AUTISTIC NICK’S FIRST WEEK BACK WORKING ON HIS DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

As readers of my blog know I recently took an overdue three week mental health break and last Monday it finally dawned on me that I was going back to work on it and frankly I was A) in shock that three weeks had sped past like that and B) that I didn’t feel ready.

It only really hit me during a text message conversation that I was having between myself and a friend and they said are you prepared for going back to work on this project?

It didn’t register with me at first as to what she was talking about, but after a few more texts back and forth it hit me this was the final week of my break and that come Thursday at 10am (AWST) I would be logging into my Yahoo! (not sure why they need that at the end of the letter O for?) and signing into my Zoom meeting.

I took some much deep breaths and attempted to reassure myself that everything would be ok in the coming days.

I thought that I had it under control and that and anxiety that I was feeling would simply disappear, but that wasn’t the case.

In the days leading up to Thursday my anxiety and my thoughts surrounding this began to spiral and whirl and I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was for this.

I pondered making an excuse like when you ring up work and pretend that you’re sick, you add the sore throat and a cough and you hope that no one questions whether you were really sick or not, we’ve all done it and most of the time it pasts muster.

But I wasn’t sure if I could in this case pull such a lie off?

Tuesday came and I had forgotten that I had a meeting that morning and so momentarily I put it out of my mind.

But by then it was too late to even consider the fake cough routine.

So, I just allowed my whirling thoughts and anxiety to overcome me and crossed my fingers that everything on the day would be ok.

Look, this isn’t the approach to take I should have voiced my concerns to someone but as per usual and like most people I felt that I had a handle on it and that I could deal with it.

In retrospect I knew that I was lying to myself but again we all have done it where we convince ourselves that everything is going to be ok.

Tuesday afternoon I email what I’d been working on to the person concerned and having achieved that I went back to what I was doing in my day which was not focusing on this or anything related to it.

I basically stuck my head in the sand and didn’t want to think the worst (although I actually was thinking the worse, but again that was my anxiety coming into play here and I was allowing it to play a bigger part in this than it needed to, it should’ve been an understudy but somehow I’d allowed it to become the main star!).

Wednesday passed and I had managed to repress those thoughts and feelings that I was having about the impending development meeting that I was going to be having on Thursday.

I stayed up late that night to get a good night’s sleep, my thought process was that by tiring myself out I wouldn’t have time to think about anything and allowing my thoughts to keep me awake for most of the night.

Thursday morning came and my plan from the night before had worked. I slept well and not once during the night had I kept myself awake with racing thoughts going through my head.

So, even though I had a lot of anticipation running through my head along with all my racing thoughts, I logged into my Yahoo! Account and then clicked onto the Zoom meeting link and waited and expected the worse.

I needn’t have worried, the meeting which was the longest one to date took 2 and a half hours was nothing that I had to worry about.

The person said that we should take more breaks like this recent three week one and that was great to know, it certainly helped me with my mental health and anxiety and when the day finally arrived I didn’t have to worry about anything, we talked about how good this break had been for the both of us and how we’d both benefitted from having this time away from this development project.

Remember that help is out there if you require it and if you feel that you would benefit from seeing a therapist then click here for a therapist in your area.

You can search for a psychologist here https://www.psychology.org.au/Find-a-Psychologist

Or you can see a physiatrist here https://www.yourhealthinmind.org/find-a-psychiatrist

Carry On The Conversation

As always, I can also be found on Twitter:@AutisticNickAU and on the Autistic Nick Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/AutisticNickAU/

Thank you for reading and I will see you next time for more thoughts from across the spectrum.