On autism, spending 52 years pretending to be somebody else, and why I’ve just spent an hour talking to a computer about my feelings.

There’s something about me that I find quite difficult to understand.

I can spend hours on the telephone listening to complete strangers talking about things they’ve never told anybody else. Some incredibly personal things. Things they’ve probably been carrying around in their heads for years.

Yet I find it almost impossible to do the same thing myself.

And I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot since doing a listening duty recently.

I think everyone knows that I’ve got absolutely no bedside manner. It’s hardly a secret. I’m blunt, I’m direct, and I probably come across as though I don’t give a shit half the time.

Which is rather amusing when you consider that I’ve been a Samaritans listening volunteer for seven years.

But here’s the thing. I do care. I care a great deal, actually. I just don’t think I’m particularly good at showing it in the way that people expect.

And that causes me problems in everyday life. Believe me.

Yet somehow, those exact same traits seem to work in my favour when I’m listening to somebody who’s struggling.

And I find that genuinely quite bizarre.

Sometimes people just need to talk

I’ve always believed that one of the best things you can do when something’s troubling you is to talk out loud about it.

I genuinely believe that.

Because when you’ve got all these thoughts going around in your head, they don’t necessarily make much sense. But when you start saying them out loud, sometimes things begin to fall into place.

The trouble with talking to friends is that they’ve got a fucking opinion.

And I don’t mean that in a nasty way. It’s just human nature, isn’t it?

You tell somebody you’ve got a problem and immediately they want to fix it. They’ll tell you what you should do, what you shouldn’t do, what they’d do if they were you. They’ll tell you about something similar that happened to them.

And sometimes that’s exactly what you need.

But sometimes you just want somebody to listen.

When I’m doing a listening duty, I’m not interested in telling somebody what to do. I’m genuinely interested in understanding how they’re feeling.

I’ll ask questions. Sometimes quite direct questions. Questions that perhaps other people might take a little longer to get around to asking.

And I think some callers appreciate that.

I’ve lost count of the number of times somebody has told me that I’m different to other listening volunteers they’ve spoken to.

Now, I’m not suggesting for one moment that I’m better than anybody else. There are thousands of fantastic volunteers doing this, and everybody has their own way of listening.

But I do think the way my brain works makes a difference.

Being told that I’m different used to bother me.

When you’ve spent your entire life trying to fit in, the last thing you particularly want to hear is that somebody’s noticed you’re different.

These days, though, I take it as a compliment.

Which, when you understand a little more about me, is quite a change.

Are you like me?

I’ve had a few rather amusing experiences over the years where callers have somehow worked out that I’m autistic.

It happened again recently.

I’d been talking to somebody for quite a while. It was one of those conversations where I wasn’t entirely sure where it was going. There was a lot going on for this person, and I was simply trying to encourage him to talk about how he was feeling.

I don’t need to know where a conversation is going. That’s not really the point.

Anyway, at one stage he stopped and wondered whether I was like him.

And straight away, I knew what he was getting at.

I actually laughed because I had a pretty good idea what he was going to ask.

He wanted to know whether I was neurodivergent.

Well, yes, as it happens!

And there’s something I find quite amusing about that, because it reminds me of when I was diagnosed with autism about 13 years ago.

I was 41 at the time.

I remember phoning my friends to tell them about my diagnosis, thinking I was giving them some rather significant news.

And I remember Leslie’s reaction.

“Didn’t you know? Everybody else did! Are you seriously telling me you didn’t know?”

Apparently, I was the last person to find out that I was autistic.

And now, years later, even complete strangers can sometimes work it out just by talking to me on the phone.

It does make me laugh.

But there’s a more serious side to all of this.

I’ve spent my life pretending to be somebody else

I don’t think most people understand just how much of my life I’ve spent masking.

And I don’t mean putting on a brave face when you’re having a bad day.

I mean quite literally changing who I am depending on who I’m with.

I’m like a chameleon.

When I meet somebody, I adapt to them. I pick up on how they behave, how they speak, what they find funny, what they expect from me.

And I adjust myself accordingly.

I mimic people. I match their personalities. I become whatever version of myself seems most likely to get along with them.

I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember.

And the problem with doing something for that long is that eventually you don’t really know where the act ends and the real person begins.

