It’s funny.  Over the years I’d had the occassional thought that I may be autistic, but it was a thought that was infrequent and easily pushed to one side.  I was fully functional, intelligent, well able to hold down any job I was either given or had carved out for myself right up to running my own very successful fitness business, touring, lecturing, writing, and when I moved into a corporate role – no problem.  I’m a natural administrator. 

I’ve dealt with so much, and yes I struggled emotionally, fought fiercely when I felt threatened; hibernated when I felt overwhelmed, but I never related to these things as aspects of being neuro-divergent and I never recognised how much these cycles are a part of who I am. 

Until now.

It’s still not even a year since I realised I am neuro-divergent and part of learning to accept that is that you have to recognise the idiosyncrasies in yourself that are attributable to the various diagnoses, and when you do, then suddenly you realise that they are so much more than you ever thought. 

People say that you are so much more ‘autistic’ since diagnosis.  Well, yes…. you start peel away the mask that you have worn – in my case, for nearly 70 years – and you not only have to face truths that can be difficult to deal with, but you have to acknowledge them and learn to live honestly with them.  That means stop hiding behind your mask all the time. 

I appear to be more emotional than I have ever been yet I can’t name the emotions.  I don’t recognise what love feels like, or joy.  Fear – absolutely I know this one, and I’ve just learned to recognise anger.  In fact, I recently became so spitting f^*king furious that I had no idea what to do with my body.  I’ve bottled up my anger since I was a small child and had become so afraid to let it loose because I worried it would be like laying out a path of destruction similar setting off a nuclear warhead!  I worried it was too much.

I’ve noticed that I move into a spiral every now and then – I’m doing it right now – where everything runs the risk of become ‘too much’.  The excitement of confirming that the home I will be moving to in a couple of months was almost too much to contain.  The noise of the person who lives near me and is out every morning with his lawn mower, whipper-snipper, or his pressure washer was too much.  So was the traffic on the road about 500m away.  Even the noise from the fridge is too much.  The almost-full moon shone brightly last night, right into my bedroom – so sleep was in short supply and that added to the ‘too-much’ pressure and to top it all, there is too much wind for me to be able to go out for a ride on my bike. 

Before I learned of my neuro-divergent status, all of this would have been so overwhelming and I would have been so very distressed and unable to understand why everything falls over all at once.  Even the ‘poor me’ factor would be too much!  Now, I recognise the ‘too much’ overwhelm building up and I know there are things I can do to minimise the fall-out.  Right now – I am sitting at my computer wearing earplugs.  It’s a beautiful day outside but all the windows are closed up tight to kill even more noise.  I’m short on sleep, so very soon I’m going to have a nanny nap, and because I can organise my thoughts so much easier when I type – we have this blog!!!

In recognising my cycle, and understanding that lack of sleep is very definitely not helping me to be able to tolerate all the noise around me is a massive step forward.  In being able to acknowledge that this is a short-term thing and that, with some self-care, I will be back to normal in a day or two, takes a whole heap of the pressure off.  I know it’s pressure I put on myself – but now I know why. 

There is too much noise, too much light, too much wind, and too little sleep.  It’s all far too much, all happening at once and my mind is about to explode!