Table of Contents
Wednesday, October 8, 2025 was a really scary night for me. I had a bunch of schoolwork due coming up, especially things that I wasn't good at doing. On top of this, I also had a 8 hour shift the next day, something that I wasn't looking forward to at all, creating a lot of stress. The weight of the world was starting to cave in on me. But the most important aspect, I was unmedicated.
I'm not proud of the person I am while unmedicated. I can get very violent, angry, rude, and impulsive; none of which are things I wish to be. Additionally, with it being late at night, that's when I start thinking bad things about myself, which everyone knows to "never trust how you feel about your life after 9pm". When you're stressed, you don't really think about that.
What was "the Incident?"
When scrolling through Twitter to give myself a little break from working (ok, just procrastinate) I found something strange happening. For quite some time now I've been what can be seen as "woke" by others. I've supported the LGBTQIA+ community, anti-racism, pro women's rights, etc. I might not be the best at it (especially at being vocal about it), but I still try my hardest to support everyone, standing up for what is right, and "calling out" those who don't.
This doesn't matter too much in the context of this story. The only reason I bring this up was because I started getting really strange, unusual urges. I found myself gaining urges to comment hateful things like "you will never be a {gender}" before near immediately thinking "No, why would I say that? This isn't me."
Successful Conflict Resolution
Nothing like this had ever happened to me in recent memory. I've been angry and tempted to say rude things, but never make someone feel bad about their own identity. What was happening? Was I secretly a bad person?
Thankfully, I quickly recognized that my behavior was abnormal, and I took steps to prevent anything bad from happening. I was too focused on schoolwork to figure out exactly what was wrong, so I made a really vague statement on my private Twitter account (I don't usually browse Twitter on my public account when at my computer):
something really bad is coming up that's going to happen to me. i don't know what it is but something is changing and i don't like it. at all. this isn't me.
Additionally, I used some of the Twitter plug-ins I had installed to temporarily remove the reply feature on Twitter for myself, and I also set a status on Discord and other platforms warning people "hey, i'm a little crazy right now, please interact with caution."
Later on I looked this up and found out these are just intrusive thoughts. When you're angry or stressed, any intrusive thoughts you have suddenly become more prominent. I even found a Reddit thread of people sharing similar experiences, which definitely helped me feel much less "alone." I additionally learned that one of the best ways to deal with these thoughts is to challenge them, which I definitely did that night when I kept thinking "I don't believe this, this isn't me."
I'm happy with how I handled this specific situation. Nobody got upset or hurt, I was able to contain myself and feel better. However, that wasn't the only situation taking place that night. And sadly, I cannot say I handled the second situation anywhere near as well.
Unsuccessful Conflict Resolution
Later on that night, I continued having bad thoughts, although urges went away, as I calmed down. I still didn't know what was happening with my mind, and I started viewing myself as almost a danger to my trans and LGBTQIA+ friends. As a result of viewing myself like this, I left the one group chat I was in, in order to "protect" my queer friends inside of it. This was my worst self-destructive action that night.
The thought that I need to shelter myself away from queer people to "protect" them from me was straight up crap. I've had queer friends in real life since fifth grade, and none of them have ever felt scared around me. Sure, there is the issue where it takes a long time for me to remember someone's new identity when they transition, but I'm terrible with that for everyone. I don't know the name of any of my teachers off the top of my head. My friends were understanding, and plus I at least tried to correct myself in person whenever I accidentally misgendered someone. Point is, I've always tried to be supportive of my trans friends, even if I'm somewhat bad at it. Plus, the people in this chat were online. What would I even be protecting them from 
?
The reason why leaving was a self-destructive action was because I rarely talk to people outside of social media (such as Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and TikTok). Most of the time I talk to the same person every day, so finally being in a group chat was helping me:
- Actually talk to more people
- Experience things outside of text chat (such as playing video games together)
- Become inspired to create
- Comfort each other
Additionally, I felt myself becoming more social outside of the chat. Small things like starting up conversations in college or singing songs in the car (something I never did before that). I was becoming a better person. By leaving this group chat I was self-isolating myself.
Almost the moment I tapped the Leave button on my screen I felt regret. The best thing to compare it to would be jumping off a building. Suddenly you have a solution for your problems, but its too late. You're already falling.
Almost immediately I started begging without mentioning the chat by being really vague over my private Twitter. I was expecting to be replaced, as Discord group chats can only hold 10 people, and our chat was at that limit. But thankfully, I never was. I am still incredibly thankful that my friends were able to reason and let me back in. I love all of you so much, and I'm so sorry that I keep putting you all through this 
.
Stopping Self-Destructive Behaviors
A self-destructive behavior is something that you do in order to make your life worse, usually with little to no benefit for yourself. Self-destructive behaviors can usually happen due to low self-esteem, social isolation, abuse, or trauma[1]. As someone with autism, low self-esteem and social isolation are really big contributing factors, as well as the way my brain works.
I've experienced and done quite a few self-destructive actions throughout my life, but I want to make a change. I want to identify when things are starting to go wrong, and be able to take action in order to prevent situations leading to self-destructive actions. After the night in the story I just told, I finally tried setting systems up for prevention.
Identification
The first thing I needed to do was identify what the common conditions of myself were when I did a self-destructive action. This is what I came up with:
- Angry or upset
- Unmedicated
- Nighttime
Being Angry or Upset
This is likely the most important factor. While angry or upset, people usually make really dumb decisions. This is due to not thinking before doing something, everything becomes impulsive. You feel upset at something and suddenly the entire world is crashing down on you.
Unmedicated
This one is more of a personal thing. As I mentioned at the start of the article, being unmedicated makes me somebody that I'm not proud of. I become more impulsive and angry. When I'm out in public I can usually handle this, but it becomes a problem while alone with my thoughts.
Nighttime
This one goes along with being unmedicated, as usually my medication wears off at night. Being unmedicated combined with the way our minds see things more negatively at night makes strong nighttime emotions so much harder to cope with.
Prevention
Now that I know when my situations usually happen, I can use this information to take action to prevent them from happening.
Sometimes you're aware that you're angry and shouldn't be doing the things you're doing, but not in the right head space to do anything about it. So, I setup automated blocking filters to deal with this.
Because most incidents happen at night, I made it so after 11PM all social and chat apps are blocked. If I still feel okay I can unblock them, but I have to wait 30 seconds for that to happen, giving me time to reflect. Also, I kept allowing video based platforms such as YouTube, as I feel those can be beneficial, and I can't remember the last time I got angry watching a YouTube video. Plus, all my comments are sent to the void no matter what channel I comment on, so who cares if I say anything stupid, nobody can see it.
Success?
Has this been working? Somewhat.
I have noticed my mood getting a little better ever since starting this, but there are times I feel angry before 11PM hit. During these times, I make a manual effort to not go on any social platforms. But with everything said, there has definitely been an improvement since setting this up, just not as much of an improvement as I hoped.
Conclusion
I hope by writing this, someone who struggles with self-destructive behaviors can become inspired to do something about it. I only wanted to share what I did, and what I did might not work for you, and it might not even work for me in the future.
I want to get better, but time isn't the only thing it takes to heal. Sometimes you need to put in work.