Emotional Overwhelm

This week has been stressful. War and Order, the game I enjoy and play, became a second workplace. I’m the alliance leader. We’ve had a few personal dramas that match many real life communities. Personalities collided, tempers rose, and I found myself dealing with conflict from every direction over three weeks. I managed it at the start, yet, by the third week, the emotional cost built quietly. Arguments and defensiveness just kept hitting me. My normal conflict diplomacy wasn’t working. I reached the point where I knew I needed to step back, regulate, and delegate to my friends, but emotional overwhelm sat underneath it all.

Emotional overwhelm has always been part of my life. My ASD assessment described how I suppress emotions until they build and how anxiety rises when I struggle to understand people’s responses. It has been this way from childhood into adulthood. Transitioning between year groups and schools, constantly struggling with friendships, leaving my friends and family for university, my first marriage ending, and my mum dying all triggered me.

What seems to be a problem is that while I experience emotions, I, according to my ASD assessment, can’t quite grasp them. I feel sadness, anxiety, and overwhelm sit physically, but rather than explain them, I can only respond how they physically impact me, like how sadness and anxiety is a chest feeling. I never had the language for anything deeper. When this all becomes difficult, the overwhelm hits, and a clear sign is always the unnecessary, long worded communication. That pattern has been with me since school and is something I explored in my neurodivergent communication post.

This week showed how quickly overwhelm can rise when fairness is threatened. I noticed patterns others missed. Hypocrisy, manipulation, personal vendettas and unnecessary judgement. These things have always bothered me more than they seem to bother other people. I wrote about this in my reassessment post, describing how fairness feels like a rule written into my bones. When people twist situations or act unfairly, my mind locks onto it. It’s not stubbornness. It’s how my brain processes justice, clarity and truth.

It wasn't just the game. I have been juggling my physical health, the stress the teens sometimes bring, managing their ASD and making sure one doesn't trigger another, avoiding me triggering them or them me, church activities, friendships, and ministries, and, just like the game, navigating the social issues within our church community, especially those who apply unnecessary pressure and stress, just because they too struggle regulating too. 

One of the clashes this week involved a friend. He’s a good guy, yet he becomes defensive when challenged. I become blunt when clarity matters. We collided. He felt attacked. I felt frustrated by the hypocrisy I saw. The worst part was that he was not the main source of the drama. He simply stepped into the wrong moment. My other friend Longhorn (his game handle) covered for me, even though he’s friends with the guy. It was kind and necessary. I reached the point where I knew I would snap if I stayed. So I stepped back. It was the right choice.

Stepping back is one of the ways I cope. My assessment described how I isolate myself, but that sounds like a negative trait. I use noise cancelling headphones and follow predictable routines when things become too much. These strategies help. They don’t remove the overwhelm. They just stop it from spilling into other areas of life. I still feel the anxiety in my chest. I replay the injustice. I struggle with the parts of humanity that make no sense to me. I’m 43 and still don’t understand why people choose manipulation or personal vendettas. I understand conflict. I don’t understand unnecessary cruelty.

For years these reactions were framed as emotional instability. My 2015 post on Dependent Personality Disorder shows how I interpreted everything through that lens. I described myself as clingy, needy and unable to cope alone. I wrote about panic, fear and distress. I believed it. I had no other language. My ASD assessment explains why that diagnosis never fit. It states that my difficulties are not better explained by a mental health condition and that my overwhelm is linked to sensory processing differences and a need for sameness. It also notes that I manage well in stable and predictable environments. That’s not EUPD. That's autism.

My post reflecting on that old diagnosis shows the difference clearly. The traits I described in 2015 were signs of autistic burnout, not personality disorder. Routine disruption, emotional flooding, shutdowns, sensory overwhelm and literal thinking were all present. They were misinterpreted. My life stabilised. The dependency didn’t remain. Autism did. They’ve been consistent since childhood. My ASD diagnosis, communication, and reassessment posts show how the picture was always there.

This week didn’t expose instability, but autistic traits I’ve carried my whole life. The need for fairness. The difficulty interpreting tone. The bluntness that appears when clarity matters. The overwhelm that rises when social demands spike. The anxiety that sits quietly underneath. The need to step back and regulate. These aren’t signs of emotional disorder. 

I’m not broken or unstable. Since this diagnosis I’m finally understanding the map. This week was difficult, but it made sense. I can see the pattern clearly. I can see myself clearly. I feel calmer and more stable, just by reflecting back through that lens, and knowing my regulation techniques will and have helped.