In retrospect, it was panic that led me down the road to a diagnosis of autism. But at the same time, the symptoms of panic disorder masked my autism and put me in a constant state of hypervigilance that clouded my view of things. Oh, my eye contact is weird? I take things too literally? OK, let me add that to my list of things to worry about, right after FEELING LIKE THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO END for no apparent reason.
Read on to discover how I got to the bottom of things.
TW: Panic, anxiety disorders, mental health
Panicked Beginnings
“I feel like something bad is going to happen.”
First, my hands and arms start to tingle. I become uncomfortably aware of my own heartbeat. I feel like I can’t breathe. But the worst part is the sense that I’m no longer attached to my own body. It’s like I’m watching a movie of myself. There I am, looking calm on the outside, while absolutely convinced that the apocalypse is nigh.
These were classic signs of a panic attack, but I was too young to realize it. What was happening to me? A premonition? A heart attack? A cancer lurking somewhere in my body? This confusion led to so much strife, because there was just no mental health conversation around me to clarify. I developed health anxiety. I sometimes experienced OCD symptoms (though I have no formal diagnosis) like thinking that if I didn’t guess the time correctly a bomb would go off. As illogical as this seemed to me, and as many times as I survived whatever scenario my mind was generating, I couldn’t shake the thoughts.
That’s not to say I didn’t have brighter periods. Marching band, for example, was a safe haven of structured social interaction and support. But I was about to leave that network behind.
The College Years
Fast forward to college. I start having these experiences again, only this time the phrase “panic attack” comes across my radar and I latch onto it. I start counseling, and feel some relief at finally having an explanation. “It’s just fight or flight gone haywire,” I would tell myself. This was not enough to deescalate an attack, but much better than thinking I was dying.
I started to identify triggers for how I was feeling, like ruminating about school deadlines. I learned techniques to ride out an attack, like narrating my way through mundane tasks. “Pick up the cup. Go to the door. Open it. Walk down the stairs. One, two, three…Turn on the faucet. Get the soap.” This kept me grounded in reality, and helped with the surreal nature of the attacks.
Getting By
But it was still a long road. Some days, I struggled to leave my room. “Everyone wants something from me and I can’t deliver.” “What if you lose it in front of everyone?” I was desperate for someone to notice how much trouble I was in, but also desperate to hide it. I remember the fall of senior year, during a particularly stressful time, having three attacks in one day. I called the campus health center emergency line from my car. They were reluctant to connect me: “The on-call counselor is at dinner.” Not a fun experience to feel like an inconvenience during one of my first attempts at getting help during an attack. The counselor himself was great, though, and showed none of the reluctance of the staff.
By the time graduation rolled around, I had gone months without an attack. This was the longest stretch of relief I’d felt in four years. But questions remained. For example, how was it possible for me to experience so many attacks, at such a duration? Why was I so prone to this? And what if it happens again?
If you are experiencing anxiety, panic, or other mental health issues, you are not alone. Please confide in someone you trust and reach out to a qualified medical practitioner or counselor. For more information, check out organizations like NAMI.
Plateauing
After learning how to keep from spiraling into more panic, my life improved greatly. I still had anxiety, and strange worries, and periods of overwhelm. But life was bearable enough that I no longer pursued even the little support I’d had in college. I have a tendency to think that things are meant to feel hard. “If it’s easy, it’s not worth doing.” “Get out of your comfort zone.” Platitudes like this were actually damaging to me. I was a grad student by this time, and constantly pushing towards the next goal. Language proficiency exams. General exams. Fellowships. The dissertation. And ultimately, a tenure track job.
The application process foreshadowed what was to come. I felt like an imposter. I had such intense anxiety over the outcome that I couldn’t bear to hear loved ones encourage me. “I’m going to disappoint them all when I don’t even get an interview.” But I did get an interview, and then a campus visit, and an offer.
A Turning Point
Some neurodivergent people are diagnosed in adulthood because their lives suddenly exceed their coping strategies. This was my experience. Hours of in-person teaching, pressure to publish, and travel all contributed to a constant state of overwhelm. I experienced this primarily as a return to the anxiety levels I’d had in college. I panicked on the treadmill at the campus gym and had to stop because increasing my heart rate reminded me too much of the old attacks. I knew I was headed down a bad road.
