ever have those days where you just want to cry and stay in bed?

[ChrisC1983]

i'm not looking or expecting sympathy and i don't believe the internet could help (even with all the good intentions here) i just need to make a rant. i used to do these on facebook now and then but with my family trolling my facebook i've lost that ability

anyway..... know that feeling where you just can't do anything. you have no support to boost yourself up (not in my family anyway), no ability to really "get out there" and do something you would enjoy (all of those things are outside the city for me.. or maybe museums and such but i'm broke and honestly the anxeity of just going to the subway to go into a crowded museum scares the heck of out me. once i'm there i'll be OK, i know that.. but that initial push is impossible)
i hate being alone and don't like to do anything alone.. but have nobody i want to be around or who would share an interest i'd want to do even if i wanted to be around them for it. typical money issues (i "work" per-se... full time, 7 days a week besides a couple days per month i run home but by then i'm so exhausted all i do is sleep and still kind of work. post online, answer questions, ebay stuff..) so there is no "me" time.

even this weekend.. i came home saturday to hang out with dad for the 4th of july. i forgot he now hangs with his girlfriend all the time, and she has about 7 family members over (in a 2 bedroom small house, about 800sqft) and they all speak spanish (not a racist thing.. i don't know spanish so it's all just lumped in noise. i can filter language that i know, but not ones i dont... so everything is very loud) and thismorning i was woken up by my aunt harping (persistent repetitive annoyance) at me to come back to her house today (where i work with her boyfriend)....... and she's been doing so since tuesday when i told her i was going home for the weekend. so none of this time has been restful for me.

dads in bad health.. he won't have small meals as he should (diabetic) so his sugar will spike up and down since he'll have a bunch of candy when he's hungry, then wait hours to eat for a real meal (even if it's just having a BBQ at 4pm eventhough it's 1pm and he hasn't eaten all day) and he's been getting fluid in his legs but won't even put his legs up to take the pressure off them. and just yesterday was bragging about how sometimes the fluid will pop and seep out like drips as if that's something funny.

and i'm pretty much lost in life. even this book i've been trying to do.. getting the time to focus on it is a job in itself. i need to be in the right mindset, i can't just ramble off information because i don't remember it without connecting the emotion.

i know if i actually had even a tiny breakdown where i laid in bed and cried so my aunt noticed (before she went to work) it would give me the day off. but i can't. my father drilled the whole "man up" thing into me at such a young age it takes a severe amount of pain just to get a tear to build up.. not even drip, just build up. so when my eyes are even slightly watery i know i'm pretty much at my breaking point. everybody else will cry... hell, my cousin ran to her room crying for 20 minutes because i had an ulcer in my colon and she told me i should eat salads. long story short, i said she knew i don't eat that stuff (and she did) but if she made some chicpea burgers again i would eat those (something she made before.. she's a vegan, for now.. yeah..) she said i should go to a real restaurant when i'm outside and i said we dont' have time (usually going to auctions or house cleanout appointments) so she called me a **** (which is both her and her mothers big word that sets them off) and ran up to her room crying. my aunt wanted me to apologize to my cousin to stop her from crying... to which i replied "what did you do last time somebody called you a ****? i'm not apologizing for saying i dont have time to eat healthy" and btw.. last time somebody called my aunt a ****, it was her now ex boyfriend..... and she drove over his foot (on purpose) with her car and left the car on his foot until she was done yelling at him. so i would need to say... my reaction of not apologizing was more reasonable than her reaction of assault with a deadly weapon (the car)

and honestly...... i don't want a pity party from those people, any advice they offer just relates back to helping them. when i stay at her house to post things online, i end up also doing the dishes, helping with laundry, and moving things so i don't get much work done and lose any free time i potentially would have had. today when i go back she already has it planned for me to put the ACs in her house (mind you, her boyfriend and his 2 sons.. both in their 20s.. live there as well. the 2 sons actually have 1 half of the house. it's a duplex...... i have the smallest bedroom that used to be our ebay storage room so it still has stuff in it and there's no door so i have a sheet tacked to the doorframe for privacy. good luck relaxing enough to fart let alone play music or anything)




sorry..... **** just builds up, it's getting very close to a point where i can't take it anymore. i've been in psych wards to visit family and honestly... i felt more relaxed in some of them than i did around my own family on an average day
dont get me wrong, some of those people have clear reasons for being there and should probably never leave. but it's bad when strangers in a psych ward are more relaxing than family in what is supposed to be your home

