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River: Seeing the fnords
Over the last month or so I've realized that most of what I thought I knew about myself is simply wrong. That's unsettling. The most recent epiphany, as of yesterday, was realizing that much of my behavior is explained as avoidance of conflict rather than embarrassment.
(This seems to explain a lot: some of my hatred of sports, lack of competitiveness, inability to ask for things where I might have to argue for them, inability to talk with Colleen about finances and some other matters, excessive apologizing,... More on this later, perhaps.)
I've also realized that I still have no idea what most of my real problems are. I know that they're mostly a set of habits I've developed to avoid things I find painful: conflict, embarrassment, thinking about my (depressed) mood... I don't yet have the tools for identifying them, much less fixing them -- it's hard to see all the fnords.
OK, new tag: fnords.
Once I see one of these problems I can start thinking about how to fix it. Or deciding whether or when it's a problem: avoiding conflict is probably a good thing, much of the time. So is avoiding embarrassment. But sometimes they get in the way of other goals; I can't make an informed decision if the avoidance maneuver is so automatic that I don't have time to think about it. It's like a kid who automatically replies "no" to every question -- I remember being that kid once, when asked whether I wanted to go to the zoo. Oops. Probably lots of other times that I don't remember.
I have enough trouble trying to figure out what my mood even is. Discovered a couple of days ago that I can't always distinguish reliably between anxiety and depression, which ought to feel different somehow. And how do I tell whether my mood has gotten better than "just OK" when I don't have anything better to calibrate it against? How, for that matter, do I distinguish between what I actually feel and what I think I ought to be feeling given my analysis of the situation?
This has gotten disjointed, and appears to be turning into a mere list of "this is hard" complaints. It is hard, but I should probably stop now.
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And on a lighter note, now you've got me trying to come up with a "pining for the fnords" joke... (Overexposure to Monty Python at a tender age, donchaknow.)
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I'm guessing it takes practice to learn to perceive moods, so I'd suggest you keep trying and give yourself time. After all, if you'd never used your legs until the past year you'd expect to be kind of awkward and fumbling when it came to walking.
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Just keep in mind, though it may not feel good to identify all these problems, once identified you can do something--you can apply logic and your other skills to seek solutions and/or work-arounds.
As to depression and anxiety, from what you've said, anxiety may trigger you into depression all or most of the time. If it's all the time, you will continue to feel depression when you're anxious for some time, at least until you internalize that you don't have to feel depressed when anxious. Even if this isn't the case, right now most of the things you have reason to feel depressed about are perfectly good reasons to feel anxious, so right now the two may feel the same because you are feeling both at the same time about the same things.
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Um, when other people are playing the sports. I don't like playing competitive-against-other-people games of any sort. I'm OK with competing against a computer or against myself.
Inability to ask for things - OK, I'm wondering if this is playing into your dislike of making phone calls. Do you relate to the phrase "I don't want to be a bother?" That is part of my upbringing, and it's connected to my dislike of making phone calls. I consider a phone call potentially interrupting, even if I think I'm phoning someone who wants to talk to me.
Anxiety and depression are very strongly linked for me. I think what happens is that when I feel anxiety, my body tries to suppress the unpleasant physical sensations that go along with anxiety by shutting down as much activity as possible. Which is depression.
As for figuring out your mood, asking other people who know you well is one way to calibrate those things. Same goes for distinguishing between what you feel and what you "ought to" feel. Given the amount of stress in your life right now, I personally would consider it sufficient evidence that your AD is working if you can get through your day without meltdowns.
From here, which, mind, is not a particularly up-close vantage point, I see fewer reports of meltdowns and I see fewer really-unhappy-sounding posts and I see more thoughtful posts. And to me that looks like progress.
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I'm not sure whether lack of competitiveness is part of conflict avoidance or just peripherally related.
Inability to ask for things definitely plays into the phone phobia. I'm entirely with you on "don't want to be a bother". Bull's eye.
That sounds like a plausible connection between anxiety and depression. Makes sense.
I've always had a lot of trouble with people trying to tell me what I think or feel. They're usually horribly wrong, and I find it highly annoying. I'm not sure I could easily switch to asking for feedback when I have no reason to trust what I'm hearing.
