Riding a wave

[Catcakes]

@Phoenix_Rising, Thankyou so much for your courage and generosity in sharing the details of your session with TTT. Not only is it heartwarming to read how good TTT is at calming you, it also might give other Forum people hope that there are therapists out there who understand complex trauma and will work with sufferers.
👍🏻🌿

[Former-Member]

Oh, @Phoenix_Rising, what an amazing day for you. I am so extraordinarily happy for you. TTT sounds like the most wonderful therapist. Cloning sounds like a good idea or maybe she can train others for the rest of us ... 

Wonky words are indeed better than no words. How brave of you to persevere. That superly calm, non changing voice is soooo important in such situations. so rarely does one find it. 

Wonder of wonders - homework! One of my therapists- she wasn't CBT more Jungian Eclectic - handed me homework as I was about to walk out the door ( I liked her, but she's moved away) That was interesting, the very first printed image on the top page triggered a total breakdown right there. She ever so calmly took the pages out of my hands and sat me down talking calmly all the while. Took awhile but we uncovered something previously hidden. I wish she was still here. 

Your homework sounds so much different and so engaging. 

Super - Everytime you use that word it makes me smile.

I did used to use it quite a lot, people would make fun of me, 'cos me = old lady and old fashioned and stuff, so I dropped the use of it, i guess you've helped bring it back.  I use super duper a fair bit too. it's the lightheartedness of it I think.  

Off to yummy foods right now. 

[Phoenix_Rising]

@Catcakes thank you for saying that. Yep, the reason I share my TTT adventures is precisely for the reason you said - to give others hope that there ARE good therapists out there...they are just agonizingly few and far between, and sadly, we end up getting retraumatized a whole lot as we go through all the bad ones to find that one good one. 

It saddens me that there are so many people here in Forum Land who never seem to move beyond learning "coping strategies." Trauma CAN be healed - even really really really icky trauma. We can never make it not have happened, but we can stop it impacting on our day to day lives. I recognise that my own muddle is complicated by my aspieness and thus I'm always going to be in a bit of a muddle. But I do believe that the bits of my muddle that are due to the trauma can be healed...if I can just stop getting retraumatized for more then five minutes!!!!!! 

TTT mentioned the other day that the DBT skills are just the beginning. It saddens me that so many therapists seem to think that they are the end. The DBT skills are awesome, but they don't actually HEAL anything. What they do is keep us alive long enough to get in and do the work of actually healing the muddles. I think it is so sad that so many therapists seem to think that learning those skills is the end goal. 

[Phoenix_Rising]

@Former-Member giggle. People make fun of me saying super too. I can't tell you how much that superly duperly doesn't bother me.  I picked it up from a Canadian woman. I have told her that it isn't a word we tend to use in Australia...at least, it wasn't, but via me she seems to have exported it from Canada to here. 

I super hope you enjoy your yummy food. 

[Phoenix_Rising]

@Jupiter are you watching the ocean tonight? 

[Catcakes]

It’s true @Phoenix_Rising that few people get beyond learning coping strategies. I would have to say that the therapist who helped me most had an amazing understanding of trauma (probably from lived experience) and she utilised many different therapeutic modalities.
But as you have expressed, a person suffering from complex trauma is so vulnerable and many have the wound that never heals.
(If you don’t mind me asking.....,)
What makes you think that is your aspie ness and not your BPD ness that makes people turn away from you?

[Faith-and-Hope]

Moving this here @Phoenix_Rising .....

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@Phoenix_Rising wrote:

Whispers back to @Faith-and-Hope: Yeah right, cos it's an awesome turtle that gets to be the first individual in the history of the Universe to be banned from calling the HC. Smiley Frustrated

________________________________________________________________________________

Question ..... do you know that for sure ?

I have another question, and I hope it’s okay to ask ..... please don’t answer if it’s uncomfortable for you.

