I'm not used to this...
08 Dec 2014, 6:52 am
I am a fairly high-functioning aspie so it came as a surprise to me last night when, in the middle of a fight with my parents, I totally lost control and dissolved into a shrieking blubbering mess.
Me and my girlfriend were hanging out in the living room hanging out together. Our parents were in the room with us (My mom and her mom are best friends). My mom is disabled and it is hard for her to do things by herself, but she doesn't seem to show a lot of appreciation for me helping her a lot of the time. I'd had a rough few days, preparing for finals and writing papers I'd put off until the last minute and I just wanted a kind of mellow day, but pretty much all day she was complaining and yelling and carrying on as she usually does.
It finally came to a head when she asked me to make sure her wheelchair was on the porch. As I was on my way out the door her glasses got caught under the door and broke. She said something about how I never watch where I'm walking and I finally snapped. I yelled at her and said that I wasn't the one who never watched where I was going and that it was my brother. She started throwing all sorts of stuff at me out of anger and I told her to stop throwing stuff at me, admittedly not in the calmest voice, but the most serious and least threatening I could manage at the moment which may have been more yelly than calm.
I am not a small person and sometimes I forget about how my size affects my interactions with other people so in the course of this fight I scared my mom. She thought I was reaching for her cane so she grabbed it and started swinging it at me, thinking that I had reached for it at the same time. I ended up unplugging her computer's webcam (she was in the middle of a Skype call when it happened), throwing the hand full of broken glasses lens I had picked up in the trash, and leaving the room. My dad came in and talked to me for a little while and I realized just how much enraged I was. I couldn't say a single word without yelling unless I was trying my hardest to talk quietly.
He told me to wait in my room for a while and he went out to talk to my mom for a few minutes and came back to my room. I told him that I needed to get some stuff from the living room and we went back out together.
It wasn't until I saw my girlfriend rocking back and forth on the couch in my living room that I lost it... I sat down next to her to try to comfort her. She had taken her medicine so she wasn't freaking out but it was still stressing her out a little. I threw my arms around her and started apologizing and sobbing on her shirt and hugging her. I stayed like that for a good 4 or 5 minutes.
By that time me and my mom had calmed down enough that we could talk for a few minutes without screaming at each other, so we talked. It was about that that my girlfriend went outside, so my mom suggested I go outside with her.
We sat on the porch, rocked back and forth, talked to each other, hugged, talked about support. I heard my parents yelling inside so I decided to go inside to see if I could calm things down inside and that's when it really got bad. I went inside and the next thing I'm standing in front of my dad and he's yelling at me, telling me to go into my room. That was the straw that broke the camel's back: I locked up and the more he yelled the more I locked up and shrieked in fear... there was no coherent thought, there was no stopping, there was just the yelling and the fear. After a moment my dad stopped yelling and started talking and it was a little better, but I still couldn't move. Not until my mom put the idea of a cup of water into my head.
After the water I slowly walked to my room and looked for my shoes and hoodie. I had to go back to the porch and hug my girlfriend again. By the time I got back out of my room she and her mom had left and I was crushed.
And so I just lied on a bed and terror set in. Parents arguing in the other room, my mom saying that she had probably just lost my girlfriend's mom as a friend and that sent me into a full blown panic attack. I couldn't move, couldn't make myself stop, could barely have a logical thought through the mess of panic and hyperventilation.
After about 10 minutes and my dad coming into my room and telling me that it was all going to be ok a few times I finally made it into My bed. Vaguely remembering an app I had on my phone that was designed to help with panic attacks, I turned it on and watched its patterns flash across the screen. So I watched it and played with it for a half hour while I just calmed down a little.
Me and my mom have smoothed the waters since then and even talked about what happened and why it happened.
I need to know, though, if there is anything I can do to keep from locking up as easily. I am absolutely terrified that someday I'll have a job and someone will be screaming in my face and that I'll handle it wrong and lose my job or worse, hurt someone...