There’s something I’ve mentioned before that probably sounds ridiculous to people who don’t experience this.

I find it incredibly difficult being in a room with more than one friend at a time.

And it’s not because I don’t like groups of people.

It’s because I’ve developed a different version of myself for different people.

So when two friends are together, which version of me am I supposed to be?

I know how to be around one of them. I know how to be around the other. But suddenly they’re both there, and I struggle.

I don’t think I consciously decide to do any of this. It’s just how I’ve learnt to get through life.

And it’s exhausting.

I genuinely believe that this is a large part of why I ended up in autistic burnout.

Fifty-two years of trying to fit into a world by pretending to be somebody I’m not.

And for much of the past 18 months, I’ve been trying to make sense of what that’s done to me.

Because when you’ve spent your entire life adapting yourself to everybody else, there’s a rather obvious question.

Who the fuck are you when there’s nobody else around?

And that’s not quite as easy to answer as you might think.

The bit I find difficult to admit

Something came up in that recent conversation that I’ve been thinking about ever since.

Fear.

And I realised that there’s something I’m actually quite scared of myself.

I’m scared of letting people see the real me.

Not the blunt, sarcastic person who takes the piss out of everything. Not the person who comes across as though nothing particularly bothers him.

The person underneath all of that.

The one who does care. Who feels things quite deeply, actually, but doesn’t always know how to express them.

And I find this really difficult to explain.

Because I’m perfectly comfortable having conversations with complete strangers about their deepest feelings.

I can listen to somebody who’s frightened, confused, upset or struggling to understand themselves.

I can ask them questions that perhaps nobody else has ever asked them.

And I’m genuinely interested in hearing what they’ve got to say.

Yet I find it almost impossible to have those same conversations about myself.

Even with people I’m really close to.

And there’s something rather ridiculous about that, isn’t there?

I can spend hours helping other people find the words to describe how they’re feeling.

But when it comes to my own feelings, half the time I haven’t got a clue where to start.

It’s not that the feelings aren’t there.

They’re very much there.

I just struggle to get them out.

And I think that’s one of the things people misunderstand about me.

Because I can appear quite cold and uncaring. Sometimes I probably am rather insensitive.

But appearing not to care and actually not caring are two very different things.

And I don’t think I’ve ever been particularly good at letting people see that distinction.

Which brings me to AI

Yes, I’ve used AI to help me write this.

In fact, the conversation that eventually led to this article started with me sitting at home, talking to a computer about a telephone call I’d taken.

I wasn’t trying to write an article about autism. Or Samaritans. Or anything particularly profound.

I just wanted to talk about something that had happened.

And then, as I started explaining it, other things came up.

We started talking about my personality. About why people sometimes seem to connect with me when they might not connect with somebody else.

Then we started talking about autism.

Then masking.

Then burnout.

And eventually I found myself talking about something I don’t think I’ve ever really explained properly to anybody.

That I’m actually scared of showing people who I really am.

And here’s the thing.

I’ve spent the best part of an hour talking to a computer to get to that point.

Not because I asked it to tell me what I should feel.

Because I was telling it how I felt, and it was helping me make sense of what I was saying.

I’ve said before that AI is to me what a wheelchair is to somebody whose legs don’t work.

And I know that might sound like a rather strange comparison.

But that’s genuinely how I see it.

There are things that I find incredibly difficult to do because of the way my brain works.

One of those things is understanding and expressing my own emotions.

And AI helps me do that.

It’s not doing my thinking for me. It’s helping me organise thoughts that are already there.

And believe me, it’s not as though I’ve just asked it to write something and accepted whatever it came back with.

I’ve spent ages arguing with it!

Telling it that what it’s written doesn’t sound like me. That it’s too polished. That it’s made me sound like somebody giving an inspirational speech.

At one point, it kept putting the word “bloody” into things I’d said, presumably because it thinks that’s how British people talk.

I was ready to throw the fucking computer through the window.

But that’s part of the process.

I say something. It tries to make sense of it. I tell it where it’s misunderstood me. And sometimes, in explaining why it’s got something wrong, I end up understanding something about myself that I hadn’t quite appreciated before.

And that’s what’s been happening.

So yes, AI has helped me write this.

