Emotional Paralysis/Despair

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This is the first thread I've ever started so I guess there's a first time for everything (hopefully). I'm not sure if this belongs on this board or the Haven board or where. And I don't know what if anything I'm asking for in response to this thread, maybe I'm just venting and getting alot off my chest. I really don't know at least not atm.

I have hit a serious wall in my life that goes back at least 8 years to when I lost my mother, maybe longer I'm not even sure. I'm finding that b/c of my life situation of having no partner, no best friend or more than a handful of any friends, no family (I'm not on speaking terms w/my sister) and no place of my own hence no pet (i.e. a support animal, in my case it'd be a dog) and no experience raising one, I have recurring feelings of despair and emotional paralysis. I'll go into more of my list of problems shortly, but I honestly have trouble seeing what the point of continuing to live is.

Let me be clear, I have no plans and won't b/c of a fear of death and a glimmer of hope I guess that I'd at least like to have a happy life. But I've been dealing w/8 years and counting now of essentially being and feeling totally alone. And this is taking into account that I see a psychiatrist and am on medications, now have 2 therapists (one of the whom is a CBT ASD specialist) and I attend three support groups each month. But all of that barely scratches the surface of my emotional needs at all! I need someone (or more than one person) who actually cares whether I live or not and about the quality of my life, not just tells me things will be ok now and then. I feel like if I have to live through another f*****g Christmas alone, or really not with people who feel kinda like a family, I'm just gonna lose it completely or something. It isn't possible to be happy w/o one or more of the support pillars I listed above, or really to do anything beyond the mundane things people do every week (eat, sleep, bathe, take a walk, get groceries, do laundry, etc).

It isn't like I don't have goals, but my current situation appears to have shattered my ever attaining them. I have a Masters degree in politics, but due to my bereavement issues (I've never had the time to really deal w/the loss of my parents), executive functioning issues, social/communication issues and emotional ones, I was unable to get into the department's PhD program which is pretty much my only professional goal. I.e. to get a doctorate in something, in part b/c my dad was a professor of philosophy. But that's not the only reason that's a goal, it's also b/c it's really the only thing I want to do, and yes I know how bad the academic job market in the US is these days. To finish the academic theme, I later applied twice to many PhD programs around the country in another field and only ever received one unfunded offer, which I didn't take b/c that's not a good offer. I did enter another Master's program in a different field a few years ago, but the same set of my issues listed above again wrecked my performance till I was kicked out of the program at least until I could complete the outstanding coursework. All of this incidentally has saddled me with over six figures in student debt, which I have no idea how I'll ever be able to pay off since I can't work (I'm on public assistance and applying for SSI).

To top this off, in the two graduate programs I was in, I barely made any friends in part due to my emotional issues and one of the best ones I did make left the country when she graduated. Her absence the last 6 years has left a huge void in my heart and life that I still haven't filled. My ASD special interest has always been politics, from a left wing perspective and especially about foreign affairs, something I have a very hard time finding Americans (even in NYC) give a damn about. It's always about what's happening in this country, which sometimes is fine. But what about the other 7 billion people on planet Earth, you don't care about them? I do have some other interests, I used to like to go to art museums, but I always find myself going alone. There are some kinds of music I like, but again I don't know anyone into that and I'm at a point now where (perhaps b/c of my age) where my tastes maybe should change. And I don't have any creative abilities myself at all. I can't draw or anything. I know it could be just a hobby, but when I say I have no such skills, I mean none.

I also live in a friend's apartment and he is a good friend, but honestly he's a smelly old man w/a filthy studio apartment that he basically uses as a store room for the books and newspapers he never throws out/gives away. His bed even is covered w/that sort of clutter. And it clutters my mind just waking up to it every day!

