There last few months have been pretty big for me. I went back to full time study for the first time since I basically had a kind of breakdown and I've been doing pretty well.
In January (about one week from now) we have two major deadlines. Before term broke up this hadn't bothered me. After the seminars in which we got the full details of the assignments I was going to make a detailed work plan for the holidays, allow myself a full week to rest and recover from the exhaustion of the first term. Be calm and logical.
Then, three days before the final week of term we got hit by a storm that caused major flooding in our area. Thankfully our house was okay but the area lost power for several days and power was unreliable for about a week. The university was closed early and students were evacuated. I managed the initial situation pretty well, I like candles and I have a pack of cards I play with over and over to stay calm. But after everything got 'back to normal' I kind of got hit with the emotional impact. I lost all sense of time and massively detached because not only had I lost a whole week of lectures, that week had included seminars telling me about my assignments and an assessed presentation.
I let myself have until Christmas to just recover because I was already exhausted from the term, this on top was just too much. I planned to get back on track after Christmas. Only, with Christmas and New Year being so off routine- I still haven't regained a sense of time. I struggle to know what day it is because any usual indicator is gone, my sleep schedule is utterly screwed, and any plan I have tried to make to manage my work has just not held at all. I'm not concentrating well and any time I try I get quickly exhausted.
I now have one week, a long essay, a portfolio, a portfolio proposal, two applications and two scripts to storyboard, plus the presentation to finish that will now be held in the first seminar back. I have done very little on most of these. And it is infuriating because I've been doing so well and I have a huge fear that I am going to be stupidly undone by time management.
I desperately want to get back in strict routine to stand a chance but until this week is over there is no chance of that because we have to go and see family tomorrow and stay the night. I'm going a little crazy now with it all and I hate leaving things to the last minute because stress stops me concentrating. Hence why I always plan a false deadline to complete work about a week before it's due. But this all got screwed by the floods messing up all my strategy and basically, I don't know how to stop freaking out.
I am allowed to ask for extensions, but I'm not sure what good it would do as once term begins again I will have another load of work to do just for seminars and my prioritisation is pretty bad so I know the assignments will fall behind. I'm still pretty newly diagnosed so both I and everyone around me is still adapting to this. In the past I have been so passive, so conscious of 'covering' that I have driven myself into exhaustion rather than try to get other people to accommodate.
Right now, I need advice on how to establish a strict routine with family members so they know that I'm not being mean when I refuse to watch that programme with them that will take me five minutes past my bed time, I just cannot sleep if I don't go to bed then (hence why I'm currently awake at 01:27). But also advice on how best to concentrate when you're struggling. I've been trying to use the break down tasks thing, but it's managing the unpredictable anxiety I'm experiencing that is one of the biggest problems.
Any advice, any help, I would be hugely grateful. I'm especially interested in hearing from anyone else who is highly routine dependent and how they manage with family members etc.
(This probably isn't at all helped by the fact tomorrow will be the first time I see a lot of family members since being diagnosed and I'm feeling very aspie right now.)
01 Jan 2016, 8:33 pm
