Today in "Hang on, is that an autism thing?"

[wildeabandon]

So I have a bit of a pattern, where something not great happens to me, and I think "Oh, that's not great, but it's not the end of the world", and if it's a thing someone else did to me I tend to reassure them that it's not a big deal, and generally look for as charitable an explanation for it as possible, and then I shrug and go on with my day.

And then a couple of hours or half a day later I realise that I'm feeling really fragile and miserable, and perseverating about what I could have done or said differently, and what I might say differently if I'm in a related situation in the future, and then I finally twig that the thing might not have been the end of the world but it's also not nothing and I am in fact pretty upset about it.

And some of the in-the-moment behaviours of minimising and reassuring probably stems from not wanting to cause a fuss, but I think mostly it's just down to a disconnect where my awareness of my own emotional reactions is somehow limited.

Does this sound familiar to any of you?

(Also, I would like sympathy please. Someone said something pretty hurtful earlier, and although it's not true, the weaker version of it that does have some truth in it is something that I'm painfully insecure about despite working really hard to build confidence in. And although I shrugged it off in the moment with a "Thank you for the robust feedback" that I genuinely meant at the time, I'm now feeling pretty miserable.)

Comments

[doseybat]

Except if the thing made me angry - then I often do not realise at all, or not until years later. Anger doesn't work properly. But sadness/hurt usually come through like you describe, with a delay of a couple of hours.

[halojedha]

Same. Sadness tends to be pretty quick for me but anger takes ages. Seconding what others have said about trauma.