Tag Archives: OCD

Autism-Adjacent, Part Two: Hopefully a Conclusion

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I have to begin this post with an apology. I haven’t been ignoring you all, It’s been a helluva roller coaster ride with health issues around here. Enough for a completely different post…

So, now where did I leave off…? Oh, yeah. The BIG, BAD DIAGNOSIS!

To be absolutely honest, I was aware of this “condition.” I’ve known since childhood. Thing is, I also honestly thought it didn’t fit me anymore. Like I grew out of it or something.

I guess not.

I was too ashamed to admit this publicly at first. It’s just embarrassing, especially as it’s not a “real” diagnosis. If you ask me, it ought to be. It’s every bit as difficult, socially and mentally, as the two (or more) conditions its related to. Problem is that, much like autism, people who don’t have the condition would never believe it. The bullying alone is damaging enough.

Granted, there are a lot of my “side conditions” that haven’t got much at all to do with the BIG diagnosis. Then again, there are definitely some that came right from it or were indirectly a cause. Like my anxiety, for instance. I do still believe I was genetically more vulnerable to that. However, my Mom had been badly bullied as a child and so was incredibly worried about me when it started to affect me as early as Kindergarten. So, what did she do? Like anyone trying to protect a child, she helicoptered. She and the mother of a friend of mine who was also a bullying victim, started a Brownie group. She was a room mother at my school. She was constantly watching me out the kitchen window unless I was at someone else’s house. I had very strict rules as far as where I was allowed to go and when, and even in the summer we were in the house after dinner, which was at the ridiculously early hour of 4 pm. Those are just examples, of course. There was so much, much more. But in understanding her, I can’t blame her. I just focus on my own healing.

So, what on EARTH is the big, bad diagnosis?

Well, this Venn Diagram is it. Yep. I’m not Autistic. It’s not ADHD, it’s not even OCD which is another affiliated condition (although I do have many similarities with that one, too…dammit.)

No, I’m GIFTED. WTF. Seriously. This is another one of those situations where people who have no idea what this means think it’s a “good” condition. Take a look at this diagram, though. Good? No. Honestly. It’s like people who have been plagued by the dead since they were children which is also called a “gift.” If you’ve ever met someone who encountered these Spirits as children, I’d say I doubt that it’s a gift. Seems more often to be a curse to those who suffer with it. And it’s the same thing with me. If you think being a teacher’s pet is hard, imagine what the entire school knowing your “gifted” does. It ain’t no fun, I’ll tell you that.

And although I know all that having lived with it all my life, it’s something I did start beginning to believe I’d grown out of it. Everyone else in the world had somehow caught up to me, I was completely normal. I don’t know. Maybe that was my self-defense system finally kicking in. Unfortunately, one of the major differences between gifted and autism is in the realm of emotion. My emotions are…insanely intense. INSANELY. I can’t hold them in, I can’t pretend I feel differently, I’ve never had to “mask” to fake emotions but damn straight I wish I’d been able to mask to hide my emotions.

That just made the bullying worse. When a bully smells blood in the water like that, they don’t stop, they beat harder. Then, to complicate things even further, I had no understanding from my home life. I was constantly told to toughen up, it wasn’t that big a deal, fight back with words. Granted, my words are one of my strongest weapons, but have I mentioned I don’t “fight or flight?” Nope. I “freeze or fawn.” That makes it DAMN hard to think quick and fight back with words or not.

Things were briefly better for me in Junior High as I had a large group of “outcast” friends. We looked out for each other. Three of them had been in my grade school class with me. Which was, btw, for “gifted children.”

My husband and his brother were in that class with me as well. 😉

The additional complication that gifted people have, above and beyond the symptoms and the bullying, is the profound feeling of failure and depression that occurs. No matter what you do or where you are in life, you’re not up to the expectations everyone placed on you as a gifted child. My life hasn’t been easy because of that. I expected the absolutely best just like everyone else did for me. At the end of the day, however, I failed at working, I failed at finances, I failed at a business, and to add salt to the wound (womb?) we were unable to have children making me a failure at even being a woman, a very basic thing. Maybe even the most basic. On top of all the oddities and eccentricities in my behavior that put the target on my back, the expectations of myself and others caused a lot of mental anguish. But, you know, I wasn’t supposed to actually show those feelings.

If you’re wondering, yes, you can have more than one condition the answer is, “yes”. Some of you might be even more complicated than you knew. It’s kind of hard-to-find resources online about adult gifted people. There are a few books on the subject, but to be honest I haven’t read any of them yet, so I can’t honestly recommend them. When I do, I’ll be sure to share them here.

And here we are at over 1000 words again. I told you my words are my weapons! Feel free to ask me anything you want. I guess it’s out on the table for the world to see now. Therapy is very helpful for this. My self-esteem is slowly coming back, my anxiety is slowly receding, and I’m starting to understand the things that trigger me. I can’t say that I have embraced being “gifted,” as I don’t know that I feel gifted yet.