 

[Suzanne]

YES, I felt like doing this most of today actually! I did have a cry and did go to sleep for a while, but picked up and now, back on form!

And YES, I hate doing things on my own; I can be at home alone and feel ok, but once outside, whoa feel really vulnerable!!!

 

[hiraeth]

Yeah I've felt like that to different degrees for a long, long time. Life is pretty exhausting really if you think about it. A lot of energy drains out there. Takes a conscious effort sometimes to find energy sources.

 

[ChrisC1983]

before my father drilled it out of me...... i sometimes would cry before falling asleep (pre-teen years) and it actually helped. usually in the morning as long as i didn't get stress thrown at me right as i woke up then i was OK

i also used to have some horrific dreams.... now i don't really dream much at all. but, again, those helped too. i would have such vivid dreams that i would feel everything that happened. i didn't have lucid dreams though so it wasn't one of those "oh it's a zombie apocalypse.. wait, this is a dream, i can fart rainbows and turn everybody human so we can party on the moon" but my actions and reactions were realistic to the situation (for me) and when i was hurt i would actually feel it. sometimes when i had those falling dreams.... i would hit the ground. then when i woke up i was in a good deal of pain most of the day. or, 1 specific zombie dream.. i had a girlfriend in the dream and she was turning into a zombie. at some point she gouged my arm down to the bone.. and when i woke up, the rest of the day my arm was killing so much i could barely use it. it sounds terrible.. and i can't say i really miss that aspect of the dreams. but they did help to get some of the stress out

i wish i knew how to actually bring some of those dreams back

 

[hiraeth]

Yeah, I have a really hard time crying as well because I got punished for it as a kid. I'm not physically able to cry unless I get to the point where I'm basically thinking about killing myself... it's really frustrating and scary. It's weird though because I can cry during movies and books and stuff like that, at one point, came to me really easily (in particular when the subject was my special interest). I just can't cry out of sadness. Like what even!

 

[epath13]

Maybe it gets even harder to pull yourself together with you're exhausted...
As for crying and staying in bed. I do not like crying, never did. Crying has never made me feel better, so I try to stay present with my negative emotions when they come, meditate, if possible, and move on. I also hate staying in bed, I'd rather walk in some park all day, than lie in bed even though I felt extremely tired during this weekend. I was taking 3 different antihistamines (doctor's order) and my migraine meds - quite a cocktail so yeah, I wanted to sleep all day, thankfully I was able to steal a few naps here and there. Surprisingly today I don't feel as tired. Maybe allergic reaction starting to wear off... I'm not exactly sure how it works.
I know many people who can relate to feeling this way. I always want to run somewhere when I feel bad

 

[NTgirl4276]

before my father drilled it out of me...... i sometimes would cry before falling asleep (pre-teen years) and it actually helped.

I often find crying to be very emotionally productive. I'm sorry that your personal history has made it difficult for you to readily access this particular expression of emotion

usually, if I'm sad, it may last a couple days, but more as a dull ache, doldrum, or lethargy feeling. but on the days when I do feel an intense rush of sadness, frustration, or loneliness, I sort of embrace it? in other words, on those days when I really, really don't want to crawl out of bed, I don't. I try to give myself the day to let my emotions wash over me.

I find that when I do that, it passes much more quickly than if I try to suppress it or feign happiness for days at a time.

I imagine I wouldn't be able to do this if I struggled with depression, though.

