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Hi, thread. I've finally caught up on all the posts as I'd bookmarked it out of curiosity back when I had a therapist for cptsd ask me if I'd been tested for autism ever and when I thought about it, I was like "huh, that lines up really well with so many things..." I'm going to do my best to let free in here as posts a few pages ago were doing, I'll still have rewritten it 20 times at least. [edit: still rewriting, obviously the extra space after the gif at the bottom is just plain unacceptable in a highbrow posting environment like this  do I preview another 4 times??  they say...]Trying to sort out what is from cptsd I was finding that it really didn't explain some things, especially from young childhood and I was spiraling and obsessing, replaying incidents back, wondering about my sanity. Once I looked into autism I Felt something, and feelings are incredibly difficult for me to process, I have to reach out and touch it and figure out, will it burn me? Will it be ok? Will it lead to hope and then crush me because I hoped for a nice thing? When I went to my doctor to ask for a referral, he asked me why I thought I needed one, at that point I was able to drop the mask after years of therapy, he couldn't agree more that I was likely an incredibly strong candidate for the referral and he really hoped I could get support for it. I'm past the first round with the referral now but still waiting, but I'm 100% sure regardless, and I'm trying to not obsess about imposter syndrome of oh what if I get rejected for the diagnosis, am I really that hosed up? Because I'm tired, so very very tired of how much energy everything is trying to figure myself out, dealing with a ton of autoimmune disorders and the lengthy processes and misdiagnoses (wrong type of diabetes for a decade, whoops I guess you really did need that insulin) down the path to get here. But I am here!   At 36, and it feels a hell of a lot more manageable, bit by bit as I'm trying to figure out who I am, where my boundaries are, recognizing burnout before it tanks my life a second time. I'm only really comfortable posting this because as brought up multiple times in the thread, holy poo poo, there's more people that go through the same things in some ways, I'm not alone in so many of these things. So thanks to everyone who stepped out of their comfort zones to say that, it's incredibly appreciated and I'm (actually slightly [that's a big deal for me]) hopeful for the future.  Agreed also with text being so much better than in person for communication, there is so much less confusion when you're able to add emojis or  . Which reminds me, a thing I found myself doing in person as for some strange reason people don't quite know what the deal is with my tone sometimes, if I'm asking a question and I'm not seeing that the person is reacting/thinking of what I'm asking as I'm saying it, I end the sentence with "question mark?" with an increasingly changed tone. Or "period." with a totally flat tone. ND people seem to appreciate it, NT people seem to have a sensible chuckle and I've been praised for how precise and unambiguously worded I am at times. Also, bug facts rock, my world was blown away by the leafcutter ant post, I love it so much, I wrote so much more but deleted it, as I've always had an intense fascination with bugs and animals really, how can anyone not be wowed by how cool and complicated everything is?  So many things to learn and have that intense shine of interest, if that's part of who I am, I'll learn to embrace it now that I know that I am indeed somewhat different. I'm not broken or wrong, just different. It'll still be tough some days but solving problems and trying new approaches to things is what gives me dopamine so maybe I can use it for good instead of beating up on myself as I've been doing.I hope that my weird rambling can help someone out there like some of y'all's did for me.  You are worthy of a chance, worthy of kindness even if you don't feel it right now.Final aside for this novel of a post, the biggest thing for me has been starting to talk about mental health has led to me starting a few more friendships with people who also are wrangling with their own known or unknown mental health. It's led to being able to be myself and let the mask drop just a little around some people as it's all just acting and decorum and if we don't have the same social norms, that's totally okay if everyone is happy. I would have never had the chance to see friendships quite like this if I hadn't seen other people sharing their experiences over time. There's a lot of posters I recognize in this thread from my lurking around various interesting threads.  Now I can start reading the other autism thread as I've completed this one, can't start reading a new thread when I'm not finished reading the previous one! So in conclusion: 
Injera fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Jan 21, 2024 |
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Jan 21, 2024 03:09
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I'm sorry you've also gone through that, it is really frustrating to untangle! And thanks for the warning, I'm (mostly!) ok even if they don't diagnose it as I don't think there's tooooo much they can do to help anyway, as it's all stuff I've got to deal with in therapy and all that. May not even be worth the effort, as just knowing what the cause is allows me to logic my brain into relaxing and breaking some spirals before they could get worse. It's not a magic fix, but it definitely makes life a little easier to manage and for that I'm thankful. 
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Jan 23, 2024 18:18
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