ASD, CP and Mental Health (Part 1)

Written between 27 May and 12 December 2024

I only remember having three friends throughout primary school, and we soon drifted apart once we moved to senior school. Looking back on my life at senior school, I now realise that I only had about three or four friends throughout the five years I was there. I didn’t realise this then, but I didn’t have conversations with other pupils apart from my immediate friends.

I have struggled with my mental health for many years, more specifically 11 years. I think my depression stems from feeling like I don’t fit in and not being able to do things for myself. I know that it’s not my fault that I am unable to do things myself, but it makes me so angry that I have to rely on others to help me with most things. I have OCD; I like things done in specific ways and I like to plan what I do, and hate it when people change plans because it throws me off course completely.

My mental health issues started when I started sixth-form college back in 2013. Since starting college, I’ve realised how different I am from the other population my age. As I went through my first two years of college, I noticed my behaviour and interests differed from those in my class.

At college, I found it incredibly difficult to relate to my ‘classmates’; I thought that this was because I was one of two students in the class who had a physical disability and all the rest had some learning disability. Although this played a part, looking back on it, I realised that I couldn’t relate to the other students because I lacked the skills and desire to make new friends; this is probably part of my Autism...

The staff at my college tried to encourage me to “mingle” with other students, but I never wanted to. Even now, I think about these situations and how I could have handled them better, because back then, I had less of an idea about how to chat with everyone and I just wanted people to lay off and leave me to make friends my way, or not make friends as the case may be. I just wasn’t interested in making more friends, I didn’t understand the point. Plus, as well, I found it difficult to talk to people because of my speech impairment.

Making the transition from school to college was traumatic for me because of how different the structure of the college day was. The lessons were totally different for a start... I was put in a class with people who had a mix of learning disabilities. I was one of two people who had a physical disability, all the rest of the class had some sort of learning disability.

Trying to fit in and make friends with people who had a learning disability was extremely difficult as well as going against my true wishes to keep myself to myself. I still wonder why they tried to get me to make friends. I found it very difficult to have a conversation, and I still have a lot of problems opening and holding conversations now.

As I said, my mental health issues really started because of my problems with fitting in at college. First came anxiety when I started college and realised how different I am… They tried telling me that I could have a job earning money, but I have always known this isn’t possible for me. Then I got anxious about potentially putting obstacles in my own way and the fact that I couldn’t understand why people didn’t understand my disability and what I can and can’t do, and because of this, I got angry with everyone and everything (including myself). The more I thought about what I could do with my life, the more I fell into depression and wanted a way out of it all… I was in therapy for about two or three years to have help with everything.

Come back tomorrow to read the second part.