I'm Not Okay: Mental Health and Neurodivergence

June 03, 2024

I'm Not Okay: Mental Health and Neurodivergence

First, a small confession. I have mental health issues. Specifically I have anxiety and depression, which puts me in the same bracket as about 25% of the population of the United Kingdom and which is the most common co-morbidity for mental health issues. I take pills for it, and that does the job most of the time, though at times it becomes overwhelming. I'm lucky, I know, because there are far more terrible conditions to have and much worse things I could have, but at the same time its been a monkey on my back for most of my life.

I'm lucky, again, because I don't have any psychotic disorders. I'm lucky because I can function on a day to day basis and things aren't so bad I can't work. I'm lucky because I have a good network of people around me.

As far as I can tell, I developed these conditions before the age of ten, and that seems to be common. The World Health Organisation reports that around half mental health conditions start by the age of 14, and while you can be born with a predisposition towards mental health the chief cause is trauma. I don't want to go into the details of what prompted my own case, as that's personal, but it was a mixture of home and school life - and in the latter being bullied by both children and teachers. That was the school where I discovered how squeamish I can get - feeling like I wanted to puke when I emerged from a biology lesson. Sadly that set the tone for most of my schooling, though I suppose that was already in train from the time I got bullied for not watching He-Man. Children, I'm afraid, are cruel little shits much of the time, and diversity isn't something they really seem to appreciate - at least during the 1980s. Perhaps that's a result of narrow horizons, and having a limited view of the world? I don't know, only that it did a lot of add to my mistrust of other human beings.

I feel like I spent most of my early life angry, and was castigated for it because "anger is childish", rather than "anger is a sign that something is wrong", and I now attribute that fury to the depression - as that word doesn't mean you feel flat or without energy all the time. It can manifest in a number of negative ways. As I say, there were problems at school and problems at home and precious little to build a positive self image with. I grew to isolate myself, because being alone was safer than being with people, and fled into worlds of fantasy and imagination. I wasn't diagnosed, and honestly for a long time I just thought hating myself and having no self esteem was normal - in fact I welcomed it because every time I got an ounce of confidence, something would knock me back down again. Rock bottom and a lack of self belief, living through fantasy (even if that fantasy often involved being transported to another world and being a werepanther) was much safer than... trying I suppose. After all, I'd been told I was unlikeable at almost every step of my life up to that point, why shouldn't I "lie down and rot" as I believe the young people put it.

It felt as if I was too strange for the town and house I grew up in, and I spent a lot of time desperate to escape. It felt, often, like it was that or do something stupid. Looking at the circumstances of my childhood, I sometimes wonder why I never felt suicidal - perhaps the escape into comics and books was enough help with that, and even without friends I didn't ever feel desperate enough to try. My "oddness" was of the "detached from almost everything popular and happily mining through things related to dragons, wizards, and superheroes (at that point, superheroes - especially the X-Men - were something I found exciting, rather than rolling my eyes at the same plots being trotted out once again. Sorry, a mild hobby horse of mine now that I'm a few decades older). My life was in these "childish" pursuits, rather than the stories that someone, somewhere, had decreed to be "grown up"

Needless to say, once I could get out into a different part of the world, things changed. A good friend at university basically jailbroke me with hugs and showing how much she liked me (not in a sexual way but as a friend) while another person taught me how to at least do a bit of kissing, even if things never amounted to more than that between us. A new me began to blossom, but the roots of that me were the same, and confidence and self esteem still struggled to take root. Despite my friends, I never thought anyone would be interested in me, and the things I'd been through left me with quite a warped idea of my own self worth. I spent a lot of time longing for a strong woman who would somehow elevate me to a worthy status... which shows how little I knew about women back then (and I'm hardly a huge authority on humans even now). I dreamt, I suppose of absolution, little realising the only person who could provide that was myself.

Life happened, eventually I found a girlfriend and after a long time we got married. Unfortunately, I feel like the old adage about being you pick what you're familiar with rather than what will make you happy applied and now that my ex-wife and I have parted company and I'm in therapy, I still have days where I wish I'd sought help earlier.

Anyway, that's one side of my story. The other side, I'm only just discovering.

I didn't know much about neurodiversity back then. I don't suppose anyone did. I remember the teachers at Emscote Lawn (the posh school in Warwick my parents sent me to after I left the place where the teachers were bullying me) where they thought I was dyslexic on the account of my handwriting (charitably referred to being like a "crippled spider spinning a web" by one teacher at secondary school). I've never considered myself to have that condition, because reading has never been an issue for me. Instead, the question I've been haunted by is whether I'm autistic.

In part that's because I remember my parents having a Persian rug and when I looked at it I would go around the edge, mentally linking design with design. I don't know why, but it was peaceful to make the patterns and build links between them, zig zagging around the carpet. The only other thing I remember about it was that my Mum insisted on sticking the tassels to the rug's underside to prevent the cat from playing with it, so you can tell how significant it was. Other things slotted into place, where I was conscious of liking science fiction and fantasy - which are genres very popular with autistic people. That and the... oddness that's always seemed to surround me. I've always struggled with fitting in and the idea of being around lots of people is one I'm not particularly fond of. In the last few years I'd felt like a changeling, or an alien, caught in a world where everyone else seemed to be concerned with things that I simply didn't care about. While everyone else was talking about schools, cars, DIY, and television, I was busy with dreams, fantasy, history, and things like that. I watched as people defined "adult" and "adulting" in terms that were only about paying their bills and never about growing as individuals or finding what gave them joy... and now I wonder if that's part of the neurodivergent experience?

When I started therapy, I mentioned it - not as a huge concern, but as a thing that had been floating at the back of my mind... A way to explain why I was the way I was and it wasn't long - a few months at most - before my therapist said "you know the idea you might be autistic..." and I completely freaked out. Bringing it closer, I had a sudden fear that the horrors of my childhood were justified and I'd brought all of it on myself. I rejected the idea, but once out of the bottle, the genie wasn't going away. I noticed, after a meeting with some colleagues, how everyone else was saying one person was upset... and I hadn't picked up on it at all.

With the possibility living in my head more than ever, I started reading books and watching YouTube videos - and learned that a couple of people at work were also following the same journey. By the end of last year, I was pretty sure in my own mind that I am autistic and that its part of who I am. Fortunately, that arrived at a point where I was far more accepting of myself and my "oddness". I'm now waiting for an assessment - though I also know that if I am autistic, then I'm low support needs. I can cope on my own.

In the meantime, I continue to learn and grow, and continue to find peace through knowledge. Pieces of knowledge click into place and make sense and while they don't prove that I am autistic, within that context, they make so much sense.