Processing loss differently
It can look like we're fine, when we're not
I haven’t posted in a while and that’s because I’m going through a huge change in my life, namely the breakup of the most important relationship of my life to date. It was a long time coming and I ended it, but it’s still knocked the life out of me.
Unfortunately, neuronormative expectations extend even to grief and how we process enormous change. It’s made me think about how the autistic community may feel under pressure to ‘perform’ grief in a way that makes others comfortable, or beat ourselves up for not grieving ‘normally’.
What we’re expected to do
Functioning: Not be able to function properly for a while, from work to self-care, but over time, normal functioning resumes
Feeling: Feel a big range of emotions that roughly map to the standard Kubler Ross stages of loss (shock, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance)
Talking: Be willing and able to talk about our feelings with friends and family, at length, and on a regular basis
What autistic people may experience instead
Functioning
We can be functioning completely fine at first. We work, exercise and socialise as per normal. However, the signs of loss-related dysfunction are there:
o Certain activities become extreme. I went from going to CrossFit three times a week to at least six times a week, shifting it from a hobby to an obsession
o A range of ‘smaller’ routines can start to fall away. I stopped making my kefir to maintain my gut health and even stopped running long distances
o Executive functioning will take a bit hit. I kept forgetting things, tripped over a lot, I even found myself not being able to understand the most basic of instructions
This difference in functioning could be influenced by monotropism or ‘tunnelling’, which is a tendency to focus intently on a small number of interest-driven tasks. When we’re in a good place, monotropism can make us productive and bring us a great deal of joy. But when we’re in distress, we can ‘disappear’ into certain activities to the detriment of other things. So at first we can appear functional, but over time, our tunnelling tendencies can cause us to become dysfunctional.
Feeling
Depending on our emotional profile, we can appear less emotional instead of more. However, this is because we process emotions differently:
o We can go completely numb: My feelings were a raging tsunami, locked behind a wall in my head. I couldn’t ‘feel’ them outside a growing pressure in my body
o Emotional sensitivities become more sensitive: I felt my justice and rejection sensitivities more strongly and they were triggered more easily
o Strong emotions can come out of nowhere: I eventually broke down, six weeks after the break up. It was after a few beers, and very much in public. And I cried and cried and cried, for hours, and until I went to sleep
This disconnection with our emotions could be signs of alexithymia, a common co-occurrence with autistics, where we can’t recognise or name our feelings. When we experience a big change, our experience of alexithymia can greatly heighten. The result is that it can feel to us (and look to others) that we are not feeling anything at all, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Talking
Autistic people may come across as more awkward or ‘autistic’. However, this is a faltering of our neurotypical mask, as our energy is focussed on surviving:
o Brain fog and situational mutism may worsen: I started forgetting words for things, and if my ex-partner got angry, I stuttered and became unable to speak at all
o Communication can disappear completely: I didn’t message anyone or respond to messages consistently or in any great depth. I had no emotional capacity to talk
o We can get stuck in a loop: When I was triggered by a fear of losing my friends (due to being traumatised by past experiences), I found myself panicking and unable to stop fixating on this fear
Talking requires a great deal of executive functioning, including much task and context switching. Autistic challenges here could be explained by a neurological wiring difference, where our brains can struggle to switch between default mode (not focussing) and executive mode (focussing) networks. When under stress, this switching is impacted, meaning we get stuck in certain ‘modes’ or just can’t focus at all. This has profound implications for communicating when we’re dealing with loss and can create a huge barrier between us and those around us.
Another difference autistic people experience when suffering loss is a non-linear recovery pathway. Months after society expects us to be ‘normal’, we may find ourselves in another cycle of grief. After my my ex-husband and I broke up nine years ago, I was ‘fine’ until about eight months later, when I ended up in therapy.
Regardless of the differences, how we experience loss falls within the standard range of human experience, making it completely normal. Grief is a deeply personal experience and there is no one way to process it.
If you’re going through a difficult time, remember that how you are functioning, feeling and talking is a valid way to process the experience. It’s your journey and you’ll recover in your own way, in your own time.