The major difference was that I could not hide it from everyone. In college, I’d put on a happy face, go to class, then pull the covers over my head for the rest of the afternoon. If I was burned out and couldn’t socialize, oh well. Now, I was married and trying to maintain a social life at my new job. I tried to mask how difficult it was to even get a word out sometimes, but it quickly became apparent to my partner that something was off.
At first, it might have seemed like disengagement, or fatigue. But conversations and conflicts sometimes ended with me curled into a ball, crying or even hyperventilating, feeling that same old panic.
Quiet and Clarity
I wish I could say that I saw immediately what was going on. It would have saved a lot of suffering. But I was putting the pieces together. A family member told me about sensory processing sensitivity, and I immediately recognized myself in the description. I found a new therapist, and worked on ways to calm myself proactively, eventually doing EMDR to work through those past experiences. My partner and I learned how to communicate through the shutdowns, taking breaks and regrouping.
Then, I moved all my classes online in 2020, and fully realized what a toll classroom time had taken on me. Ultimately, I learned to code and changed careers to better suit my need for long stretches of quiet, independent work.
It was in this new quiet that answers started emerging. Yes, I was scared, but of something tangible that we were all in together. In terms of that old nameless fear, I was calmer, and better able to notice when things became too much. I had grown so accustomed to my former level of upset that it had been hard to track how I was doing.
With this new knowledge of what it felt like to be calm, I was more reluctant to push myself. I allowed myself to decline invitations to things I knew would be overwhelming even as the world opened back up. I doubled down on things that make me happy, like our cats (we now have four). I allowed myself downtime to read, to knit, and crucially, to scroll on TikTok.
Thank You, TikTok Creators
Did I think it would be life-changing to log into that app? No way. But then I started to see content that was uncannily familiar: Stories of overwhelm. Physical habits like walking on my toes or the sides of my feet, or sleeping in a particular position. Processing styles like bottom-up thinking. I’ve told some of that story already, and will surely tell it again, so suffice it to say: I found the answer. This was why things could look fine for me on paper, only for my days to be spent in utter panic. This was why other people could handle things that sent me over the edge. This was why I noticed and thought so hard about so many things others didn’t even consider for a moment.
Now that I know I am autistic, it all makes sense. Autistic people experience higher rates of anxiety, and might need to approach treatment differently. For example, exposure therapy might work for a specific panic-related trigger, like a place where I’ve had an attack before. But forcing myself into over-stimulating environments that eventually provoke anxiety does more harm than good, and won’t “cure” me of anything. This is why it is so disturbing to hear claims that autism will be “cured.” It is part of who I am, and when I treated it like a disease, I did damage to myself.
Not only that, but panic disorder masked my autism. I couldn’t focus on the other challenges that I had. Ironically, these were the more discussed aspects of autism: Social difficulties and processing differences, for example. Those concerns paled in comparison to the all-consuming panic I was feeling.
Reliving and Reconsidering
I recently went to a huge event (think 20,000 or so people). The burnout lasted almost two weeks. During that time, I could feel so clearly the beginnings of the panic I used to experience. When I hit burnout, it’s like my senses and attention can’t keep up. I feel ill at ease, and can’t tell why. I start to numb out, which leads to the kind of derealization that used to hit me during those attacks. I knew during this recovery period with absolute certainty: Overwhelm had led me over and over to anxiety, which then spiralled into panic.
But this time, I had not only the mental health tools to handle it, but also new knowledge of how my brain works. I didn’t judge myself. I didn’t push myself to do more and more until I collapsed. I took it easy, as much as I could while working. This is not always possible. We hit overwhelm, and the society we live in demands we keep going. We have to work. We have to take care of ourselves and our families.
Accommodation
Within this, it is still possible to accommodate ourselves. I wish I had known, for example, that simply wearing a hoodie or a hat pulled over my head most of the time could be so calming. But surely not all of my professors would have understood that this apparel was helping me stay engaged. I might have encountered other challenges like bias, with teachers thinking I was slacking or hiding a hangover.
This is why autism acceptance is so important. I need less external input to pay attention effectively, so some of the things I do will look contrary to others. Looking at the ground doesn’t mean I am not listening. I can hear through the noise-filtering earplugs. I will not fall asleep if I lie down to meditate or read (unless it’s past 10pm). I will focus better if I knit during that long talk (my lifelong covert stim). And the consequence of not allowing myself these things is the destruction of my mental and physical health.
Now that I know these things about myself, I can finally be calm. And the experiences of the past only serve to strengthen my resolve.
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What are your experiences with neurodivergence and mental health? Leave me a comment below.