I guess that’s the next mountain to climb.

And I don’t usually say this, but “likes” and comments would be warmly welcomed. This is probably the hardest blog I’ve written yet.

~*~ Camylleon~*~

Autism-Adjacent, part One

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I believe I’ve made a few references to my mental health battles here. Maybe not much specifically, but little hints here and there. Some might have assumed these were jokes but I assure you, they’re not. 🙂 With that in mind, I figure I might want to actually explain what that journey has entailed.

I can’t believe I made it this far into my life without therapy, honestly. The first time I saw my primary care doctor, which is going on 6 or 7 years now, she immediately had the nurse drag in the EKG chart and hook me up; my heart was racing that badly. Panic attack? Likely, only I didn’t know what that was. I mean, how do you explain what that feels like to someone who has never had one? They’re all so individual or at least can be. I now know that one of my reactions is a throbbing in my lower back, and sometimes the entire world turns yellow. No one’s ever said anything about panic attacks like that to me.

I thought it was a heart attack. Kinda glad it was “only” a panic attack.

One of the many traumas in my life that I’ve had to deal with is one I’m sure many, many women will relate to. Horrible doctors that minimally don’t listen and maximally berate you, or worse. I hadn’t had a decent doctor who listened in ages at this point, aside from the doctor at that practice who had moved on and abandoned me, and I’d only seen him for about 2 years.

Needless to say, when my PCP got the test results from the EKG and I broke down in tears, she sat down to talk to me. I bawled and explained that I felt like I had some sort of medical PTSD. When I first attempted to get my neuropathy diagnosed (I was pretty sure by this point I knew what it was), the first doctor didn’t even look at my feet or send me to a specialist or anything but write me a couple of prescriptions. The second doctor had told me there was a 40% chance we’d never know what was wrong with my feet, but when I asked about a specialist, she said there wasn’t any need for that.

Right.

But finally, I found a doctor (female, of course) who was listening to me. Not only did she write me my first prescription for anxiety medication, and send me to a therapist, but she also sent me immediately to someone when I complained of menstrual issues. The absolutely WONDERFUL (female) doctor I saw for that caught the endometrial cancer and sent me to a WONDERFUL gynecological oncologist who got me in for surgery 5 days after I saw her with the diagnosis. 5 years later, I’m still clean, and I hope to stay that way.

Long way around, I’m sure, but that’s the background for how I finally got help.

As you can see, and probably know, or at least likely can understand, some of my issues were caused by direct circumstances. Attending what should have been a fairly normal, mainstream church during a particularly fervent Charismatic Movement messed me up, sure. But when combined with an authoritarian father who was really a Baptist in Episcopalian clothes and my innate need for his approval, well, it did double damage. They either refer to that as religious trauma or sometimes religious PTSD. I’ve got issues, like many people, because of bullying throughout my public-school career. Anxiety, just a touch of OCD, social anxiety to the point of avoidant personality disorder, and a little privacy issue. Just a little. Yeah, there’s event-based damage that I can track back, and have traced some of it.

But then, there seem to be issues that were just always there. I wrote on the wall inside my mom’s closet “why doesn’t anyone love me” when I was six. I remember getting stomachaches and not wanting to go to school in kindergarten. I used to hide in my closet to be alone, to the point my parents would freak out and start looking for me. Something was going on genetically, I assumed.

After a false start with a therapist who sucked, at least for me, I ended up with the person I see now who is phenomenal. Perfect for me. Grew up in the same town as I did, even knew some of the same people although she’s a few years older. Her sister was a Wiccan and into ghost hunting, so she knows what I’m talking about in the largest and most important parts of my life. Also, that same sister who unfortunately departed the mortal plane too soon, was trans. She gets my life, my point-of view. I don’t worry about judgment. Phew.

So, the time came when I had a question to ask her. I’d been on TikTok (bad idea, btw), and seen many, many, many people discussing being autistic. I’d picked up a lot, but at the same time many of those people were self-diagnosed. No judgment there, because I understand how hard it is for most people to get therapy and treatment for their mental health. Self-diagnosis is often all they’ve got.

At the same time, I wasn’t sure then, how accurate they were. I had so many “symptoms” that were similar to autism. SO FREAKING MANY!!! Hyperfixations, anyone? I’ve got my share and then some. I’ve been studying cults and religion since grade school. If you want a good genealogist, find someone with a hyperfixation, you won’t regret it. I am amazing at research. If I want to know something, I will not stop until I do. All the food I hate is because of the texture. I will not wear polyester, and you can’t make me. The feel of that is just…slimy…I’m cringing even thinking about it. And of course, there’s more.

When I brought that up to my therapist she smiled broadly, which did worry me slightly, I’ll admit. But she said, “you’re ready for your diagnosis.”

OMG, I’m over 1000 words already! Since attention spans are so small these days, I guess I’ll have to put the rest in a part two. See you there!