u/Easy-Opposite-153

I'm in my 20's, and came off my SSRI's recently because I was feeling too emotionally distant from everything, but now I just feel WAY too deep in everything that happens to me. I thought because things were going well, I could come off them for a bit and see how it was going, but I've almost immediately fucked up all my progress again. What I thought was actual emotional progress seems to just have been the medication protecting me, and I'm just the same as I was before. Almost like a bolt of lightning, I got hit with the impulse to do some ED stuff, that I haven't done in over 3 years now, and I've just felt really disgusted with myself and my body all of a sudden, all at once. I've started drinking hard again, just getting blackout drunk to feel something, and I got so drunk the other day that I was being all friendly with this guy and then he started running his hands on me in a kind of gropey way, but not SA or anything just made me uncomfortable, and moreso when I left I just started spinning out about it, and some stuff that happened in the past, and felt like I wanted to hurt myself for the first time in years. Then, I'd been having that in the back of my mind, and trying to just drown out the thoughts by listening to music, and I was busy at work, and I was trying to avoid people a bit because I was feeling on edge, and my mom was pestering me (rightly) to take the vitamins I was prescribed for my deficiencies, and I shouted at her really loud and meanly, for the first time in about a year or more. I feel really terrible about that. I wish I could take it back, it wasn't anything cruel just very loud and uncalled for, I feel like I've undone the relationship we have now, because I used to shout at her all the time a couple years ago when I was in a really bad place, and then I went on medication and it just calmed me down and I stopped shouting, and I felt like a better person and we were close for the first time since I was a kid. Now I feel like I've ruined all that, and I'm just a really terrible person behind the meds, like this is the real me and I'm just like my father, just like my natural way is to be abusive and hurt the people around me. Even if I go back on the meds, I feel like it's just this terrible person hiding behind them, like if I go off them again, I'm always going to just be this aggressive person who ruins peoples lives.

I am in my 20's and fully verbal but for my assessment we used module 3, which I was not expecting. I suspect this is because I have no experience with relationships and equally do not have to deal with many "adult" experiences like a full time job or romance. Though it may be because my communication, although I am very verbal, it was noted that I struggle to express thoughts and overall struggle to converse a lot. It's crazy because I scored almost 3 times over the cutoff point for autism, and was rated the maximum of 10/10 for severity of autism in conversation, while being completely independent and mostly unaffected in terms of daily life skills. Which I think is a wild combination, being "severely autistic" in conversation, while being fully independent and self reliant and also able to hold down jobs and function very well in academics.

That being said, my level of communication verbally is apparently extremely below my language ability. I can't express thoughts clearly, I stop abruptly in conversation, I interupt, my tone and volume are uncontrolled, I can't do back-and-forth, and I monologue, I absolutely hate eye contact, and I can't really show emotions physically, such as with my face. AND THAT'S ME TRYING! That was my best effort at engaging with the assessor, and I got 10/10 severity. When I don't have time to mentally prepare beforehand, I mostly just end up answering yes/no, or I automatically say stuff that just communicates I don't want to be talking, like saying "anyway..." "okay.." when I KNOW I shouldn't do that, but when I'm caught off-guard it's like I don't have time to transform back into "human-mode" i'm usually too locked in thinking about something else. Even when I am in social-mode and I'm really trying, I just end up staring at people and not knowing what to say, I creep people out but I can't really help it unless I avoid people, my brain has a hard time applying what I've learned I "should do" to real-world situations, and I usually just end up silent not being able to meld into the crowd of other people. In one-on-one it's better, but apparently it's still obvious I don't know what I'm doing, because everyone always asks am I autistic, when I trying my best to appear all receptive and social. It's actually difficult to express how basic my social skills are for someone who is doing so well otherwise, because usually when I meet other autistic people their support needs and social skills line up pretty closely, while mine are just exaggerated opposite ways.

I struggle with doing assignments and studying, mostly because I struggle to stay still in one place so the whole "just study for 10 mins and you'll get into it" advice doesn't really work for me. Also, I'm autistic so when I'm supposed to be studying I'm always thinking about reptiles instead, and mostly about how I'd prefer to be researching about reptiles instead of studying something else.

A solution I came up with, hear me out, is that I have a collection of sticker books and activity and colouring books containing reptiles, and when I get a task done, or do certain minutes of study, I get to do an activity in one of those books. I'm embarassed about this, as someone in my 20's and a very independent person, because they're obviously mostly made for children. I hide the books when people visit my place, because it feels to be a grown ass adult and just have a bunch of kids sticker books in my house. The thing is, it works and has made it a bit more motivating for me to study. In a sense, I have Pavlov's dog -ed myself.

It seems like something someone would use for a child, but I've tried the more common rewards like buying myself a treat and stuff, but those things are so much "bigger picture" stuff, and the reward is delayed so much, that it doesn't feel all that connected to the studying itself, so I didn't have that positive association with studying before.

Just wondering if anyone else does something similar, or am I the only one?

I'm 20. Was diagnosed with autism. I'm not gonna take these answers and run with it dw, if I'm serious about this I'll go to a medical professional, I'm just wondering what people living with tics think is happening.

When I was 14, I suddenly had really bad anxiety, a lot of things contributed. One of the biggest things was that I had very intrusive thoughts about what I thought people were thinking about me in the moment. It was made worse by this thing I had where sometimes, for no reason and no control, I'd just wink 😉 really obviously at someone. A lot of the time teachers. Made the anxiety so much worse bc I had people confront me about it, and I was worried about people thinking I was doing it on purpose in a creepy way.

I still have this, the anxiety has gotten better, but I still do it all the time and it makes me self concious. It's not an autism stim, because I've tried hard to stop it and it happens randomly, but it's weird because I don't do it when I'm alone?

I have the same thing, started around the same age, where my neck flicks to the side, but that doesn't make me as nervous. It's obvious, but people just assume I'm having neck pain.

I thought it was just anxiety, described it to therapists actually and they didn't really comment. Maybe it is, but as far as my research goes I don't think it's a very common thing?

I have a similar final thing also where my knee jerks up, (actually the same with my fingers) and this is the only one I have in private. All started around the same age, and bullies did mention it, but they had their choice of things to pick out, so I didn't think about it hugely until recently when my anxiety has started to die down a bit, but I still have all these movements.

Just wanted to hear your thoughts, I know this isn't medical advice. Just, the winking thing especially, I've never heard of anyone else actually doing that.