I might have more to post in a comment later, I'm not sure. I know there are things like Meetup and whatnot, but I'm really not sure if that'll meet my needs either. NYC can be a very tough and lonely city if you don't have an adequate support system and a very thick skin, neither of which I have. Additionally, I've been told I "catastrophize" among other types of negative self-talk, but when I look at my problems, I don't see small problems. I see HUGE ones that objectively could f**k up even an NT's life for good. I see and feel trapped not all the time, but often and it's become very hard to see any way out. The CBT I've recently started is suppose to help w/alot of these issues, but can it get rid of my debt? Can it help me get back into school (which is partly impeded by my debt)? I know it doesn't work for everyone. But honestly right now what I need at a minimum is someone or multiple people I can talk to a few times/week about my problems, who'll at least listen. I'm not asking for 24/7 support at all, I'm not asking them to fix my problems, but it isn't possible to be functional w/o that kind of support and just to be able to have people you care about to do stuff with. I.e. a romantic partner, friends, REAL family and/or a pet. I'm just fed up w/the cycle of anger, misery, fear/terror, paralysis and despair and my living it alone that is my f****d up, middle-aged f*****g life.

Having said all that, I guess I would pose the question: how do you deal w/emotional paralysis, despair and similar feelings? When they hit me really badly, I often just stew in my own fear and misery for hours on end or longer. Sometimes it f***s up my sleep as well, though some of my medications recently have prevented that on most nights.

Decades of loneliness is like autism; it doesn't matter how well anyone might know the symptoms, they've no means of empathising with it unless they've lived (functioned/existed) through it. No professional has yet managed to make a dent in my conviction that despondency is a perfectly sane reaction. Whatever psychological damage they might be able to patch up, they can't do anything about my neurology, and they've done little to reduce the consequences for my ability to make emotional connections with people. Even if I got up to speed now, peers and potential friends/partners all have a decades long head start.

In my social life, I've dumbfounded quite a few people when I've loosened my tongue too much with alcohol, and enumerated all the things which I have to listen to them take for granted, while I sit there silent, no anecdotes of my own (I never was much fun at parties). But I struggle to even get myself roused enough for a fit of jealousy these days. The autopilot just about handles the basics.

I wanted to write more, and more encouragingly, but I'm struggling for the right words right now (too many, not too few.) If I find them, I may write more later. I am listening, though. Be kind to yourself, and best wishes.

I know what a lifetime of loneliness and depression is like.
the task at hand is simples-to find your soulmate,your healer.
this comes down to LOCATING HER( in my case-I am searching for a girl who was my childhood sweetheart. I never stopped missing her. all i got to go on is her first name, Sharon, and her nickname which is Pookie).
That's two halvings right there.
Once this was complex, involving pis phone-books,etc
butt now we got the 'net.
so finding her, whatever her name is comes down to simply LOCATING SOMEONE.
This is simplified as there is likely many or at least several qualified soul fixers.
you must not ever give up hope of finding your fixer- if you do you will simply turn off.
I know this for a fact.
about 3 months ago i got real low and despaired of ever having a warm bed with some else in it which is all i really wanted-not to die alone and unremembered.
I began the task of drinking myself to death, hoping h.a.#3 would take me in my sleep like my old dad.
my boss got me to a doc and detox though not without perm nerve damage due to thiamine deficiency. I didn't get my ha just semi crippled.
I felt better just from the attention.
if you feel the doc don't really care, this comes to another LOCATION task.
remember, she may be right next door. she may be HERE an inch away in cyberspace.You have taken the first vital step- coming here perhaps the largest collection of us poor mutts in one place in the world.
That is half or more of the task-LOCATING this place.
I thinx, anyway. I know at once it began to help me pull up out of the nosedive-
...
remember-the task at hand is trivially simple- it can be described in one word-LOCATE.
You are lonely? LOCATE her.
your doc is an uncaring insensitive prick?
LOCATE a better doc.
this is much simple than bulldogging or analyzing the misery directly.
in engineering, which I'm , DIVIDE the problem
internal/external?
design/build?
vendor/customer?
Real/illusory? etc.
this is a binary process each step makes the process half as large.
The usual reductionist method don't work well on holistic psych stuff but halving does.
you must examine the scope, the borders of the problem/ and divide that scope. you may wind up with many pieces, but they will be small manageable pieces instead of a monolithic massif of a miserable lifetime of loss.

fr-instance just coming here was the first halving-HERE/OUT THERE
This is not a solution -it is a method for finding a solution.
this is in contrast to reductionist-take it apart look at the pieces and how they go together.
your head is not an alarm clock that can only be disassembled/reassembled one way.

