Simon and I have been talking about emotions, and how we regulate them. It also seems that we have some things in common as far as being stuck in our head, thought spirals whirling about and going in some suboptimal directions. Our dumb lizard brains tend to go toward the fear and anxiety stuff, I suppose as a means of staying alive, despite there being far fewer threats to our persistence compared to hundreds of years ago. Why can't our minds go to puppies and rainbows?
I worry about that for him, because he hasn't had the experience of developing decades of coping strategies or self-regulation. I also know how not self-aware I was for a long time. And if there's one "advantage" that I had it was not knowing about my autism diagnosis. A lot has been written about that lately, because it's a double-edged sword. On one hand, you go through a significant portion of life thinking that you just suck at some things, with all of the self-loathing that comes with that, but on the other hand, you have the diagnosis and just kind of feel broken, with all of the self-loathing that comes with that. There's no winning either way.
The other thing that we may have in common is that we often feel like the world is against us. For me, I complained about it a lot when I was younger, but was mostly able to channel that into determination that led me to success in my field (before I decided it was shitty and changed careers). Simon is not there at all. He immediately deflects every challenge to others, rarely acknowledging that some of it might be him. I think I might be reaching him on that, but it's tough to walk the line of not invalidating his feelings and still holding him accountable.
I hate that I kind of frame everything about Simon's way of thinking to my own, but it's the only reference that I've got. The more time I spend talking to him, the more I get these little glimmers of hope that I can help him. It's hard at that age though to be most concerned with the present, because the past and future seem so important. Heck, it's not easy at my age! But living in your head all of the time is exhausting.
No comments yet.