 

[ChrisC1983]

@hiareth - the last time i really significantly cried (i mean to the point of being distraught for days) was over an anime i was watching. I can't remember how many years ago it was, i'm going to say atleast 8. not to bore you with the anime itself.. but it's centered around this main character (female) who's a robot that slowly becomes a human. so as time goes, they gain emotions and everything... and the other main character (male) helps her the whole time to become human. at the end of the anime (it has about 26 episodes by the way, so it's a long detailed storyline) the girl ends up saving the guys life in the process of losing her own. then, to top it off, they flip to the future.. maybe 20 years or so... and show dieing and as he dies, he has a vision of her and then the whole thing fades to black.... basically showing he still cared about her the rest of his life and he didn't really do much else with his life (you could tell he was run down.. i believe he was at a bar, kind of ratty clothing) and he didn't have anybody else except the memories of her
and literally.. still.. that got me to tear up a bit. because that is how i see my life.... i have a few good memories i try to latch onto, some positive thoughts of what i want life to be and thats it. i know when i'm capable of doing something that i can excel at it.. and i know when i can't do something, i just can't do it. even if i haven't done it before i just have this feeling that i can or can't do something after just a few minutes of thinking about what it would en tale. i can't say much about work or social situations.. they both scare and stress me to no end. but i know eventhough i have an almost endless amount of anger in me, i have an equal amount of carring if not more. for as long as i can remember.. even before my teens.. back when cooties ran rampant through the class and girls didn't get why boys liked motorcycles and boys didn't get why girls liked playing dressup..... i wanted 1 person to be with my entire life. that 1 person (didn't exist btw.. it wasn't modeled after anybody i knew, just a concept) would give me all the reason i needed just by existing for me to do anything else. with them, i would have a reason to push myself to socialize, go out more, exercise right, eat properly, just take better care of myself to live upto a standard that i felt they deserved (again, this person doesn't exist.. all made in my head) and eventually when we had a kid i would make sure i had a house for them, and make sure we went on trips, and we would just go out and have fun. i dont care if it was a boy who loved sports and monstertrucks (i'm not a fan of either) or a girl who wanted me to go dress shopping with them. just the fact that they were there and we were doing something together was good enough for me. i looked forward to helping with school and giving advice on anything i could and even them teaching me things because i don't care what anybody says. the age doesn't matter, you can always learn something new from anybody. and this girl i made in my mind didn't have a lot of specifics.. basically, any generally average human height, a healthy weight, and that was about it. there were preferences for everything but none of them were "deal breakers" so long as i was able to be myself around her and she was comfortable with me cuz i knew i was one weird ass kid and that i would be an equally weird adult. my only big thing was a moral system i had made up... but again, we're talking about pre-teen years so at that time expecting somebody to have never had sex or such before was pretty reasonable. it's a very long detailed morality system which i've slowly (and not significantly) altered throughout the years based on equality (anything i do, i must be OK with them doing) and some leniency given current age and such. but at this point it's pretty clear that's not going to happen. i'm now 31, still have nothing to show for it, and my family keeps me working so much i can't even try to focus on myself if i wanted to (which, sometimes, i do)

epath13 - i've tried some meditation, breathing, overall zen "escape your mind" type of stuff and.. to a point.. it does help. i believe it's why from time to time throughout the day i'll start to black out (gets dark, goes quiet, stop moving..) i know high levels of stress will cause it and i think it may just be a default escape for when i can't actually leave the situation but usually it only works well for specific situations. like, if i NEED to ride the subway.. first off i'll try to time it so it's not as busy (which, being near boston, isn't really possible.. but there's times that certain directions are less busy than others) so basically what i do is plan out the entire thing. i'll get on the orange line (it's color coded).. go 3 stops, then go to the green for 2 stops and sofourth. i try to make a little bubble around myself so everything else is kind of hazy. like if you need glasses to see, but you take them off... except everything looks like that outside the bubble. so instead of a stress level of 10 it may be a 3 or 4. it still adds to the big pool of stress, but not as quickly. but.... eventually... when the pool fills up, i have no way of draining it. when i was given time to myself i could force myself to release a lot of it. now, i just need to hope it evaporates faster than it fills which pretty much never happens so i just stay in this funk longer and longer until something can release some of the pressure without popping it


