Finding HopeWhen You Feel ‘Too Much’
Posted on February 10, 2018
As I’ve said before, I struggle with how powerful my emotions can be. When I’m happy, I feel like every cell in my body is glowing; when I’m upset, it feels like my chest is collapsing; when I’m angry, I feel like I could destroy buildings, and when I love someone, if I could take on all their pain myself, I would do it in a heartbeat. These feelings can completely overwhelm me, making it impossible to think rationally and I’m often left absolutely exhausted afterwards. Occasions like these are closely linked with my autistic meltdowns but they also do occur separately. Over the last couple of years, I’ve gotten better at managing this so I thought I’d write down some of the ways I do this (of course there are still times when something emotionally difficult just comes out of nowhere but we can’t control everything so we work on the things we can).
Allow myself to feel everything – I think it’s so important to actively feel and process your emotions. Ignoring my emotions does me no good. So I let myself feel them and let them settle and usually then, I can feel what the right thing to do is.
Prepare for events I know will be emotional – When I know an event is going to be stressful or upsetting or emotional, I seriously think about how important it is that I attend. If I don’t need to go and I can see that it is going to negatively affect me, I do consider not going. There’s nothing wrong with protecting your mental and emotional health. If I either need to go or think it’s the right thing to go, I make sure that I’m prepared for it. I make sure I have everything I need, I plan the elements that I can (like travel arrangements) to minimise stress, and I do some of the other things on this list. I also factor in the number of people. Big crowds of people can really stress me out so it is something I consider when deciding whether or not to do something and then how I handle it.
Create a safety net – Again, when I know something (an event or period of time) is going to be stressful, I take certain precautions. I’ll arrange an escape plan ahead of time in case I need it or I’ll arrange to have someone I know with me. Most of the time, I’m fine but that’s usually because I know I’ve made these plans and so I’m not worrying about what will happen if something goes wrong.
Build in time to recover – I am easily exhausted, especially at the moment, so I allocate time before and after an event to make sure that I’m as rested as I can be before it and then to give me recovery time after. I struggle with the reality of this: I get very frustrated about tiring so quickly and wish I could jump from one event to another like many people I know can. But even when I’m raging and swearing about this, I do it because I know objectively that I need it.
Writing or journaling – I’ve written about this before but I’m such a believer in writing down your emotions. For me, it gives me somewhere to put them so I don’t have to carry them around with me. I can leave them where they are and move on. It also makes them more manageable because I’ve put words to them; they’re no longer an intangible mess overwhelming me.
Therapy – Talking about how you feel is invaluable and having someone who is professionally trained, someone outside of it all who can look at what’s happening objectively is even better. I’ve been going to therapy for three years now (three years today in fact!) and having that safe space where I can talk about anything is so important to me. I wouldn’t be where I am now without it. I might not be alive without it.
Specific amounts of medication – Certain medications I have taken have had a little leeway about them and my psychiatrist trusts me to use my judgement with them. For example, when I know I’m going to need as much energy as I can get or have really needed some sleep to recover from something, I have increased my sleeping medication temporarily to make sure that I sleep well. Of course, this is something you only do with the guidance of your healthcare professional.
It does still happen. I do still get completely overwhelmed by how I feel but I am better at managing it. I guess these things just make the experience easier on me and everyone else, and less stressful than they were before. Despite all of this though, the strength of my emotions is something I really value about myself. Everything matters. I care with everything in me. It’s hard but ultimately, I wouldn’t want to be any different. Life is bigger this way.
Holding On And Letting Go
Posted on January 28, 2018
A while back, a friend shared this article on Facebook and I couldn’t not share it here. I’m currently in the process of going through everything I own in preparation to move house and so I’m coming across a lot of things that I have previously loved. I’m being constantly faced with the decision to hold onto something or to let it go. So I resonated with this piece very strongly.
I thoroughly recommend reading it but here’s a summary. The author describes feeling sympathy for inanimate objects, from “the guitar that doesn’t get played anymore” to “the once loved camera that has now been displaced by a newer one.” And the thought of an object being discarded causes great anxiety and sadness.
I’ve struggled with this all my life. As a child, all my toys had personalities and thoughts and emotions but that hasn’t faded as I’ve grown up even though I no longer play with them. They’re all still in my cupboard, neatly stored in boxes and bags. I feel guilty about that, that it must be uncomfortable and claustrophobic, but it’s better than throwing them away. That would be the ultimate betrayal. Imagining them in a bin or landfill fills me with such overwhelming anxiety and guilt that I can’t think properly. But it’s not just toys; it’s everything. I have a draw full of my old phones (how can I go from carrying them around twenty four seven to throwing them away?), a box of broken Christmas ornaments (it would be so callous to throw them out just because they’re not perfect anymore), my old school jumper, and so on and so on and so on.