As for estimating my own mood, yes, I can identify proxies like lack of meltdowns and occasionally laughing at things. But I don't seem to be able to actually feel it. It's still almost all analysis, after the fact. I don't seem to have any more evidence than you do. When I'm doing it I don't notice, and when I think about it later I often get worse.
I suppose that's because I've learned to associate thinking about my mood with feeling bad about it. Yet another feedback loop I don't know how to break out of.
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Yeah, I would hate that. That's not what I ask for when I ask for feedback from other people. I say "In your opinion, am I acting differently from usual?"
Most of the time I notice my mood changes before other people do, but on a few occasions they've said "Well, you have been acting crankier / saying negative stuff more often" or "...less often."
But I don't seem to be able to actually feel it.
What do you think you're supposed to be feeling?
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But as they pay attention, their brains learn how to use the input from their ears.
Likewise, as you pay attention, you will learn.
And if you're not sure what you're feeling, you can (if you want) describe it to someone and have them give you possible words. I've had the experience of someone asking what was bugging me, in the form of "are you feeling x?" and telling them "no, that's not right" but on thinking more about it, deciding that they were, at least partially, correct.
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I don't have any objective reality I can refer to. That makes it harder.
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In some people, this mirroring is weak; I'm guessing that is true for you. But you could try looking at yourself in the mirror while thinking about different things, and then compare your facial expression to the ones other people say are associated with different feelings. There may even be some book or other resource used to teach autistic kids these things that you might find helpful.
Of course, your innate facial and body language expression may not be standard, but it's nonetheless a place to start. And facial expression, posture, and the like, are at least objective, even if they are interpreted subjectively.
Like you noticing you slowed down when you thought about making a phone call--the depression was subjective (i.e. internally experienced--the chemical state of your brain is, of course, an objective reality, even though you have no way to put a sample in a test tube to determine what it was), but the slower walking was objective, and didn't take any special training or equipment to notice.
(Most people don't realize it, or perhaps don't like to think of it in cold scientific terms, but emotions are biochemical in nature.)
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"What do you think you're supposed to be feeling?" -- that's a pretty clear case of "if I could answer that question, it wouldn't be a problem." I think I ought to be feeling something. In other words, it ought to feel different from not feeling anything. It doesn't particularly, especially if I try to think about it.
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On the other hand, if I sit quietly and don't pursue any of the thoughts, I become aware of feelings. But they are kinda subtle -- unless something unusual is going on.
On the gripping hand, if "curiosity" is an emotion, I am feeling something most of the time.
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Another thought on depression and anxiety, besides those already expressed - sometimes, my anxiety manifests depression as a defense mechanism because the dropped energy/mood levels give me an out from doing what I'm anxious about - the depression hits as a defense against the thing that made me feel the anxiety. If you don't realize the anxiety's hitting and the depression comes up behind it, either as a defense mechanism or because anxiety is upsetting/depressing, it would be easy to think it was just depression you were feeling. (In my case, anxiety almost always manifests nasty tension cramps as well, so I have an advantage in spotting it. If you can call that an advantage. I'm not very appreciative of it when it happens, though.)
Maybe instead of trying to track 'mood' you should try to track 'energy levels' (mental as well as or more than physical) and 'avoidance of things'? Depression usually ties to lower energy levels, and anxiety will tend to cause avoidance of tasks tied to the anxiety (whether directly tied or indirectly).
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Good suggestion; I can probably track energy level, at least a little, though I'm often not even aware of it. Avoidance I can track if I notice it, but a lot is just staying away from situations where something I'm anxious about might happen.
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Instead of asking yourself, "How do I feel?", you might find it easier to answer "What am I thinking about?".
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Yes, that would be much easier: my thoughts are usually out where I can, as it were, think about them. I'm not sure it gets me the information I want, though.
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Paying attention to feelings would, I suppose, require me to stop reading the tape. That's something I don't have any recent practice in doing.
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It's a lot like the bumper sticker that says "if you can read this, you're too close", or a sticker on the bottom of a cup that says "you've been poisoned". It tells you that something happened that you didn't notice happening at the time, or ahead of time when you should have been paying attention.
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For me they so often happen at the same time, or lead into each other, that they blur. Just last night I was feeling too depressed to sleep, and my brain was going over and over unhappy thoughts. It took me over an hour to figure out the circle of depressing thoughts were actually all about fear. At which point I took an ativan and went to sleep.