I’ve said for the longest time that it’s like being a prisoner in my own head because I have so much emotional retention. Only now am I beginning to discover that is because of years of being afraid to express how some of that stuff made me feel. Because most “men” or whatever would toughen up and not let it bother them. So I can’t tell if it’s toxic masculinity which traumatized me or autism. Maybe a little of column A and a little of column B
But as an adult, I am inherently people-pleasing, struggle with decisions, have extremely low self-confidence and act like I don’t even exist, etc
Are you asking if others feel guilty for just having feelings? I definitely do
Yes 100% thank you so fucking much you put it into words that even my therapist couldn’t
Have you heard of "subjugation schema"? I stumbled across this Psychology Today blog post yesterday trying to understand wtf is wrong with me and wow, there's actually a name for it.
You may have grown up with parents who were domineering, demanding, or needed you to take care of them, so it may have felt like your authentic emotions were locked away. Now that you’re an adult, you may still operate in love relationships with the feeling that you are obligated to make the other person happy, which means mostly going along with what they say.
It's all my relationships, though. I genuinely don't know how to conduct myself otherwise.
In schema therapy, we call this subjugation schema. It gets triggered anytime you feel an urge to express emotion but feel you have to contain it because it would just be too scary or risky to put into words. You just feel dread. It’s like you may even know what you would say, if you just thought you could, but there’s that terrible bad feeling about it. So you stay silent.
That whole second paragraph 😞 all the way up into young adulthood, I had such a hard time in even really average, non-threatening social situations because I felt this horrible lump of dread in my throat and chest anytime I needed to say something and didn't know how they would react. Even just really simple, basic stuff, like "where is your bathroom" or "I want to go home now" would become impossible to articulate.
and now that I say it, I'm suddenly wondering if this is how I gained my impressive bladder compacity 🤔😂😭
Of course, it continues to today with anything heavy or complicated.
Oh my god. Absolute fucking game changer 😮
Now working on how to unfix it I guess 🫠 I was always told that what you’re referring to is simply “anxiety” and there are pills for it, but I’ve never thought about it this way
But it would perfectly explain why I’ve been living a life without confrontation and always want to keep the peace wherever possible. I guess it’s all relative, but I can’t remember my parents being domineering/demanding but they did send me away to my room for hours on end to “think about what I had done” every time I “misbehaved.”
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Being a fucking child, it is very possible that I didn’t understand what they meant by this and it could have been a sign of another problem.
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I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I now isolate to feel safe. Because when locked in my room for hours for doing the “wrong” thing, I’d spend hours in my head getting totally lost in my own head. It was just me and my brain for hours on end trying to pass the time in some way. I’d write letters apologizing for what I did to get some kind of approval and it would always be read as an excuse.
I didn't see anything wrong with a lot of the stuff that happened to me as a kid until I had one - even though there were things I knew I'd definitely never do, I just didn't understand that some of the things were actually wrong and harmful.
Being sent to your room for hours to think about what you've done is a thing that seems to me like it could be harmful. Kids don't reason like adults; they're not going to magically understand a thing better after hours of forced contemplation. They need compassionate conversation.
If they used this punishment for infractions based on your attitude or speech or reactions (and not just stuff like you broke a vase or failed a test), idk how you wouldn't begin to think your feelings were secondary to everyone else's.
A ton of it was “talking back” iirc. (i.e. trying to offer an explanation)
But yeah, I see it as a potential explanation for why I can’t deal with confrontation today. Could be totally wrong but that’s what I’m going with until I find another reason
Aaaaaahhhhhh omg, I got in trouble so much for "talking back"! And it honestly baffles me to this day. When was I allowed to talk?! The rules kept changing!
Anyway, good luck sorting things out ❤️
Only now at almost 30 am I understanding the brevity of certain words/phrases but it is making any type of relationship/friendship so hard 😭 I just need constant assurance that I’m doing everything the “right” way
But even that sounds like an excuse to people. I don’t know how else to describe it 💀
Also, I’ve never actually been diagnosed with autism professionally, but my life sorta just looks like I would be so much better off if I was just held back or something. I would’ve had more time to develop social skills which I feel are the one thing missing from my life
I just need constant assurance that I’m doing everything the “right” way
ME TOO. 🤦
I've never been diagnosed professionally either, but idk how much good it would do me at this point. I've scored really high on all the tests I've taken online, I relate to pretty much all the autism content I've seen, and I finally stopped worrying about whether I had it when I saw someone mention that people without autism don't spend all day obsessing over the possibility that they're autistic. 😂🤷
Are you me? It’s really starting to feel like I’ve always just been an alien to other people—it’s been a repeated cycle of trying to make friends but never being enough. Like, I always come on too strong somehow and can’t gauge what level of discussion makes people uncomfortable. And AGAIN a lot of this comes down to never being able to be myself growing up. Because how would I know the “right” way to behave if there was none?
All I really have is like 2 people I grew up with who I occasionally see and I’d say that fucking tracks. Like I met them in the years I was being abused/hadn’t yet fully processed how far that abuse went
Feeling like an alien who inevitably accidentally turns people off by being Too Much? Me too.
At least we know why now, and we know we aren't alone.
Now I just hope to find people like me irl, because even though I’ve found a lot online, I don’t get that closure/assurance I need until it becomes “real.” And that’s probably another issue in and of itself to be quite honest.
It really just feels like I’ll never be as emotionally mature as my peers. Been a never ending struggle of one step forward, me saying something socially inappropriate and having to restart from scratch 🥲
And the super crushing part about all of it is the realization that there are a lot of people who don’t like the unequivocal me and never will. Just because our brains are wired differently I guess 😔
I relate to every word of this. Every. Word.
I'm trying to comfort myself with consideration of the fact that people generally behave like assholes, so it's okay if people generally don't like me, what do those jerks know anyway, right?
Except there's that instinctive, crushing fear that comes with that isolation, because if something goes terribly wrong, I know having a limited social circle of people who barely like me is a dangerous situation. Unfortunately, it seems like "having a limited social circle of people who barely like me" is a pretty common situation for autistic people, so I kinda feel a little doomy about it.
Trying to determine if “unmasking” is actually worth it :/
Tried to “come out” to one of my good friends and it’s clear that those of use with relatively low support needs are seen as completely “normal”
God I hate it
Yeah this is kinda where I'm at right now. I don't know anybody who isn't married or related to me who isn't repulsed by my unmasked behavior.
I've just been isolating as much as possible and unmasking then. I know it's not a long-term solution, but it's all I've got.
I used to not need very much support, but I had a couple all-timer level traumatic events in 2022 that really fucked up my ability to deal (and tarnished some favorite coping mechanisms, like "be outdoors" and "play with dog"), and now perimenopause is hitting and the hormones are wrecking what little control and clarity I had left.
I'm still trudging along, but it does really fucking suck, and I need to see some light at the end of this tunnel sometime soon.
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