The GenX Autistic

Late discovered autism and ADHD, queer, polyam, Asian diaspora on Turtle Island

[thegenxautistic]

You don't need to fix yourself.

You need to fix your environment.

[thegenxautistic]

Autism and concepts of "work life balance" and burnout.

From Unmasking Autism by Dr. Devon Price:

"Autistic people don’t necessarily thrive in judiciously balanced days where rest, work, and play are parceled out in equal amounts. Some of us operate best on boom-and-bust cycles of intense hyperfocus followed by recuperation time.

I’ve had periods of my life where I’ve spent upwards of thirty hours per week writing and blogging, in addition to my day job, and found that pace incredibly exciting. Other times I’ve spent every free moment deep-reading random subreddits and blogs until my eyes felt like they were going to melt out of my skull. I loved every minute of it, and craved doing it again.

When I’m swept up in a special interest, I feel alive. The concepts of “work-life” balance and “burnout” just don’t always translate to Autistic people’s schedules in the ways neurotypicals might expect. I’ve gotten intense burnout from periods of my life where I worked relatively little but socialized a lot, for example.”

I quit the salaried 9-5 job lifestyle over 10 years ago. Going back into the workforce would solve a lot of financial problems, but every time I think of doing it, my heart fills with dread.

There's a part of me that says: "I need to embrace the truth, I'm simply not built for a 9-5. I can't do it, and if I could do it, I would have done it in the past 10 years. I should stop dreaming its a possibility and close that door so I can focus on something else."

There's also a part of me that says "Well, maybe I could finagle my way back into the workforce again, and maybe this time, because I'm learning to self-advocate, I won't burn out."

If I pause for a moment, I know the sustainable path is to lean into what makes me feel alive.

So perhaps the question isn't "Go back to 9-5 or not?".

Perhaps the question is "Am I excited about this? ".

Maybe the strategy is to pursue what makes me feel alive and excited. Maybe my interest and excitement is what will illuminate my life path. Maybe I can give myself permission to explore that.

I have definitely learned that using "shoulds" to illuminate my life path, might yield immediate results, but has never been a good long-term strategy.

[thegenxautistic]

From the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents:

Emotional loneliness is so distressing that a child who experiences it will do whatever is necessary to make some kind of connection with the parent. These children may learn to put other people’s needs first as the price of admission to a relationship.

Instead of expecting others to provide support or show interest in them, they may take on the role of helping others, convincing everyone that they have few emotional needs of their own. Unfortunately, this tends to create even more loneliness, since covering up your deepest needs prevents genuine connection with others.

Our early childhood experiences with our caregivers form are our formative experiences around relationship. They become the unconscious relational blueprints that we carry with us into adulthood. Before we become conscious of our internalized programming, we are like 3-D printers only capable of printing one thing.

Here are the unconscious imprints I've been carrying:

Core Imprint #1: "I need to be someone I am not, in order to have the possibility of connection." Origin story: Because my mother (the adult) failed at connecting to me (the child), I assumed the adult role of trying to connect to HER. I sense a seven year old child, confused and hurt. My mother was not able to connect to me, so in order to survive, I needed to become someone I am not. This was a valid and accurate response to a real survival threat. This was my origin story of autistic masking.

Core Imprint #2: "Even with all my efforts, I fail at connecting to others. Connection is not possible, and I am to blame. I am a FailedConnector" Origin story: As a child, no matter how hard I tried, I could not make my mother connect to me.

I know I carry these Core Imprint inside of me.

Even in "safe" environments:

I mask because I believe that I must become someone I am not.

I feel threatened by anything that looks like actual emotional closeness. I am uncomfortable with closeness.

[thegenxautistic]

Emotionally Immature Parents x Autistic Child: The collab no one asked for

From the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents:

Emotional loneliness is the predictable result of growing up without sufficient empathy from others.

Sufficient empathy. how that works for us autistics? How many of us actually received sufficient empathy in our childhoods? Are we receiving sufficient empathy now? I would guess the answer to both is "no".

Speaking from my own experience, I did not receive sufficient empathy as a child. My mother was unable to connect to me in the ways that I needed.

Why was my mother unable to connect to me?

Her unresolved and unaddressed trauma history. When an adult does not address their own trauma history, this is emotional immaturity.

Neurotype mis-match. As I am newly looking at autism, I also see that she did not know how to connect to my neurotype. And due to her own unresolved trauma, she was unable to do the work to learn how to connect.

As a child, I remember seeing the look of confusion on my mother's face. Like she didn't know what to do with me. Like she didn't understand how I played, or the intensity of my emotions. I remember being confused "Why doesn't my mother understand me?"

Sending love to that sweet 7 year old girl, who didn't understand why her mother couldn't seem to connect to her.

