Overwhelmed

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Ever since I can remember I have felt overwhelmed by my emotions. Both the positive and the negative ones. In relationships I feel so overwhelmed by how much I love the other person, it scares me. In life I feel overwhelmed by responsibility, by every little mundane thing I'm supposed to get right. I even feel it when I enter a book store or see a box set of one of the TV shows I love for sale somewhere. I feel like I'm going to scream. I want to trash the place, because I want everything in there and I can't have it but I might need it, I have to have everything, some isn't enough. I buy books, hoard them and never read them. I just look at them on the shelves and they make me feel safe.

I'm rambling.

It's a feeling of panic. A feeling of not being in control. It makes me heart race and my breath short. It makes me want to cry. Sometimes I do.

I have such a long day at work tomorrow. Working at three different sites, two meetings, calls to make. I feel so alone and buried beneath my empty, terrifying life.

Does anyone have any idea what I'm feeling? Any advice or explanations?

Used book sales are good for hording books.. then you can buy a bazillion books without spending much money. And sometimes you find some really good ones, too!

I don't have any advice or anything, you have a job so you're a step ahead of me as it is..

It's voluntary work. I'm still living off the state

Thanks for the tip about the books. I used to work in a charity bookshop and this problem was always cropping up. In the end I had to just stay behind the counter and not look at the books at all. Now I work in an office.

I couldn't even handle that.. I was trying for awhile, but I was such a mess.. and then I'd be driving home not even able to think straight.. felt like it couldn't have been much safer than driving drunk.

When schools and libraries sell old books, a lot of times there are some good ones, especially for reference books and stuff. Spending like $12 and walking away with a huge box of books is always fun.

I can relate to the overwhelmedness...I can relate to the book hoarding...I used to have my own collection of books that I coveted and they went with me everywhere I moved..It was not a very big collection..but I grew up in a book hoarding household...and my partner compulsively hoards second-hand books..and it is impossible to get rid of ANY of them..perish the thought....

I am too overwhelmed to be able to focus on any books...too trapped in my little circles...and bogged down with all the stuff I need to do to be able to find any comfort in reading at the moment.

I hoard unusual clothes and vintage toys...and all kinds of other junk...it is really insane the amount of stuff we have and I have been trying to organize it...I can't get rid of anything because I have a need to know where the stuff is going....

I have lots of anxiety over losing specific random items..I was freaked out for weeks possibly over my e.e. cummings book that I had had since high school that dissapeared...I will be kept up at night worrying about the whereabouts of say...my favorite hat...if I don't know exactly where it is...

I have all these things that I need to attend to...practically on my own...in a lot of ways...
I have severe executive dysfunction, but I am the only person willing to do much of the cleaning, and each little task is a cumbersome mountain....Keeping our living space in something other than complete disarray...The dishes take me forever to clean and at the end of the day, they are all dirty again...as soon as I scoop the cat boxes, they are overflowing again...as soon as I feed and water the cats, their bowls are empty again...bathrooms...laundry...and so on and so on...

Leaving the house and riding in the car can be a massive sensory assault that I need to recover from, because I am gripped with terror from riding in the car on the freeway....

Then, night after night, it is bands bands bands at my venue...and our day job...and all the mundane tasks involved with that...

And the creative projects I am supposed to be working on...and then these insane leisure activities I have to be subjected to against my will..I am supposed to go on a sailboat race, and I don't want to go... I need to be making sock monkeys for the holidays...I need to be screen printing shirts...recording an album...etc....

I try to find the light at the tunnel where i can maybe find a way to regiment everything so that it falls somehow into place...and Flakey talks about getting me a helper...but I have such a hard time dealing with people and such a hard time handling other people doing things with my stuff....that is causes me a great deal of anxiety.

so..overwhelmed...yeah...

Hi all,

I just wanted to say that I also experience this feeling of being overwhelmed. These words capture what I sometimes feel: "I feel so alone and buried beneath my empty, terrifying life."

Yeah, that line really resonate with me. Although I don't feel that way in my free time, for the most part, when I'm free to dawdle an afternoon away and pursue my obsessions. It's at work that I feel overwhelmed, overwhelmed by the expectations of others, of having to prostitute my senses for my bi-weekly paycheck

Dan

I have been dealing with this issue all my life. As a child, my emotions were always on the surface, which led to lots of teasing & bullying (I was such an easy target.) At some point, I learned to shut my emotions off most of the time - but it was either all off, or all on. It took me a long time to make any progress at regulating my emotions - to only let a little out at a time (I don't think I'm all the way there, yet.) And there were many lapses along the way.

Too much emotion led to difficulties in relationships. A huge meltdown after a particularly bad break-up led me to just pull back completely & not let anyone get close. When I did try again to be close to someone (after about 15 years), it was an even worse disaster.

After that, I discovered Taoism & meditation - which I think helped me a lot. I gradually started to put my emotions into perspective, but it has been very slow going. It was another ten years before I felt anywhere near "normal" again. Finding out that I have AS has also clarified a lot of things.

I don't know if I have any reliable advice to offer - except to say that I found that completely shutting off my emotions did not equal control of my emotions. It was only one small step along the path of control.

Lately, I've been trying to gradually let people back into my life - without losing myself in the process. I'm starting to feel as though it might actually be possible.

I think I understand what you say about the books - I do that, too. There are currently far more books in my apartment (overflowing the shelves) than I can possibly read. But it is comforting to know that the information contained in them is within my reach. I think this is an example of my trying to establish "local coherence" - as described in the book Send In the Idiots, by Kamran Nazeer (a book profiling the adult lives of a group of former classmates at a special school for autistic children.) It's a way for me to control my environment - while the rest of the world around me seems to be completely outside my control.

Thanks guys. I makes me feel a little better to know I'm not the only one. I'm pretty sure this is a huge big red neon sign screaming ASPERGER'S. But nobody gets it.

I didn't go to work. And I lied to my boyfriend and told him I did. I'm so annoyed with myself, I've done this all my life. When I had a German test at school I cut myself in the break and had to be taken to casualty. When I had an English exam in my first year at uni I had a huge freak-out, screaming and repeating the same words over and over. It took my boyfriend ages to calm me down. When I came back to my old job after being off ill and was worried I'd be in trouble, I entered the building, signed in, went up to cloakroom and then ran out again, without telling anyone. I'm always doing it. I get overwhelmed and I avoid. I did it for almost a year once, just shut myself away so nothing scary could happen to me.

Will this ever get any better? I don't want to be the unreliable girl anymore.