Month: April 2019
Introduction – Part One
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 40. I think that the diagnosis came so late on in life because of how I was brought up. Events in my childhood could easily explain away my autistic traits. So I thought I’d talk about my life to date over the next few posts to give some context.
I was bought up in the mid 70s in a two bedroom terrace in a small village in an industrial area of North Staffordshire. My home situation was not normal. I was an only child, and my mum wasn’t married, which wasn’t that common back in the 70s. We lived in what had been her family home with my two uncles, until I was 15. My two uncles shared one room, and I had to share a room with my mum. When you’re 15 and sharing a room with your mum, and your two uncles share a double bed, you’re not that inclined to ask friends over. It’s embarassing. Consequently you don’t really make any friends.
I was bullied at school because my mum was not married. So again, no scope for making friends.
Although there were other kids in the village, I tended to be a bit of a loner. They all had father figures who would take them to football etc and I had no-one. So they were into football and played it all the time, and I had no interest or aptitude for it. As we lived right next to the West Coast Mainline I took up trainspotting, as you don’t need friends to do that.
I was very much tied to my mums apron strings. I was a very shy child and she would do everything for me and would not push me outside my comfort zone, so when I was invited to do things with others, I’d often decline to do so, as I was shy.
When I turned 11 I won a scholarship to the local independant school on the merits of my intelligence. I was surrounded by kids from well off backgrounds, whilst I got free school uniform and free school meals, which was obvious to the other kids. They all lived in modern houses, I lived in a 100 year old terrace with my mum and two uncles. So I was picked on for being poor. The kids in the village didn’t want anything to do with me because they were influenced by their parents who were jealous of me going to a private school.
I was also picked on because of my high forehead, and my facial ticks, which I now think are actually autistic stims.
So I had no friends. I indulged myself in my hobbies, which were going out on bike rides by myself, train spotting, electronics and chemistry sets, and computer programming. One of my uncles bought a BBC Micro when I was 10, so I would spend hours learning how to programme it whilst I could see the kids from the village playing out.
The school that I went to was an all boys school, so I didn’t have exposure to girls during my pubescent and teen years, and that coupled with my home circumstances meant I never learned how to chat someone up. To this day I have never asked a woman out; I’ve always been the one to be asked. I still don’t have a clue how to do it, what to say.
I guess that I’ve always put my chronic shyness and inability to socialise down to my nurturing because I didn’t have the practice and experience in my formative years due to my home circumstances, rather than it being down to my Aspergers.
Autistic Burnout
I was just browsing Gavin Bollard’s excellent “Life With Asperger’s” blog and came across the concept of “Autistic Burnout” for the first time. It’s not something that I’d heard of before; it’s certainly not mentioned on any of the more “technical” sites, such as the National Autistic Society, or in the many books that I’ve read.
For the past 6 weeks I’ve barely been able to function. I feel like I’ve been on autopilot. Typically I just get up at 0500, go to work, get home at 1930, eat, go to bed and repeat. Everything else, such as doing housework, or attending the youth group that I’m involved with, has been a struggle. Weekends are worse; I just stay in bed as long as I can just to avoid facing the world, which is something I’ve never done in my life.
I feel broken.
I thought that I was depressed, because the last 6 months have been one hell of an emotional rollercoaster. I came out of a relationship of 7 years and somehow ended up in a new, very intense one straight away, which itself came to a very abrupt and unexpected end at the start of March.
Now I’m thinking that I’m suffering from autistic burnout rather than being depressed, although from my brief readings so far I’m not sure that there are too many differences in the causes and symptoms.
In summary Autistic Burnout is an accumulation of years of trying to appear normal and cope as an Neurotypical (NT). The strain and drain of it suddenly becomes too much and an autistic person (me in this case) falls apart. All autistic symptoms get worse. Trying to manage all the everyday normal activities are way too much. It is overwhelming and stressful for the person involved.
Kezza – What is Autistic Burnout
For the first time in a very long time I don’t have to go home and put on a façade, because there is no one else there. But I also don’t have the energy to put on a façade at work, or anywhere else for that matter, so I’ve reverted to being very blunt/abrupt with people. Gone are the acts that I’ve developed over the years.
I don’t think I realised just how hard I try to fit in to the Neurotypical World, and how exhausting it is to do so. Everything I do to try to live a “normal” life goes against my instincts.
Now I have no relationship the stress of trying to maintain a relationship has gone, and boy was that stressful. Trying to understand your partner’s needs, and what they are telling you, and constantly getting it wrong puts your anxiety right up at 100% 24/7.
Not having a partner also means that I don’t have a social life anymore, as all of “my” friends were actually hers. So I no longer have to make an effort there either, not that I ever really did. Over the years we did less and less socialising because of how I always embarrassed her.
So for the first time in 8 years I have no reason to make the effort, and I think that the stresses of all the acting that I’ve had to do have caught up with me, and I’ve crashed.
I love my job. I’ve always loved working. For the past 23 years I’ve been used to getting up between 4 and 5, and being out of the house for 12 to 14 hours. Right now I really can’t be bothered. The 55 mile commute has suddenly become a drag, and I have no interest in work when I’m there. I’d rather just stay at home, but not having a job would make my life even worse.
I certainly am experiencing many of the signs in the infographic above, and can tick the box against many of the causes.
I just haven’t figured out a strategy yet to get myself out of this. I don’t know how to motivate myself right now. All that I want to do is just curl up in a ball in a corner somewhere and have the world pass me by.