Remember- LOCATE.
I hope this helps. this logic saved my ass. I almost slipped away.
and at this site you have hundreds if not thousands of fellow polygons who know the score.
(if NTs are squares, then we must be more complex Polygons)
...
Take hope. your fellow polygons got your back.
ENDURE! OUTLIVE THE PRICKS,SEZ I.

gonna go get the dog drunk now.
FYI, the back end of the dog gets drunk before the front half 'cuz it's farther from the brain, and the spinal cord gets drunk too. I have scientifically verified this- a drunk poodle taking a fast corner over-steers like hell and spins out. Heh.

signing off
Ferdnand Feghoot.

google "feghoots" for many grins. you know you're gonna. I predict.


and compared to me you got a free ten years to Sherlock it out.(I'm 62.)

Exact same situation here, word for word regarding our psychology. Our situation is different though. I am currently struggling with money, but still totally alone, doctors feel like they don't care and don't listen, family is exhausted with having to deal with me and I am unemployed and depressed, and on top of that I care about them but I have no way of showing that. Trapped in my own head basically.

I read your whole post. Online meeting sites don't help me either because the people there are nothing like me. I constantly crave some kind of relationship with a group of people that are anything like me at all, and I'm just too unusual for the friendships to work out. I'm willing to listen to others and care for them but other people are just kinda "callous". No more real conversations with people.

I find people on here, like yourself and others, but seems like I just can't find them in real life somehow. I long for when I can have a friend group of 10 and we are all just similar, somewhat outcasts of civilization yet willing to brave outside of it.

breaks0, I will make 2 suggestions.

First, it sounds like you are suffering from trauma. It is likely that much of this is due to the passing of your mother. The stress of this event is the primary cause. But stress is cumulative in nature. Other stressors can add to this stress and throw your body into distress and this can over time result in trauma. [So in your case, you have stress from your living conditions, stress from not transitioning to a career, stress from student loan debt and others.] Much of this stress is stored in your body in the form of unused hormones and chemicals (stress energy) which accumulates in your limbs. In your case, I would suspect that it is locked away in your fifth limb which is your neck. This is because it seems like you are screaming out for help.

One needs to vent the stored stress energy in order to normalize your body. How do you vent stress energy in their neck muscles, vocal cords, and jaw? The best way is to scream at the top of your lungs several times. But this must be done in a socially acceptable manner. Never scream at a person. I live in the rural countryside and my dog is a free-range dog. When it is mealtime and my dog is up and about; I call my dog very loudly.

I yell so loud that I can hear my voice being echoed back to me from nearby hills and mountains. My voice carries about a mile. The call is so strong that it borders on a roar. It is a very good feeling. It gives me a sense of great strength, like I could split a mountain in two just with my voice alone. I feel strong to my core. It is a great stress reliever or normalizer. And it is socially acceptable in the countryside.

One might try howling like a wolf at the moon. There is an individual in New York City that howls at the subway cars as they pass by deep down in the subway stations. But there are other ways to scream in a socially acceptable manner. A singer can do this if it is a very powerful song. A barker in the county fair can do this. A fan at a rock concert can sing along at the top of their lungs. Some commuters sing along to the tune on the radio at the top of their lungs while they are driving down the road. A spectator at a sports event can do this in cheering on their team. Even a Girl Scout can practice barking in front of the local grocery store when she sells Girl Scout cookies. Or find yourself a soundproof room.

My second suggestion relates to your search and longing for friendship. So I would recommend that you brush shoulders with individuals with big hearts. You can accomplish this by volunteering at a food bank or soup kitchen. Volunteers generally have big hearts. They give their time and effort to help others, in many cases total strangers.

breaks0, you are facing the common plight of the unconnected in midlife. I want to make one point for other readers which does not apply to you since your mother is already gone; please humor me. Then I will address a few things in your post.

