After a week of panic attacks, surges of “feel good” and obsessively listening to “Whatever It Takes” by Lifehouse, I do know what I feel. I know it is many things and I know it rockets between “ecstatically hopeful” to “you piece of shit, you ruined this” on seemingly hourly basis.

Doing the work is hard. Really hard. No contact is even harder. When your inner fear of rejection and/or abandonment is ingrained for decades, it is tough to deal with those thoughts when someone you love is in your life. When they are not (in whatever ways) then they really ramp up their effectiveness. They have moved on, your life means nothing. You know, the usual.

I went to my first group therapy. When I was first diagnosed, group therapy was the primary support available for those diagnosed with ASD. At the time, I thought it made no sense and would be more triggering than anything else.

Foolishly, I did not go and instead opted to do one-on-one counselling; teaching me the skills of masking to be neurotypical and all of the magical anxious thoughts that one should be thinking during a social encounter.

I spent many years being angry at how that therapy did not help and, in many ways, created more issues. But that is pointless, obviously.

Panicking in the foetal position in the cabin of a ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki, I decided to leave the dark room and walk the dog. To my surprise, it was light as hell outside and the deck was filled with people walking around and taking videos. My last ferry was an overnight from Helsinki to Germany and it had nothing but grey seas and no signal.

Seeing that I had missed a call from a good friend, I circled the deck with a confused dog as I talked into some bluetooth sunglasses and explained the events of the last few weeks. They listened and challenged the thoughts coming from that dark place that everyone’s mind goes to and focused on what can be done now. In this moment. Instead of tiring myself out overthinking and thinking how it could have been different, just having the thought “what can you do for yourself now?” is vital.

Doing that in practice, however, is a whole different thing. It absolutely sucks that your brain is your own worst enemy but knowing it, and taking steps to “fight” that is already a big step.

Doing the work is tough to recognise, particularly if you are a person that feels like productivity is only productive when it is visible.

From reading and therapy, I started down the path of co-dependency and whether that applies to my experiences or thoughts within relationships. Hearing or reading the content is painful and I hope that is not because I am avoiding admission of things; I recognise some of the patterns and certainly behaviours fit into them but I would not consider myself a narcissist or a sociopath (though I have considered it in therapy sessions).

My actions come from a place of fear and, quite possibly, from complex trauma stemming from my father’s death but I never do things to manipulate or hurt people. At least, not consciously. This is where “doing the work” feels tough, it makes me question the origin of my thoughts or actions, which is undeniably a good thing overall but it also increases the anxiety and shame felt. Shame and fear are powerful motivators and rarely in the good direction.

To be sure (as sure as one can be), I have taken multiple tests for narcissism and sociopathy (solo and with therapists) and not scored as one. I do not think I am special or that I deserve more than others, nor do I want to harm or manipulate. I am scared and do not feel worthy enough to show my own needs.

As a kid, I did not experience trauma (that I am aware of) nor did I believe anything special about myself or even consider what others thought of me. I would only talk to people about the Libertarian party and I barely understood what an emotion was. I was, and am, autistic. After diagnosis at 20, I went through years of therapy that taught me how to understand some of my own emotions, how to try and identify what others were feeling and what to do/how to act. It was scary as shit. It was like showing me a whole new dimension that was inside the same dimension we live in. “People really think this?”, “People really do that when X does Y?” rolled around my head, a head filled with blissful ignorance before.

Sidenote: I remember asking for a girl’s number when I was 13 and texting them (rarely, because I had no idea what to say) and then being told that I had to write “tbcx” at the end of every message, which apparently meant “text back, Chris x” in txt speak. So, I did, to every female contact and every message, for 5 years until flatmates in university told me that did not need to happen (nor did it ever need to happen). Such a simple statement modified my behaviour and also taught me to expect responses even when messages did not have questions; so many grey areas.