A reminder to me:

I was not responsible for learning my mother's NT neurotype. As the adult, she was responsible for learning my neurotype.

ND children are not responsible to become "more NT" in order for their parents can better understand them.

It is the responsibility of the parents to figure out ways to connect to their ND child.

It is the responsiblity of the parent to learn how to speak in the language the child understands. That way, when the child communicates in their natural language, the parents understands what they are saying.

If there is a neurotype mis-match between an adult and a child, it is the parents is responsible to fix that. Not the child. The child should be able to just happily exist as they are. The parent needs to stretch, not the child.

[thegenxautistic]

On Emotional Loneliness Part 2

Excerpt from the book: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, Or Self-Involved Parents

===

If one or both of your parents weren’t mature enough to give you emotional support, as a child you would have felt the effects of not having it, but you wouldn’t necessarily have known what was wrong. 

You might have thought that feeling empty and alone was your own private, strange experience, something that made you different from other people. 

As a child, you had no way of knowing that this hollow feeling is a normal, universal response to lacking adequate human companionship. 

“Emotional loneliness” is a term that suggests its own cure: being on the receiving end of another person’s sympathetic interest in what you’re feeling. 

This type of loneliness isn’t an odd or senseless feeling; it’s the predictable result of growing up without sufficient empathy from others. 

[thegenxautistic]

On Emotional Loneliness Part 1

Excerpt from the book: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, Or Self-Involved Parents

=====

Children have no way of identifying a lack of emotional intimacy in their relationship with a parent. It isn’t a concept they have. And it’s even less likely that they can understand that their parents are emotionally immature.

All they have is a gut feeling of emptiness, which is how a child experiences loneliness.

With a mature parent, the child’s remedy for loneliness is simply to go to the parent for affectionate connection. But if your parent was scared of deep feelings, you might have been left with an uneasy sense of shame for needing comforting.

When the children of emotionally immature parents grow up, the core emptiness remains, even if they have a superficially normal adult life.

Their loneliness can continue into adulthood if they unwittingly choose relationships that can’t give them enough emotional connection. They may go to school, work, marry, and raise children, but all the while they’ll still be haunted by that core sense of emotional isolation.

[thegenxautistic]

Masking and Parents Part 2

From my mother I never had these experiences in my childhood

I feel heard and understood by another.

I trust that if I share about a tender vulnerable topic, I will have the experience of deep listening.

If I’m feeling angry and express confusion or frustration, my mother knows how to soothe me.

I did not have those experiences.

My first memory of this lack, this ache, was seven years old.

I have a SenseImpression of feeling confused. I reached out to my mom, yet she didn’t reciprocate. She failed at showing up for me.

Parts

Parts that are coming up for me (using Internal Family Systems model)

That young 7 year old, who is very confused

Another part coming up is a very angry part. This part feel like maybe 13 years old. She just wants to rage and lash out.

[thegenxautistic]

Masking and Parents Part 1

I’ve recently realized that I mask around my mother. I’m in my mid 40s and looking back, I’ve been doing it pretty much my whole life.

I realized this last week, when I was dreading picking up the phone to call her. And I recognized the DreadFeeling. It’s a familiar feeling, its the feeling I get when I mask. My entire life, I've trained myself to push past the DreadFeeling, because I've always forced myself to mask.

But this time I stopped myself, and saw for the first time how much I've been creating a false persona for my mother.

When I talk to my mother I put on this bubbly gal-pal voice. Because that’s the only way she can receive me. It's a caricature of the Neurotypical Daughter she wants me to be. And she's always wanted this so badly, she's unable to see me for who I am. It's been this way since childhood.

Parts

Parts that are coming up for me (using Internal Family Systems model)

A part of me resents being forced to wear the FakeNice mask. Resentment, anger, dread all swollen together. A teen part. Firefighter.

A part of me dislikes the resentment part, because it’s so disruptive to my system to have such intense emotions. Manager.

A part of me feels a sense of obligation to show up for my mother in the way that she wants.

A part of me longs for authenticity.

[thegenxautistic]

Q: How can I socialize better with neurotypicals at a work function? 

What's been helpful for me is to critique my own internal criteria. I've realized I've been subconsciously judging myself using this mindset: "How can I convince/trick the NTs into accepting me as one of their own? It’s really important that I  smile and fake it, because otherwise they won't like and accept me. Then everyone will know that I am a social failure."

I am learning to replace this mindset with:

“I will never be an NT, these are not my people. I don’t need to try to fawn my way into getting NTs to accept me as one of their own. We are not built the same, we are simply not on the same wave length. Unscripted small talk with NTs does not bring me ease and joy. I find other forms of social connection much more easeful, enriching, enlivening, and inspiring. But in this moment, what sort of inter-species connection is possible? What would be enriching to me about this interaction? How would I accomplish that?”