Blue Monday

October was a fairly dark month for me. Not as dark as those before my first year at university; but still pretty grey. November too has felt the same so far. I know what depression feels like and I can safely say that I have been depressed at times during the last few months. Even at the best of times there is the feeling of a loss of control of the events that surround me. It’s hard to be optimistic in the current climate. The economy is still struggling but now it is really starting to hurt both my work and my parents. My one major insecurity in life is that I am totally reliant on my parents. I need them. They provide support to me, support that is vital to my mental health and stability. I can go from ‘happy as Larry’ to suicidal in a matter of hours. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does I need support. In these situations I won’t go so far as to actually kill myself, but I think about it and that in itself is distressing.

For a few months my parents have been fighting the bank, who are extorting vast sums of money from their business every month. Assets have been and continue to be sold in an effort to keep afloat. Legal action is being prepared against the bank, but legal help costs more money. It is a case that according to legal precedent they should win. The question is whether it will be too late. The whole thing casts a massive shadow of uncertainty over both their and my future.

Ordinarily I would throw myself into my work, but that business is struggling too. My hours have been drastically cut and I have agreed to take a massive pay cut in order to keep the firm above the red, as well as to safeguard my job.

I know how to deal with depression; I’ve been dealing with it since I was thirteen. I can cope with it. I’m not suicidal, so please do not worry about me. I just feel a lot of anxiety at the moment. I don’t like change and the potentially catastrophic changes that could occur are simply too much to think about. At times like this I fall back into the moment I’m in. I try to enjoy the little things in life, be it games, books and music. I’m also going to have to cut back on my twitter experiment. The anxiety that it sometimes causes is unhelpful when I am feeling vulnerable.

All in all not a very optimistic post, but an important one. Many aspies face a lifelong battle with depression. It is key that we learn to identify it, counter it and not let it ruin our lives.

Fear of the Future

I spend a lot of time thinking and planning, it’s just in my nature to. My favourite saying is “failure to prepare is a preparation to fail”. Being an Aspie with an intense fear/distrust of change, that saying has served me very well over the years. Change isn’t so hard to deal with when you have prepared for it. I was as mentally prepared for my grandpa’s death as I could have been. Granted, it still hurt, but it could have been worse. I had vast career plan when I left school many years ago, and whilst things didn’t go as I’d hoped, I did have a lot of backup plans, so I was prepared. Whenever I go out in my car I am prepared for most emergencies. I try and stockpile consumable products so that I will never suddenly run out (especially my favourite green tea - I’m British so that is not as ridiculous as it sounds). I have set in motion plans to deal with most of the predictable events in my life. I estimate that about 40% of my time spent thinking is devoted to planning. Less than half, you say; to which I would reply it is still the largest amount. Only 10% is spent reflecting on the past and 30% on the present. The other 10% is spent daydreaming utter nonsense, but hey, you’re allowed to have fun.

The older (and I hope wiser!) that I get, the more that I accept that I cannot predict and plan for every eventuality. I love the great Robert Burns’ poem ‘To a Mouse’, particularly the passage:

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

It acts as a useful mantra to limit my propensity to plan; a counterbalance if you will. There have been many times in the past where I have been metaphorically caught with my pants down. In a way that is a good thing as I always try to learn from my mistakes and vow never to make the same again. However, it also demonstrates to me that no matter what, the future is largely unpredictable, full of change and most of all inevitable. That translates to an Aspie as absolutely terrifying. My fixation with planning helps to lessen that, as does a certain degree of optimism; change can be a good thing. As long as that optimism is tempered by a healthy dose of realism, then you won’t be disappointed too much. I always say expect the worst, hope for the best. Even with all of these defence mechanisms I would still describe the future as my biggest fear. I fear what I cannot control. I can imagine that for most Aspies it is the same. We fear/dislike change and yet the only thing that never changes is that everything changes. The future is change. I guess what I’m trying to put across is that it is OK to fear the future; even NT’s do. I am able to cope with it through the development of the defence techniques listed above. Sure they’re not perfect, but I am still working on them and that is a reason for hope.