How Do You Typically Feel When You Leave A Session?

[greenleaf]

Is this the autism (I was dx'd with Asperger's early this year), or does it sound more like some kind of pervasive dissociation?

Hello DogwoodTree.

What I'm writing uses ideas from other people's work, only recently trying to apply it to myself, and this is a pretty slow process. I hope something in here is helpful to you.

Tony Attwood in Australia is one of the recent folks doing great research on female autism and his videos really help me. Yay Aussies!!!
https://vimeo.com/122940958

Tony really seems to like Aspies too, it's a relief. Not all "deficit deficit deficit" and just so nice. Yay.

I am also a female who was diagnosed this summer (age 52) with autism -- the "Asperger's" dx probably fits. Female adults with autism who "function ok" have really not been included in much research at all, so I don't think our feelings of isolation and the reasons for the very very high percentage of us with depression are well understood "officially". A very high percentage of autistics are abused and traumatized for various reasons. I know the feeling of isolation after talking to "helpers" has left me feeling strong despair on many occasions.

So, here goes... I think my native thinking language is mostly non-verbal, and that gets in the way of "normal" connecting to a therapist in the regular, verbal therapy setting. I have to translate, an energy-intense activity that draws my attention away from the inner feelings I needed to be sharing. Neurotypicals just use some built-in hardware I guess!

I'm good at math and visualizing. When thinking, I only experience occasional verbal thoughts, though I can intentionally do it. Verbalizing internal feelings is a skill I have worked on for decades, and it still only really works quickly with feelings I remember how to verbalize. Newly remembered or relevant feelings seem to take days to figure out how to bring over to the verbal side. I like analogies... imperfect but hey. Verbalizing feels to me vaguely like using a limb to do something very complicated and focus-consuming. Verbalizing for me includes watching the other person carefully, mentally "getting" their perspective, figuring out things to say and how to say it politely, without insulting anyone, in the words that might make sense to them, maintaining eye contact correctly, trying to understand those darn subtle expressions that I only recently realized were there that I often miss thus needing the mental understanding of their perspective through their verbal statements. If this sounds complicated, please understand that it is, I was totally unable to do this as a kid, was bullied etc. (leaving out the family abuse and ptsd etc.) but I have worked on it for decades. Also my "IQ" is quite high; I am really not trying to boast, I'm trying to explain why I can do this quickly and have "passed" and held a job -- albeit one with limited socializing. I get tired and start spacing out, and too many people at once fries my brain really fast; too much info to "act normal" but a quiet female is generally overlooked. I learned how to share various kinds of experiences with people, use facial expressions somewhat (though I get feedback sometimes it's different, but jokes and laughter work well)

Several problems in all this with therapy and getting support... I didn't learn how to ask people for support, and didn't understand that I didn't learn that. I didn't naturally use the "socially normal" way for females to be upset and get support; if upset, I'd get very quiet around people since it felt unsafe to not "act normal" -- that being only a subset of "normal" for neurotypicals.

Helpful stuff: I learned this one from this site (Myptsd), and it's been incredibly helpful!!! Journaling, and sharing the journal with the T.

I write down my real feelings and issues by myself, when I don't have to "act normal" with other live humans right there looking at me. That writing can then be handed much later to a therapist! Amazing but true! (sigh) :rolleyes:
The therapist can then read it and give a few simple responses to me. I don't have to act normal much. Over time this year I have started to feel more "heard" by this. More of my inner feelings are evident to me too, I can process them with more brainpower somehow, they are not just in a nonverbal bubble that is always with me (and is really a huge part of "me", my inner real world) but cannot really interact with the outside world of talking humans.

I also feel more connected on a general level with people when I can do things with them and not have to talk all the time. Physical stuff is good, I feel more in my body then too.

I am suspecting that the lack of direct connection of this inner "me" with all those naturally verbal neurotypicals, with no words or concepts for any of this, is responsible for a lot of my isolation feelings. Also the lack of actually getting to work on many of the issues like PTSD with a T.

