Are aspergers sufferers really more prone to develop PTSD?

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Hey, WP, i just wanted to know how many of you have PTSD and exactly how old are you??tbh i'm so ashamed to deal and accept the fact im barely 22 and already exhausted with most of my life, is like im a walking zombie, I have depression and anxiety that most NTS find unfathomable and laughable, is it really that common for aspies to go through such harder lives?? I just wanted to know your coping mechanism agaisnt this ptsd ailment, sorry if my english isn't that accurate it's not my first language after all.

Yes because autistics are more likely to be mistreated and bullied and because things that are easy for typical people can be traumatic for autistic people.

Welcome to WP Leylori
Yes, PTSD is very common in Autism and a lot of us have PTSD from a very young age. You have nothing to be ashamed of at all. Please do not feel ashamed. I understand why you feel that way but trust me, you do not have to. I have tremendous PTSD and it can be very debilitating and impairing for me. I am 51 years old but I have been dealing with PTSD from things that happened to me all throughout my entire life and even from when I was less than two years old.

Because as Autistics, our brains process emotions differently from neurotypicals. We take a lot longer to process emotional things. Our brains process more slowly. And sometimes we can only process emotional things a very little at a time because we can feel our emotions so much more intensely than neurotypicals can. Some Autistic people actually have trouble feeling any emotions but many of us feel them extremely strongly when we do. So when we are processing emotions, we become very overwhelmed and exhausted.

Many of us also have trouble with processing sensory information like sounds and textures and visual stimuli. It is difficult for our brains to interpret and process all of the sensory stimuli that we receive and that can also really overwhelm and exhaust us. We also have difficulty with processing information that comes from other people socially or in conversations and our brains having to deal with interpreting all of that information, get really exhausted as well. There are so many things your brain, as an Autistic brain, has to work so much harder to understand and process than neurotypical brains have to so yes, you will be much more exhausted and drained than everyone else if you are trying to keep up with them. I lived in that zombie state pretty much all through my days of school. I am amazed that I even got as far in school as I did. But trying to keep up with everyone else can have very bad consequences.

Eventually your brain and body will not be able to do it anymore. After a few decades you will experience what is called an Autistic Burnout. That is when your brain can no longer sustain that trying to keep up with everyone else thing and will just stop working. I had a massive burnout three years ago and it got so bad that I would have died if I had not basically taken myself out of society completely, cutting as much sensory stimuli out of my life as possible and just spent weeks recovering. I actually don't think I ever fully recovered so I have to be careful because once you have had that happen, you become more fragile and more vulnerable to having it happen again.

If you are living in perpetual zombie state, you need to restructure your life. You need more rest and recovery time and you need to be careful how much time you spend with others socially and you need to be careful how much sensory stimuli you expose yourself to. You will need to rest a lot more and find places of sanctuary where you can relax and recharge. Don't be afraid to say no to people. People want us to hang out all the time and be social but if that is exhausting you, you can't do it like they can. They don't get social fatigue like we do. If you need to stay home and sit in a dark room and do whatever you need to do to recover, you do it. Right now you are in a preburnout mode. You need to take actions now to be able to recover and prevent yourself from having a massive burnout.

And from now on you will need to learn what your signals are. You need to learn how you feel when you start to get overwhelmed and exhausted and how much time it takes you to recover and what you need to do to recover. There is no shame in any of this. You are not a normal person. You have special needs and everyone in your world will need to understand that including yourself. ALWAYS PUT YOURSELF FIRST WHEN IT COMES TO THIS. That is crucial. if you don't, the consequences can be very very bad.

NTs find your depression and anxiety laughable and unfathomable because they have no concept or idea of what it is like to experience emotional content at the extreme levels at which we as Autistics can experience them. We can feel levels of emotions very very often that could be fatal to nts or that could make them permanently insane. We are used to feeling these levels of intense emotions because we cannot filter them. Just like many of us cannot filter sensory input, making it extremely overwhelming and even sometimes crippling to us, many of us also cannot filter or soften emotional input because the filters in our brains do not work like the filters in nt brains work. NTs can tune things out. If they don't like something they hear, they just tune it out. We can't do that. The same way we can't tune out sensory input, we also can't tune out emotional input. So we feel everything at full force all the time. Nts have no idea what that feels like. They might only have that kind of intense emotional experience once or twice in their lives if ever. So to them for you to feel that way a lot, they cannot comprehend that. And when you are feeling that way all the time, your anxiety and depression will be severe. But they have no concept of what that is. I have been suicidal since the age of ten, I am 51 now. And I feel suicidal every few weeks, since the age of ten. This has just become my norm and I manage to live with it. It's just normal for me like breathing. This is not uncommon for Autistics. Not every Autistic goes through this but many of us do. So if you are one of us that do, it is completely understandable.

