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Feeling like a failure

Kate Kestrel

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 identify.  I remember this feeling from early childhood.  I didn’t have the necessary power to make things different to the way I thought they should be.   Therefore, in my case, the problem is I somehow feel I have a responsibility to make life be the way it ought to be.  I have a problem which is lack of acceptance that there are forces in control of the Universe going right back to its beginning but I see myself as the main force and am baffled at my lack of power over everything.  Surely if I’m the only feeling being I should be able to control all?

    I wonder if Autism is an illusion that I am the only feeling being?  Because I do not intuitively know that all other people feel equally real to themselves as I do to me I assume I have special powers.  Neurology makes me feel alone in the universe.  My neurological condition allows me factual information but it is not telling the truth about this one fact: I am not alone.  That is why it is a disorder. 

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  •  I identify.  I remember this feeling from early childhood.  I didn’t have the necessary power to make things different to the way I thought they should be.   Therefore, in my case, the problem is I somehow feel I have a responsibility to make life be the way it ought to be.  I have a problem which is lack of acceptance that there are forces in control of the Universe going right back to its beginning but I see myself as the main force and am baffled at my lack of power over everything.  Surely if I’m the only feeling being I should be able to control all?

    I wonder if Autism is an illusion that I am the only feeling being?  Because I do not intuitively know that all other people feel equally real to themselves as I do to me I assume I have special powers.  Neurology makes me feel alone in the universe.  My neurological condition allows me factual information but it is not telling the truth about this one fact: I am not alone.  That is why it is a disorder. 

Children
  • in reply to NAS73180

    That's fascinating. I must admit I can't relate to that feeling of... is it OK to call it 'grandeur'?  I'm the exact other side of the coin perhaps. But I do wonder about inherent qualitative differences in how the neurotypical feel. What for them is sufficient to be given descriptors like profound, or intense, or lasting. I was asked recently by a therapist to define 'love' and struggled to articulate the complexity and depth and continuity of how I experience it. Outwardly, it probably seemed like I didn't understand a key human emotion, but I have a suspicion that I understand it almost 'too' well, experientlially. It doesn't have an on/off switch or a volume control that I can manipulate at will as many others in society seem to be able to do when a circumstance no ,longer suits them. Anyway, it occurred to me to look up a dictionary definition of 'love' last night, and was surprised at how slight is sounded - basically 'to like someone very much, or have lots of affection for them'. I mean I suppose it is that on a very basic level, and maybe all it proves is that its true depths remain inexpressible. I don't know. That feeing of disconnect (and a suspicion that I've wrongly overestimated most people's capacity to feel with the same consistent intensity I do) is growing in me of late, but I don't want it to get too 'us [autists] and them' (in your case it sounds more like 'me and them') in case I lose the balance of what's healthy.