Hello everyone,
Just thought I'd put a post to do a meet and greet. I've been aware of Beyond Blue for quite some time and sometimes I do read the forums but never really posted myself.
I'm a guy in my forties who is discovering his autism as part of my personality. It does lead me to info dump and go off on wild tangents but it's just who I am and how I process.
Four years ago, I suffered an extreme nervous breakdown, lost my job and lost my house that I had worked hard to save up for. I was unemployed for four years.
I've recently started work in a new workplace but my concerns are that with some of these thoughts and that is a similar work environment that a lot of this emotional trauma might come back seeking proper help.
I am going to seek therapy to address this.I'm also trying to find a place to acknowledge these things happened and accept that they weren't fair, and minimizing them is only being destructive.
I spend too much time trying to minimise my trauma and my physical disabilities. This doesn't really address the problem and it's probably what eventuated in me having my breakdown.
I have lived with severe eyesight problems, rare genetic conditions affecting puberty and causing repeated skin cancers, years of bullying and shame about my body, sexual boundary violations, domestic violence, and an assault that reopened facial surgery and left a permanent scar. I have also been closely affected by schizophrenia in both a former partner and my sister, who later died in a car accident during a relapse, as well as multiple family deaths, including my father and stepfather, and I am now facing the possible death of my brother-in-law. On top of that, I went through a painful long-distance relationship breakdown, a major nervous breakdown, loss of work, loss of income, and eventually the loss of my home.
I have spent years minimising all of this and telling myself other people have had it worse, but starting a new full-time job has brought much of it back to the surface.
I realise now that minimising won't fix this problem. It's time for me to grieve what happened with others but also seek help with someone who's trained to assist, which is why I'm looking for therapy. Sometimes it can feel like even though you're surrounded by friends and family you're so alone because you don't know anybody who can relate to what you're being through or you don't even know the first way of how to express it or you tell yourself I don't want to bother them with my problems and so you don't say much.
At least feel happy that I'm starting to realize that I need to address these issues and seek help because I think there's a lot of pain and anger and grief that I've just buried under a lot of pretentious pragmatism in the hope that I can just forget about it and get on with my life.
I am glad that the workplace I am in is not toxic and is actually quite friendly, and while I'm sure after my training's done the work is going to be a bit stressful it is so good to know that the people there are loving and caring. It will make my recovery so much easier to balance with work and life.
Thanks everybody, just wanted to say hi and I understand we've all been through our struggles and this is one of the places that we can seek privacy to talk about it without fear of repercussion.