No NT will be able to relate to you unless that person struggles with severe chronic depression and anxiety. So the fact that people in your life don't get it is not hard to believe. But just because they don't get it does not mean that it is not real. It is very real and I 100% understand because I am the same way. You have to make sure that you take care of yourself and do not let others who don't have a clue influence your ability to do that.

Autistic allegedly have higher rates of obsessive compulsive disorder, clinical depression and anxiety, than neurotypicals

Autistics allegedly usually have fewer friends than neurotypicals

Those factors might make it easier for autistics to get PTSD, than for neurotypicals to get ptsd

Judging by the forums over the past few months I have observed quite a few Aspies have PTSD. I myself have along with Asperger's Syndrome, have OCD, GAD, ADHD, BiPolar and PTSD.

My therapist and I have begun to dig through my psyche to figure out if I have suffered PTSD any other times in my life and we have nailed it down to three specific instances in my 43 years on this wretched planet.

The first instance of PTSD was when my father beat me so hard when I was 13 years old that I was unable to walk for several hours afterward. The second instance of PTSD was when I had to leave my job as a Journalist when I was 38 years old because the deadlines and social demands were so extraordinary. The third instance of PTSD was a combination of two events and the first was when I lost a very good job that had a lot of like-religiously-minded guys there because I beat the crap out of a guy who was bullying me there. This traumatic event caused me to finally admit to myself that I had Autism and thus, Asperger's Syndrome and sought a formal diagnosis.

Emotions run high with all Autistics and that makes us far more susceptible to neurological trauma caused by PTSD and vice versa.

_________________
*** High Functioning Autism - Asperger's Syndrome ***

ADHD, OCD, and PTSD.

Keep calm and stim away.

Some parents are just overwhelmed with their kid being "different" and not adapting to its surroundings properly. This causes extreme frustration and sometimes leads to physical and psychological abuse, or even worse (as in my case). That, of course, can intensify the PTSD enormously.

On a personal note, being different has caused nothing but trouble with my parents, teachers, and peers alike. I was never a troublemaker. In fact, i was a very quiet kid who has always been too insecure to speak up. For some reason, though, they all seemed to see the mischievous nature that i was.

Wow, I never expected that many answers, thank you so much guys!

I am seeing an unfortunate confusion in the posts between PTSD and other forms of learning/not-learning, and that autistic burnout / shutdown are a result of PTSD. I don't have time to flesh out this assertion right now, but please think about your definitions, if you care to, that is.

I don't want to "call out" any particular person in particular. I see it is more than one person.

First, let's define PTSD. It is an anxiety disorder in which a stimulus related to an earlier severe trauma evokes an extreme response out of proportion to the current danger. Typically the earlier trauma is one that threatens safety or life. The traumatic threat need not have been against the patient, but instead could be witnessing a bad effect on someone else. I do not think it is accurate to view losing a job as a PTSD cause. I also do not think any single episode of bullying can evoke PTSD unless it is quite severe and threatening (such as holding one underwater). However, repeated and regular minor bullying episodes could probably cause PTSD.

I do not agree that PTSD is the primary cause of autistic burnout. Stress that exceeds the individual's ability to cope causes burnout. The stress may be a combination of internal (self-imposed) demands, environmental or sensory stimuli, and lack of social support. People can get burnout without any real symptoms of PTSD.

I just think it benefits analysis to keep concepts tied to their common definition.

Again - gotta go.

I understand and appreciate your message. Thank you for the clarification!

Aspergers sufferers probably ARE more prone than NTs to develop PTSD. That's because there are numerous anxiety disorders, including phobias, OCD, social anxiety, and panic attacks, that are co-morbids with autism. So given the same PTSD trauma, it's probable (though not certain) that the person with autism will develop PTSD from it.

It's also true that the child with Aspergers is more likely to be bullied or outright abused, as other commenters have pointed out. Sometimes the abuse is horrific.

Also, having a large coping load at managing sensory overloads, impaired executive functions, and social ineptness, the person with autism more readily reaches a place where they cannot cope with a particular situation.

I think it's important to know for those who have commented on this subject that if PTSD has been identified by clinical psychologists and verified through a series of events that the idea of these forums is not to "call out" anyone but to show compassion and to provide support because that is the point of these forums in the end.

Anyone's ill-informed opinion or uneducated assessment of what PTSD is, is irrelevant to the learning psychological industry and unsupportive comments are quite inappropriate here.

Tsk tsk.

_________________
*** High Functioning Autism - Asperger's Syndrome ***

ADHD, OCD, and PTSD.

Keep calm and stim away.

It might be that people with ASD are more prone to PTSD. I think this is probably because we are more likely to be treated like crap our entire lives. Also, we may be more likely to perseverate on bad events due to an obsessive nature.