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| ID: | 1616 | | Title: | Overwhelming emotions - http://thiswayoflife.org/blog/?p=185 | | Description: | I screwed up last week, I let my emotions get away from me.
I’ve written about this before, about how my “flat” emotions are a result of trying to keep my emotional state in check, lest the emotions wash me away. Strong emotions are very difficult for me to manage, and I’ll trade some of the extreme happiness I feel to not trade some of the extreme sorry and sadness.
During this time, I was very hurt and sad. Thankfully, there were several things I was able to do so that I didn’t hurt myself. The first was work - at least for 8 hours a day, I was able to focus on something that was relatively neutral on an emotional level (thankfully I have a good job, or this wouldn’t have worked). I also slept a lot. I knew I wasn’t going to hurt myself while sleeping, and I really didn’t want to hurt myself. I knew that this would be a fairly temporary situation, based on past experience. But it was very real and very deep (and still is to an extent), and there was real danger if I didn’t do something about it.
But, what about the rest of the time? That still left a few hours each day when I was not working or sleeping. The first thing I did, something that I couldn’t have done even years ago, was to tell another autistic person about what was going on. I’m not sure this person quite experiences emotions the way I do (I’m not sure that it’s necessarily an autistic trait versus something else), but I knew she, basically, wouldn’t give me crap about it or tell me that I shouldn’t feel like I do. I also know she’s went through hard times, too. Because I feel very strongly about doing things that I say I’ll do, I also told her (thankfully I was able) that I was going to let her know before I did anything dangerous to myself. I don’t know what I expected her to do if I did tell her that, but I knew that having someone know would help if it got to that point (fortunately it did not). More than anything though, just having someone to vent to was important - some way to release the emotion a bit.
I also considered my other friends, and tried to remember a couple of things - that they didn’t want to see me hurt either, and that they truly would be willing to help me if I needed it. That did help too. I didn’t mention this to anyone else, but I knew I could if I it seemed as if I was going to need to.
Another thing I tried to do was to keep myself busy. I realized I was less likely to do something dangerous, and that the emotions were less likely to build in strength, if I was doing something else - especially things that got me out of my house. So, I took several long drives. I normally love drives, and a sign of how messed up I was emotionally is the fact that, when I got back from these drives, I thought, “I didn’t experience any joy doing that.” But, while I didn’t experience any joy, it also didn’t make me feel worse, and it was time when I would otherwise have been simply thinking about how miserable I was, which builds on itself if you let it.
I forced myself to spend some time around my friends, even though I didn’t want to very much, because I knew being around people I like was likely to help. And it did. But I certainly didn’t feel like doing that at first.
I tried to perseverate on a few interests, but that just wasn’t going to happen. I know I’m in trouble when perseveration doesn’t happen.
Finally, I’ve also tried to confront some of the stuff that’s been a trigger - not the cause of this whole mess, but rather things that I might normally have been able to handle but which just made things worse during this state. That’s some of the hardest things I’ve done, and I hope I don’t have to deal with it for a while.
I really need to find a way to manage my house - and maintain order in it. During these things, I was continually reminded of my inadequacy to maintain my house. In addition, I truly do need order around me, in spite of my inability to maintain it. I don’t know how to solve this problem yet, and I know I don’t have the energy to deal with it now. But it would have helped things if I didn’t have disorder surrounding me.
What scares me is that I have, overall, a great situation in life right now. I do have some good friends, I have a great job, I’m not struggling financially or with my health more than normal. I’ve got plans for things that I hope I’ll enjoy doing this summer (although right now it seems hard to believe that everything is going to be enjoyable - but I know a couple of weeks ago it seemed like these things would be great, so it’s probably still this short depression that’s talking). I also have friends that do want to help and who do care about what happens to me - and even if I’ve not confided in all of them (mainly because I was trying not to think of how miserable I was when around them - so I could try to enjoy their company, which I felt was more important), they’ve done a lot of good. That I have a good deal in life right now scares me for two reasons - first, I could lose many of these things. If I didn’t have them, I know this emotional problem would have been much more severe than it was. The second thing, the one that scares me even more, is that a lot of autistic people don’t have a great situation in life. It’s really important that we work on that - it’s hard enough to deal with this stuff if you have a fairly good support system.
I’ll finish by saying that I am doing fine right now, although my emotions are certainly still screwed up. But I’m no longer worried about it becoming bad enough to make me want to harm myself. Certainly I’m going to try to be careful about what activities I engage in, although there’s stuff that I’ve left undone during this that really need to get done soon. So I’ve still got a tough few days, maybe a week, ahead of me. The good news is that I’m ready for the weekend, and I’ve got very few plans for the weekend - I need the rest now. (Source: NTs Are Weird) | | Category: | Autism | | Link Owner: | | | Date Added: | June 17, 2007 04:51:26 PM | | Number Hits: | 0 | | |
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