this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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Sorry if I implied I asked all those questions at once. It's more of a menu where I sometimes asked one or the other. My point was that they just communicated nothing once they broke down.
Alongside teaching them not to flood you with questions when you can't deal with them, remember to communicate what you can to them before you break down so that they don't feel helpless watching you break down without even being able to help or know what's going on.
As I answered in other comments, this happened mostly before my SO got diagnosed and didn't know how to deal with it, now with therapy we both deal better with it so I don't flood them and they don't leave me out of the loop of their needs and wants.
I'm perfectly capable of solving my own problems when I'm upset, I'm just not capable of communicating unless the stakes are serious. If the problem is a person, then I can dissociate and deal with the person as a threat while neglecting my own feelings. It's toxic, but it gets the job done even when I want to go nonverbal. But I don't want to treat my girlfriend like a threat and dissociate with her. That's not right. And when she's asking questions while I'm upset, the only way to answer them is to dissociate.
That's the thing, communicating stuff before you become upset. For example, my SO used to come from work exausted and used to lie down in the sofa, slept until night, then maybe grabbed some dinner or just slept straight until the next morning. Sometimes we didn't speak at all in 2 to 3 days because they woke up earlier than me, they then went to work in a hurry, no talking in work because work takes 200% of focus, and then come back home to their date with the sofa, and end up sleeping again before I finish my work.
Now we chat about our day at lunch even if we are not together and they vent about it whenever they can so that when they come back, I can make some time for them, and they also manage work stress way better than before so they don't come back utterly exhausted every day. Learning that they could not work in the field they were working and live to tell the tale and taking the time to change fields with my support helped a lot too. The situation mentioned above was before they were diagnosed and they just bruteforced the workday in a super toxic way for them and those around them (me).
Why not just say what's on your mind? Why disassociate instead of just chatting about it? How does disassociating deal with a thing instead of just postponing the issue until it's talked about and your feelings are therefore addressed?
In those situations processing emotions, let alone finding the words to describe them, can be as difficult as imagining a new colour. It's just not going to happen and trying to get them to open up will just build frustration/anger/anguish as they are unable to mentally deal with either their emotions or the questions.
Because I'm literally on the edge of going nonverbal unless I dissociate. It's called having a disability. Autism, to be precise. I can't "just chat about it" any more than I can "just run a marathon" or "just beat up a mugger". There's people in the world who can do all three of those things, but they aren't me.
I just want to understand the mechanics of it, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come off as telling a blind man to just see 😅
Like for example, what is non-verbal? How does that occur?
Nonverbal is when the cognitive effort required to form words into sentences is too much to bear. Conversation is effortful even for neurotypicals at the best of times. Have you ever had a thrilling 3 hour conversation about philosophy with a friend and felt exhausted afterwards? For autistic people, the baseline effort is higher, and complicating factors are worse . Which topics are a minefield? What are the other person's triggers? What idioms don't mean what they seem to mean? How much introspection do I need to do to answer a simple 'how are you'? Why does everything sound so loud? Do I have to answer questions right now? What's the answer? How do I find out???
When I'm having a meltdown, there is nothing left in the tank that I can remove without compromising my ability to do things like "exist in the presence of light bulbs" or "not be upset by the fact I have hair". I can either go to the effort of finding answers for my girlfriend when I'm exhausted, or I can just barely manage to not want to kill myself to escape the pressures of existence. Because every second of my life, the task of being okay with existing in the real world does take effort. Not much, but sometimes it's the only thing I have energy left to do. Sometimes I don't have the energy to do it.
That's rough. Is it possible to change the environment in some way so it bothers you less? I don't know anything about being autistic, but I used to live in a big city, eventually I couldn't stand it anymore, homeless tents next to upmarket fashion shops, bus drivers avoiding bus stops like the plague, the endless NPC tech demo ass crowds, the costs, the grey, the awful public transport, thugs, lads, beckys, chavs, tourists etc etc. I used to feel exhausted just literally being outside, any small thing would ruin my day utterly and completely and I would retreat to sleep, dreaming of watching it burn. Now I live elsewhere, and I'm much happier overall.
It got better when I moved from the suburbs to the city, but it's never going to be perfect. I like to focus on the parts I can control. I can't make the landlord install better sound insulation in the apartment walls, that's unreasonable. It should be a reasonable ask, but it isn't. But I can control how many questions my girlfriend asks when I'm having a meltdown.