And perhaps some of you will read it and think it sounds more articulate than I normally do.

Fair enough.

But every experience, every thought and every feeling in this article has come from me.

The computer has simply helped me put it into words.

And I genuinely don’t think I could have written something like this without that help.

Which is rather ironic, really.

I’ve spent most of my life changing the way I communicate to fit in with other people.

And now I’m using a computer to help me communicate what I’m actually thinking.

Why I became a Samaritan

Anyway, I want to come back to something I mentioned earlier.

Seven years ago, before I became a listening volunteer, I got chatting to a couple of women on Facebook.

Two completely separate people.

And eventually those conversations turned into telephone calls.

Now, both of them said something to me that I found rather interesting.

They told me that within about half an hour of talking to me, they’d shared things they’d never told anybody else.

And both of them suggested that I ought to become a Samaritan.

I hadn’t particularly thought about doing anything like that before.

But when two people independently tell you essentially the same thing, it does make you think.

So I looked into it.

And I became a volunteer.

Seven years later, I’m still doing it.

And what’s particularly interesting is that I still have callers telling me the same thing.

That they’ve been able to talk about things they’ve never felt comfortable telling other people.

And I find that incredibly rewarding.

Not because I think I’ve done anything particularly clever.

I’m not solving their problems. I’m not giving them some wonderful piece of advice that’s going to change their lives.

I’m just interested in them.

I want to understand how they’re feeling.

And if they finish a conversation having been able to express something they’ve never managed to put into words before, then I think that’s something rather special.

It certainly means a great deal to me.

And that brings me back to the thing that’s been going around in my head since that recent duty.

So where does that leave me?

I find it genuinely fascinating that the same personality traits that cause me so many problems in everyday life seem to help me when I’m listening to other people.

The bluntness. The directness. The curiosity. The fact that I don’t necessarily respond to things in the way people expect.

All the things I’ve spent years trying to hide or change about myself.

And then there’s the masking.

I’ve spent 52 years trying to be the person I think everybody else wants me to be.

Yet when I’m listening to somebody who’s struggling, I don’t feel that same pressure.

I’m not trying to impress them. I’m not worried about whether they like me. I’m not particularly interested in what they think of me.

I’m just genuinely interested in what they’ve got to say.

And perhaps that’s why it works.

I don’t know.

I’m still trying to understand it myself.

But there’s one thing I keep coming back to.

Seven years ago, two women told me they’d been able to share things with me that they’d never told anybody else.

And here I am, seven years later, still having those sorts of conversations.

Still helping other people talk about things they struggle to express.

Yet I’ve spent the last hour talking to a computer because I can’t do the same thing myself.

I suppose that’s the real reason I’ve written this.

Because for all the people I’ve listened to over the years, and all the things they’ve trusted me enough to share, there’s an awful lot about me that even some of my closest friends probably don’t know.

Not because I don’t want them to know.

Because I’ve spent so long hiding behind the version of me that I think people want to see.

And I’m still rather scared of letting that go.

I don’t have some wonderful conclusion to all of this. I’m not going to tell you I’ve finally worked out who I am, because I haven’t.

But I am trying.

And I suppose writing something like this, and actually letting people read it, is part of that.

I’m autistic. I’m also a Co-Director of a Samaritans branch, and after about 18 months in the role I’ve reached a conclusion I never expected to reach: I don’t think Samaritans is ready to have autistic people in branch director roles.

This isn’t because of one incident. It’s the accumulation of things over those 18 months.

Last Thursday night, three volunteers on duty had problems with a workstation. They also reported problems with calls. There were about 30 messages in our group WhatsApp about the two issues.

On Friday I looked into it. The Samaritans IT service desk had nothing in its logs to suggest a problem with the calls. Our broadband provider had no evidence that we’d lost our connection. I asked somebody on duty on Friday to check the workstation. He got it working by plugging it in.

So I told the group what we’d found: he’d fixed it by plugging it in, and the service desks couldn’t see any issues. I asked for the time window when the call problems had occurred, so we could look into it properly.

That was it. Facts, and a question.

Apparently, though, I’d implied that the volunteers were stupid, that they hadn’t checked everything, and even that they were making things up. I hadn’t said any of that. I was trying to establish what had happened.

