Care Fatigue

It's not that I don't care.

I just, can't.

Like, when you've cried so much, you can't cry anymore. You're still sad, hurt, lost, feeling... but you're also numb. And your tears are spent.

I do care. Or, I would. If I could. If I cared to.

But I don't. Because I can't.

I'm all spent.

I've started saying something - mostly to myself but also to anyone I'm talking to... 

"I have more important things to worry about."

Are there problems that need to be fixed? Sure. So. Many. Problems. 

Work drama. Life drama. House drama. Clean the dishes drama. "She said what?!" drama.

And I just literally Can. Not. with any of it. 

I have more important things to worry about. Than all of that. Today, I have to survive. I have to make it from the start of this day to the end, and then get up and do it all over again.

I'm not trying to be all holier-than-thou here. This isn't me saying, oh my problems are so much more important than theirs. No, they're probably not.

It's just me saying, I have spent every last cent of care I could afford and I am broke and have nothing left to give. Nothing, except, 

Dust. Dry tears. Understanding. Sorrow. Fatigue. Deep, deep soul-fatigue.

Trauma

It would be really nice if every day didn't feel so damn traumatic.

*Rainy day on the way to work, stopped at a red light. This isn't the trauma but it reflects the mood. 

Christmas Eve Communion

Christmas Eve communion. 

An impromptu, informal, multi-cultural, meet-us-where-we-are, moment.

Father Nathan Monk, thank you.

"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need." 

Confused

You know those moments?

The moments when you finally break down,

and start yelling your feelings, 

and words just start coming out, 

and then you hear yourself and you realize, wow, 

I didn't even know that's what I was upset about

Alexithymia

"I'm confused. I work so hard to not be confused and it doesn't matter because I ended up being effing confused all the time anyway" 

And after I said it, frustration seething, tears running down my face, I heard those words and thought,

"Oh my God. That's it. 

My entire life experience in a nutshell."

The goal

This feels simultaneously like a very "duh!" thought and a very "wow this is brilliant" epiphany. So bare with me, cause somehow, I think it is actually both. 

I'm starting to think that [*all of this*] ...life, world, process, thing(s) we're experiencing... it's not actually about the destination.*

*This is the "duh!" part. Like, how many times have we heard this? So. Much. So much that I'm rolling my eyes and am done with this post, and I'm the one writing it.

So let's say it again, differently...

Maybe [*all of this*] is not about the destination - at all. In any way. 

It's not about the destination. At all. Not even a little bit. 

I don't know about you, but that hits different for me. It feels kind of uncomfortable. 

You see, I'm a very goal-driven person. It took me a long time to realize this, actually. I'm going through life with a check-list. "What's the thing we're doing now? Let's get that done. Great, what's next?" 

Without a goal, what are we even doing? What even is the point??

The point is the process. 

I'm realizing that "the goal" is not actually the goal. It's not finally "arriving" at some destination, or "completing" each task of life as if it were part of a rubric. 

The process is the goal.*

*I will totally acknowledge here that, this may or may not be true of everyone. Maybe there are tangible goals in your life for you to complete, and I wish you well on them! 

But also, there is [so much] more to be gained from the process, than from the destination itself. 

When you study for a test, the goal (presumably) is to do well on that test or, at least, to pass it. But the actual goal of that whole excersize - the whole point of it - is to learn the material. There's a reason you're taking that test, and the reason isn't to just earn another letter grade or random certificate.*

*For the sake of this analogy we'll leave out the whole "I'm in school because my parents made me" - and even so, the larger goal there is still for you to learn! 

So cheating the system to somehow obtain the apparent goal (an A on the test, congrats!), is actually cheating the whole process and keeping you from the actual, intended goal - knowing more about [that thing].

-----

The "wow this is brilliant" epiphany part comes in as I'm starting to really accept the process. To embrace the process as the goal. 

To accept, and not begrudgingly, maybe there is no "arriving." No having-it-all-figured-out. I'm in process. Always. And not only is that okay, it's the whole point.

There's a lot this is opening up for me. But the point I want to make with all this is... 

The process is messy. It's learning. And making mistakes. It's bumpy. And dark. And imperfect. And scary. 

Elyse Myers was asked how she manages her nerves and she said, "I don't. I just do things scared."

So here we go. 

I'm in process and no longer waiting to arrive somewhere. It's messy and I make mistakes. But I'm learning, and I have something to share. So I'm inviting you along. 

For a moment... for a while... for until your process takes you another way... 

I'm Heather, and I'm glad to have you here. 

🧡

What we needed

----part 1, written 8.2.22---

"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need." -Mick Jagger

This is what our win looks like today

A beautiful, confident, new haircut. Soft and silky and, if you didn't know any better, looks like any other cute haircut you've ever seen.

Any other cute, twenty-dollar, made-my-appointment-walked-in-and-walked-out-happy haircut. 

But the haircut isn't the win. Not really. It might be the trophy, I suppose. Or the prize-winnings. But it wasn't the win.

Behind this silky smooth hair is months of neglected, matted hair. Several victories of their own right - battling the mats - and then watching them return with a vengeance. Six months late for the "next-trim-[over]due" date. Two missed hair appointments. Weeks of on-again, off-again discussions of will-we, won't-we. Several determined agreements, later negated. Bribe attempts. Plea bargains. Lots and lots of tears.

For children [/anyone] with the disabling combination of sensory processing disorder and social anxiety (and God-knows-what other anxieties) haircuts are not /just/ haircuts. It is 100% torture. And not in the fun, jokey way.

