I started writing this with an application within WordPress, which is within GoDaddy, which is where my host thingy is. I clicked “go back to WordPress” and a pop up literally said “going back may break your website”. I took my chances, we shall see what happens.
I am not good at talk therapy, I can sit there and list my plethora of fears and issues, but then any attempt to overcome them, I just don’t believe. One therapist, when I was talking about my debilitating fear of catastrophic weather/geologic/acts of god things, said that I should look at it like this – I live in Ohio, where we do not have volcanos, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, uncontrolled fires, etc. That is all true, but we DO have tornadoes, high winds, lightning, and sinkholes. And those other things still exist, so just because they are not happening to me, they still happen, and there are animals that are affected by them and animals don’t understand what is happening and then they get scared and hurt and don’t know what to do. I am no less afraid of these things, knowing I live in Ohio, than I was before.
Another therapist said some really profound things about the way I dealt/am dealing with the death of my best friend, Catharine. She gave me ways to “let go” and “move on”, but ultimately, I don’t want to. So what good did that do? My stubbornness prevented it from working the way it should.
I did have EMDR therapy, which was life saving, and also really weird. If you don’t know what it is, it involves literally moving your eyes back and forth really fast – and other things, too, but it’s the eye thing that is weird. I had the mental image of finding Catharine dead on replay in my head, and I couldn’t make it stop, and that made it stop.
All this is to say – after two years (more than two years) of not really leaving my house because of Covid, not going in the office, not socializing – I have gone backwards in my ability to “mask” in public. Autism in me comes out in a variety of ways. Sensory stuff is huge – noises, people talking at the same time, background music while people are talking, being crowded, being too hot or too cold – all of those things provoke very strong reactions in me. I know NO ONE likes those things, but when I say it affects me, I mean that not only can I generally not function in those circumstances, but I often have physical reactions that I can’t control. Rocking back and forth, punching my arms out, banging my fists on things in a “drumming” manner (not a violent manner), and literally losing the ability to speak full sentences. People think I am being dramatic, or exaggerating, or trying to get attention – and that’s fair, because this didn’t happen (as much) prior to all of this isolation stuff. People at work knew I had my moments of rocking, or I’d have to walk away from things – but I was able to “mask” extremely well to the point that I appeared to just be a little sensitive to things.
I thought maybe I should find a therapist who specializes in these things and maybe start working on the ability to mask again – though I have to say, the energy it takes to do that is SOUL SUCKING. I did not realize how exhausting it was until I didn’t have to do it. So I found this therapy group nearby and I emailed them and didn’t get a response. So I emailed again and didn’t get a response. It would make sense to call at this point, but we’ll see how that goes. I also think I am darn close to being one of those people who never leaves their house – but I will still go see theater and Joshua Bell, so I am not there yet.
And that is just ONE aspect of things I need to get back to masking, there are SO many more.
The whole point of this is that it is really hard to find a therapist. That was it, that was the whole point.
If I could wear noise cancelling headphones, pet soft things, watch my various sensory lights and bubble tubes, and just rock back and forth all day, that would be the career I’d like to choose. And I love my job, so that’s saying a lot.