Please help...
_________________
What do you do when you live in a shoe and you ain't got a sole at all?
08 Dec 2014, 7:05 am
Me and my girlfriend were hanging out in the living room hanging out together. Our parents were in the room with us (My mom and her mom are best friends). My mom is disabled and it is hard for her to do things by herself, but she doesn't seem to show a lot of appreciation for me helping her a lot of the time. I'd had a rough few days, preparing for finals and writing papers I'd put off until the last minute and I just wanted a kind of mellow day, but pretty much all day she was complaining and yelling and carrying on as she usually does.
It finally came to a head when she asked me to make sure her wheelchair was on the porch. As I was on my way out the door her glasses got caught under the door and broke. She said something about how I never watch where I'm walking and I finally snapped. I yelled at her and said that I wasn't the one who never watched where I was going and that it was my brother. She started throwing all sorts of stuff at me out of anger and I told her to stop throwing stuff at me, admittedly not in the calmest voice, but the most serious and least threatening I could manage at the moment which may have been more yelly than calm.
I am not a small person and sometimes I forget about how my size affects my interactions with other people so in the course of this fight I scared my mom. She thought I was reaching for her cane so she grabbed it and started swinging it at me, thinking that I had reached for it at the same time. I ended up unplugging her computer's webcam (she was in the middle of a Skype call when it happened), throwing the hand full of broken glasses lens I had picked up in the trash, and leaving the room. My dad came in and talked to me for a little while and I realized just how much enraged I was. I couldn't say a single word without yelling unless I was trying my hardest to talk quietly.
He told me to wait in my room for a while and he went out to talk to my mom for a few minutes and came back to my room. I told him that I needed to get some stuff from the living room and we went back out together.
It wasn't until I saw my girlfriend rocking back and forth on the couch in my living room that I lost it... I sat down next to her to try to comfort her. She had taken her medicine so she wasn't freaking out but it was still stressing her out a little. I threw my arms around her and started apologizing and sobbing on her shirt and hugging her. I stayed like that for a good 4 or 5 minutes.
By that time me and my mom had calmed down enough that we could talk for a few minutes without screaming at each other, so we talked. It was about that that my girlfriend went outside, so my mom suggested I go outside with her.
We sat on the porch, rocked back and forth, talked to each other, hugged, talked about support. I heard my parents yelling inside so I decided to go inside to see if I could calm things down inside and that's when it really got bad. I went inside and the next thing I'm standing in front of my dad and he's yelling at me, telling me to go into my room. That was the straw that broke the camel's back: I locked up and the more he yelled the more I locked up and shrieked in fear... there was no coherent thought, there was no stopping, there was just the yelling and the fear. After a moment my dad stopped yelling and started talking and it was a little better, but I still couldn't move. Not until my mom put the idea of a cup of water into my head.
After the water I slowly walked to my room and looked for my shoes and hoodie. I had to go back to the porch and hug my girlfriend again. By the time I got back out of my room she and her mom had left and I was crushed.
And so I just lied on a bed and terror set in. Parents arguing in the other room, my mom saying that she had probably just lost my girlfriend's mom as a friend and that sent me into a full blown panic attack. I couldn't move, couldn't make myself stop, could barely have a logical thought through the mess of panic and hyperventilation.
After about 10 minutes and my dad coming into my room and telling me that it was all going to be ok a few times I finally made it into My bed. Vaguely remembering an app I had on my phone that was designed to help with panic attacks, I turned it on and watched its patterns flash across the screen. So I watched it and played with it for a half hour while I just calmed down a little.
Me and my mom have smoothed the waters since then and even talked about what happened and why it happened.
I need to know, though, if there is anything I can do to keep from locking up as easily. I am absolutely terrified that someday I'll have a job and someone will be screaming in my face and that I'll handle it wrong and lose my job or worse, hurt someone...
Please help...
dude, what you're describing is a perfectly NORMAL reaction to a stressful situation.
