chrisg

The exercise from my therapist for this week was to write down the thoughts that came and caused the distress over the week; to give some insight into what makes me feel like I need to do act out these negative behaviours in order to “calm my mind”.

First thing to note: I know I do those actions and I take full responsibility for them, it is not my mind or some part of me on autopilot. However, I do accept that my own body is interpreting normal situations as some sort of prehistoric attack so the coping mechanisms feel like “survival instincts” and become hard to ignore.

A second point is that there has been a lot of therapy focusing on identifying emotions but the work has been primarily focused on reflecting after the fact. One of the downsides of autism is that my connection between brain and body is different. While I may have more sensory inputs than Neurotypical folks, I am not able to read them as well. This often means that I am not looking for “I am feeling sad, I wonder why” but I am looking for “What physical sensation am I feeling (tight chest, hot head etc) and what feelings does that indicate”. To find out what I am feeling in a moment is not simple, finding out why makes it seem like a mammoth task.

I will say that “sitting with the discomfort” is the hardest thing I have ever done, still now, and my ability to self-soothe/self-regulate is poor without external input.

Maybe I am prefacing this because I do not want to write these things, maybe I need to excuse them. But they have created enough shame in me for years and if transparency is part of the work, then this is the route forward.

1. If I am not useful, then I am not wanted (Value)

Low self-esteem, I know. Pretty typical, right? Many of us have been there. Many books have been written about this and it does not only impact relationships, it can affect work life; especially when working remotely.

If I cannot show, quantifiably, that I have done things, that I am useful, then I am not. I do not think I fully believe this myself but it is enough of a thought that “the idea of “just be” or let people “accept you as you are” is panic inducing. Which likely leads to the next, more extreme, one:

2. If they need you, they will not leave (Self-worth)

Even my shitty head knows this is not true. And I am so sure that I do the things for other people because I want to do them and not as some form of manipulation. I know this, I think, because I would give all of those things to someone who I did not know so well or to someone that I was no longer dating (that may be a separate problem in itself), but I know my core motivation is fear and not a nefarious, co-dependent need for someone to fully rely on me.

3. Out of sight, out of mind (Object permanence)

This is maybe because this is how my head works and my empathy skills are still developing. If someone goes away, then it almost feels like a surprise that they are there when I get back or that they want to continue speaking to me or that I am still in their life when there is distance between us. That is the most extreme version of the thought, I have become infinitely better at dealing with this one and giving myself evidence and being more proactive in reaching out to show that is not true. In weaker moments, though, this one can really take hold.

4. You do not deserve this, they will leave (Self-protection, catastrophising)

I am unsure how to phrase this one (or even if I believe it) but, as a black-and-white thinker who likes rules, I think this comes from father’s death. A person who I could relate and discuss things with was a cornerstone of who I am today, his death was like a wave of pain that my brain could not process and so decided to implement extreme measures to stop me from feeling that again.

About the deserving, I neither think I am special/better or worse than anyone else, so I am unsure why I feel like I do not deserve the things. I do know that my brain seems to follow the rule of “other people’s happiness before my own” so maybe that has deeper roots than I am aware of.

5. They have left/moved on/they don’t need you. They don’t want you. (Uncertainty, catastrophising, fear of abandonment, self-worth).

This one is the kicker. Without certainty, all thoughts are welcome and they focus on the very, very negative. This pit, once in it, is almost impossible to get out of and it often comes with a paralysis from deciding for the other person. If someone does not want me to do something, they can tell me and I will not do that thing. However, in this pit, my view is that they think I am disgusting/annoying/pestering/pick one and any action I make to them is harmful/abusive/triggering. Crawling out of that pit and doing something as simple as reaching out a hand to hold seems harder than running a marathon.

Possibly because I seem to struggle with long-term thinking, this thought kicks in very quickly and, the longer the uncertainty exists, the stronger it gets and the harder it is to do things. It also feels closely correlated with the next thought:

6. Needing to know for sure (Uncertainty)

Yes, I have read the book. Yes, I know the irrational nature of needing to know things for sure and the harm it can do in the long term but the risk of doing something and being rejected/not wanted/not useful is powerful, possibly made stronger with not being so great at reading people that I want to do the right thing and validate it before doing it. I am sure there is some efficiency thoughts in there as well but, typically, I believe the worst case scenario is true (see above) and, without the external certainty, the pit seems oh so deep.

Some good coping mechanisms for these thoughts have been found over the years:

• As other people change plans, it is better to plan things as open ended. For example, instead of “Cinema with X on Thursday”, it is better to see it as “Spend time with X on Thursday” and that plan can change without triggering anything (or could even run later into the night).
• Fake it: This one I learned from running. If I need certainty, I can be the one to give it to myself by pretending the other person has given it. It does not work indefinitely but I can give me a few days/week of comfort/strength to try and act independently.

It is so much effort to think these things, not react to them, let them pass and rationalise them. So much so that I am incredibly jealous of people (Neurotypical or divergent) that are able to do this naturally or that have developed mechanisms to make this more natural. I know that deeper fixes (working on self-love, self-esteem and my own needs) are part of the issue here but I do not feel like they are the core; the core seems to be not being OK if these thoughts are true. That could be my mistake, though, and may be part of the issue.