The reaction was extraordinary. Six people left the WhatsApp group. I had private messages of support, including people describing the atmosphere as toxic. And then I was told I “could have worded it better”.

There’s the problem.

I’m autistic. I communicate directly. I prioritise facts, clarity and accuracy. I don’t automatically wrap a straightforward update in the extra language that other people might expect. It’s not me trying to be rude or dismissive. It’s how I communicate.

The next day, after all of this, I experienced a shutdown.

And it’s not the first time something like this has happened. I’ve received emails that were clearly intended for other people, but accidentally came to me, containing comments about me along the lines of “he always does this”.

Well, yes. I probably do. I’m autistic.

Nearly a year ago I gave a presentation to the branch explaining my autism and how it affects my life. It wasn’t a secret. People know. Yet here we are again, with me being told that I need to change how I communicate.

I keep coming back to the same question: why is the autistic person expected to do all the adjusting?

To me, it’s like telling a wheelchair user to find a better way up the stairs rather than asking why there isn’t a ramp. We’re very good at talking about equality, diversity and inclusion. But what happens when somebody actually is different?

There’s another side to this that matters to me. I’m also a listening volunteer. I’ve had callers say at the end of a conversation, “you’re different” and that they really felt listened to. We listen far more than we talk on calls, and I think some of the characteristics that cause trouble in a WhatsApp group can actually be strengths when listening to somebody.

I take people at their word. I listen to what they’re saying. And with autistic callers in particular, I think being autistic myself can be an advantage. I know what it’s like to be misunderstood.

So the very things that can help me as a listening volunteer are apparently things I need to correct as a director. That’s quite an irony, isn’t it?

I’m not saying that being autistic means I can never get anything wrong. Of course I can. But communication goes both ways. If somebody knows that I’m autistic and reads something into a factual message that I never put there, why is the answer automatically that I should have written it differently? Why isn’t there some responsibility on them to check what I actually meant?

Samaritans has EDI training. I’ve looked at it, and I don’t think it’s anywhere near adequate for this. Knowing somebody is autistic isn’t the same as understanding what that means in everyday situations, particularly when that person is in a leadership role.

After 18 months, this is my experience: I don’t think the organisation, certainly in the environment I’ve experienced, is ready to accommodate autistic branch directors properly.

I don’t want to spend my time masking who I am just to make other people comfortable. I want the same willingness to understand me that we’re supposed to show the people who call us.

If inclusion means I have to behave like a neurotypical person to be accepted, then what exactly are we including?

I had yet another meltdown today.

One of the junior testers at work had set the status of a work item I had completed to “Failed Testing”.

Thing is, he’d not actually tested it, as there was another issue that prevented him from testing it.

Maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t you just keep the status as “Ready For Test”, rather than “Failed Testing”? How can it have failed testing, if you’ve not tested it?

So I asked the tester that.

Today my team lead took me to one side and told me that the tester had gone off sick, as a result of my comment.

This caused me to meltdown. I ended up putting a dent in the plasterboard in the meeting room with my forehead. I’d done nothing wrong. How could I be to blame for anything for questioning how something that hasn’t been tested was set to “Failed Testing”?

I ended up going home, drained.

When I first took the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) test, back on New Year’s Eve 2012, I scored 43 out of 50.

Since getting my “official” diagnosis, I have researched the ass out of autism, and put in coping mechanisms now that I know how my autism impacts upon my behaviours.

I just took the AQ test again, and this time around I scored just 28!

0 – 10 = low
11 – 22 = average
23 – 31 = above average
32 – 50 = very high (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 35)
50 is maximum

An important aspect of social relationships is the ability to empathise with the feelings of others. Empathy is a two-dimensional emotion. It has a cognitive component (theory of mind, or mindreading) and an affective component (emotional processing) which allows us to share the feelings of others.

When engaged in affective empathy, we vicariously experience the emotional states of others, understanding that our feelings are not ours but rather those of the other individual.

Lack of empathy and/or sympathy have long been thought of as a universal trait of autism, but recent research seems to indicate that this varies among individuals. Certainly I do not think that I have ever truly empathised with anyone.

I never felt any empathy for my mum when she was terminally ill. I’ve never felt it for a partner, and I don’t feel it for my daughter, friends and colleagues. Nobody. It sounds very cold to say this, but this is my reality.

