chrisg

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.