“Good Morning”
Is it? How do you know that? It’s very presumptuous of you. I could be having the worst time ever, and usually am.
“Good Morning” has to be the most pointless piece of small talk going. The more cheerfully said, the more irritating it is. I don’t get why Neurotypicals feel the need to speak just for the sake of speaking. One person says “Good Morning” and the recipient repeats “Good Morning”. What purpose does that serve?
It’s even worse when a stranger says it to you as you pass them.
Clearly people say it just because they feel obligated to say it, that it’s the polite thing to do. I just like to keep myself to myself, and attract no attention, yet here people are stressing me out by making me engage in conversation, if that’s what you can call two words.
Sometimes they add “How are you?” to the end of the “Good Morning”. I know, and you know, that they don’t actually want to know how you are, so again, why feign interest?
If I’m feeling particularly grouchy, I’ll sometimes stop and start a conversation with the greetee if they ask how I am, and tell them of all my problems. That tends to stop them from ever saying it to me again.
I once worked with a girl who every morning would bounce into the office full of life at 8am. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone more happy clappy than Gemma. She would almost sing “Good Morning” before immediately launching into 101 questions. “Did you have a good weekend?”, “What did you do last night”, “Did you see such and such on the TV?”.
God she did my head in. Eventually I had to tell her that I didn’t do conversation until 9am just to stop the endless onslaught. I’ve no idea how she ended up being a good friend, when I took that attitude with her, but she did.
The last relationship I was in was a long distance one, so we relied on messaging and phone calls. She always expected the first message of the day to be “Good Morning” and if it wasn’t would grumble. So most days I remembered to type it out, but I really didn’t see the point. I’d rather have launched straight into conversation. It’s such a pointless filler.
Yes I know that all of the above makes me appear to be rude, but honestly, it really stresses me out when people engage me in this pleasantry. I don’t know why, but it just does. The stress starts when I’m walking towards someone, knowing that they are likely to say it. So I will sometimes divert my path, or put my phone to my ear as though on a call, just to avoid a simple “Good morning”.
My First Meltdown
Since being diagnosed I have been able to look back on my life and recognise that I have had meltdowns throughout, but they were minor in comparison to one specific episode, which to me was my first “proper” meltdown. It was certainly the most violent, and was a turning point in my life.
I was 40 when I had my first meltdown, although I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time, as I’d yet to be diagnosed as being on the spectrum.
It took place on New Year’s Eve 2013.
I remember it very vividly.
My partner at the time, Maria, ran her own business and as we lay in bed that morning she reminded me that I had promised to go into her office and put her servers onto an Uninterruptible Power Supply, as there had been issues with the power to the building.
I really didn’t want to do it, as it was New Year’s Eve and I didn’t want to be doing any kind of work, so there was tension as we spoke. She pointed out that she’d been asking me to do it all week, and that the blackouts were causing work to be lost.
When she mentioned blackouts I argued back that she’d never mentioned blackouts to me. She was adamant that she had. I pointed out that she had told me that the power kept dipping, which is a brownout not a blackout, but she insisted that the two were the same thing.
Now at this point the reader familiar with Asperger’s will probably recognise what was going on in my head, the issue of getting hung up on the very precise definition and usage of words.
So an argument ensued, and voices got louder and louder on both sides, with me repeatedly insisting that a brownout was not the same as a blackout (it is not!) and she was insisting that I was just being awkward on purpose and knew exactly what she meant (I didn’t!).
The next thing I remember is that I’d jumped out of bed and stood there repeatedly slapping my forehead hard. At this point we were in a full blown argument, and she said a few more hurtful things, probably to do with the fact that I was now out of control.
I remember feeling so frustrated that I was being blamed for her not knowing the difference between a blackout and a brownout, and that it had lead to an argument.
The next thing that I remember was falling to the floor and repeatedly banging my head between the wall and the wooden bed-frame. There is about 18 inches between the two, and I was ping-ponging my head very hard between them. I did this with such force that it split the bed-frame.
Whilst I was doing this I was also screaming, shouting and crying. Eventually the head banging stopped and sobbing ensued. I just lay there motionless for quite a while. I’ve no idea for how long, I guess about 15 minutes.
My behaviour stopped the argument dead, but Maria had no compassion. She thought that I was having a childish temper tantrum and had no sympathy. I can’t remember what she said, but it would have been angry and cutting.
It made it worse that the commotion had attracted the attention of our 12 year old daughter who witnessed the entire episode.
They left the house, and went to the cinema without me, which upset me as it was our NYE tradition. When she got back she told me that the relationship was over, that I had to move out, but she’d give me a few weeks to find somewhere to live.
What had happened scared them both, and she didn’t want our daughter to be in an environment where I would do something like that. Which is understandable.
It scared me too. I had no idea what had just happened to me. I had no control. I didn’t want to be banging my head into the wall, but I couldn’t stop it. And when I eventually did stop, I had no energy; I felt exhausted.
So I had to figure out what had just happened to me. Through some skilful Googling I came across autism and Asperger’s. As someone had joked a few months earlier that I might be autistic I focused on this. The more I read about Asperger’s the more I identified with what I was reading. It kind of made sense of a lot of my life.
So I took one of the online AQ tests and scored a high 42.
I did read around other conditions too, but Asperger’s was the only condition that matched. I made an appointment with my doctor and that was the start of my journey into unravelling the first 40 years of my life.
Following on from that first meltdown, I’ve only had 2 more “major” episodes, and a few minor, but I’ll write about those some other time.