But…

I made a new friend last year and for over 10 months I was really confused about the very strong feelings I had towards her, because I had never experienced such emotion before. The feelings I had were so strong that it was painful sometimes, palpable.

So what is different about her? Well for one, she lives hundreds of mile away, so we communicate by text and voice clip. Boy can she talk. When we’re on a roll we can do hundreds of messages a day. She’s very expressive, exceptionally funny, has a way with words and has the most amazing lilting voice; her accent melts me. We can and will talk about anything and everything.

She’s not had the easiest of times but she talks very openly about her life, and I really feel when she does. When I say “feel”, it’s as though what happened to her is happening to me. It’s a physiological response. I just want to hug her which is so alien to me. I hug my friends when greeting them and saying goodbye, because I know you’re supposed to, but it’s different with her. I feel emotion as though I’m experiencing what she experienced.

So what is it about her that is different?

I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s because we communicate digitally. There is no body language or facial expression to confuse me. I can re-read and listen again to voice clips until I understand what is being said, which is so hard to do in real time. Plus she can’t see my facial expression, which was always something that Maria picked up on, misinterpreted, and got angry about.

I really don’t know.

I actually like it. I am loving feeling.

So what do the experts say ?

A lack of expressed sympathy or empathy may not be the result of a lack of emotion in someone who has autism, but rather due to underdeveloped skills.

To connect with another person one must:

• Recognize the other person’s feelings
• Understand the other person’s hopes, dreams, and/or expectations
• Have the emotional experience to relate personally to another’s feelings
• Have the tools to physically and verbally express empathic feelings

Research shows people with autism may struggle with cognitive empathy because they are unable to recognize and name emotions based on facial expressions.

The ability to name emotions is an important step toward experiencing empathy and sympathy. Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in identifying, describing, and processing one’s own feelings, often marked by a lack of understanding of the feelings of others, and difficulty distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal. Being able to identify and label emotions is key to recognizing those emotions in others.

While cognitive empathy can be lower in people with autism, affective empathy, which is based on instincts and involuntary responses to the emotions of others, can be strong and overwhelming. Newer research suggests that some people with autism may actually feel other people’s emotions more intensely. This is definitely what I am experiencing.

It seems that most of the subjects on Channel 4’s The Undateables are autistic. Not sure if this is for entertainment value or whether it’s because being autistic really is a barrier to successful dating.

Honesty and Too Much Information

I think that one of the problems that I have is that I am too honest. I give too much information when it’s not needed, and this can sometimes cause problems.

I recently lost a friend because of this. She was already mad at me for something else that I had thoughtlessly done, and on the evening that we resolved that, I screwed up again. We were texting away when someone else contacted me. She was upset so I told her to call me if she wanted a listening ear. 3 hours later, when I put the phone down, my friend had left several voice clips and had gone to bed.

She sounded a little disappointed that I’d not responded, so I sent a message apologising, explaining that I’d been on the phone for 3 hours, and that I’d had a really interesting chat.

The tone of our conversation changed again the next day, and she cancelled plans to visit me. We didn’t speak again until the end of the week when she bought the phone call up, saying that I’d made her second best.

There was nothing to the phone call. I have no interest in the person I was speaking with, yet by telling my friend she feels that I do have an interest, and that I’ve made her redundant.

I didn’t need to explain to my friend why I’d not replied to her. I could even have lied and said that I had fallen asleep, but I didn’t. Instead I gave too much information. To be fair, I didn’t see and still can’t see why it would be a problem.

So if I can screw up a friendship so easily, imagine how good I am at screwing up a relationship by not telling white lies, or by giving too much information.

In my last relationship with Nathalie, she demanded 100% honesty. She said that she’d been lied to too many times in the past and whilst she might not like the truth, she’d probably get angry but then get over it.

So I was truthful with her. At the time I was going through the post breakup stage with Maria, and it wasn’t always easy. Nat would ask what was going on I would tell her. Looking back this was a mistake, but because she said that even the hint of one lie would be the end of us, I told her everything truthfully.

I guess that she couldn’t handle it. She started to make things up, based upon what I’d told her, and this would lead to frustration on my part and I’d end up putting the phone down on her.