My head did not cope, apparently, it took this huge grey area and try to turn it into black and white rules. Loaded with the loss of a parent who did understand how my brain worked, it focused on following those “rules” and doing whatever it could to avoid the hurt it felt when my father died. “People you love will leave. You can control your actions. I will do that for you” it said. I remember telling a therapist that I spent some time each day imagining my mother’s death, my brother’s death, those of friends, so it could prepare and detach and implement its master plan to avoid the world crashing pain it felt when father was gone.

It created a series of masks to wear to be as neurotypical as possible, never showing a need for others and hiding the autistic self.

There is no excuse for the things I have done when using the wrong coping mechanisms to deal with fear or discomfort, to avoid relying on someone but I very much hope that it is not due to narcissism. I am a people-pleaser, as many are, but I do it mostly because I want to and because I like to feel needed or that I have something to offer this person or this world. Potentially it is for attachment as well, but not to artificially force attachment or trap someone. This behaviour is learned, learned in an effort to live in a neurotypical world and have successful relationships. This fact gives me hope because it can be unlearned and new lessons, more in line with who I am, can replace them.

I hope I can look back on this post in 6 months and either:

• see that this is true and have done work to address showing all facets of my authentic self
• accept that I am wrong in my understanding and have done the work to address being something I never thought I could be

When I wrote the admission post, I did not know what I was going to do from then on; I just knew I had to do something different. Owning it myself was hard enough but admitting it to others, accepting that fear that I had tried to avoid for decades was tougher still.

In this past week, a rollercoaster of emotions, self-reflection, self-loathing and actions have happened: panic attacks, eating nothing and getting to silly levels of drunk, wanting to sleep all the time just to block it out.

Normally, I write notes in Obsidian but these findings, reflections and lessons also felt like something that should be as open as the first post. A journey that I need to go on but one that I can throw into the void. Maybe others with a similar issue would read this or maybe those affected by my actions could gain some closure.

What I have read

• The emotional regulation crash course
• Dealing with negative emotions
• Managing Negative Emotions

What I have learned

54321 Grounding

When feeling a bunch of things, doing the 54321 grounding can be essential

• 5 things you can see
• 4 things you can hear
• 3 things you can touch
• 2 things you can smell
• 1 thing you can taste

This works as like a reset and, while it is frustrating to keep doing it, it is like a mini superpower and has helped tens of time this week

90 second reactions

All these things I have done, I have always seen them as subconscious and that I have no control. An excuse, I knew, but having the research to back it is a nice arsenal of evidence to use against myself.

When a thing happens, an external event or a feeling comes up, your parasympathetic nervous system has control for 90 seconds; that makes you flinch or scream or run. After that, it is all you.

This is not only important for ownership, but also to understand that, when you want to do something quickly, you likely need to wait 90 seconds to think clearly. “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast”, it seems, and the grounding technique above is a good 90 second killer.

Feelings have a physical sign

Discomfort. I feel it. Physically. Often. I do not often know what I am feeling, it is hard for me to connect brain and body and identify emotions. Sometimes it feels like being in a shoe store and I am asking the shop worker what I am feeling and they go out the back to check. Sometimes they will come back with the item or they may stay in the back for hours and come back much later.

Studies have been done where people were shown black and white images of people next to emotions and they were able to link the images with an emotion.

I did not know this! Now I do not need to ask the shop worker and I just make a best effort guess based on what I physically feel and try and identify if there is a trigger that might be causing that.

What I need to do better

Lying

I want people to like me, all people do. Maybe it is because off the autism or feeling like I cannot read people but I need them to like me. To continue to like me, to see good things in me, to not leave me. Enough therapy has me aware that the fear of leaving comes from my father passing away due to a brain tumour but this behaviour existed before this.

This fear, “you need to do things to make them like you, dont show the bad things, dont need them or they will go”, does not just cause the negative behaviours and outlets that I look for in relationships but they impact my communications daily.

Lying? No, I would never call it lying. I am a good person. I do not lie. My brain (once called “the director” by a therapist) does these things. I do not want to do them. I do not know that I do them. Yet I do them. I tell a person that I love them and then I use these outlets to deal with that fear that comes from loving them, wanting them. To show myself I do not need them, that I can handle it if they leave.