@NTgirl - i believe it is... and, luckily for you, as a girl it's more socially accepted. people may still complain about it if you cry too often or something... but for the most part, if a girl cries in public it's met with more of a "is she ok? whats wrong?" whereas if a guy does it, he better be walking down the street with a pipe impaled through his chest because otherwise that "what's wrong?" turns into "what is wrong with him? get over it"

when i had more control over my life, i would give myself that time.. and generally within a day or two i would be OK. sadly today i don't have that type of freedom because even when i come back home to get away from my nagging aunt, she'll just keep calling and texting me.. and if i dont answer she'll call my father (who's bipolar) and get him upset. so then i need to talk to him so he knows i'm fine, which gets relayed back to my aunt so either i answer next time she calls (or call myself.. same outcome) and she screws up the whole process. or i don't call or answer her call and now next time i see her (after she stopped trying to call.. which can take the rest of the day. and assuming she doesnt just physically come over to the house... she's undiagnosed bipolar) she blows up defeating whatever negative feelings i just got rid of

the feeling is somewhat often to me (maybe very often for others)...... basically, any noteworthy holidays. so any holiday requiring a family gathering or contact with family (mothers day, 4th of july and such) and the major holidays (christmas for example.. halloween is the only OK holiday but it's a bit of a coin toss) and my own birthday (basically, i have nothing to show for my life.. so proving i've lost 1 more year and did nothing significant is just depressing... my birthday is in late november btw, so basically after halloween i'm miserable until the christmas decorations come down.. which can be sometime in feburary)

and you have seasonal depression..... i actually prefer cold winters for the most part, and bad storms are relaxing to me. but summer is rough. there's a lot of social expectations and i try to do them but i never can enjoy myself at any of them. also the temperature alone... i'm very sensitive to the sun and light.. so it's tough to see outside and i'm squinting all the time (haven't found good sunglasses) and i can feel my skin heat up almost instantly from direct sunlight which is a bother because it just feels like burning.

 

[NothingToSeeHere]

Hmm yup. I normally end up crying when waiting to go to sleep rather than in the morning, but wanting to spend all day in bed, just sleeping my life away in a regular thing for me. I go through phases where I have loads of energy and optimism, and then just suddenly have no energy and can't see the point in anything for a while, and end up crying and sleeping a lot Ah well.

It's sad to hear of people being punished for crying. Personally I hate crying because it makes me feel awful, but healthy expression of emotions is never something that should be judged or shamed. The expectation that people should "man up" or "get over it" is messed up. Self pity isn't a good thing in my opinion, but acknowledging when you are upset and expressing that definitely is.

 

[hiraeth]

Yeah I get it. I give off the impression that I don't care about anyone, and I wouldn't be surprised if I've subtly pushed people away because for the longest time I actually believed that I somehow didn't have the mental capacity to care about anyone. But since learning about autism I've started to think it's not that I don't care, but the way I care, and the way I love, is different. It doesn't look like any outward, visible, obvious display of emotion, it might not even involve any "emotions" in as far as I'm capable of identifying them as emotions. Society has taught us that there is only one way to love, but there isn't.

But I try not to sustain any hope or vision of finding companionship. The odds are totally stacked against me, and it'll just make me feel way worse. I need all the energy I can muster to learn how to take care of myself on a daily basis, how to be an independent autistic adult because I've had to be, and will need to be for the foreseeable future.

 

[ChrisC1983]

Hmm yup. I normally end up crying when waiting to go to sleep rather than in the morning, but wanting to spend all day in bed, just sleeping my life away in a regular thing for me. I go through phases where I have loads of energy and optimism, and then just suddenly have no energy and can't see the point in anything for a while, and end up crying and sleeping a lot Ah well.