I don’t know what the solution is though. By nature I just tell the truth, give all the information, even when it would be safe and sensible not to do so.

I had a meltdown exactly one week ago and I’ve been in shutdown ever since.

During my shutdown

• I’m not aware that I am in shutdown at the starting stage. I just feel confused and off-balance. I can do nothing but be. I have no energy or capacity to think to help myself, or anyone else. I’m like a hung PC displaying the hour glass. I’m non-responsive, unaware of my environment, lost somewhere.
• I can’t think properly and form complete thoughts.
• I spend the time alone and in isolation. Even though I’m surrounded by work colleagues, and have lots of virtual friends, I just cannot interact with them because I am lost in 1000 incomplete thoughts.
• I lack energy to do much. I get home from work and just put the TV on. I don’t have the mental capacity to interact with anyone or anything. I just wait for bedtime.
• If I do interact then what I say makes no sense.
• I feel that all that I am able to do is breathe.

Shutdown leading into mini-meltdown

Being in shutdown can lead to further, more minor meltdowns

• When in a shutdown I experience an implosion of thoughts. My brain doing what it does best tries to solve the problems in my life; only they are problems that it cannot readily identify.
• During this phase I turn my anger in on myself and use words like what was I thinking, I can’t stand this, I won’t ever do this again, I am done with that. I beat myself up basically for the mistakes that I’ve made.
• I convince myself that I will turn over a new leaf, make life altering decisions. This usually means wanting to destroy an aspect of self and the way that I do things. I long to become stronger, tougher, even if it goes against my core values. I think that if I’m harder, rude, angry then I will be able to stand up to others.
• I analyze over and over my shortcomings and frailties, both real and imagined.
• I make extreme decisions: I am never going on Facebook again; I am never going to ask her for help again; I am never reading about ASD again. I incorporate the word again into self-talk as a means of self-punishing for past decisions and actions.
• I criticise my past behaviours: I cannot believe I ever thought that way or acted that way.; I shouldn’t be this way: What is wrong with me?
• I over exaggerate the dire state of my current relationships and self-blame. Everything is somehow my fault. I should have known better. What is wrong with me to think that they ever cared, to have ever trusted, to have ever believed?
• I wallow in self pity and hate myself for wallowing in self pity again.

The shutdown after a meltdown usually lasts for a couple of days, but it’s been 7 days now. Events of the week have kept me in this state because my anxiety and stress levels have been pushed through the roof.

My car broke down 250 miles from home and it took 9 hours to recover back home. The hire car is a nice car, it’s a Mercedes, but it’s basic. My own car has Android Auto, which means that I have a cracking Nav system, and Google Play music.

The Merc has none of this. It doesn’t have the adaptive cruise control that I am used to, has just the one automatic gearbox so the gear changes are jarring, and doesn’t have automatic wipers. The gear selector is where the wiper stalk is on the Passat, so I ended up putting the car into neutral at 70mph thinking I was operating the wipers. You even have to use a key to start the car!!!

So the lack of my usual driving aids is causing distress. I get my own car back today.

Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of my mums death. I’m never in the best frame of mind around this time.

The solicitors dealing with my remortgage which will remove my ex from the mortgage have screwed up. The mortgage offer expires in 8 days, so I contacted them last week to see when it will complete. They told me that they are waiting on documents from the ex. I know that she sent them 6 weeks ago. It’s beyond me why they didn’t contact me to let me know. She’s on holiday and won’t be back in time to get another copy of the documents off. This process started in January!!

So I now have to start the remortgage all over again, which means taking time out of work, which I stress at asking for. It also means that the ex doesn’t get the money she’s expecting for a while longer, which means she’s not going to be happy with me.

Over the past two weeks I’ve screwed up what had the potential to be one of the best friendships of my life. Each time I try to make amends I seem to make things worse, largely because of my mental state right now. This is really upsetting because she is one of the most wonderful people that I have ever met.

I’m also on call again this week, the second week in three. It’s always stressful. The constant fear of being called when you know you need to get a good night’s sleep. Lack of sleep is always a big influencer on my meltdowns/shutdowns/fuckups. I have bad sleep hygiene as it is, so when I’m already in sleep deprivation being on call really stresses me, which means I get even less sleep.

