Autism and PTSD

Post Reply New Topic

Things that I had thought are peculiar to me are really just autism symptoms. By learning about autism I learn about myself. I have adjusted my expectations of myself and have received support I hadn't before.

Well I doubt every adult with autism has PTSD, even in my case the bullying and ostracism I endured at school did not directly cause my PTSD...I imagine it was a factor since it contributed to my depression and anxiety, which I think contributed to a specific trauma I experienced to cause me to develop PTSD, my mind was already in a somewhat vulnerable/iffy position and than boom girl I know get's shot and well not going to go telling the whole story again...but it was a series of events that led to the eventual PTSD, not sure I'd have it if it wasn't for the shooting incident hard to say though since I know ongoing mental torment can cause complex PTSD....can be a confusing issue that is for sure.

That is probably the most annoying thing of all for people with PTSD, since it is litterally a mental disorder which prevent's you from 'just getting over it' that is the whole basis of the damn disorder. It causes physical changes in the brain and neurology that do not allow you to 'just get over it'.... So trust me that one pisses me off to. If I could do that I would have done it already. Hell I even tried to just get over it by burying it, which of course back-fires with PTSD.

Being undiagnosed, and the resultant treatment of me, by others, and the criticism and expectations and comparisons, have left me with a lot of scars and a lot of issues. I am hoping to get some therapy to try and deal with the tangled mess, which is additional to childhood abuse.

I immediately have disdain and hold grudges toward everyone that has ever said that to me. If they could only understand that it's not a choice, having PTSD means that it chooses when those panic attacks happen out of your control, when the depression really immobilizes you in bed, and when you cancel every plan you made because you don't want to go outside and be around people or be triggered.

We live in a 'I am a survivor' culture, where people expect everyone to overcome anything, never give up until the problem is over mentality. I'd like it much more if people were more understanding with what I go through and can 'sit' with me when it acts up, rather than say I'm playing a victim and walk away because they cannot stand it.

Sometimes it's better to accept disabilities and learn how to live with them rather than to try to be something you can't.

I could literally go on for days on this topic. I can't say that laying blame would do me any good. My childhood was terrifying probably more because of my wiring and my reactions to the cruelty and ignorance of others than anything else. It didn't help that I was born into a poor family and was the less-than-wanted third daughter of three girls. Not only was I sickly and female, and "defective," I always knew I didn't fit in and didn't belong. Mom is bi-polar and at that time, she was untreated, unpredictable and unreliable, so most of the time I was at the mercy of my older sisters (the oldest was quite the sadist, even to the "normal" kids in the neighborhood) unless I ran across the field and hid out with my grandmother. She and my grandfather (who was very likely on the spectrum as well) literally saved my life many times. Grandma kept me from getting beaten up getting on and off the bus, and would give me a safe place to just be by myself when I needed to be.

I knew anxiety and panic attacks long before I knew what they were or what caused them. I don't know how many nights I spent awake just lying still staring at the ceiling or the shadows on the wall, wracked in a cold sweat of terror. My sisters and other kids knew that it was "fun" to do things to trigger my overblown responses, so by the time I was old enough to go to school I was PTSD. It probably didn't help with the peer abuse issues that I was hyperlexic. I could read and comprehend far above grade level, and I was always reading something, usually subject matter that was over my classmates' heads. Since my family was poor, I always had bad clothes (my sisters' threadbare and ill-fitting hand-me-downs) and thick glasses. I have gross motor deficits, and I was very small for my chronological age, which also made me an ideal target for the sadistic set. Who better to pick on than the sickly little geek kid who can't run? By the beginning of first grade I was 24-7 anxiety on a stick, and didn't need a reason to freak out.

My parents and teachers and adults around me had absolutely no idea what was wrong with me when I spazzed out, other than to castigate me for "over-reacting." I tried to stay to myself as much as I could and tried to avoid anything that would act as a trigger, but that didn't work very well. As I got older and had to work with others and deal with the general public, keeping my anxiety at bay became more and more difficult. Even into my adult life I have had full blown panic attacks and have had to suddenly step out of a room or pull the car over long enough to somewhat calm down. There were many times I thought I was losing my mind.

I didn't learn that there was connection between HFA and PTSD until I was in counseling the last time. My counselor explained to me what PTSD was and gave me a number of strategies to help live with it. Naming my fears and feelings, which sounds trite and immaterial, actually helps a lot, especially for a hyperlexic who is fascinated by words and written language. It's easier to face what you can name.

Part of dealing with PTSD and anxiety -for me- involves medication. I take a combination of Prozac and Catapres that helps to mitigate the biochemical process that contributes to PTSD and anxiety. Meds may not be a good option for everyone, and it probably shouldn't be a first option (and it wasn't for me) but the meds have been a Godsend for me. I am able to (most of the time) engage my rational mind and not go down the "what if" and the "I'm just plain terrified because I am" trails.