Dissociation? I don't know for sure; you might Google "autistic shutdowns", a milder form of "autistic meltdowns". Who knows, but there might be some similar brain chemistry; the wording is so similar. It's kind of like a circuit breaker getting tripped for me. Depersonalization and dissociation are what I thought I had, with ptsd, before my autism diagnosis. Now, more like autism and ptsd that is partly worked through but partly all tied up in autism issues and not resolved.

So I'm really hoping that researchers and autistics themselves, maybe, can better understand how to help autistics with these issues. Each autistic is so different that we'll likely have to slowly figure ourselves out too, but a "toolkit" could sure help.

:alien::ninja::hug:

 

[DogwoodTree]

I think my native thinking language is mostly non-verbal, and that gets in the way of "normal" connecting to a therapist in the regular, verbal therapy setting. I have to translate, an energy-intense activity that draws my attention away from the inner feelings I needed to be sharing.

Yes, exactly. It's tedious to have to translate everything from visual/conceptual thought into words. Nearly impossible to maintain contact with elusive feelings at the same time.

Several problems in all this with therapy and getting support... I didn't learn how to ask people for support, and didn't understand that I didn't learn that. I didn't naturally use the "socially normal" way for females to be upset and get support; if upset, I'd get very quiet around people since it felt unsafe to not "act normal"

I'm only slowly learning how to do this, and even so, it's like I have to translate "Okay, when an NT does this, they're communicating this message.... Even though that's not what it feels like to me, I can make a conscious choice to try to receive what it is they're trying to communicate."

And yes, when I'm upset, I can't do all of that so well. It's not safe to not act normal, like you said, so there's no room to be something other than "the way I'm supposed to act based on the situation I'm in." Whatever it is I'm feeling...I haven't figured out how to factor that into the equation in a way that makes sense to other people.

Now, more like autism and ptsd that is partly worked through but partly all tied up in autism issues and not resolved.

Yes...I don't know how to resolve the ptsd stuff when the autism stuff keeps getting in the way. Like... there's no "closeness with the T" to moderate the intensity of "facing trauma memories and feelings." I have to logic my way through all of it, and although my T is learning to track with me on that level, there's still no sense of emotional connectedness.

I'm slowly learning to be okay with that, and this has created a little space for making some other progress. But sometimes the loss of hope over ever having that sense of emotional connection rips me apart all over again and has to be grieved over and over and over.

 

[greenleaf]

Like... there's no "closeness with the T" to moderate the intensity of "facing trauma memories and feelings." I have to logic my way through all of it, and although my T is learning to track with me on that level, there's still no sense of emotional connectedness.

I hope you will try writing down some of the emotional memories in a journal, for sharing with the T during your session!

Even just a little test at first, see what the response is, slowly figure out how to improve this communication type, and try working to improve that with the T.

If you then give the T the journal, and you are in the same room, you are there with the person and you have communicated something difficult. You've shared. It was hard for me to take that in, emotionally, for a while, that a person really read that -- and maybe I would say a couple more words about the issue.

I can also just sit and feel the emotions in the same room with them sometimes too and not talk, and know they know about the thing I wrote. But I don't have to both feel difficult things and talk "normally".

That was really scary at first, but my brain has really good circuit breakers. A little too good... :rolleyes:

The T might then respond in a way they might respond were you to verbally say the words out loud (minus intense eye contact perhaps; I hope they will pay attention to what helps you feel comfortable.

I have started to feel a sense of relief sometimes when doing this now with my T. Sporadic bits of connectedness?

I like Amethyst Schaber's wording about not requiring all autistics to "speak with one's mouthparts"... there are other ways of speaking, including of traumatic memories.

 

[DogwoodTree]

I hope you will try writing down some of the emotional memories in a journal, for sharing with the T during your session!