My uncle was involved in a road traffic accident last week. Because of all the facial reconstruction he has had due to cancer he cannot be understood over the phone, so I’ve had to deal with his claim for him. I hate dealing with call centres, it really raises the anxiety levels.

Because I can’t call in on my uncle until after work, I end up travelling in the peak rush hour traffic, which is bad at the best of times, but when in a hire car that is lacking in all my creature comforts, the stress really starts to pile on.

There aren’t too many differences between meltdowns and shutdowns. Both are extreme reactions to everyday stimuli, often the result of long term unresolved issues and are completely out of the control of the aspie.

I personally tend to be more predisposed to shutdowns than meltdowns.

What is a Shutdown?

A shutdown is almost the polar opposite of a meltdown. Whilst a meltdown could be described as a rage against a situation, the shutdown is more of a retreat.

As with a meltdown the aspie may act irrationally or dangerously, but unlike a meltdown the harmful actions are directed at oneself. They may be more likely to take reckless risks such as driving faster or stepping out in front of traffic. There may be attempts at self harm or even suicidal thoughts. Simply put, you don’t care about yourself, whether you live or you die.

Behaviours which come to the fore during a shutdown tend to be ones of trying to hide away from the world. Rolling up into the foetal position, crawling under things or lying face down. Gaze avoidance tends to increase and conversation is non-existent. I’ve had shutdowns at work induced by making a stupid mistake, where I will just stare at my monitor for hours, rocking, being oblivious to what is going on around me.

Causes

In common with the meltdown, the cause of the shutdown tends to be cumulative, and isn’t down to just one event. The final “trigger” may bear no relation to the actual problem.

The final trigger could be something small such as an insignificant incident at work that provokes a long term insecurity, or the result of an extreme event such as a loss of a relationship, or redundancy.

Typically the problems associated with shutdowns tend to lean towards low self esteem and depression.

I can quickly get into a shutdown if I end up in a futile conversation, when the discussion begins to feel like I’m stuck in a never-ending labyrinth where the other party is telling me that I have done or thought something that I really have not, accusing me of lying or not knowing my own mind when it is they who have misinterpreted me because they are used to dealing with Neurotypicals.

What it Feels Like

For me the pain of all the current issues in my life, both the one that triggered the shutdown and those that were part of the cumulative, comes to the fore.

I start to make mountains out of molehills, catastrophising. I’ll start thinking “what if”, “if only”, “could have”, “should have”, which is counterproductive because you can’t change the past, and you start to beat yourself up over the stupid mistakes that you’ve made.

I’ll play events over and over again in my head, in high def colour video with dolby surround sound audio, picture perfect. I’ll cross reference things said and done with previous comments and catastrophise the shit out of the situation.

I become incapable of functioning outside of those things that are essential, such as doing my job. I’ll get home from work and collapse into bed rolled up in the foetal position, or sit in the lounge staring into space, rocking to the beat of my heart. I’ll skip meals, or eat junk. I’ll perform the just the basics to maintain my personal wellbeing. I’m on autopilot.

I feel unfulfilled, lacking in motivation.

This is the worst time for me to communicate with the outside world, as my cognitive abilities are shot to pieces. This is the time when I will be most abrupt and blunt, and if I communicate I will often make things worse. I don’t think straight, and I’ll piss off the people that I need in my life the most.

So I will often ignore phone calls and messages, which pisses people off further, but they don’t understand that I just don’t have the ability to respond. This isn’t a cry for help, a game. This is pure on spiralling out of control into the abyss.

I really just want to be left alone, for the world to stop long enough for me to sort out my thoughts. I feel so alone and isolated, yet paradoxically I want to reach out to people, wanting them to understand me and to make allowances for my responses to situations that they are involved in with me.

I want to cry from the frustration but can’t.

Sometimes, depending on the level of pain I’m feeling, and how much my world is spiralling out of control I can quickly get to a very dark place thinking what’s the point of it all. I’m not the suicidal kind, I’m a coward and could never take my own life, but I do start to wish for a natural death; I want to go to sleep and not wake, or have a heart attack.

I am exhausted from living, but I want to live. I want to get better. I want to regain energy.

