Tags: #autism #psychotherapy #neurodiversity #overload #communication
The cognitive misunderstanding that torpedoes every attempt at support
A collision of cognitive styles.
My brain: needs coherence, structure, logic, frames.
Therapy: offers emotions, co-feeling, intuition.
Result: chaos. Resistance. Overload.
After every session: frustration, anger at myself, guilt.
I do not reject therapy because I do not want help.
My nervous system rejects it.
Because when I ask for structure - I get metaphor.
When I ask for a plan - I hear: “what do you feel when you say that?”.
And what I feel is… that I am falling apart.
I cannot not need support.
Because I still have triggers.
Because children are emotionally and cognitively demanding.
But the way help is offered to me deepens the crisis instead of easing it.
This is not a “difficulty opening up.”
This is not a “lack of readiness for emotional contact.”
This is an ontological mismatch.
This is not about emotions - it is about the architecture of thinking.
And I am simply not made of the same concrete as the therapeutic system.
I want not to fall apart
That is already a lot.
Because for me, “falling apart” means:
- losing cognitive coherence,
- no longer being able to distinguish analysis from panic,
- losing the boundary between what I really feel and what is expected of me,
- leaving a session with pain in my body and aggression toward myself,
- spending hours reconstructing meaning just to regain continuity of consciousness.
I do not need “opening up,” “fixing,” or ready-made solutions.
I need frames and reflection - conditions in which I can think and feel without pressure.
What frames mean to me
For me, frames are:
- a clear session plan (I know what will happen and in what order),
- information about whether we are returning to a topic today or not,
- the possibility of saying “stop” without feeling that I am interrupting something,
- the right to be in silence without analysis that it must mean something,
- not entering “emotions” suddenly - without warning,
- questions that have purpose and meaning, rather than existing only “for contact”.
What reflection means to me
Reflection (paraphrase) means:
- hearing my thought in your words - so I can recognize myself in it,
- not feeling pressure to immediately do something with it,
- not being processed into therapeutic goals,
- but simply being seen in my own form of thinking.
So I ask you to
- Do not expect me to open up.
- Do not push for “contact” before I regain control over myself.
- Do not treat my overload as a sign of crisis requiring intervention.
- Give me space to understand before you begin expecting emotion.
- Help me organize my thoughts before we move on to “feeling”.
- Respect my way of thinking - even if it does not look like “emotional growth”.
This is real help for me. Everything else - even with good intentions - deepens my overload.
It is true: emotions overwhelm me. At the same time, I am not afraid of them
My way of thinking does not cope with their chaotic form. So I often do not show them, process them, or “co-feel” them.
But the fact that I do not experience emotions in a way that is legible to others does not mean I do not have them.
For my cognitive system:
- Emotions = chaos
- Emotions = loss of analysis and orientation
- Emotions = too little information to make a decision
- Emotions in a group = loss of access to my own thinking
- Emotions = something that disrupts clarity instead of supporting it
Not because I do not want to feel.
But because emotions are not a tool that organizes reality for me.
What organizes it for me is: structure, meaning, logic, predictability.
And maybe there is trauma in that too. But that is not all.
It is also the architecture of my mind.
I no longer want every difficulty I have to be treated like a symptom. Sometimes “I don’t feel” because the system knows that is not its path to survival.
That is all. And that is already a lot.