Thank goodness for this blog – a place to make sense of my experiences. It's been a challenging life.
Growing up, dad took care of the responsibilities and practicalities of everyday life, things I would later have to learn to navigate on my own.
He was good at it.
And I didn't know I had autism. What I didn't realise was what would happen when I tried to go into the world and navigate it myself. With autism, you're isolated and on your own.
You live 24/7 by yourself, with yourself – often with overwhelm. No matter who is around you, or with you, you're by yourself.
With autism, you can become stuck in your own mind, not because you don't understand that something needs to be done, but because the way you process the situation makes it difficult to find a way forward. Your thoughts keep returning to the problem, trying to make sense of it, but instead of finding a solution, the overwhelm builds.
You become caught between knowing you need to act and being unable to work out how. The harder you try to think your way through it, the more mentally and emotionally overwhelmed you become, until you feel paralysed.
When the external influences are working well enough you become accustomed to the way things work, and as a result, how much the circumstances around you are helping. It is only when you have to navigate the world yourself that you begin to discover what those challenges are.
The challenges aren't new. What is changed is that you're now having to deal with them without the same circumstances that previously helped you manage. And that leave syou in a constant state of overwhelm.
In an already changed world, situations that someone without autism might see as a small problem to solve become magnified and overwhelming for someone with autism. Instead of being able to work through the problem, you find yourself battling with your own mind and thoughts, ruminating over the situation without finding a way forward.
The overwhelm builds, making it even harder for you to think clearly. You remain mentally and emotionally stuck until the situation resolves itself or someone helps you find a way through. For me, this is an important part of my understanding of why I am continually in a state of overwhelm.
You want to move forward, and you understand that you need to: but you feel paralysed.
What I'm describing isn't just something I experience personally. It's part of how autism can affect the way many of us navigate the world.
It is not difficult to understand why you might feel that way.
You can find yourself facing a world that demands things of you that you don't know how to manage, let alone manage on your own. It becomes a lot more difficult when the traffic jam comes all at once, when you're already trying to adjust to a world where everything familiar has changed, and the support and circumstances you once relied on are no longer there.
And with autism, you're not just having to deal with those changes. You're also having to manage the mental and emotional overwhelm that comes with them, while trying to understand how to navigate that world as independently as you can.
In my mind I am independent. But I am continually in a state of overwhelm.
And in a world that is already changed when the support isn't forthcoming autism makes that reality much harder.
I go back to growing up and my dad.
There's a difference between having someone help you navigate the world when you know you're autistic, and not knowing until later in life – finding out too late to be equipped with the understanding and tools you need.
Suddenly, you're having to take a crash course in yourself, learning how to navigate the world independently.
Then only later do you find out that the world doesn't work in a way that meets your needs.
