Anybody else experience something like this?
So here's the scenario. I'm at a busy/noisy/crowded place, like a supermarket or something, going about my business. The whole time I'm there I'm stimming like crazy, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. Then when I leave, it's like a huge wave of exhaustion hits me all at once.
If I didn't know better, I'd call them shutdowns. Except, well, I already get something else very different that I call shutdowns. With those I'm very aware of the building stress that I'm putting on myself and the effort it takes to hold them off. And when I do succumb it's pretty much complete shut down: no verbal communication, curl up into a fetal position, can't do anything at all, usually for about a half hour.
With this other thing, it's like I'm not even aware that the environment is stressing me out until I'm out of it. I see other people talk about overstimulating environments sometimes, but I get the impression they're usually very conscious of what in the environment is causing the issue. The entire conscious thought process for me here amounts to basically "hey my hand is really stimming a lot" and "holy crap I'm exhausted now". And I don't really completely "shut down", I'm just drained and exhausted by it. Does anyone else have this sort of experience?
Yes, being unconsciously stressed/anxious, then recognizing that I'm exhausted after the fact is the only shutdown-like thing I experience, which is why I thought that maybe I wasn't actually experiencing the shutdowns other people talk about on WP. When it happens, I don't stim, I just become a zombie: sit still, stare off into space, too tired to talk, processing speed slows down and can barely have a coherent thought at the worst times. I couldn't pinpoint what exactly causes it, but I'd say it's between visual and aural over-stimulation.
Now that it's happened for so many years, however, I'm aware when it's happening a bit more often, but it still creeps up on me, even when I expect it ahead of time.
"With this other thing, it's like I'm not even aware that the environment is stressing me out until I'm out of it. I see other people talk about overstimulating environments sometimes, but I get the impression they're usually very conscious of what in the environment is causing the issue. The entire conscious thought process for me here amounts to basically "hey my hand is really stimming a lot" and "holy crap I'm exhausted now". And I don't really completely "shut down", I'm just drained and exhausted by it. Does anyone else have this sort of experience?"
Yes and no. I have piss-poor internal awareness, like, really really bad to the point that I didn't know it was bad (don't know what I don't know sort of thing). My partner has noted patterns expanding from my daily life in relation to my 'I need to lie down, I'm too exhausted' moments, that I have not.
I don't know what to call many emotions I experience either, and I don't know how to release them short from letting them build up and crying, stimming, hurting myself, etc.
_________________
Not autistic, I think
Prone to depression
Have celiac disease
Poor motivation
Yes. I'm not always aware at the time of how things are getting to me. I'm just trying to get through it. Then later I crash.
Yes and no. I have piss-poor internal awareness, like, really really bad to the point that I didn't know it was bad (don't know what I don't know sort of thing). My partner has noted patterns expanding from my daily life in relation to my 'I need to lie down, I'm too exhausted' moments, that I have not.
I don't know what to call many emotions I experience either, and I don't know how to release them short from letting them build up and crying, stimming, hurting myself, etc.
Yeah, I suspect it's an internal awareness thing. I'm very similar in terms of not really realizing if something is bothering me, or how it bothers me. To the point where it impeded me getting identified on the spectrum because I would answer questions like "do you rock back and forth in your chair, or seek self stimulation" with no. Only to realize much later on that, oh yeah I actually do, and have done so for years, and everyone around me knows it.
It's just difficult to wrap my head around the idea of how something can bother me without me actually being aware that it's bothering me, let alone start to pull that apart and think about it in a way where I can actually do something constructive about it and communicate it to other people.
Yes. I'm not always aware at the time of how things are getting to me. I'm just trying to get through it. Then later I crash.
See, it's not just not being aware of how something is getting to me, but not even being aware that something is getting to me at all. Then I crash, and it's only in hindsight that I can see that "well there's nothing else that could have possibly made me crash except for this thing, so it must have been that".
Yes and no. I have piss-poor internal awareness, like, really really bad to the point that I didn't know it was bad (don't know what I don't know sort of thing). My partner has noted patterns expanding from my daily life in relation to my 'I need to lie down, I'm too exhausted' moments, that I have not.
I don't know what to call many emotions I experience either, and I don't know how to release them short from letting them build up and crying, stimming, hurting myself, etc.
Yeah, I suspect it's an internal awareness thing. I'm very similar in terms of not really realizing if something is bothering me, or how it bothers me. To the point where it impeded me getting identified on the spectrum because I would answer questions like "do you rock back and forth in your chair, or seek self stimulation" with no. Only to realize much later on that, oh yeah I actually do, and have done so for years, and everyone around me knows it.
...agjalgkhalgkjawbglkbj
SOOOO frustrating...I had just a psychiatric appointment today, and I was not allowed to bring my SO in to help with this stuff...being myself and focus and mentioning things, and I had a breakdown this afternoon upon realizing the multitudes of things that I either said wrong, glossed over, or just have not been touched upon yet and may not be touched upon in my next appointment. I am also intelligent and articulate and so with my mask I am actually really good at communicating when I am focused and have energy, which is also not what one expects from someone on the spectrum. (And I know, I know, if I can function doesn't matter that I'm on the spectrum, but I don't do that very well either, just better than not at all, and just enough to keep trying to have jobs and make myself miserable in the effort involved.)
Like, just now, it came to me that 'distracting' does not have to also mean 'frustrating', but that internally distracting has always included frustrating, so I would never have internally thought of myself distracted as for many things that distract my attention in the moment because they are not actually frustrating. Eg: I am seeing the refresh rate on my monitor, and it's neat and therefore I do not call it distracting, but in actuality, it IS distracting because I have noticed it and I will pay attention to it periodically, but it is not frustrating to me at all because I am at home and comfortable and I am into what I am talking about right now and I am not bothered by the interruption.
I hear you loud and clear. I have discovered, just this past year, that I seem to have a external ideas of things and internal ones that are completely different from one another but then I think about the language I use to describe both things and lo and behold, they are the same thing. 2 separate things in my head and its just like, random luck to find that, oh, oops, they aren't separate things at all!
Another example, I have thought 'I am fine with socializing' a lot, and I still think I am most of the time, at least when I try, and I also have known for a long while 'I don't often know what people think of me'. It did not even occur to me that not knowing that is a part of poor socializing skills, therefore making me not as good at socializing as I had once thought.
_________________
Not autistic, I think
Prone to depression
Have celiac disease
Poor motivation
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