Imagine someone with a fear of heights. This is an understandable fear. It makes sense. If we fall, we die. The end. 

I have an innate fear of heights that I only began understanding the extent of when I visited the Grand Canyon at 17yo and again later, when I attempted a high-ropes course in my 20's. My body was in pure fight/flight/freeze/fawn and there was no reasoning to be had. No amount of coaxing, determination, discussion - nothing - had an ounce of affect on the outcome. I *wanted* to enjoy myself. And my body noped right on out. 

----part 2, continued on 12.1.22---

While it's a bit of an extreme physiological reaction to have your legs decide to stop working properly while 20 feet in the air, it's still an understandable reaction.

It's understandable to be afraid of heights (falling could actually hurt or kill you!) and so, it seems reasonable when one's nervous system responds with fight/flight/freeze/fawn. 

But let's take this back to the 8 year old, screaming and crying in the bathroom because... "They don't want to get their haircut." That seems pretty unreasonable. Is that really it, though? 

Let's try that again ...

Let's take this back to the 8 year old, screaming and crying in the bathroom, because [their nervous system is in fight/flight/freeze/fawn] ... because having a stranger wash their hair (with water in a sink they can't see, leaning back uncomfortablely, with other strangers in the room, with new/weird smells from the shampoo) and then (painfully) comb their hair and spend many long minutes slowly and carefully cutting it (i.e., light sensory touch, which is often very overstimulating) ... 

And all of that sensory overwhelm has their nervous system in a state of panic. 

It doesn't feel so unreasonable anymore.

Understanding the sensory sensitivities at play here takes me away from disciplinary mode - "you better straighten up right now or no TV for a week!" - to empathetic and reassuring - "I  know this is so hard and painful. I know you're scared. We'll get through this together. If we can get this haircut done, I promise we won't have to do this again. I'll learn how to cut your hair myself, so you can feel safe."

That was our win.

I saw her need. I validated and supported her. Miraculously, my offer helped calm her enough to get through that experience (we were literally in the chair y'all, and I was trying so hard not to walk out on this poor hairdresser who was being so patient with us)

I'm finally finishing this story, four months later. And I'll have you know, the hair has now been matted -again and again- for weeks. We have talks and plans in place to work it back out, and it's still in my to-do to learn to trim her hair.

If the "win" that day had been about the hair - you might now call it a loss. But it wasn't. (I am grateful she was able to have a nice haircut when school started; and she was too.) But, the WIN wasn't that. It was seeing her in that moment and being able to speak to her need instead of her behavior.

I am so so so much more grateful for that. We both were. She was so humbled and kind when we left, so grateful and appreciative. She didn't need correction. She needed to feel safe. 

Honestly

One day I realized, there are people that refuse to tolerate -at all- the level of baseline discomfort that I live with on a daily basis.

My brain trying to process this information:

I just.

I can't.

I don't get it.

You can just - not. do. that. [uncomfortable thing]

I didn't realize that was even an option.

Ever.

At all.

The problem though is...

...even the most simple and mundane tasks that most people easily accomplish - often, to me, cause an incredible amount of discomfort.

Sensory processing disorder.

It means that "easy" task for you, can be incredibly exhaustive for me.

Except no one knew. Including myself.

And I never realized how easy [random task] was for most everyone else. I thought it felt hard for everyone.

I didn't know to advocate for myself, because I didn't know how much more discomfort I was putting up with compared to those around me. I knew it felt hard, for me. I didn't know it didn't feel that hard for everyone else. 

I went through life with a check-list of "to-do's" based on the average expectation for someone my age, wondering why in the world I couldn't keep up. Why was I so exhausted after doing one or two [things], when everyone else around me was running circles around [those things]. 

Living this way culminated in 20+ years of major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, chronic headaches and nightmares, 5+ years of chronic migraine, and an immune condition we still haven't fully pinpointed but let's just call it Mast Cell Activation Syndrome for the time being. 

And then, two years ago, the stars aligned and the light bulb clicked. I learned that I do, actually, experience life differently than most/many. And there is a perfectly reasonable explanation that I wish didn't cost half my life and most of my good health to figure out. 

 

Hi. My name is Heather, and I am autistic. The lightbulb clicked on, August 2020, and I received my ["official"] diagnosis, January 2021. It came with a free bonus diagnosis (I'm joking) of ADHD, inattentive type (not joking), which was somehow more shocking to me than being autistic. (Let's face it, I'd been wondering on and off for a long time.)

I was 36 years old. 

It was a [very] long road to full realization (which I'll share more on someday) and it's been a long road since then too - reframing, accepting, learning, relaxing, being.

I've been absorbing as much as I can from autistic & ADHD adults on their journeys / professionals on the cutting edge of this better understanding of neurodiversity / and anything I can find to help make sense of *all this*

I've learned a lot. My life lines up now in ways that I never understood before.

I'm still figuring it out. I'm still learning. I'll probably never feel truly ready to start sharing this story. But if there's someone -anyone- out there on their journey, wondering why life feels so much harder, who can't cope anymore for even one more day going on like this... 

I want you to know, you're not alone.

Maybe you're not autistic, or ADHD, or have sensory processing issues. Maybe it's something different for you. A weight so heavy you can't breathe, but so nebulous you can't understand how everyone else is breathing. Why is it seemingly so much harder for you.

I don't know the why. But I do know, you're not alone. And it doesn't have to be this way. You can be you. Just you. All of you. 

I don't have all the answers (or maybe any). But I do have hope. Some days. (Let's be honest.) But I am searching for more, every day. 

And I would love to share what I find, with you. 

💛