When Pain meets Autism

Hey besties, welcome back, did you miss me? Of course you did! 

How was your week? Mine I will not lie was stressful, had some health issues but we are thriving and getting through it which actually brings us to today’s talk.  

Dealing with health issues and pain with autism: 

So besties I have been diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia, if you don’t know what that means. It is a compression of the nerves in your brain, and it causes an intense pain in your head, down your face and jaw into your neck and shoulder. 

But today we are not focusing purely on that, we are focusing on pain as a whole. As a neurotypical person you pop a pain killer and mostly get on with your day, at least the people in my life do. However, as a neurodiverse person? That is not always the case.  

Firstly, who agrees pain is so overwhelming and overstimulating? How can you get anything done with any sort of pain? How am I meant to focus on a book, cooking dinner, university while I am in pain? I don’t see how it is possible, whereas so many people just tell you to get on with it – get on with it? I can barely function when a tiny little pain happens. Much to people’s belief pain is not just pain when you are autistic.  

Not to mention, do any of my neurodiverse besties look up their symptoms and then convince themselves you are dying? I am not saying neurotypical people don’t do this but as an autistic person when I research suddenly I am dying in preparation to tell my doctor I’ve got a brain tumour and two months to live because Dr. Google has told me.  

With pain comes tablets, the beautiful little things that’s meant to help us, but the side effects? The long list of what ifs? And then there’s tablets that confuse me, you take them 3 times a day evenly spread out and it’s meant to stop your pain? And then it says but you are going to take it and it won’t do anything for a few days, maybe even a few weeks. I'm sorry, what? Why am I taking it then? Feels pointless right?  

Then when you decide to go to a doctor, they speak in these long words and unless you have a good doctor they don’t always explain it in an “autistic” form, which makes the stress worse, not only are we stressed from the issue but now we are stressed because we don’t understand but we are not gonna say we don’t understand instead we’ll nod and say “yeah thank you”. Then go home and Dr. Google it which as we have established does not help the situation. 

But as your autistic bestie let me say, if you are going through any of this you have got this! You will get through it! And even through the stress and confusion when you feel you are failing and are crying because you just want to understand remember you are not alone; us autistic besties are in the boat with you trying to row it as well. 

I know today’s talk was a lot, and very heavy but sometimes the heavy talks are the ones we need.

Love,  

Your autistic bestie  

Book of the week: A Court Of Frost And Starlight (same as last week but we are nearly finished!)