I do believe there can be a biochemical connection with PTSD and that it's reinforced with every trigger. I also think that being HFA sets you up for PTSD, because you are already nervous and on edge because you know you're not one of the "normals." I grew up believing I could never be good enough and that I was defective and not really a person deserving of respect and dignity. I had to PROVE everything- that I could do better, know more, be better, to be considered worthy of anything. Since no one understood that when I was growing up, everyone thought I was just over-reacting to "normal" kids' teasing and so forth. So you have to go through the long process of re-learning what is a threat and what is not a threat. I'm still on the journey. I'm still trying to figure this stuff out.

Gosh that must have been awful. So many abused kids go unaided.

Medication helps me too.

I grew up in the 1970's/80's, when nobody knew what to do with HFA kids, let alone a hyperlexic female (about 1 in 200,000 kids.) So I can't blame teachers, parents, etc. for their ignorance. There was no malice involved in the way I was treated. It's just that I was treated like any other kid- when I was anything but.

The plus side is my rather harsh experiences growing up forced me to learn how to function in the world of the "normals" because I had no other choice.

Today I see the other extreme- too many parents and educators are using HFA and other ASDs as an excuse to mollycoddle kids and keep from challenging them- which is just as bad as throwing them to the wolves to be beaten and exploited.

True. The things parents fuss over today would have been laughed at when I was a kid. If only...

On my end, the Dx only made it worse. It turned up the pressure to "act normal" by about 500%. Before I could tell myself it was just my personality. After it became A Disease.

I don't know how to fix that. Still struggling with that, though it's getting better.

My therapist keeps telling me I'm over the worst of ASD and am mainly just "eccentric" now, and "eccentric" is fine.

My therapist still doesn't realize how much mental energy goes into being "just eccentric." Nobody does, except another "passing" autistic.

Forcing myself to get off my own fecking back, at least at home (hey, I don't jump my hubby or MIL for their ADHD traits, so why should I jump myself for ASD ones as long as it's not forcing everyone to comply with a ridiculous degree of idiosyncrasy or flying into violent rages or getting so lost in hyperfocus that I don't cook and clean??), seems to be slowly helping somewhat. Fewer meltdowns and panic attacks, less seething rage and sense that I'm due some kind of restitution for all the s**t I've been through.

OTOH, I do seem to have been permanently turned into a semi-submissive (not in the sexual sense-- in the "everything else" sense). More than half. Trying to be assertive causes feelings of anxiety and guilt, out of fear that I'm "being autistic again" and dragging everyone else along against their will.

And yes, we do fuss and fret too much over things that are small potatoes in the grand scheme of things with today's kids. I'm not saying every parent is guilty (but the majority of school systems sure seem to be) or that we ought to "leave well enough alone and let them grow out of it" with everything short of severe profound classical. I don't mean that at all.

But I do think that a lot of today's kids and teens have been over-medicated, over-therapied, and generally over-pathologized. I do believe there are a lot of young people who have been significantly traumatized by it, which has thrown a real monkey-wrench into their lives and maybe even reduced their potential to be happy and productive.

I hope we'll soon learn to back off a little bit and let the kids have some room to spin and flap and generally breathe, ASD-kid style.

I would seriously question this guy's treatment. The ever fruitless quest to be NT almost killed me. Now I don't try to pass st all and it has helped my anxiety a lot.

And you don't get over autism, you just learn to cope.

I think I can pin point the day that tipped me over the edge. It was 7th grade I believe during track season. I was trying to participate in most sports in a crusade to fit in, only to fail miserably at every single one because I was so uncoordinated. This was the pinnacle of it all. Anyways I was set to try to run the mile during a meet. I came in dead last by over a lap as I was watched by a crowd of a few hundred, I wanted to just jump off to the side as I watched them all pull way ahead, but I felt like I was stuck on a rail on that track. It was the most horrifying thing that ever happened to me and the worst part was I did it to myself considering I volunteered to run it. I don't remember ever getting crap for it from anyone actually, I doubt anyone even remembers it, but they didn't need to, it consumed me with with anxiety and feelings of extreme low self worth. It took me to a whole new level of insecurity. It was like I was shell shocked. After that I dropped out of all sports and retreated to basically within my own mind for a few years. Still bothers me, I still have no real wish to ever compete in any form of any way, be it academic, physical, or even the dating game.

I realized school was a hostile environment in grade 1. I had a new bionic woman doll and was fixated on it. The teacher grabbed it and took it from me until the end of day. I never played much with the doll after that and I never trusted teachers again. By grade 2, I was totally freaked out and began having OCD symptoms. I kept asking the teacher to repeat the instructions and she yelled at me. Then I just turned into a ghost.

I relate to this. I was diagnosed with PTSD before being diagnosed with ASD. I worked through a number of issues in therapy, but have a whole new set of issues to deal with now that I have a better understanding of my life and my behaviour thanks to the autism dx. I had an extremely traumatic childhood.