It's sad to hear of people being punished for crying. Personally I hate crying because it makes me feel awful, but healthy expression of emotions is never something that should be judged or shamed. The expectation that people should "man up" or "get over it" is messed up. Self pity isn't a good thing in my opinion, but acknowledging when you are upset and expressing that definitely is.

i rarely have energy.. occasionally i'll have a few energetic moments but they're often stomped out by negativity and by "occasionally" i mean a handful of times per year. as far as the bed thing.. it's not even sleeping, i just don't want to get out of bed. eventually i'll keep falling asleep from time to time but basically it's just laying there knowing that when i get up, everything will be just as bad as it was yesterday and the day before that and so-on

Yeah I get it. I give off the impression that I don't care about anyone, and I wouldn't be surprised if I've subtly pushed people away because for the longest time I actually believed that I somehow didn't have the mental capacity to care about anyone. But since learning about autism I've started to think it's not that I don't care, but the way I care, and the way I love, is different. It doesn't look like any outward, visible, obvious display of emotion, it might not even involve any "emotions" in as far as I'm capable of identifying them as emotions. Society has taught us that there is only one way to love, but there isn't.

But I try not to sustain any hope or vision of finding companionship. The odds are totally stacked against me, and it'll just make me feel way worse. I need all the energy I can muster to learn how to take care of myself on a daily basis, how to be an independent autistic adult because I've had to be, and will need to be for the foreseeable future.

looking back on it, i can see how i possibly pushed people away. i pretty much fear all social events, so when somebody invites me to go i always say i dont want to go. even if i do.. there just won't be enough there for me to be comfortable (lack of knowledge of the situation... 20 strangers at a petting zoo is fine because i can focus on the animals eventhough i don't really know anybody. but, for example, as i mentioned with this 4th of july. my father has been dating the same girl for years, i know her well and i'm OK around her.. i've met everybody in her family atleast once before (some twice) and it was all at her house which i've been to before. i got there a little early so it was about 2 hours before anybody showed up.. and i was a little stressed by then (just knowing they were coming)... within 30 minutes of everybody being there, i was done and had to try to politely hide. luckily it was hot out so i went in the house for the AC.. but even when i was cold i stayed in there because i didn't want to go back out. basically.. it sucks. i want to do all the stuff and be social but its just overwhelming and starts to cause mild panic attacks............. and stepping outside of that situation from a 3rd party view it's easy to see how that can push people away. if somebody seems uninterested in staying around, eventually you just wont invite them or want to hang around them. but such is ASD

i look at it like an alternate set of senses. not just the obvious over sensory things from sight/touch/sound/ect but the emotional level is comparable to an animal where it's shown more through subtle physical characteristics with a lack of words.

 

[hiraeth]

I'm not too sure what "subtle physical characteristics" would entail? I feel like love is expressed through actions, for me. Like helping each other out, in concrete and measurable ways, like sharing intimate details and material things that you wouldn't share casually. Staying up all night for someone if they need it, letting them crash on my floor for a night if they need it, hearing them out when they need an ear to listen. All the affectionate words and all the intense feelings in the world mean nothing if the actions aren't there.

I was talking to another autistic person the other day and they said that, the direct implication that caring for someone is all about "feelings" is weird, because - you can be angry at someone, but you don't care about them any less just because you're angry. You might be depressed and too tired to feel much of anything, including the desire to talk to them, but that doesn't mean you care any less. You might be really busy and pulled in a million directions by stress and external demands and not have a whole lot of space to focus on any one particular person, but that doesn't mean the caring has suddenly diminished.

