Mental illness is more prevalent among people on the autism spectrum: roughly 40% present with some level of anxiety disorder at any time. For the majority of my life, it was mental illness that had the dominant effect on my life, to the extent I thought that was all there was to me at some stages.
The reasons for this fascinate me and I’ve spent many happy hours watching lectures and shows on the topic. On another occasion, I’ll happily talk your hind leg off about it. However, right now my purpose is different. I want to cover how complex and interlinked these issues can be and talk a little about my personal experience with both mental illness and potentially being on the autistic spectrum.
I’ve always – or at least as far as I can remember – been an anxious person, worried about what people think of me, about that thing I said, organising anything. To be honest, I’m anxious about pretty much anything that’s not 100% known. Even positive news, if containing significant unknowns, can leave me on edge for days. I don’t remember a specific point when someone flicked a switch and I became this anxious, worried beast I am now. I think it was a gradual progression into it and (spoilers) a gradual progression back out of it. I’d like to give you an idea of how it developed, so I invite you to take a brief tour through my formative years.
In my early years, I lived in West Germany on a British forces base, my family having moved out there shortly after I was born. The base functioned like a small community, where almost everyone I met knew me or my dad, who was teaching at the base school. Plus all but one of my classmates lived within a street or two of me – so I have nothing but happy memories of that period. However when I was seven, my family moved back to the UK. I left this supportive environment where I was surrounded by friendly faces and went to a new school and a scary estate where I knew no-one. Adding to that, my dad was working on the other side of the country so we only got to see him on weekends. I struggled to adapt to this new situation and it led to me becoming difficult to handle in the classroom.
Having good middle-class parents, both of whom were teachers, they saw my acting out as a sign of my vast intelligence and had me IQ tested. I scored well and, as a result, was accelerated and left primary school a year early. This didn’t solve my problems but it did change them. I was now even more different: smart, smaller, long hair and – most damning of all – ‘not from round ‘ere’ in a school where I had no real friends. Worst of all, I was being driven to school by the intimidating Mr Hall, the French language teacher at my new school. This only added to my notoriety.
I stuck out like a sore thumb and was, as a result, often the target of the local neanderthals. I mention this because, on reflection, it was my first experience of being overwhelmed by emotion. I started to have what with glorious 20:20 hindsight seems to have been meltdowns. I saw them as fighting back but the loss of control scared me hugely and I became quite withdrawn and distant to avoid becoming overwhelmed as I feared what I would do when out of control.
It’s also around this time that my anxiety started to manifest, but it was when joining high school some years later that my anxiety became a dominant force in my life and left me drained and extremely depressed. I felt out of my depth, unliked and unloved. I started to physically isolate myself from others which only exacerbated the issue. Although I was at first doing well at school, I started avoiding it – first to avoid people there and then gradually to avoid the consequences of my frequent absences. The loss of this one area of my life, in which I’d always excelled, further diminished my sense of self worth and left me with a feeling of utter helplessness. In that ‘black hole’, I felt so apart from the world and there was nothing to indicate to me that anybody cared that I existed. Ending the pain at that point seemed the only logical way to proceed. There was no more hope and I tried to end my life with an overdose of paracetamol. I survived (obviously) and aside from the oddity of me washing my own bedding, no-one knew anything at the time.
In a weird way, that was the best thing I’ve ever done. When I made that attempt, I set a touchpoint for low. Whenever I’m struggling now, I remind myself how wrong I was back then in that dark place when I thought I’d never be happy again. In the years since, I’ve had a number of occasions when I’ve been on the brink of ending it. Being able to look back at the evidence of my own experience and use it to quiet the nagging voice that ‘I’m not worth it’ has stopped me from falling over the edge.
Oddly enough, I never thought of getting help at the time. Instead I struggled on with my secret shame that I couldn’t cope with the world. I hope anyone else in that or similar situations would seek help. It was only when I became suicidal again at university that I finally got some help. Sadly, it was too little and my depressive episode was so all-consuming that I left my PhD unable to complete it with the state that I was in. My dad came and looked after me for that time. That was pivotal for me. Not only was the support great but he opened up to me that he also had depressive episodes – and I never felt quite as alone again.
When my father died a few years later, I went back into therapy and onto medication as I was struggling again, and it gave me the strength to carry that load and find new ways of belonging. Treatment became a regular feature of my life since then, but it then took me over a decade of therapy of varying forms to understand that my depression stemmed from a fear of people and the unknown. ‘Anxiety’, in a word. I also finally found cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and it chimed with my own methods of survival. I finally had external reassurance that a technique I’d often used – using evidence to break down unfounded worries – was mainstream or in some way normal. It enhanced my understanding and taught me to be more cognisant of positive things in the moment to help in that analysis.
I was having a particularly difficult patch a few years ago which led to me seeing many different counsellors and psychologists in a short period. More than one of them suggested that I was exhibiting many traits commonly associated with ASC (Autism Spectrum Condition) and the way I was presenting fitted with what’s termed ‘High Functioning Aspergers’*. The ‘high functioning’ means I’m one of the lucky ones in many ways. Like Mystique [from X Men], I can pass as a regular person and appear accepted by regular society, but inside, that feeling of being different is incredibly isolating. The classic ‘alone in a crowd’.
Exploring this possibility of me has helped me understand that many of my behaviours and difficulties are in line with facets of the condition. This discovery helped me be more accepting of them, which has been revolutionary for me. So now you have an idea of my past and the position I’m speaking from, but what’s my point? What have I learnt? And to answer the question my counsellor asked me, what would I like you to take away from this?
I’d like you to know that small gestures can mean the world to someone in a low spot. Even pre-counselling friends reaching out helped reassure me that I was actually liked. It wasn’t all down to me pursuing them. That means the world when you are feeling completely alone and has probably quite literally saved my life more than once. A little bit of kindness goes a long way. It can be as small as giving a little smile when you see someone you know or just saying ‘thank you’, but those little points could be being logged away by someone as signs of their own worth.
I’d like you to know that if you feel different, isolated and alone, you are far from the only one. There are others out there feeling – if not the exact same thing – at least very similar things. There is nothing wrong in being different. It’s trite but it’s true that the world would be a terrible place if everyone saw the world the same way. Human development has always relied on visionaries to twist common perceptions on their head and develop new forms of artistic expression or understanding of the world around us all. Your differences may make some things harder for you but they may also provide you with an insight someone else may be forever incapable of reaching.
I’d like you to know there is help out there, and amazingly some of it actually helps. I’ve taken a number of depression and anxiety medications. I’m on a course of escitalopram at the moment, as well as trying a number of different forms of non-pill based treatments: group sessions, 1-2-1s, CBT, psychotherapy and person-centered counselling. It took me a few attempts to find out what worked for me and I’m still on the journey. I hope that doesn’t sound disheartening, because I view it as in keeping with the principle of Kaizen: continuous improvement. As I learn more about myself, I can deal with the events of life in new ways and continually improve my quality of life. That’s an awesome and empowering sensation. I alone can make my life better.
In summary, seek to understand yourself and others and you’ll end up having a much more fulfilling productive life and help others do the same. It was through understanding myself that I’ve always unlocked new levels of achievements. I’ve given myself new tools to help me balance my life, appreciate and amplify my strengths, and recognise and reduce the impact of my weaknesses.
* It’s worth noting that the term high functioning is frowned upon as it creates the false impression that the spectrum is linear, in addition it reinforces the idea that matching neurotypical folk is high status.