I did it! I found an AS-literate therapist. She’s a colleague of the psychologist who diagnosed me with AS in November. And she’s only a half hour away. So now, in addition to seeing an OT in Massachusetts, I’m going to meet with a therapist in New Hampshire. (Did I mention that I live in Vermont?) Anyway, I have an appointment with her in late May, so we’ll get to sit down, and talk, and see whether we click.

It’s been so important for me to find a therapist who understands AS. I’ve done a lot of psychotherapy over the past 25 years, and it’s done me a world of good, but around the time I was diagnosed with AS, I began to feel very frustrated with it. The underlying assumption of psychotherapy is unending progress. You just have to work on your issues, and the sky’s the limit. In fact, my last therapist told me that with a little more work, I was going to “soar.” It didn’t make me feel good. I didn’t know why then, but I understand now. I don’t need to soar. I need to learn how to walk through the world being exactly who I am.

One of the many things that I love about my OT is that she doesn’t make me any promises. She doesn’t say I’m going to “soar,” or learn to filter out background noise, or even go grocery shopping once a week. She doesn’t promise anything. She just gives me tools and says, “Let’s try this and see how it works for you. Everyone is different.” What a relief! It allows me to accept myself exactly where I am, knowing full well that I might make some progress, or none at all. As long as there are practical things that I can do, I’ll do them and see how they work. I like that approach very much.

So it’s a little odd to think about going to a therapist again. A great deal of my present work consists of undoing all the psychotherapeutic assumptions I’ve lived by for 25 years. The main assumption to overcome is that all of my problems are emotional and psychological, rather than neurological and physical. Undoing that assumption is very hard work, but I’m getting a little better at it. Consider the following:

1. How I handle my anger. I have lots of reasons to be angry. My lousy childhood. My estrangement from my original family. Global warming. Autism Speaks. I could go on, but you get the idea. For much of my life, I’ve seen my anger as a psychological problem to be solved. I’ve needed to “work through” my anger at my parents. I’ve needed to learn to “channel” my anger at the ills of the world into productive work. And that’s fine. I’ve worked hard at all that, and I’ve had a lot of success at it, too.

But now, I’m realizing that a great deal of my anger is my nervous system trying like crazy to get my attention. Yesterday at the co-op, in the midst of all the sensory overload, I could feel my anger rising, and I realized that my nervous system was yelling at me: “Get me out of here! Get me out of here! There are too many people! They’re all talking at once! The large-size gloves are driving me nuts! Someone is banging on metal! There’s too much music! Please, take me home! Now!” As my OT would say, my anger is just my nervous system defending itself.

What an incredible piece of information. I don’t have to take my anger out on myself. I just have to listen to my anger as a signal from my nervous system—a signal that I need to respect. The respecting part is the hard part, because I’ve devoted most of my life to overriding my neurological signals. I’ve gotten quite adept at it. It’s become a deeply-ingrained habit, and habits are difficult to break. Difficult, but by no means impossible.

2. Why I overeat at night. I can hardly express what a failure I think I am around food. I soothe myself with it. (Isn’t that just awful? I mean, it’s right up there with global warming and Autism Speaks, isn’t it?) Up until the past few months, I figured I was soothing myself emotionally because of trauma issues, loss, and insecurity. But I’ve worked on these issues forever, and I still use food the same way.

Now I realize that my nervous system is in an uproar at night. An absolute uproar. After a full day of wending my way through the sensory world, I am tired and my nervous system is going nuts. How wonderful to talk with my OT, and to realize that overeating at night is not about a lack of willpower or commitment or strength or character. It’s just my poor 50-year-old jangly Aspie nervous system saying, “Help. Please. Help. I’m hanging from the chandelier. I know you don’t have a chandelier. It’s just a figure of speech. Help.”

So why see a therapist at all? After all, my OT is giving me the information I need.

I need some emotional support, too. I need some support for feeling my otherness, for accepting my aloneness, for guiding my daughter into young adulthood, for figuring out what to do here in mid-life when everything I’ve planned for, and dreamt about, and worked so hard for is done. The therapist I’ll be meeting specializes in helping women through mid-life transitions, so if anyone can help me get comfortable with becoming a crazy old cat lady, it will be someone like her.

Of course, I’ll need to get some cats. I’ll put them on my list. But where do they go in the sequence? At the beginning, before I see the therapist? Or as a reward somewhere down the road? I don’t know. It’s all so confusing. But I’ll get there. Wherever it is. That’s for sure.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg