Life is a constant attempt to overcome suffering, pain, confusion and misery. This sounds dark, but it is actually positive – I am trying to describe an attempt to overcome the darkness after all.
I was reflecting on events in my life and it dawned on me that the last four years have been particularly hard going. But in all of it I have been attempting to come up with endless strategies to overcome the hardships I suffer.
To understand here is a succinct resume of the period in question:
2019
In this year I actually had a kind of work situation I liked. I was working doing bank work for several companies – doing support work. I had one private client, who had been long-term and we were doing good things. I was happy. It was not sustainable though. One of the companies had a manager I really did not appreciate and the workload was becoming ridiculous (but then at other times I got no shifts at all). And still another company…I did not like their approach, but I liked their clients. The bank work fluctuates a lot and I wanted stability, so I was moving towards taking on private work solely.
The whole issue with work is way more than regular income, or something to occupy myself with. It is about having enough control of my life that I can manage myself, my inner self. In order to do that I need to be able to control my outer environment. And sometimes it is as basic as damage limitation – to be able to have a burnout under controls (that I control). Taking a contract gives me little control to no control – I have not come across an employer who respected my needs, who did not see me as essentially a paid slave.
On top of this I also want to have a say in my work. A huge amount of my time is spent analysing people and building up a profile. Over time I learn a lot about others needs and how I can help, how I can build a therapeutic relationship. I wanted control over that, I want to be able to use that information to help the other person. Very difficult to do under a third party managing the working relationship.
So, 2019 was the year of trying to break from contracts (previously I had worked full time in a contract situation). It was the year it wasn’t quite working, I realised it was a world built on sand and while it gave me the freedom of not being overly involved in work situation politics or under their total control, it made me an outsider and not of great importance to anyone – so I was not integral enough to be allowed sustainable income or influence. I needed to change that.
2020
Well…that was the year that overturned everything. Obviously the Covid period started and it wrecked my work situation. No one would allow for bank workers, the agencies basically closed (not that I like them or wanted them, outside of bringing some money in). I had only the one private client to continue with…so broke, stressed, worrying, anxious and in mental hell. My life structures disappeared overnight.
The atmosphere that came from people was overwhelming. I could not cope with the media. I haven’t watched live TV in years, nor radio or Internet news. The reason for this is to gain control over my emotional and mental state and not be led by unbalanced people. But I caught parts of various media in work situations. Then, given this period was so extreme and erratic, I had to keep an eye on Government decisions, so I had to dip in and learn what their plans and rules were for how I could live. But linking into such a domineering, psychotic institution did me a lot of harm. Essentially it led me into a lot of negative thinking, paranoia, and instability. I was living in high anxiety all the time with no rest or control.
Not long into this year I had to take a contracted job to bring in a pay cheque. It was with a company I knew well…but did not agree with in its approach to supported living, or any care work. I sacrificed my principles to pay the bills. It was a big sacrifice.
2021
This year is quite a blur. I just worked the year away in my contract. The Government continued relentlessly to cause trauma. The future seemed very bleak. There was no sanity anywhere. No help.
2022
The ridiculous rules and working conditions at the company became too much. For months I felt the inner tension building, I knew I was about to break. And I did. I went sick for a month around Feb with anxiety and depression. I then resigned. The next month my time with my private client ended, he no longer wanted or needed support. Success! Six years of work ended, it was difficult to transition from this.
I had by this time savings and two clients adding up to about five hours work a week, and one ad hoc client you never knew what the hours were, or were not, going to be. But I had burnt out and went into an extended meltdown period. I could not cope with more work, though I had to try to bring in bill money. It was a bad idea. Thankfully I had some savings, so these helped me not need full time hours. But savings only last so long. I had to take agency work.
For me agency work is so ad hoc, so out of my control that I cannot imagine anything more stressful. You have control in accepting the work…but the work itself tends to be difficult for me. It can be Support Work situations, which in all cases are hard line cases where others do not want to work – violent and very awkward clients is the norm. I do not like ‘care’ work, which usually is focused on physical needs only and for short visits. In all this there is very little regularity, or input…it just does not rest well with my needs.
I had intermittent stress from agency, stress from no regular income, stress from Covid information, stress from just so many changes. In response I did a huge amount of hiking locally. I walked miles and miles to wear myself out, and found it helped me mentally a great deal. The instinct is to eradicate the stress factors by either hiding from them or attacking them full on…but in this situation I could do neither. I just had no money to hide in anything, or distract myself to the degree necessary. Walking was the only thing left and I found it did the trick really well.
Most of the year I just could not take on much work. I easily became overwhelmed. My emotions were very sensitized. The stamina just was not there. It was a period of laying low, not stimulating myself in any way, and not facing much mental work. The walking used the nervous energy and kept me exhausted enough to rest and not think to my usual degree. I am often my worse enemy because I use my energy to feed my weaknesses – overthinking, pushing myself and so on.
2023
This is the year just about every major appliance collapsed and needed replacing. Yet I was trying to keep to private clients, keep self-employed to give me control in money, hours, contact with humans (only the ones I knew well). Eradicate chaos and the new…
…It did not work. I was only working part time, so those expenses nearly killed me. They included a new car I could not afford, but had no choice but to buy. A new car in itself was traumatic.
My clients were not settled. Some massive journeys enfolded for both them and me. It was hard to impossible to regulate the hours and income.
This was also the year I discovered I was Autistic. In itself a massive journey and change in perception. I found out through getting involved in Autistic peer support. It was interesting to see this community, and it obviously introduced me to the idea I was Autistic. It was very traumatic though. Peer support only works if those peers are very humble, mature in understanding their weakness, their strengths, and having a means of regulating themselves. Otherwise they will most certainly be unbalanced and the negatives will easily outweigh the positives.
My experience was of a peer system that had created a very distinct ghetto for itself. There were Autistics who put themselves on a kind of throne of power, with their special gifts and abilities, one of which I was constantly reminded was they couldn’t lie. And this community was verses the ‘normies’ who were all liars and deceivers and dangerous to ‘Auties’. I do not like ghettos and I do not want to be in one. Neither do I agree that Autistics are versus non-Autistics. This peer system was a system of control and they tried to control me and manipulate my work situation as well as my personal life. So that caused a meltdown. But I am wise enough to recognise danger and I got out of it pretty quickly and learnt my lessons.
I plunged for taking a private assessment, and went in for that. That was no small feat as it involved revealing a lot of personal issues. The ‘mask’, or act, I had been keeping up for most of my life was very difficult to peal back and not use as a prop. Facing up to my real underlying issues was emotionally exhausting, it is never easy to be confrontational with yourself. Not that I was challenging anything, but just looking at the raw self and accepting – that is a huge thing to do.
Immediately after that I had my biological family pop up and tell me I had to collect my things so long stranded at my parents. Due to a rift with my father I had not been allowed to collect my personal items from their house, and they had been there many, many years. These were books from a rather huge library I had built up. They were mostly on subjects still of relevance to me. There were specific books in that collection I really wanted so I could carry on researching and perhaps writing on. It is never easy to have family contact as those ‘family’ years were not happy and they ended in drama. Just travelling to pick up my things was emotional…but it was at a low point for me anyway, and I had to make room for the travel and unpacking amongst a busy weekly schedule anyway. The days I would be recovering were no longer for recovering in other words. Then I noticed my books…well, they were not all there. I found out many of the very books and research articles and notes (which I wanted to continue working with) I had built up had been thrown in the skip, that only some of my library was saved and much had actually been thrown in the recycling centre. Excuses were made, but not being consulted on this, then asked to pick up the items they did not throw away…it was just one disrespectful move after another by those who, to me, should be the very ones who love you – but in reality do not.
After that I thought things must be ready to slow down…and I wanted to build on this Autism discovery and through it perhaps build a more specialist, but stable, life for myself…so I got some advice and I was told a degree specific to Autism would certainly help, that I should get myself known by writing about my life, and set up a group. So I set out on that plan.
I signed up for a degree, a Masters, distance learning over 3 years. First problem with that was I discovered I could not claim the Gov student loan due to a technicality with the courses length. So I had signed up and committed to pay for it myself by accident, and I wasn’t exactly overflowing with money.
Then I had a problem with client income and losing one. I had to scramble to find a new client and sorting out my income…and that was hard going. In itself that is a whole article and more of searching, knowing what to look for, interviewing, deciding who to take, and then settling in…chaos for me internally. Constantly above all this is endless fear regarding money, bills, everything.
As that went on I got flu, and that knocked me back a month and affected me emotionally, as it always does. Meanwhile I had to cancel interviews and give up on the idea of getting the income sorted quickly (panic!), but also trying to settle into the Masters.
It is hard because the Masters is done on videocall, and that for me is big time stress…but also trying to focus on the research and formulate a plan for the assignment when I feel I have a huge amount of things whizzing around me and pestering day and night: income, new client, dealing with old clients, dealing with my own self discovery and pushing to set up those things I hope will lead to better work conditions and opportunities for myself…and just settling down after a long period of utter chaos and bedlam.
So that is where I find myself right now. Christmas is coming up and I want nothing to do with it to be honest. I am so exhausted, overwhelmed and just had enough of life. I survive on wanting 2024 to be a year of ‘retreat’, that is recovery is peace, harmony, and silence. I doubt I will allow that to happen, but that thought gives me happiness.
How my instinctive responses, my thinking and overthinking, my choices and motivations…how they all combined to create what I chose to do is my next article. Underlying this chaos and mayhem I do believe is a subconscious desire to recreate my life. I do believe my environment, the world around me, was responding to my deep dissatisfaction. I do also believe that I forced myself into a situation where I had to find the answer to what was wrong, why I could never feel happy or balanced – and that was in confronting the fact that I am Autistic. I can say my present perspective is that these years of hell are my own creation, not just things happening to me, and I want to next unravel how I did end up creating all this mess, and see if it is a mess or just a process that needs interpreting.
Nigel, the Autistic Companion 