I have felt it very important to support my adult autistic daughter (who additionally has history of TBI) in such a manner that she will survive me. I've always supported her romantic relationships and especially the serious long-term one she is in now, with a very decent fellow. I've supported her getting various kinds of government assistance. I've supported her living independently, even with some painful natural consequences (example: don't pay your speeding ticket - and get your license suspended!). I've helped her get SSI funding, go to an adult autism support group, right now I am paying all her dental expenses in exchange for her getting on a better self-care routine, I've promoted (hard!) the importance of throwing yourself into pleasurable activities to counteract depression, etc etc etc.

My whole purpose in doing this is so that in midlife, she does have some friends and family connections and good lifestyle habits so that my death won't be such a loss.

Now returning to breaks0. If your student loans were government insured, you can definitely get them forgiven or erased if you can verify that you have a disability. I did this whole process for my daughter, and fortunately her whole burden, about $30,000, was forgiven. (The total amount doesn't matter, what matters is whether they are direct bank loans vs. government insured loans, the latter being better.)

I sense that your vocational direction doesn't make any sense at your point in life. Apparently academia does not want you. Probably the letters of recommendation that would get you into a good program are not forthcoming. I'm afraid you must face facts and choose another direction or life goal. I know you don't want to hear that, but I also suspect you might be getting close to hearing that. Some people with your qualifications go into teaching public school, private school, or community colleges. It's not an opulent lifestyle, but it is a living. I knew one man in my college years who was a recovering heroin addict. He has spent the rest of his life teaching in a private school. (Private schools often do not require teachers to have state certification.)

Like you, I am overeducated and unable to really function professionally as an academic. I spent the last fourteen years of my working life (I'm retired) as an administrative assistant. It's not a prestige job, the pay is not great, but it is a way to make ends meet.

You seem to feel your only options for living are in NYC. I don't have to tell you that rents are sky-high there. You might do much better in smaller cities, towns, even rural areas. The roommate situation you have sounds pretty awful, better than sleeping on a park bench but really not ideal either for you or the roommate. There are housing programs for people with financial hardships. I think you should explore them and begin the applying and waiting process.

I know you wanted to talk about emotional shut-down, and I am not addressing that. You already have sources to help you with mental health. I'm just addressing the workaday lifestyle issues. Although any one of them may seem monumental, start chiseling away at the requirements for change. Part of them is admitting to yourself that you are disabled (yes, you are) and part of them means saying goodbye to things you have long strived for, such as employment equivalent to your dad's. You may not be ready for these painful messages.

And by the way, "I don't have a lover" or "I'm unemployed" or "I failed in academia" are not excuses for doing nothing. I'm not gonna tell you otherwise. You have more internal resources than you give yourself credit for.

Thank you all for your replies, I appreciate you taking the time to answer. Most of you clearly took alot of time, for which I'm doubly grateful. I see four replies, so I'll try to take them one at a time.

Jifmam: You kind of lost me when you started describing dealing w/one's issues as a binary process and your polygons reference. I'm not clear what you mean. But I think I get your main point about locating a better person (like a therapist, doctor, etc) to help w/one's issues or for listening, what you call a fixer. I'm not sure what exactly that is, but I'm trying to be cautiously patient w/the CBT therapist b/c it's supposed to take time to pay off and I've just started doing it and I like my new therapist, but it's already helped me to identify some of my main issues. The big question is will I be able to learn and apply its problem solving method to my life. As for a soulmate, I totally feel you on that, but for now that's probably a medium-longer term romantic goal. I hope you find one yourself in the not too distant future.