Let's call it what it is: lying. It permeates every layer of my life. I filter my speech for what the other person wants to hear. No, what I think the other person wants to hear. Not just a partner, a random colleague or friend. This needs to be struck from my life. I need to gain self-respect, gain a sense of identity and accept that honesty is the only option.

Validation

I still want it. And I still do not know how to give it to myself. What is worse, I want it from the very person that I was too afraid to seek it from. I still find myself messaging them, going to message them and to tell them of all the work I am doing, of all the new things I have learned. I want them back but I made this situation. And the work is for me. For my lessons learned. They may move on, without me, and that is my doing. I did that.

Fears and Reliance

Love doing things for people. Love it. Feels amazing. The opposite? Not so true. It hurts and creates such discomfort that the urges to do shitty things grow exponentially. I have done the work in therapy and I know the things. I know it can be equal and I know that someone doing a thing for me is a good feeling for both parties. But the fear of “owing them” or not being seen as capable of doing it for myself or that I am not worth those things being done for me is so great that I do not know how to sit with it, let alone process it.

But I will. I have to master these things. To live consciously and actively. To take charge and stop blaming my brain/the director/my fears for my actions.

An Open Admission and a Promise to do Better

I doubt anyone is reading that does not have a direct link but I think my work needs to be done in the open.

My name is Chris Gwilliams, I am a developer by trade and I am an incredibly anxious person, diagnosed with Autism at the age of 21. I am also a person who has low self-esteem and is unable to validate themselves so I seek it from others; typically in relationships. For almost all of my adult life, I have been in long-term relationships, with a maximum of a year in between (but normally a few months).

This is because the loneliness creates discomfort and anxiety in me. Discomfort and anxiety are feelings I want to avoid so I seek a distraction: dating. Dating typically then leads to a long term relationship and, in most cases, they have been with some amazing people.

That anxiety stays through the relationship. I believe that I should be the best version of myself for my partner and I do try, but it is tiring. And I do not know what to do with the not so good parts, the “shadow self”. I am afraid to show it because I think they will leave and that fear leads to me doing awful things, like:

• Looking at online classifieds for external validation, through adult chats or audio/video sessions
• Looking on escort sites to message someone (for the same reason) and engaging in physical cheating
• Sending messages to previous partners about feelings (for the same reason). In one instance, this went on for months, engaging in physical and emotional cheating that hurt both my partner and the previous partner.

All to be told (or to feel) that I am good, I am loved, I am OK. But I know this is not true. I know this behaviour is not OK. It is abusive, manipulative and it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of the very thing that I am trying to avoid.

Anyone that knows me knows that I am a person with low willpower. I eat pizza regularly, impulse buy gadgets and rarely go for the “hard thing” (unless it is for someone other than myself). I always believed that these behaviours were the same part of it, and I am sure they are related somehow. But I have also never talked about them directly, openly. Part of me thought that these things were “under control” but I knew that I was ashamed of it. Ashamed that I cannot soothe myself, ashamed that I do not have the skills to fix this for myself and ashamed to admit to needing people.

I am still ashamed but mostly because it has taken me this long to admit it to myself, to others and to work on it. Because I hid it for so long, it became a part of me; a routine, a habit, a knee jerk reaction. For those reasons, and for all of those that have been hurt by my fear and my actions, I need to be open about it; so here it is. And to those people that I hurt, I am so incredibly sorry, you deserved none of this and I hope this goes some small way to addressing that, making some small amends and know that I am doing the work, now, in the open, before causing any more harm to others or myself.

How to look after this anxious hound =====

Born: 2017 Race: Mixed Nationality: Italian Weight: 20kg Eats: – Brit Care weight loss/Acana/Frolic soft (soft dry food): 1 cup – Can also eat 1 packet of wet food with dry food if he is being picky

Daily Routine

• Between 6 and 8am: Walk
• 830am: Breakfast (dry food)
• Between 3 and 5pm: Walk
• 530pm: Dinner (dry food)
• Between 9 and 1030pm: Night time pee

Commands

Saying this is an excited, slightly high whisper is the best way to make him responsive.

