#so i basically only had myself to rely on when my main pharmacist had the day off

[lycorid]

It’s kind of wild looking at jobs near me.

They all require years of experience and expect you to have things that aren’t even used on the job (drivers license for a job that doesn’t require any form of driving) but they all pay like garbage.

The pay is low enough that you wouldn’t even be able to afford one of the low income housing apartments because they require you to make 3x the rent.

[winterfairyy]

So had a follow up with my psychiatrist the week after I brought up my very valid and well backed concerns about being on the autism spectrum, and he brushed me off completely. “Even if you are, from what I’ve seen you would be VERY high fuctioning anyway.”

Like wtf. Does he not realize the amount of physical and mental exhaustion I go through daily to suppress every symptom and act like I’m “normal” ??

The hours upon hours I spent in my room at night watching “social etiquette�� videos and videos on basic human behaviour and conversations and meticulously studying human body language and social cues because I don’t fucking understand it?

Every social interaction is an act. I don’t know what’s going, it’s all a front, it’s literally acting. If you asked me a question about a social interaction or asked me to role play something, I couldn’t. Because my ability to communicate is based on watching people’s body language and giving them whatever they want in the conversation and playing to whatever they want me to say and what they want to hear. Because that’s the only way I can keep a conversation going. I have to keep it one sided so I’m not expected to genuinely contribute sincere conversation.

Because when I talk about something I’m interested in I’m “going on and on about the same things” and “I sound like a broken record” and “I’m not making any sense and jumping all over the place.”

Like I can’t express emotions because I’m always worried “that’s the wrong way to express this emotion”. I’ve literally googled “how to express X emotion” more times than I can count.

Like I hate my mom but I still rely on her for everything because “what if that’s not normal?” Or “I’m most likely missing something here and I’ll fuck everything up so I need an outside opinion to just tell me what to do”

I can be throwing up, fainting, and having trouble breathing but if even one person says “well I don’t think you need to go to the hospital” or “I wouldn’t go to the hospital for that” and I won’t go. No matter what I think. Because what if I’m missing something and that’s socially unacceptable?

And then stimming. I used to stim all the time. It was the main reason my elementary school teachers started trying to get my mom to look into an autism diagnosis. And then my mom used to shame me for it and say “that’s not what normal people do” so obviously I suppress it now. Which is hella exhausting and stressful.

And overstimulation. Loud noises, flashing lights, more than a few people talking at once, etc etc. Will set me off and I can barely function. It happened at work when I was luckily working stocking and not a till and I had to take my break early and lie and said I had a panic attack because something was beeping loudly in the bakery and I couldn’t handle it. Even though it does that multiple times a day. We went to a show and they had strobe lights and I had a meltdown and had to leave early and my mom called me an embarrassment. Even though no one saw and I left alone and just bussed home so they wouldn’t have to leave.

And talking to my psychiatrist he’s trying to explain every behaviour and issue I told him with a separate diagnosis. Like you can diagnose every single separate symptom as a different mental illness all ya want buddy, but I don’t think my karma is bad enough to be getting the “13 for the price of 1” mental illness blowout sale.

Like all symptoms relate to basic autism symptoms. All my experiences relate to nearly every experience I’ve found from talking to actual people who are diagnosed with autism and forums online. I’ve had multiple teachers suggest it numerous times.

I can’t relate to none of these countless mental illnesses he’s trying to explain each separate symptom with aside from anxiety and anorexia.

I don’t have social anxiety. I don’t have any issues with social interaction. My manager praises me almost daily on my communication and customer service. I can talk down any “Karen” you throw at me. Why? Because I’ve literally trained myself to do it and it’s all an act and I’ve spent YEARS meticulously studying how to react to any social situation you can throw at me. And if a new situation comes along or I don’t know how to react to something, I shut down. I cant function. I can’t hold a conversation. I can’t keep up the act because I haven’t studied that particular situation and if I try and “wing it” aka do what normal humans do, I’ll likely say something wrong or insensitive that I think is right and fine and fuck it up. I don’t fear social interaction. I fear having a situation thrown at me that I haven’t “trained” myself to handle.

I have massive trouble with empathy and relating to other people or “putting myself in their shoes”. Like you could come tell me your parent died and I wouldn’t be able to react and just shut down because I know that that would mean they’re upset. But I can’t comprehend how they feel. Because personally I don’t feel upset so it’s hard for me to feel empathy because Its not making me upset and socially I know they’re upset because when your parent dies obviously you’d be upset, but I just can’t relate and be empathetic because I’m not personally feeling it. And I feel like this is a bad explanation that’s making me out to be really insensitive but idk how else to describe it 😂.

When I was younger it used to be so much worse. Like when I was 14 my grandma died. And I was very close with her. But my response was “yes it’s very sad. And I’m upset”. But no crying. No outwardly sign of being upset. I just kinda shrugged and went Yea it’s sad, now what? And Ive blamed it on the meds I was on for years but am recently realizing after talking to a pharmacist friend that it likely wasn’t the meds as those ones don’t tend to have that effect. And not to that extreme.

Like I stopped taking my anxiety meds that were very effective and needed from above the maximum dose (different rant about my moms abuse through medication) to nothing literally overnight because of having no other explanation for these issues I was facing and no other solution as I couldn’t get help because my mom refused. I went through a week of withdrawals and then have had severe anxiety ever since then. And have had an irrational fear of any medication for anxiety or depression because I’m worried it might make that happen again and have refused 3 different ones from my psychiatrist because of this fear.

But I also realized that when I stopped taking my meds is when I also started meticulously studying human behaviour and social cues and the socially acceptable response to emotions and basic empathy every night and started up the act. So things got “better” because of that. Not because of my stopping taking the medication.

So much has been coming to light lately after conversing with people online and from autism forums and my own research and The one person I thought would be able to actually help me and got my hopes up two weeks ago just brushed me off and told me that even if I was on the spectrum I seem to be high function enough that I shouldn’t even bother looking into a diagnosis” and then trying to diagnose each symptom as a separate mental illness.