people should set up autistic communes?! 
    perhaps we need to think outside the box? :) 

  • You are an artist - you’re just not a practicing artist at the moment :) 

    I do feel fortunate to have spent all these years working as an artist - although since my illness last year I haven’t been able to work (due more to the mental health impact rather than the physical after effects). 
    I’m hoping to return to it though - in time. 
    It’s great that your a counsellor - that’s wonderful. 

    Re. school - when we drove away from my youngest son’s last day at his Primary school we played ‘Strike Up the Band’ - we were so glad to leave that school behind! It had the most TERRIBLE misogynistic Headmaster who I swear got a kick out the power he had, and his ability to wind me up. Just horrible. 

    anyway - all in the past. Let’s face it virtually everyone on here has a bucketload of awful stories to tell about school. I think it’s important to let it go if you can - because we can’t change the past. 

  • Yes, I used to revere teachers and hang on their every word.  Some lessons I absolutely loved but, given my hyperlexia and academic leanings, the teachers obviously thought I was OK.  I really wasn't.  And I went on to spend years in higher education and then at work just not being OK. 

    I can see now how it all lined up for me.  Doing well in education and getting loads of qualifications seemed,on the face of it, to line me up for supposedly "good jobs".  The message was always that if you work hard you'll get a "good job".  But really what they meant by a good job and what I understood by it were two very different things.  My accountancy posts were all "good" but they ground me down and could have killed me if I'd stayed any longer.  So I actually worked hard at school to get a soul destroying nightmare of a job and I'd have been better off focussing on my art.  And my husband says he'd have preferred a life on benefits as he actually became suicidal. 

    I've given up expecting places of education or healthcare to be supportive and inclusive, at least for now.  I hope it'll change in the future but I'll need to see some evidence before I trust them again.       

    So yes, being "clever" can be problematic for an autistic person.  And I'm not feeling so clever now. 

  • Oh, so so lucky to be an artist.  I've always felt that I'm meant to be an artist.  I might still be one in fact.  Just heavily disguised as an accountant, and more latterly (a better match) as a counsellor. 

    And for us schools have simply been a place of trauma.  My old school is being knocked down soon and my sister and I were thinking of going to watch, perhaps with some champagne to hand! 

  • What does it say about our society that jobs that help people have poor salaries? I think it says it all to be honest! 

  • I don't think anyone has ever had a good salary doing a job where they help people. But job satisfaction and good colleagues are more important to me.

  • ‘Pretending to be an accountant’ Blush

    As an artist working from hipbone I escaped having to ‘pretend’ at work - which was a huge plus! 

    yes - schools not being ‘safe’ for many autistic people - that’s a good choice of word. 
    When my eldest first started school he lost so much weight - do the extent that I took him to a doctor as I was so worried. Eventually we realised it was the stress that was causing it. Awful. And when my youngest started school he developed Selective Mutism. So both had serious signs of distress on starting school - and yet I kept being told that they would ‘get used to it and settle in’. They never really did - not without a huge cost to their health and well being. 

    personally I think there should be more schools that are specifically designed to meet the needs of autistic children. Then they could really thrive, and make friends too. 

  • I think I've seen this kieran guy before and he's going to be at the national autism show near me this week as a speaker.

    I don know if it's different now but when I was at school your career path was determined by how "clever" you were rather than taking a more holistic approach. So we were shuffled off to college and uni. I was offered progression at work into mgmt snd this was around the time I thought I could be autistic. Altho I could do it with my eyes closed, I declined as I knew I'd find the meetings difficult and the higher level of interaction with colleagues would be challenging.  I'm glad I stayed where I was. We don't have to endlessly be chasing the ladder.

    I'm sorry your husband had a bad experience.  You'd think places of education would be much more supportive and inclusive.

  • Not assessed as such but yes, we think so.  So our sons have a double dose of neurodivergence.  Slight smile

    When we first started our respective careers (I was pretending to be an accountant and holding up my end of being part of a young professional couple!) we both thought that we'd gradually get used to speaking in front of others, at meetings and more generally.  And dealing with conflict and change at work.  This didn't happen, and we just made ourselves miserable, coming back home in some very stressed states and probably affecting our sons too.  

    Thinking about my husband, we maybe should have learnt something from our own experiences at school.  As children, we both got bullied at school.  But as a teacher my husband ended up feeling bullied by the management team and gradually edged out, no matter how hard he tried.  As things stand, we don't now believe that conventional schools are safe places for autistic kids, or autistic teachers for that matter.  

    I think Kieran used to work in education too and he definitely has some thoughts on this!    

  • That sounds wonderful - and such important work. How excellent. My husband works in a place where he helps a lot of vulnerable people who need a lot of support and assistance, many of whom have language barriers, and barriers of other kinds too. He doesn’t earn much but we take comfort from the fact that in his job he is helping people, not exploiting people or trying to get people to buy stuff they don’t need. 
    It’s good to do work that genuinely helps people Heartpulse

  • That's kind of what I do but with disadvantaged people from abroad. It's quite fun and brings out the inner entertainer in me. It's just enough people interaction on my terms and without social commitment.

  • Years ago husband taught an evening class helping adults with basic literacy skills - he found it really fulfilling. 

  • There are so many teachers in my family: my parents were, all my maternal aunts and uncles and their partners. The stress it put them under was phenomenal. I could never have coped with it, a nervous breakdown would have been a certainty. 

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  • There are so many teachers in my family: my parents were, all my maternal aunts and uncles and their partners. The stress it put them under was phenomenal. I could never have coped with it, a nervous breakdown would have been a certainty. 

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