Citizen: I'm sorry to hear of your own difficulties. Yeah I can relate to family being too exhausted to deal w/you, that's part of why I'm not in communication w/my half sister, though we were never very close. And yes, it can be very hard making friends, I get that too. I've been told by friends on the spectrum I need to diversify my interests, though I was never only into international politics as I tried to say above. The Aspie support group I'm in actually I did find it through Meetup and it's definitely been helpful, though I don't exactly consider anyone in there much of a friend, not yet at least. I probably need to explore Meetup and other things more b/c I am in a city of 8 million people so there's alot out there. I've tried w/political groups (the leftist kind which is what I'm looking for) and had some horrible experiences w/psycho people. Others seem to want me to get involved w/campaigns or projects that I'm not ready for atm, perhaps in the future. I don't know where you are obviously, but I think in your case it does sound like you need to make connections outside of your family, like my CBT therapist the first thing she introduced me to was Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and "Belonging" is one of the first ones people need to address for basic mental/emotional well-being. It's clear this is a big one for you and me. So I'd urge you to keep putting yourself out there, as I'm gonna try to do. As to the job issue, yeah I don't know what to say, again just keep trying. This precarious labor market is s**t and it isn't gonna get any easier under this President. Good luck!

Jimmy: Yes totally on the trauma issue! I've told people that, though the reaction I often get is people ignoring it or dismissing it or de-emphasizing it, even therapists I've had since my mom passed, albeit not the ones I'm seeing now. I wouldn't say that my mom's passing is the principle traumatic event in my life, b/c what I view as my trauma anyway predates that or even the passing of my dad 5 years before. As many other threads on this board and, for example, the friendship board among others have said, a lifetime or at least many years/decades of being socially ostracized and being single except for one relationship where I was abused are all traumatic experiences (at least for alot of guys, but probably for girls too). As I'll get to in my reply to Bea's post, all my academic difficulties have been traumatic (especially the rejection of my PhDapplications), coupled w/meeting but later losing several potential friends in college and grad school. Your network in grad school at least is supposed to be one of the main things you take with you after you finish, but I really don't have one and it wrecks your mental and emotional health, not to mention your career prospects. As to your suggestions, yeah I have a problem w/my temper, which runs in the family and predates the loss of my mother. One of my medications has helped w/that, but only partially. I'm hopeful the CBT will help, but again the isolation works against that and as you say, yes I'm under alot of stressors. It sounds great that you both have a dog as a companion and that you're in a place you can vent through yelling like you do. I'm not really sure there's anywhere like that here where you can do that, maybe Central Park or something. Pardon me for saying this if it makes you uncomfortable and for the sexism involved, but even though it's a fix, porn sometimes does help me when nothing else can. It's not an underlying solution, but it's something. I'm not exactly clear what otherwise I need to do for venting, though again maybe the CBT will provide the answers. As to volunteering, thanks again for the suggestion. I do live across the street from a church that does do a soup kitchen a few times/week, something I should probably be going to myself more often since I'm on foodstamps now and it doesn't last me the whole month. But maybe that's somewhere to meet big hearted people as you say.