 

[ChrisC1983]

basically, as you said.. it's more through physical actions like what you talk about with them and sharing/doing things you wouldn't do with others. for myself it's very noticeable but for others i've realized it's not. i don't have my own house so i can't do any of that but i will have other things... like, i generally hate talking to people. but if i answer the phone all the time or even call you myself.. it's huge. although many people just consider that normal (but also in my family, they won't call or answer calls of people they dont want to talk to) or if i offer to go out somewhere to help you.. basically anything that i wouldn't do due to anxiety. but all of it is just considered "normal" if the person doesn't realize i have those social problems. and as of recently, to me it wasn't even a thing specific to me i just figured it was normal (nobody has told me i had any AS problems until a few months ago... people online suggested it years back, i thought it could be true.. but without something solid it's just speculation to me)... so basically all of my quirky idiosyncrasies i thought were more common and understood than they are.
but i don't have any of the words.. and since my actions are subtle by normal standards, the whole feeling tends to go unnoticed. a couple people will get it after a while but generally it takes atleast 6 months for them to start noticing after i start. so anybody who may be on a girlfriend level has either left or is dating somebody else (so i stop doing what i'm doing since i'm not trying to be with somebody already dating somebody else or recently broken up)

 

[hiraeth]

Yeah I understand. I identify as aromantic and asexual. But I've even had other aromantic people accuse me of being too "cold" so... I'm just really confused. Maybe I'm just autistic. I was unofficially (at least I think it was unofficial? It just kinda came up during a conversation with my doctor, wasn't a long formal evaluation) diagnosed with Schizoid PD once. But I feel like AS accounts for a larger number of my "quirks", of which the social aspect is just one but not all. It certainly is the most debilitating one. I do want to have close relationships, why can't I just have one without all the unnecessary sweet talk and directing of strong emotions towards the other person? I used to be very "emotional" as a kid.... as in, I had meltdowns constantly. My system just doesn't seem to know how to integrate openly strong emotion, so I trained it to not have them in the first place. And society tells me that's wrong, but I'd much rather that than have random meltdowns constantly because emotions cause my system to go into overdrive.

Sometimes I think there is a cultural element, too. I grew up in a culture where parents - at least none that I knew of - ever say "I love you" to their kids, where kids never saw their parents show affection to each other in their presence, stuff like that.

 

[ChrisC1983]

I think that would be a pretty fair way of describing myself. I honestly don't remember much of my childhood (dad had a bipolar breakdown when I was 12, I came to realize I had a breakdown of my own so I've forgotten a lot of my childhood) but as far as conveying emotions to people, I pretty much do the same thing. when something gets to be too much, whether it's a good or bad emotion, I basically shut down. then, eventually, out of frustration i'll build up so much anger i'll have a meltdown. it's not usually anger directed at anybody.. I may be mad at people for various things, but nothing bad enough to merit how I feel so it's really just an overall feeling of frustration being unable to fix or even try to fix the problems around me (slew of mental problems in my family and I basically have no control over any aspect of my life)

I do believe my upbringing is part of the issue. my parents would say "I love you" and things like that, but it was always double sided. I didn't take that specific instance and separate it... so, what I mean is.. if my father (or mother, whoever) said "I love you" and 3 minutes later called me an inconsiderate prick for leaving the fridge door open or something like that (not a major thing, more often than not it was a general accident. like with the fridge thing, I have a habit of turning my back when shutting the door.. so if I don't push it hard enough, it wont shut all the way..... I still do it, I just turn back around now to make sure it closed) so in my head I had "ok.. so they love me.. and I'm an inconsiderate prick" and since the two can't exist with one another in my mind, I figured the "I love you" part was more of a required default statement than a true feeling. such as when your boss tells you "oh I'm sorry you're feeling sick today"..... honestly, they probably don't care and just want you to do your job. but it's a polite thing to say so they feel they need to say it since "suck it up and get your job done" can cause a lawsuit and get them fired

 

[AuBurney Tuckerson]

I'm more of an introvert, but I always have those moments. I think it's my depression because I could only think of sad/depressing things while sad music gets stuck and plays in my head. Then I end up crying until my nose closes up, making it hard to breathe. It sucks, and I feel like a crybaby. I'm supposed to be tough.

 

[Mr Allen]

Frequently.

Not so much the crying, but I do often not want to get up, particularly some Thursdays when it's the day for my Digital Arts course, I enjoy the course, I just don't enjoy having to get up just after 7 AM to get ready and travel from Stannington to Parson Cross to get there before 9 AM.