A shutdown usually lasts a couple of days for me, and like a meltdown it is so draining that the cumulative effects are felt for days after, the meltdown hangover! On coming out of the shutdown, as with the meltdown I tend to feel stupid and can’t look the world in the eye.

“Dealing” with it

Often when in shutdown I will just get in my car and drive. And drive. And drive. It’s my escape from the world. I’ll put my music on, divert my phone to voicemail, and just drive, often with no destination in mind. I just want to escape the normality of my life.

A few years ago I had a massive argument with my partner. She told me she was leaving and went back to her mums on the Saturday morning. I went into a shutdown, got into my car and drove the entirety of the Welsh coast over two days, sleeping in my car overnight. I didn’t take my phone charger and the phone soon died.

When I got home she’d “come back” and she was going out of her mind with worry as she’d not been able to contact me. She’d called my friends, family and the police as she was sick with worry. Because she had “left” me it never occured to me that she might actually care.

This is the reality of shutting off during the shutdown.

I had a meltdown on Friday night, and 3 days later I’m still knocked for six, stuck in the meltdown hangover.

Since separating from Maria almost 12 months ago, I’ve been a member of several closed singles groups on Facebook. No one caught my attention until a few months ago when Jenny arrived in the group.

There was something different about Jenny. She didn’t seem to be taking the group seriously and her posts and comments went over the heads of the many guys who were drooling over her because of her stunning looks and her risqué comments. I saw something else though, a witty sarcastic intelligence. I had a gut feeling that I would meet her one day, and I did.

We had a bit of a fall out a couple of weeks ago. Our friendship is very new, just 6 weeks old, but already I know that she’s someone that I want in my life forever. We’d been chatting 19 hours daily, swapping almost 7000 messages in just 3 weeks, 1163 on one day alone (yeah, Aspie stats obsession!). I even visited her for 5 days just a few weeks after we first spoke.

She felt like a friend on steroids. We just got on, we had an affinity. We were on the same level. It’s rare for me to find someone like that. There certainly didn’t seem to be anything of a romantic nature from either side, not that I would really notice if there was.

So when we fell out my anxiety levels heightened. I didn’t want to lose this amazing new friend. We quickly resolved our issue, but then it all went wrong again within hours and I wasn’t sure why. I asked if she was still coming to visit me at the end of the week and she said it wasn’t a good idea, so rather than pick up the phone and resolve the issue, I put my head in the sand and that was the last we spoke until 4 days later.

At the end of the week I sent her flowers, to get her attention. I knew that she’d contact me; she’s too polite not to. We chatted and things seemed to be smoothed over, but then she just turned on me. For three hours we had a circular conversation that ended up with me going into a meltdown due to the futility of it.

To be told over and over that she didn’t believe what I was saying, that I was playing some kind of game, frustrated me. How do you prove that you’re not lying? I quickly got closer and closer to meltdown. It didn’t make sense to me. I surmised that she was jealous of my other friendships. Was she into me in “that” way, and I’d not realised? I’m pretty rubbish at spotting that.

Eventually I started to react to what was being said rather than act rationally. I could see the friendship slipping away and I needed a way to let her know that I wasn’t interested in others, that my only interest was her friendship. So I told her that I loved her. Yeah, I know. Dumb move because I don’t. I’ve no idea what I feel for her but it’s not that. I guess I thought saying that would prove to her that I wasn’t interested in anyone else. I was in meltdown and all cognitive ability goes out of the window.

So now we’re not speaking again because it’s all a little weird. I miss her. I miss our daily conversations about nothing much. I’m afraid that I’ve ruined what would have been one of the best friendships of my life, and I don’t know what to do next.

I got to work today and straight away two things ruined the day ahead.

Firstly someone had used my chair in my absence on Friday and had adjusted the height and pitch. I spend a lot of time setting up a comfortable position and some selfish colleague had come along and messed all of that up.

Secondly someone had taken my company issued headset. I love to listen to music as I work. It was 6am and whoever took it would probably not be in the office for another 3 hours. This meant that my routine was now all over the place.

I appreciate that these are small things, but they caused me great anxiety, and I know that I’ll be on edge for the entirety of the day now.

I just don’t understand why someone would come to your desk and mess around with the setting of your chair, or think that it’s ok to take your headset and not return it.