Since I started researching Asperger’s and other spectrum disorders a year ago, I noticed a gazillion articles about meltdowns. Most of them focused on sensory overload.
This week, I had three days of severe s
ymptoms and several meltdowns. The thing is that these meltdowns were not a response to sensory stimulation but mostly frustration.
It all started when my husband rented a DVD of a movie I’ve been wanting to see. He brought it home and we sat down to watch it. I couldn’t concentrate. So, we set it by for later. Later came and went. He had a doctor’s appointment that took five hours and we had to run some errands. Finally, we sat down to watch it. Try as I might, I couldn’t follow it. I started to cry. I wanted to watch the movie, but my brain couldn’t complete that task at that time that day. Needless to say, my husband promised to rent it another time. However, that only made me more upset. Why couldn’t I watch it now? Why could my brain process a movie yesterday and not today?
A light bulb went off.
A lot of my anger and frustration results from not being able to do certain activities when it’s convenient or I want to. In school, there were so many times, classmates were doing an activity that no matter how hard I tried, I could get my brain to do. I lost count of all the times I was left out and didn’t understand why my peers could play jump rope, but I couldn’t that day, especially since I wanted to jump rope more than they did.
My brain is its own entity and constantly I battle with it to get things done. People ask why I read six or seven books at a time. It’s simply because I want to read and my brain won’t allow me to process the information. Sometimes, I open dozens of books and end up curled up in the fetal position on the floor because I couldn’t read them. All I wanted to do was read, but my brain refused.
At that point, I realized how much my disorder held me back in ways I never noticed. It still doesn’t make sense that today I can write this blog, but yesterday I couldn’t. Or why I could go to the grocery store on Sunday, but not on Monday. I have to accept the fact that sometimes I can’t do what I want to when I want to. The frustration comes in because those are the times I want to do those activities.
The Adderall helps a lot with this. I’ve been on it about a year now. However, this situation still happens all the time. The only thing I can do is make the most out of my day and content myself with the activities I can do and not the ones I can’t.
But it’s really frustrating. I guess it always will be.
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