#autisticme — Public Fediverse posts

@mimikama #Autismus ist keine Krankheit, auch keine chronische. :autism:
#OnTheSpectrum #autistici #autisticindividuals #autisticme

Trotzdem: Gut, dass ihr aufklärt.

i lost my pencase with my two resin falcons and refill bottles and I am so distraught. At least they're easy (if costly) to replace and I have plenty of pens to go with in the meantime, but damn, the psychological impact is wild.

#fountainpens #actuallyautistic #autisticme

i lost my pencase with my two resin falcons and refill bottles and I am so distraught. At least they're easy (if costly) to replace and I have plenty of pens to go with in the meantime, but damn, the psychological impact is wild.

#fountainpens #actuallyautistic #autisticme

I typed out some of the most resonant parts of I Will Die on This Hill for my #AutisticParent blog, so I don't forget them.

https://willaful.blogspot.com/2024/03/i-will-die-on-this-hill-where-was-this.html

https://willaful.blogspot.com/2024/03/more-quotes-from-i-will-die-on-this-hill.html

#ActuallyAutistic #AutisticMe

I typed out some of the most resonant parts of I Will Die on This Hill for my #AutisticParent blog, so I don't forget them.

https://willaful.blogspot.com/2024/03/i-will-die-on-this-hill-where-was-this.html

https://willaful.blogspot.com/2024/03/more-quotes-from-i-will-die-on-this-hill.html

#ActuallyAutistic #AutisticMe

My parents keep talking to me both at the same time while I’m coding and the oven is beeping… no wonder I used to find family time so stressful. Time to put on headphones.

#actuallyautistic #autisticme

My parents keep talking to me both at the same time while I’m coding and the oven is beeping… no wonder I used to find family time so stressful. Time to put on headphones.

#actuallyautistic #autisticme

I know why it hurts: it feels like losing your community over something you don't understand. A well known feeling for #autisticme / #actuallyautistic honestly.

#llms #llm

I know why it hurts: it feels like losing your community over something you don't understand. A well known feeling for #autisticme / #actuallyautistic honestly.

#llms #llm

Buying a legion go to play elden ring wherever might have been one of the better mental health decisions I made.

I had a switch but none of the games fully capture me like the big badaboom AAA stuff does (ok mostly from soft and of course monster hunter).

Realizing that gaming is actually a healthy regulatory mechanism has been a powerful insight. Like earplugs for the mind.

#autisticme #actuallyautistic

Buying a legion go to play elden ring wherever might have been one of the better mental health decisions I made.

I had a switch but none of the games fully capture me like the big badaboom AAA stuff does (ok mostly from soft and of course monster hunter).

Realizing that gaming is actually a healthy regulatory mechanism has been a powerful insight. Like earplugs for the mind.

#autisticme #actuallyautistic

@actuallyautistic

One of the things that has come up on people's posts recently, has been autistic burn out. It reminded me how truly grateful I am that I joined this site. Because without posts like these I would not have recognised what I was experiencing this time last year, which was the worst burn out of my life.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what would have happened if I hadn't. I was beyond exhausted, even to the point of disassociation, in terms of briefly not knowing where I was, or what I was doing, even whilst working. But knowing me and my actions in the past, I would probably have tried to push through regardless of how bad it was. And I dread to think what the consequences of trying to do that would have been, especially if I had ended up going to the doctors. It is not as if the concept of autistic burn out is widely known, or not normally misdiagnosed as depression and medicated accordingly.

Instead, I was able to realise what it was and that things needed to drastically change and then to take the steps that have led to me feeling much better now. Not entirely out of the woods yet, but certainly seeing glimpses of the world beyond them. And all thanks to what I have learnt here. Being here has also deepened my confidence in my self-diagnosis, through the peer-review process, as someone once described it, of talking to others and realising just how similar and how much in common we have.

It is because of it, that I can look back over the days of my life and realise even more how autistic they had been. How much of my life revolved around it, even before I had this name for my difference. The accommodations I made because of it, without even realising what I was doing. How it had restricted, shaped and in so many ways, defined my choices.