• Sit (point downwards or click your fingers)
• Spin (after sitting, rotate your finger clockwise)
• Twirl (after sitting, rotate your finger anticlockwise)
• Down (flat hand lowered to the floor)
• Roll (after down, rotate your hand)
• Wait (hand up, flat palm)
• Suche/Search/Go get it (after wait, to retrieve a treat)
• Up (onto your chest, double tap it as you say it)
• Up (Point to a log/bench/wall as you say it)

Guidelines

• Not allowed on the bed (up to you if you want to enforce)
• No jumping up without being told
• Should sit and wait before being fed
• Wet food can be used but should be limited
• Should be pulled off of other dogs and leave area if he attempts to mount multiple times

What to do when...

• He has ticks – Once you have stopped screaming and calling him, “disgusting”, there is a tick remover in the zipped pocket of the treat pouch; grip it and twist, if you get legs and head then you are better than I am at removing them
• He will not walk – Sometimes he may stop for no reason or try to pull in a different direction. As long as he is wearing the orange harness then just continue to pull him until he starts to walk with you (do not worry if you have to pull quite hard!)
• He does not eat – Soaking his food in cold/warm water for a while can help sometimes. He also struggles to eat if there is a lot of movement so you may find he will eat when you sit down to eat. This is perfectly ok and it is ok to leave his food out if he does not eat it right away
• He vomits – Firstly, sorry! Second, do not worry unless it has happened more than 2 or 3 times.

Fears

• Bald, larger men 🤷‍♀️
• Loud noises
• Noisy packaging
• Large objects moving
• Vacuum cleaners

Notable

• Does shed quite a lot of hair
• Might not want to walk sometimes or leave owner; pulling the harness is perfectly ok in that case

• Labyrinth Park
  • Strongly recommended, very cheap and quite empty in mid afternoon
  • Escape room is cool and mini golf is free if you finish the max
• Agios Nikolaos – Small town with a lake close to ocean
  • Town that the Spinalonga boat leaves from
  • Nice but maybe not worth the visit otherwise
• Sissi Port
• Boufos Beach
• Animals
  • Amazonas Wildlife Park
  • Cretaquarium
• Water parks
  • https://watercity.gr/
  • Acqua Plus Water Park
• Historical
  • Malia Minoan Palace – From 1900 BC
  • Monastery of Areti – Active monastery
  • Dikteon / Psychro Cave – Birthplace of Zeus
    • Long walk but recommended
  • Spinalonga Island – Take a ferry to the old leper colony
    • full day but very recommended. The island is cool and the boat stops for an ocean swim
• Horse Riding
• Richtis Waterfall
• Snorkelling – Dis Island

Purchases

• Maximum 5 video games
• Maximum 3 gadgets/hardware
• Maximum 15 books/audiobooks

Food / Drinks

• Max 6 bottles of carbonated drinks per month
• No sweets

As an avid self-help book reader (and ignorer of all advice they offer), I have gone through “Designing your life” by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. Unsurprisingly, I ignored their exercises, words of wisdom and tips for life.

While waiting in an airport, I looked through books that would be better than the 2 I had already packed for myself and I saw “Designing your Work Life”. In the same act of hopefulness, I bought it and set it aside for an indeterminate period of time.

In an effort to “fix” myself amidst common issues I am struggling with at work, in life and in general, I started the book yesterday with the specific goal of following their steps. Note-taking is an unsolved problem for me so doing the first exercises make the most sense here; with the added benefit of public accountability.

Page 51 describes two exercises to figure out your purposes for work and life (or write them down if you already know them) where you write a 250 word manifesto of your Workview and Lifeview that answer a series of thought-provoking questions. So, here we go:

Workview

Why work?

Let's ignore the obvious, “because we have to” and instead say that, if we can, we choose a career early in life in an area that interests us. Sometimes we are forced into it but we do work out of a necessity to work in order to survive. Yes, we can find some public land and grow crops on it but that it also leaving your life behind as well.

What is work for?

