2020 was a monstrous year for this mommy.
I couldn’t stop screaming at the kids.
I couldn’t calm down.
I couldn’t pause and think.
I couldn’t sleep.
I couldn’t eat.
I couldn’t stop crying.
I lost 160 pounds in eight months, and my psychiatrist didn’t notice…but that’s a rant for another day.
In that state of crisis, I found myself unable to communicate with anyone, even my husband.
I knew I had PTSD, Major Depressive Disorder, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I knew my brain poorly regulated and underproduced the chemicals our bodies and brains need to function, much less have peace, and the psychiatrist was a last resort.
No – the talk therapist was the last resort, because I didn’t get one until I was struggling to use my love for my children to fuel my will to survive.
My mother had a hair trigger unpredictable temper.
I blamed her temper for my CPTSD symptoms, and that seemed enough. Why look for more sources?
I identified as a Highly Sensitive Person.
In 2020, I started studying autism, thinking I was learning about my sons.
My sister is so much like me, but also very different. She was always beautiful, which has benefits my fat self had to make up for with sweetness.
We both learned to people please like customer service for the elite.
In fact we both served the wealthy in serving capacities in our careers, which though wildly different, probably felt similarly infuriatingly dis-empowering to us as Earthborn Aliens raising ourselves at the turn of the century.
I bring up my sister because I triggered the Hell out of her two months ago, triggered myself by her and my brother’s perfectly reasonable and yet perfectly inflammatory behavior.I was the villain in the story, if there must be a villain.
I’m the one that lost control and couldn’t remember how to get it back, until a couple weeks after they were back in their home states.
And a week ago, I was STILL stuck in my feeling spiral. Guilt, shame, rage, sorrow, despair, rage, guilt, et merde ad nauseum.
There is a big difference between permissive parenting and gentle parenting, but if I can’t elaborate on that difference, then I’m just parroting something I heard. So…
When I am being a permissive parent is when I don’t have the energy to get up and help, or I don’t have the peace for the patience to problem solve instead of reacting.
When I have my peace, even without the energy to get up, I can help with my hard-earned communication, empathy, critical thinking, and problem solving skills.
Turns out peace is something I have to work hard for, and the harder I have to work for something, the quicker stress overwhelms my system, until I burn out, explode, and shut down.
And I am a BITCH about it!
I tried telling all my friends what a mean bitch I’d turned into, and they kept arguing with me that I was a sweetheart.
I was so confused. So lost in my identity crisis and personal grief.
I promise, even when I’m mad I am not trying to hurt people. I am trying to get help feeling better.
Because I literally have brain damage from a lifetime of trauma, I literally need another human brain, to see where I am and where I am trying to get to, and help me organize the steps so I can get there when I am upset.
Simply put, I need someone to take my hands or my shoulders and warmly, firmly get my attention by telling me what they see: Hey, you are breathing hard and sound upset. Can I help you calm down with deep breaths, or a tight, long hug?
I need the people around me to model being calm and safely present, so I can mirror their body language and join their calm.
Monkey brain see, monkey brain do.
If I am going ape shit mode, you go human empath mode, connect with me, and then I will copy you.
Your body language, tone, and words will influence mine if you make me feel your confidence in me that I am safe, and I can calm down if I just breathe with you.
I can do that for people because people have done it for me.
Modern life has us isolated from each other. So many of us never knew what is or was like to feel safe in our bodies, and now, we can’t hide our suffering around our coworkers or customers anymore, nor around neighbors or strangers.
I live in a huge suburb and barely know a handful of neighbor’s names.
I’ve lived here seven years without knowing I was autistic, and I am only coming up on the second year since I figured out that neurotypical advice is why I’ve felt so damn miserable my whole life.
Thank you, Gen Z. You’ve given me my muchness back with your videos.
(Alice Through The Looking Glass reference 😁)
TikTok is changing my life because a bunch of teens and older late diagnosed folk are going through what I went through with and without the two decades of trauma.
And they are brilliant. Hilarious. Deep. Problem-solvers. Solution seekers. My people.
Back to my five year old in the picture way up top.
TikTok et al taught me meltdowns are not spirals, though they often coincide.
Sensory meltdowns can be triggered by emotional upset.
So my kids’ silly game of making mommy scream because it’s funny ended today, and I didn’t have to get enraged to decide to put an end to it.
I simply realized how many times I had to send them out of my room just today because I kept getting overstimulated from the noise and movement, and my room is my haven.
I like playing in my room with my family, so a blanket stay out rule, or no playing in my room rule, would not work for me.
While I was busy dreaming and blogging and living today, my youngest found his Halloween costume and asked me to help him.
He’s scared of the dark and does not like PG level violence in shows, and he loves pretending to be scary monsters. Making them adorable. Taking away their power to scare him.
Clearly, I enjoy and encourage this playful learning behavior. We’ve learned together how to navigate their needs and mine while quarantined together with no vehicle until January of this year.
My fourteen year old had a very different mom when he was five, and a very different life. He and I shared a therapist 2020, which was instrumental in me retrieving my confidence in my parenting skills and choices!
Thankfully, he was only depressed and anxious because of the acutely stressful situation that was causing my breakdown, and once my Ape Shit Persona got rid of that problem and burned every bridge it could think of and laid traps, built the strongest thickest walls and dug the deepest broadest moats…
Well, once my Ape Shit Persona finally felt safe enough to give control back over to me, I had no boundaries and no sense of self I trusted anymore.
Seeing all these influencers talking about living in this world with autism has made a bigger impact than all the books and blogs and forums I’ve read. Or maybe all that reading primed my mind to see what I most needed to see in them, so I could figure out where I keep my peace and how to make it bigger, more durable and long lasting.
Now that I’ve found my peace, I’m remembering how to fill it so it becomes my first anchor in the storm, again.
My bedroom is my haven, I explained to my mischievous demon children.
You both know I have PTSD. You both know I am autistic. You both know what it feels like to melt down, how awful that feels, right guys?
So I don’t want either of you scaring me on purpose anymore. I know and you know, and you know I know and I know you know…I made a silly face, and they laughed.
You know that I get overstimulated easy and that scaring me gives me panic attacks. So EVEN THOUGH IT’S FUN, EVEN THOUGH WE’RE ALL LAUGHING…it’s bullying.
It’s hurting me. It’s making it harder for me to stay calm for you when I most need to be, and it’s setting us all up for a hard time.
When you scare me by accident, we’ll laugh. That’s funny, and no one’s fault.
But scaring me on purpose is not ok. Even if I laugh, I need you to remember it’s not ok, and remember that game is bullying, not fun for me.
The nice thing about parenting with emotional needs right up there on the top priority list with other physical needs is that my kids have good self-esteem, and did not get weepy or defensive.
They repeated the new family story, that we don’t scare people on purpose unless they say we can, because otherwise that’s mean.
And we discussed in brief how in 2023 America, living around Orlando, scaring a stranger might get you shot.
Adventures of an Earthborn Alien 