Adult ASD diagnosis &PTSD overlap -resources, articles etc?

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This is what ive been fixated on at different times over the last few years, what type of therapy are you doing?

My therapist does not follow specific school, believing in choosing tools from wide palette, but it's generally a talk therapy - my main goal was originally to learn to identify my own emotions so we mostly talk of them.
By the way, she specializes in eating disorders that are not my problem at all - but whatever, she's helping.

Most good therapists have a vast palette to choose from—

Just like most good artists.

My counselor is licensed in CBT, but most of what we do isn’t strictly CBT.

I don’t think strict CBT is necessarily that great for addressing trauma, so I’m glad that we don’t follow a practical approach that closely.

My mum was told that she had miscarried my twin in the first trimester and was prescribed bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy, for fear i would miscarry too. She is a highy anxious person and ive often thought about the stress hormones she shared with me before i was born.

This is also a helpful example, I decided a while back to give up on friendships, I barely have enough social energy for the people closest to me, but it was the reinforced experiences of misplaced trust in others that made the decision easy.

Identifying emotions is not a strength of mine, at the lend of my last therapy session the best response I could give to the 'how do you feel question' was... i feel lighter inside.

I feel CBT is good with people who isolate themselves.

Under the influence of isolation, and reading things like social theory and political theory, people lose sight of what actually makes people tick.

They live via theory, rather than by “real life.” They expect people to follow what’s set forth in generalities, and expect people to be like the models which are obtained through research.

Without taking into account the individual.

CBT is also really good at helping people deal with irrational thoughts and feelings (black and white thinking, catastrophizing, and things of that sort).

I think that as far as approaching trauma it’s not all that beneficial, so I’m glad that I’m not really doing CBT.

I adopted the term emotional dysregulation as a catch-all for the weirdness in my emotional responses, which includes:
- delayed emotional responses (sometimes by days)
- under-reaction to some events and over-reaction to others
- and especially the tendency to get "stuck" in an acute emotional state for longer than seems normal.

When I first came across CBT I felt the same way - it seemed to me that it was a therapy based around changing ways of thinking but could not address the actual life problems that lay behind my stress disorder, so I dismissed it.

Later, after I'd done all I could to reduce life stresses but was still having a problem (getting triggered over minor things), I realised that I had a problem with a hypersensitised amygdala. That's the part of the brain which identifies danger in the environment and initiates a stress response. With PTSD, this gets into a hypersensitive state so that even small stresses can trigger a state of hyperarousal or a meltdown.

The amygdala works by activating fear responses, so the way to de-sensitise it is to address the fears underlying our responses. In my case, it took me a while to recognise that all the upset and anger and frustration I was feeling when I was triggered were underlain by a fear response. Once I realised that, I used CBT theory to move past the cognitive distortions I was using to justify my reactions, recognise and identify the fear that lay beneath, and then uncover an old "core belief" which lay behind my fears.

This was actually really successful, because the "core belief" that was causing me problems was one left over from childhood, when I was far less able to speak up for myself, and I was able to demonstrate to myself that it was no longer valid. So now I'm retraining my amygdala that all those situations which used to trigger me no longer pose any threat. It's suprisingly effective

The take-out is not to bother too much with all those CBT exercises based on identifying cognitive distortions - that part is not very relevant to PTSD at all. I would recommend asking your therapist to get straight into the theory of "Core Beliefs" and how these have shaped your subconscious fear responses.

By the way, my CBT was self-taught based on a book called "Asperger Syndrome and Anxiety" by Nick Dubin.
I strongly recommend this book.

I didn't know it was CBT theory, but I went through the process of peeling out cognitive distortions with my therapist, too.
But my "core beliefs" were not always possible to eliminate, as some of my mental distortions covered up sensory issues and exhaustion.

But this is also good, when you know what your real problems are, you can adress them at the source.

I feel like it’s good, in general, to have an objective perspective in general.

If one isolates one’s self and relies upon books and Internet, one develops distorted views of reality.

My year and half old brother died of bronchial pneumonia when my mother was five and half months pregnant with my embodiment, and I know and have read of others with AS whose mothers who had been traumatically effected / affected during pregnancy.

So in gestational sense we developed through a PTSD experience, and later environmentally went on to have our own experience or experiences with PTSD ourselves.

Mine was nearly dying (near death experience session in the 'light') aged three, having seizures thereafter, and getting bullied and having severe breakdowns at school (with my my first psychological diagnosis being Psychopathic or Schizotypal Personality Disorder aged twelve).

Good job and best explanation for my special interest being metaphysics and psychology methinks!

I'm still learning about the role of the autonomic nervous system in PTSD, stored physical memories of trauma and such.
I could only relate to parts of PTSD until recently, like Startrekkers response i knew logically that I was not in danger, but my body could not tell the difference and was reliving the memories.
Im reading sections of this dissertation at the moment, it's answering questions that I hadn't quite formulated yet.
Braeken, M. A. K. A. (2014). Psychological functioning and the autonomic nervous system during pregnancy: Impact on mother and child. Heverlee: PROCOPIA.