To provide a minimum quality of life that allows you to utilise your free time in ways that are not restricted. To allow contributions to a system that, in theory, takes care of worries that we have moved past as humans (healthcare, transport, infrastructure, services).

What does work mean?

Work should mean that it is a task you give more than eighty thousand hours of your life to and it provides learning experiences, gratitude and fulfilment such that you want to spend your time with it; regardless of the money.

How does it relate to an individual, others, society?

I suppose it relates here because a job can be necessary for society to function but does not provide much motivation for an individual to work it; or that society creates a hierarchy based on these positions and metadata associated with them. To an individual, it should not be something you dread or crave time away from.

What defines good or worthwhile work?

Humans are short-sighted and selfish creatures by nature, this is not a bad thing in itself but it does mean that good work first has to benefit the worker; which could be in the form of seeing their impact or altruism, but it can also be financial or otherwise. I believe worthwhile work leaves the area of that work measurably cleaner/better than before; something that is not causing harm (or minimising it) and providing the greatest benefit to the majority.

What does money have to do with it?

Unless Capitalism somehow fails overnight, it is necessary in order to function within society, as well as to provide for those outside of your immediate circle (through taxes towards social housing, public healthcare, homeless initiatives etc or direct donations). It needs to be enough to allow you to live a lifestyle that you (and those dependent on you) can live in comfort without fearing a surprise bill or how to eat for the next week.

What does experience, fulfilment and growth have to do with it?

It is secondary. When you are in the position where you can select from a number of open positions that all reach your financial needs then you are able to select a position based on what it offers you; whether that is learning to stay relevant for future positions or for personal growth. The fulfilment is the part that, I believe, makes you stay in a position for 2 decades vs 2 months; feeling appreciated, recognised or required in a position that has meaning in your life is going to remove the dread one feels before the work day and increase your productivity.

Lifeview

Why are we here?

I believe this is random and there is no specific reason we are here.

What is the meaning/purpose of life?

As above, any meaning we have is/must be created by ourselves. If there is a purpose beyond what we make for ourselves, then it would likely be to reproduce and continue.

What is the relationship between individuals and others?

Humans are social animals. We benefit from others and our worldview is improved/expanded when we surround ourselves with different people. Other people are necessary for an individual to experience a life beyond the filter bubble of their own mind.

Where do family, country and the rest of the world fit in?

I wish I had a positive view here but I believe people prioritise themselves first and then those within their immediate circle naturally. If we were able to take actions where we had the same compassion for the world and its inhabitants as we did for ourselves then behaviour would be good in general.

What is good? What is evil?

Evil is an easy one: an action that causes harm (and where the consequences are known) but provides little/no benefit for the individual(s) carrying it out. Applying that definition to actions is subjective, however. For example, is the mother torturing and beheading the person that sexually assaulted and murderer her child evil?

In the same vein, an organisation/government/individual that tells a lie to the public in order to cover up damage to the environment is evil. While there is a benefit for them (continued profits), the consequences are far greater.

Good is less easy to define. A person may have committed adultery earlier in the day and then that guilt forced them to assist an elderly person with chores. Is that good? I guess if you do not connect other actions and instead judge each in isolation then it is easier. Can an action be good if the motivation do the action is not?

Do I believe in a higher power? How does that belief affect my life?

No, I do not. It makes me angry that some do but I know that is through my own experiences with religion. I am frustrated that Catholicism can still exist when it has contributed to thousands of child abuse cases globally and misused donations from those that could barely spare to provide them. It makes me more pessimistic in general, it frustrates me that my father turned to Christianity more when he realised his terminal brain tumour truly was terminal. If I could have faith then I would be able to see a greater plan in actions. Right now, I see the majority of human impact as negative and progressively destroying a planet when we are aware of the consequences. That action is evil, even if the individuals are not (in particular the huge majority that have no choice but to live in a destructive manner).

Checking out a individual folders (or files) of a Git repository

git init
git remote add origin $URL
git config core.sparsecheckout true
git sparse-checkout set $DIR #check with git sparse-checkout list
git pull origin $BRANCH