Throwing things away is hard for me. I have this anxiety about letting things go, like I’ll lose parts of myself. Anything that has some meaning to me, I have to keep. It’s similar to how I write everything down and take a million photos. It goes with my difficulties around identity, a big part of BPD, and feeling like I have no idea who I really am. So I’m probably assigning aspects of my identity to physical objects in response to that. It certainly doesn’t help with all of this. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a link to the difficulty I have in managing the strength of my emotions. I’ve talked about this before: how strongly I feel emotions and how I sometimes feel other people’s emotions. I’d always assumed that it was another facet of that.
The article discusses some other potential causes:
“There is some evidence to suggest that OCD and Synaesthesia are possible causes. Put simply, Synaesthesia is a neurological condition where the senses are confused. So someone with it, may smell a taste, or see a particular colour when thinking of a specific number. Some people have a form of Synaesthesia known as Personification. This is when a personality or emotion is attributed to an object. It would appear that there is a higher tendency for those on the autistic spectrum to have Synaesthesia in one form or another.”
The link to Synaesthesia is an interesting one. I do have some Synaesthesia-like experiences: with some sounds, I experience specific tastes or sounds. The sound of 7 chords leaves a metallic taste in my mouth so strong that I avoid those chords as much as possible and working on the production of my songs can be a bit of a minefield: high frequencies, like cymbals, are yellow while lower frequencies are dark colours (different depending on the instrument) and the colours in the song need to be balanced for me to be happy with them. It’s hard work and often leaves me with a debilitating headache.
I don’t know what the answer is or whether there is one. But I think the more we talk about this stuff and the more normal it becomes, the less we struggle against it. That takes up so much energy and emotion when living with these things is hard enough. That’s kind of why I started writing all of this stuff down, to feel less alone and hopefully make other people feel less alone too.
(Left: me and my toys when I was about eleven. Right: confetti that I kept from an amazing concert.)
When I Said I Wanted Superpowers, This Isn’t What I Meant
Posted on January 14, 2018
I’ve seen a lot of people make sense of their mental health issues or their Autism or their whatever by saying that it’s given them a superpower: sensitivity to emotions, intense focus, and so on. Despite my love for all things superhero, this has always irritated me and I never really understood why until I talked to my Mum about it. The words just came out and it clicked into place.
For me, it’s too simplistic a concept. At this point in time, I only feel disadvantaged – deprived – by my Autism especially. I’m told I won’t feel like this forever – I know that lots of people feel like it does add something to their lives – but right now, it takes away from my life more than it adds. So it really doesn’t feel like a superpower. If anything, it feels like I’ve suddenly got a superpower that I can’t control. If you want an excellent example of this, watch Agents of Shield: one character develops the ability to control the vibrations around her but because she can’t control it, she essentially causes earthquakes whenever she gets upset or angry or scared. Sometimes I feel kind of like that, like the intensity of my emotions causes irreparable damage to me and everything around me. I’m not causing natural disasters or shattering windows but maybe the effect is just slower.
An example that fits better with Autism might be having enhanced hearing – connected to the sensory sensitivities – but because I can’t control it, I can’t use it. I can’t isolate a single sound and tune out everything else; it’s just a tidal wave of noise, the world with the volume up to maximum. It feels like the best I can do is to manage it, to keep it at a level that doesn’t kill me. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to control it, even a little bit. What if it’s something that you just can’t control, like time or the weather? I worry that it’s one of those things, that it’ll be like this forever. Is it still a superpower if you can’t do anything with it, if you can’t do anything good with it?
I’ve done my fair share of those personality tests that supposedly tell you something about yourself, what animal you’d be or which Hogwarts house you’re most suited to. I think this is something that many people who struggle with identity do: you feel like you don’t know who you are so you’ll take any answers you can get. I’ve definitely fallen into that rabbit hole before. I’ve never found a good one for superpowers though. Mine would probably be something to do with emotions, like being able to manipulate someone’s emotions or transmit my emotions to somebody else. Maybe that’s the problem: maybe the strength of my emotions just falls short of a superpower, maybe one percent more and I’d be able to control them. That fits right into my fear that I’d be something special if I just tried harder, that I’m never trying hard enough. Okay, I’m rambling now.
Anyway. My point is… I’m not even sure what my point is. I guess I’m just thinking out loud. Reading it back it’s a bit of a mess but I needed to put all of this somewhere. Mostly I think I’m scared I’m not enough, not enough of anything. I’d love to know if you’ve thought about any of this, whether you like the superpower metaphor, even what you think your superpower would be… So if you’d like to, please leave a comment below.
(Photo by Richard Sanderson. He called this my ‘superhero pose.’)
Finding Hope 