So I am finally able to express insecurities about my body that I’ve held onto my whole life due to, you know, feeling like a singularly fucked up freak which unfortunately is a common experience for us autistics and neurodivergent folks. I’ve had some recent experiences that have me feeling pretty down about my body and I guess I want to write it down and get some validation from others that may share some of these experiences or have some guidance or information to understand myself better. Unfortunately, some of these “quirks” lead to some serious social avoidance behaviors and anxiety because I feel like I have no control over when my body seems to decide to just stop working properly. I just want to understand better why I, for example, can seemingly randomly lose my coordination and take an embarrassing tumble or knock over and break things; why I can overheat and start sweating profusely so easily; why my reflexes can be so reactive and I get jumpy or overreact, like having a gag reflex that can cause me to puke or spit up over nothing; why I can sometimes be very sensitive to pain or not feel it all; why I have IBS and other stomach issues that don’t seem to correlate to any particular food or activity; why I have nerve pain in my legs and restless legs; why I can sometimes feel the constant urge to go to the bathroom or have embarrassing episodes of sexual dysfunction. I hope this post doesn’t come across too much like a “woe is me” thing, just trying to understand myself better so I can stop feeling so insecure about something I can’t control. How much of this is related to general executive dysfunction that is a hallmark of autism and ADHD? Does anyone else have similar experiences? Is it possible some of this is completely unrelated to neurodivergence? Do others also feel this way about their body?
I get this. For me personally it has always been pretty much being checked out from my body when it comes to basic stuff like pain, the need to pee, hunger etc. I have trained way too hard, dieted too hard, walked around septic like it’s nothing and ignored pain that likely never was the “high pain treshold” that I though it was. I never get hungry, I also don’t really get sleepy so always been a night owl and work has been very hard.
I have also had the “stress GI track” since I was a teen, all the way to an ulcer at age 18 just from stressing about my exams in high school. And the very very sensitive gag reflex I have too, never could even watch people make mock gag sounds without feeling sick.
And being nervous always has made me feel like I need to pee. This afaik is a very universal thing, but most of this other stuff is also very much part of the neurospicy experience.