[Continuing]

I never really thought of PTSD affecting normal people like me because its all about the troops and shit when people talk about it. I have been in denial with what was happening to me when people would relate their experiences of it in group about it. That is why I never really looked into it seriously before and did not internalized it when they told me before about it when I started the program.

Yeah, that’s understandable. I don’t know your story but one thing that has been useful for me with framing this sort of experience is recognising that because it’s something that has always been there in my life, or it’s something that feels that way, then it can be really hard to identify it because that’s just your baseline.

This famous bit by David Foster Wallace comes to mind.

I just assumed I was bipolar but my episodes are not psychotic in nature. The things happening to me are reactions to real events, and the emotions are rooted in my past, and my body shows it to people who can see these things in people I think. I am not really reliving the moments as much as I just get raw emotions that override anything I am feeling. I need to map my triggers now which is gonna take time because I have no idea what is doing it when I think back on situations like this. I need to be able to make it though a 60 min therapy session without using 30 of it to cry that is for sure. The meds they say will help stabilize me for that. I am just glad I was around people who could spot PTSD episodes and know how to deal with them.

Yeah this is really typical for what you have described.

It can be easy to think that staying up all night because you’re hyperfocused or the ADHD impulse purchasing is actually a symptom of (hypo)mania and stuff like that.

The emotional swings that come with being ADHD and having PTSD can really come off as bipolar-esque mood swings, especially because you aren’t necessarily able to identify how or why your mood just plummets or why you suddenly feel a surge of overwhelming aggression or whatever else bubbles up to the surface in response to what you experience.

I’m not saying that you aren’t bipolar, or that you are, but when it comes to complex and comorbid conditions like autism, ADHD, and PTSD together then it’s super important to approach this very carefully and to take inventory of all the assumptions and things that you might be taking for granted. Being very diligent and taking a scientific approach of “Observation > Hypothesis > Experiment > Collect Data & Analyse Results” to rule things in/out is extremely important imo.

I have a new thing for my list too and that is my silly ruminations I do on the type of events that happened at the PHP building. I will be up for 2-3 hours just ruminating on events and cant really stop unless I totally shut down the thing in me that wants to rehash shit. Like flat out saying out loud we are not going to talk about this. I hate it because it will toss things at me like comments from a peanut gallery. It stops me from sleeping and if I wake up getting back to sleep is impossible.

That does sound a lot like the intersection of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and being autistic, where you take hard knocks from the RSD and being autistic you just run into social rejection more often and you have the tendency to experience perseveration. On top of that I think that it’s common for autistic people to sort of decompress and analyse their interactions from the day or the week to scour it for any missed details or faux pas and similar stuff. This can also include determining how certain things made you feel in the moment as well. Part of this is a deeper aspect of masking imo but I think there are other facets to it as well.

If it’s causing you distress then yeah, use those strategies to manage it. But I also think that doing this can be fairly neutral too - I know that sometimes I’m experiencing a difficult emotion and I can’t pinpoint the what or the why but by replaying the events from the day I can glean insight and often things fall into place for me (e.g. upon reflection I suddenly realise that I have been carrying a lot of frustration because earlier in the day someone had misinterpreted what I was saying and so I can deconstruct that by reminding myself that I put a lot of effort into communicating, I was being clear in my communication at that point in time, and that I don’t need to take on the blame for them not listening or seeking clarification from me before jumping to conclusions.)

I think it depends on whether or not it’s “pathological”; is it causing you distress? Does it interfere with your ability to enjoy things? Does it serve a purpose? etc. etc.

One thing I have noticed is how much my body reacts to these episodes… I also have some other symptoms that are really allergy like that intensify after episodes. I get a sore throat where I can also feel some swelling that might be my uvula, I sweat a lot, I get itchy, and my nose goes all runny. Its like my body is attacking itself when episodes like this happen.

This is getting a bit into the weeds but autistic people are more likely to experience auto-immune diseases and similar. It’s pretty well known, although it’s not necessarily established in scientific literature, that chronic stress aggravates this stuff, and we know that autistic people experience really high levels of stress compared to their allistic counterparts.

I really want to get off this Abilify at one point but I think that might be years away. I live on my own and really do not have anyone that looks after me physically and so my place is a hoarders hell.

Experiencing serious trauma, experiencing executive dysfunction, neurodivergent burnout… these things are a recipe for hoarding. And that’s without even mentioning the socioeconomic factors because hoarding is very often a response to poverty or significant experiences of deprivation (e.g. childhood neglect, even if poverty itself wasn’t a factor) and neurodivergent people are so often overrepresented in poverty stats as well as often experiencing deprivation due to stuff like being too burnt out or too overwhelmed to make food so you just don’t end up eating, that sort of thing.

Once I clean up my life I was thinking about getting one those psychiatric service dogs. I have a friend who is a DID system and they have one that helps them with their problems. They do tasks for them so they can remain independent which is what I want to be. I know the dogs take years to train but I also have years to train myself on how my body actually deals with things.

Sounds like it would be a wonderful thing to have!

A service dog can be trained to respond to your emotional state and to alert you to it or to take actions to intervene (e.g. laying their body on your torso to provide deep pressure stimulation to help calm you down). It might be really handy to have a dog who helps you with identifying and managing this stuff rather than trying to do it all by yourself.

Thanks for listening to me again. It helps me a lot.

Any time! I hope that things improve for you.

(Also apologies for rambling and apologies if I have lectured you about stuff that you’re already aware of - my intention isn’t to make myself out to be some sort of expert who knows better than you do, I just try to resource people and often it’s sorta like dropping PSAs for other people who might be reading this and notice that certain things are resonating with their own experience.)