Even just a little test at first, see what the response is, slowly figure out how to improve this communication type, and try working to improve that with the T.

If you then give the T the journal, and you are in the same room, you are there with the person and you have communicated something difficult.

I've done a lot of that. It didn't help me feel connected or comforted, although it was good to give him a fuller picture of what's going on inside for me...informative for him.

Sooo so much of what I experience inside never shows on the surface at all. My journaling has really helped to open up that interior world for him, so that he understands me a lot better. But that loop doesn't complete back on the inside for me. It helps with the outgoing information, but his response doesn't come back in.

We've figured out a few of the reasons why. I'm hyper-aware of other people's negative emotions because I learned to monitor that information closely when I was a kid. It was highly relevant to my emotional survival. But I never learned to perceive people's positive emotions as a good thing. Their positive emotions simply made them less predictable...more volatile...and in some ways, more demanding. So I don't experience other people's positive emotions in a positive way.

I think some of it is also attachment trauma. I never learned to trust anyone with my needs, and so I never learned how to not "perform" around people. I don't feel safe with people at all...because I never learned how to do that.

Some of it is verbal processing issues. I think in pictures way more than in words. To interpret someone else's words into the corresponding ideas, process those ideas, respond to those ideas, and then translate my own ideas into words that will make sense to the other person...this is a cognitively demanding process, and in doing all of that, there's not much bandwidth left for being in touch with my own emotions at the same time (which is also demanding and difficult).

Some of it is social ignorance and awkwardness. I don't easily fit in with people at all. I tend to be quiet and observant, almost invisible. Invisibility is my super-power. In social situations, I'm so overwhelmed with processing incoming data that I don't have the wherewithal to "show up" and inject my own contributions to the conversation. One-on-one is better, because then there's only one other person to track, and if I choose that person well, they can help invite me into the conversation. But I tend to rely on scripts and have a terrible time trying to just speak my thoughts as I have them rather than filtering everything and trying to make it all fit my "algorithms" for interactions.

Some of it is delayed emotional processing. It's often hours or even days before I know what I feel about a particular event or conversation. So there's not much opportunity to express my genuine emotions "live" during the conversation, even if I knew how to do that. It's like the emotions are bubbles slowing rising through thick tar, and they're not detectable to me until much later after the triggering event. They might be extremely overwhelming at that later time, but then it's so out of sync that it's confusing and seems irrelevant. Expressing them then feels fake and disconnected from reality.

I'm working on allowing other people's positive emotions to be neutral for me or even to be a good thing.
I'm learning to accept that not everyone thinks so badly of me as I do...some people might even like me on some levels.
I'm working on acknowledging the tidbits of my own positive emotions and letting them exist, even if they don't last long.
I'm working on not spinning such damning stories around all of the negative emotions.
I'm working on accepting love from myself as I do things for self-care and self-protection and just-because-I-want-to.
I'm working on seeing myself as an adult and not an inferior child in an adult's body (I'm in my 40s but most people guess me to be early 20s...if it weren't for the few wrinkles starting to show up, I'd fit right in with the pre-teen crowd).
I'm working on believing that my needs and preferences and interests matter, and it's okay to let those things seep out in certain relationships with people who can handle them.
I'm learning to recognize what I need from other people, although this is a painfully slow process.
I'm learning to question the judgments I've made about people and how they relate with each other...that perhaps it's not as fake and meaningless as I used to think.

Mostly, I'm learning to give up on feeling "connected" and simply focus on being "present." It hurts like crazy, and yesterday I left my session in tears (walked out of his office, out of the building, and then halfway across the parking lot it suddenly all burst out and I didn't even know why at first) because we're working on some of the physical intimacy issues, and I told T at the end that it's really scary to be doing this without feeling connected to anyone, but I have to accept it and move forward anyway. It feels like I'm jumping off a cliff with no safety line. But I have to do this. I have to keep working at it. I can't let myself get stuck here.