And yet, the weird thing is that, despite this, being on here can also ignite my imposter syndrome. I read about the lives of others, the difficulties they face and the things that they struggle with, and I can't help but look back over my privileged and, from the outside looking in, anyway, pretty much normal life and wonder how I can even dream of being autistic. When I have lived alone and managed with most of the day to day stuff that has to be done, without any real problems or hardships. Or that I ran my own business for 22 years. Or that I have had, in fact, a pretty good life. If not, perhaps, the one I could have had.

And this, I think, is one of the problems of realising so late that I am autistic. I have had that long life to look back upon. Of coping, of making do and shaping something for myself that worked. Almost despite itself. It can make the autism seem unreal. To make me wonder if it is not just another excuse for not having done better. For the feelings that I could, perhaps, have done so much more. That it's nothing more really than a final grasping at some vague straw, before finally having to accept that it always was and had been because I was a little too lazy or, in some way, simply broken and faulty from the start, that I didn't do more.

There will, I suspect, always be moments when I doubt myself like this. When I forget all that I have learnt and the depth of the connection I feel simply being here. The price that has to be paid by someone like me, I suppose, for the sense of belonging and fellowship that I feel here and have literally never felt anywhere else in all the decades of my life. The true peer-review that this place produces and which I will always be truly, and beyond deeply, grateful for.

So thank you all, for being here and for putting up with me ❤️​ It means so very much.

#Autism
#ActuallyAutistic
#Autisticme

.

So I think I learned an important lesson today. I need to approach “boredom” (the physically painful, stress driven kind of boredom) the same way I approach noise.

It’s something that can result in a meltdown and the way to deal with it is to recognize symptoms and then applying the necessary strategies. The meltdown is just the consequence of a dis regulation, not the problem itself.

Which means that a handheld console is like earplugs for boredom.

#autisticme #actuallyautistic

1/

My mom is now on the "self-diagnosed to diagnosing all her friends" pipeline. 😂

I'm really glad in truth, because I never really felt comfortable talking about it much with her before.

#ActuallyAutistic #AutisticMe

Reading a book which talks a lot about peoples scented bath products and such and I guess I'm feeling particularly sensitive right now because it's like I can almost smell and taste them. 🤢

#AutisticMe

@actuallyautistic
There is a strange duality to living over five decades bewildered and uncertain. And by that I mean not realising that I was autistic. Part of me spent that time learning to deal and in many ways accept the difference that I didn't have a name for. To learn how to cope living alone, the routines and, if I had only known it then, the workarounds that allowed it. Settling into work and a social life. All the things that allowed me to seem to be living the life allistic. If only no one looked too closely.
Because at the same time I didn't do sporting events or busy pubs or night clubs. I kept to the same small local pub where I was known and knew those who used it. Work was perhaps a little too encompassing of my life. Because it was something I had a control over and was comfortable doing and I filled as many hours with it as I could. Getting together with family was all about what they wanted and rarely if ever what I wanted. And quite frankly the less said about the few romantic relationships I had the better.
It was all, in fact, about controlling what I could, because there was so much I just didn't see myself having any control of at all. Whether because the hollow weight of the difference that filled me left me too ashamed and alone to feel that I could or even should, or because I didn't understand enough or feel justified enough to assert myself in the allistic world around me.
Realising I am autistic has allowed me to see this and to understand why my few barely understood comfort levels and self imposed boundaries were so important. Also why I had such an excessive need to control those few areas I could. It has also allowed me to see now the validity of how I think about the world. Of how I want and in many ways have always tried to exist within it and given me a shape, rough and vague admittedly at the moment, of where I might want to go.
But five decades is a long time and the habit of my former thoughts and way of being is truly hard to break. It still leaves me trying to control too much, trying to justify the way in which I spend my hours and all too often in those former terms. Is it allowed, is it acceptable. Am I being productive, am I serving a purpose.
The duality it seems is still with me and may be forever. Because there are no guides this late in life. No voices coming back through time to let us know how it's done. There is only us now, being I suppose the voices for those coming after us.`

#Autism
#ActuallyAutistic
#Autisticme

So much has happened this year, and so much is being tackled, and on top of that the whole insecurity / vertigo around what #llms means for software engineering, my body feels like it's been processed through a meat grinder.

I'm learning how that is how I actually feel emotions, and my #actuallyautistic #autisticme brain is just floating above it all plowing ahead, so that is good, but I've been feeling that "post-meltdown" feeling for 2 weeks now and it's exhausting.