Bea: The info you provide about how you've helped your daughter sounds great. You appear to be a very caring parent and you're right, it's better to prepare her now, so that she doesn't end up like me. You aren't saying that I know, but you don't need to, I'm a good example of how you don't want to end up by the time you're in your mid-40s or later. I resurrected another old thread yesterday on the issue of forgiveness of student loans for people on the spectrum and I will definitely look into the advice you gave Twilight and I re: that issue. If you're right, that would be fantastic news and just by itself would remove one of the big obstacles in my life, so thank you for telling me! I also appreciate your feedback on my career goals and the suggestion you make re: teaching, probably at the secondary level or community college. I'm glad you were able to do office work for several years to make a living, it's definitely a job, you're right. I'm sorry to hear that you also weren't able to pursue an academic career, since I take it that's what you had wanted to do previously. What was your highest degree, a Master's or PhD or what and in what field? Office work is where most of the handful of work experience I have had has been and it's definitely not for me since I can't do it. I know I have a disability as well, that's clear and the city already thinks I can't work, now it's just a matter of getting SSA to approve me for SSI, which should just be a matter of time. Now, I'll respectfully disagree w/some of what you said. You're right, I'm not keen on hearing that the academy doesn't want me, I got that message loud and clear 5 years ago when I didn't get into a PhD program on the third try and then again when I was kicked out of my last Master's program. To be blunt, higher ed is a very ableist field, at least the schools I've attended here in the city. And getting my diagnosis just 2 years ago didn't help since I obviously never had anything like an IEP when I was in secondary school b/c by today's standards, no one really knew what Autism was. I can't really talk to the chair of my program (classmates of mine have called her cold and aloof) and the response I got from someone high up in the registrar's office was similar to yours, that I should switch fields. When I say this is ableist, I hope how it manifests is clear from what I've said and maybe you disagree w/me on that matter, which is fine. As I said in my original post, I'm aware the academic job market has been precariatized like the rest of the job market in this country, which is kind of a tragedy, not just for people like us. The field of education creates the most jobs of any professional field per million dollars of public spending on it, but that clearly isn't a priority for the government in most places these days. All that said, however, I'm stubborn about this issue and for the foreseeable future am unwilling to let it go, especially now that I've started the CBT which I've been doing for less than 2 months at this point. It's no magic wand and I've never been a problem solver, except for a statistics class I took back in grad school. But from what I've been told this is the only form of therapy that works for people on the spectrum and as I think I said in an earlier part of this post, it's already helped me identify some of my major issue areas I need to work on, such as cognitive distortions and various executive functioning issues. The question now is can I improve my problem solving skills, which I think is possible, not guaranteed, but potentially doable. That's better than it being impossible b/c it at least gives me some hope. As to where I'd live, I'm not from NYC (I'm from the Philly suburbs), but I've been here 20 years now and w/my parents gone this is my home now. You're right, I'm super aware of how bad the rents are here and while it's not the worst in the country, it's close to the top. But that's the case in every major city now, no big city now has affordable rents except maybe for a studio, and forget about owning your own home, as any Millennial or Gen Zer will tell you. For now I'm still of the mind that this is the best place for me to be, for a wide variety of reasons which I'll go into some other time on some other thread. Since I'm going to try hard to get back into my program and apply for PhDs again, that's the only reason I'd be willing to move. I don't care where I do my degree, as long as I get it done in the type of field, approach and environment I wanna be in and contribute something to with a dissertation. Beyond that, despite my age, I think I have at least 2 or 3 books in me to write, something my dad never did, he was always teaching. But your suggestion on looking into housing options for the poor and/or disabled is a good one and is something I'll probably pursue. Lastly, I appreciate your vote of confidence in my "internal resources", even though you don't really know me. I still maintain, however, the type of support system you have is vital for coping w/all the crap people in my situation, let alone those worse off, have to deal with. And by support system I mean close friends, family (biological or some other social equivalent, however defined), romantic partner and/or a support animal. That's in addition to perhaps therapists, shrinks, care coordinators, social workers, etc. I'm not saying that's universally true, but I think it is in general and it certainly always has been and likely will continue to be for me. So I need to build those connections asap to be able to achieve my other goals, academically, professionally and otherwise. To avoid despair, paralysis, anger/rage and related emotions or at least to minimize them, I at least need people to talk to and I need to be there for them too. If that's co-dependent, I don't care, that's what I need and I'll do my best to do it in healthy ways.

I think that's it, if any of you read all this thanks again. Feel free to respond if you want to.

NYC is definitely overwhelming and lonely, but one of the positives is the amount of opportunity. There are a lot of grassroots groups and orgs that could use your political expertise. Volunteer work could give you a social and political outlet, and a lot of groups need online online or written organizational help. I saw a lot of political meetings with the whole IDC thing last election a lot of organizing protests for immigration policies. Groups will start getting active again for 2020, and now for AOC and green new deal. That's not exactly foreign policy, but does affect the billions of people that share the Earth. There are also so many local, city, and state politicians who are semi respectable, I have no idea how you go about getting a job with them.

I once went out with a Ph.D. in Poli Sci who was doing oppo research. Again, it's a job and in his field of interest, although I don't think you need a doctorate to do it!