crazy thoughts - dino aspies can you relate?

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i am having a very hard time coping.

i go through phases where i question my sanity. no one makes sense for an entire lifetime (i'm in my late thirties) - now on WP forums everyone makes sense!? am i imagining this? when i have a good day, i think i'm fine and i've imagined the whole thing (therefore i must be crazy). when i have a bad day, i think i'm way worse than i thought, i can't make sense of anything (therefore i must be crazy). i think i've made all of it up in my head, then it's eerie to find other people who experience the exact same things (virtually everything i have ever been confused about) but they're almost all on an internet forum and in some books etc so i must still be imagining it. maybe it's an imaginary disorder. maybe nothing is real and i've imagined all the other people in the world (because they don't seem real to me anyway - since they don't seem real, maybe i'm crazy). i had an anxiety attack yesterday spurred by this terrible thought loop.

i always knew i was wired differently than other people, but at the same time i thought they were all illogical and my main coping mechanism has been to embrace being different which works out ok until you realize you are stuck there without a choice. and fighting it makes it worse. it's like having a bad drug trip on your own brain. i always felt like i was under glass or something, or there was a glass wall separating me from other people. i used to just accept this, and now i am beating on it and it doesn't budge, i just hurt myself beating on it. it's a bit scary.

has anyone who diagnosed as an adult gone through anything like this?
and if so, does getting an official diagnosis help to validate things and ease your mind?

I have similar feelings.

There was a rush at first from finally having an explanation for why I am the way I am. It wore off though. The dx explained me, it didn't change me. Didn't improve my life. I have exactly the same strengths and dysfunctions I had back then, when I thought I was just crazy.

Wish I could have added something encouraging to this. But I'm still trying to cope too.

"still trying to cope" is plenty encouraging.

thank you.

Yeah, what you said.

Then I went through years of bouncing back and forth between living in denial and being so starkly confronted by my dysfunctions that I'd get depressed and wonder why I was bothering to keep on living and struggling to have a better life when I'm always going to be stuck like this.

I went through the "five stages of grieving" and I still bounce around in different stages, though I spend more and more time in acceptance as it goes on (the nine year anniversary of my diagnosis is next month.)

Hi Kat, I can relate to you on a deep level here.

When I was formally Dx'd it was the most wonderful moment of my life, yet it was soo to be followed by extreme fear, as I felt I was waking up to a nightmare of "Kafkaesque" proportions.

I felt a fraudster, a phoney, half identifying with the aspie world and half seemingly diametrically opposed.........it took me some time to understand how because of extreme mental distress and humiliation as a child I had to disassociate from my aspie self in order to survive.

Diagnosis seems such a crude word to describe the moment of enlightenment that explained why I have always been (and will always remain) the way I am. However, only with intense and highly specialised therapeutic help was I am able to deeply understand my life story and integrate this radically new way of looking at myself.

My life story reads very the same as Donna Williams, whose 1st Autobiography "Nobody Nowhere" soon to be followed by "Somebody Somewhere" says it all really.

At times I thought I would never overcome this shattering of my adaptive self and the insulating effect it had on my nervous system. To face the world in such a radically new way is terrifying........however, as with all change, the intensity and fear does subside.

Do you have any philosophy or spiritual beliefs that are of value to you in this time?

Chris

Chris, i recall your helpful words from last time i posted to the haven feeling nuts.

i have read a few books by Donna Williams and my experience is a bit similar but on a much smaller scale (and minus the creation of multiple "characters" or personalities as a coping method) .. i get a bit lost in sensory experience and when stressed or in an unfamiliar environment, it's difficult to ground myself.

i'm not especially spiritual nor philosophical, unless you consider obsessive truth-seeking to be a philosophy. ironically i think it is sometimes this truth-seeking that makes me nuts. i have trouble with anything that doesn't have a concrete answer.

maybe it's time for a new philosophy?

Yes......I understand the need for concrete thinking, and boy, such thinking can drive me mad too. I have OCD and trying to figure out the perfect answer can take me to the edge of sanity.

There is nothing so moving - not even acts of love or hate - as the discovery that one is not alone. So connecting with others in the spectrum will be healing I am sure.

a new philosophy?..........One based around self-love and acceptance would suit most of us here.

Go well out there.

C

absolutely.

i feel better just having blabbed. thank you.

Liebe KatzeFrau,

I can relate to all of what you say. I often question my reality too. Sometimes I think I am doing ok, but then something happens & I'm thrown into a bad tailspin. The one big difference is that I am undiagnosed. I would love for a doctor to see me the way I do, & what I have experienced. Some days, it's easier to cope than others. I think being female with Aspergers is really much harder than being male. Men,it seems to me, have a much easier time being different. Women are expected to conform.

Sorry, this doesn't really help all that much! Just know, you are definitely not alone.