Have you ever done communication skills training ?  You are clearly very skilled at written communication.  Perhaps studying communication principles, strategies, and formulas will help ..... knowing that structure works well for aspie structured thinking patterns .... ?  It’s a form of decoding I think.

If the thought does make any sense, perhaps it is something you can run by TTT ?

[Phoenix_Rising]

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@Catcakeswrote:

(If you don’t mind me asking.....,)
What makes you think that is your aspie ness and not your BPD ness that makes people turn away from you?

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@Catcakes I was diagnosed with BPD back in 1996. Consequently, everything about me was kind-of seen through that lens - and I'm sure you are aware of all the icky stigma that goes with the BPD label. 

After I had a major workplace incident, I realised that the BPD label didn't explain what happened that day - it was very much due to sensory overload. After that, all these little puzzle pieces started to fall into my lap until I became certain I had ASD. Then I went and paid for an expert to confirm what I already knew. 

One of my most commonly used phrases when I'm engaging with people is "I don't understand." This used to be met with responses like "of course you do, you're very intelligent, you're just playing dumb." Since I got the ASD diagnosis, people have been a little more patient when I say I don't understand, and it has become increasingly apparent that the reason I don't understand so much stuff is because of the very literal way that I use language. I seem to get into the most magnificant muddles because I have a totally different understanding of what people say to me, compared to what they THINK they said to me (and vice versa). 

It also seems to be becoming apparent that I process things in an atypical way. This seems to be a big part of the muddle I am currently in. Again, because the ASD wasn't picked up, my way of being in the world has always been labelled as me being difficult, argumentative etc. However, having now read quite a bit about ASD, it is painfully apparent that my way of being in the world is just different - not less. A lot of my emotion dysregulation is due to extreme frustration. It's like being plonked into a different country where you don't know the culture or the language. Trying to both understand others and make myself understood is infuriating - both for me and the other person.

I now know that there are a LOT of women out there who got missed being diagnosed with ASD and have spent their whole lives feeling like an outsider. Many women seem to realise they have ASD when their child gets diagnosed. ASD presents very differently in females. This is an Australian organisation that is focused on ASD in girls: https://www.yellowladybugs.com.au

Sorry, that all got REALLY long winded didn't it. The shorter version is that my way of using language and my way of processing information and of being in the world generally drives people nuts after they spend more than a short time with me. These quirks simply can't be explained by the BPD diagnosis. Most people really like me when they meet me...it's just after they get to know me a bit more that they realise they can't cope with being around me. 

I hope that helps. Feel free to ask anything else about it. 

[Phoenix_Rising]

@Faith-and-Hope Yes, I know for sure. That was part of the conversation yesterday.

And no, I've never done any communication skills training. This is part of my despair. I can very much see that if the ASD had been picked up earlier, I probably would have got that sort of support. It is certainly something that TTT and I will work on (amidst the other billion things we are trying to fit into 1 x 50 minute session / week). 

My uni counsellor (K) and I did a tiny bit of communication stuff, just as it related to communicating with my dissertation supervisor. This is one of the reasons why losing K was so hard - she could definitely have helped me much more in this area if we had had the opportunity to work together in that way. 

I would so very VERY badly like to be able to work more on this. This is why it's so crushing that people leave rather than helping me figure out what the heck I'm doing wrong. I know TTT will be able to help me with it but alas, there's really no one left in my world to practice communicating with...and I have no inclination at all to start over again with anyone else. Too much trauma, too much pain, too much hurt. 

[Catcakes]

Thanks @Phoenix_Rising for answering my question. In fact I have two close family members with ASD , both males and I haven’t read enough about how it presents differently in females (so I will do that). I find it really tragic that people like yourself slipped through the cracks but having been in the situation of screening young children, it is often extremely difficult to detect because many early signs can be missed. Also parents often don’t want there to be anything wrong with their children so they play down signs as typical family traits .
Thanks for the generous offer to ask anything, I may just do that.
You’re a wealth of knowledge and a very generous little turtle. 🌿👍🏻