I really hate it when it takes a few text messages to articulate a thought, but my friend responds to the first message without context of the next two messages which would completely change the response, but they clearly have put their phone down somewhere because they must be doing something because now that the thought does need a timely reply because it's in regard to a change of plans which would be better started earlier than later..... they're now not reading their messages and you've trapped yourself in waiting mode hell.
So, two winters ago I couldn't find what I did with my favorite red coat. I searched everywhere for it, and came up with nothing and was very sad that I had lost it.
For some odd reason, I decided to open the coat closet that's in the basement that we never use, it's just where old coats go to be forgotten... Guess where my coat has been for the past two years. In that closet that I totally forgot to look in.
One of the things I find myself struggling with a lot as an autistic person with an autistic partner is how often there are moments where I do not honor my own needs or preferences because they seemingly conflict with my partner's needs and preferences, and how it feels easier to mask my discomfort than to express a different preference and potentially provoke unnecessary dysregulation and conflict.
On the rare occasion I do speak up and we try things my way and it fails miserably because it isn't his way, I get so disappointed and upset that he's unable to be as flexible as I force myself to be for him and his sensory needs, and wish we'd never tried doing it my way in the first place.
This doesn't exactly feel healthy to me, but I'm not really sure how to interpret what I feel either.
Though, one thing I've noticed when we're both simultaneously in meltdown mode is that when I start to hit the point where my meltdown goes from internal to external, he starts to compare it aloud to every time a neurotypical has gotten overwhelmed and lost their temper at him which to my ears, when melting down myself, feels dismissive of my autism because the reasons I'm melting down are nothing like what he's describing.
@Jobob@Zumbador@actuallyautistic Yeah, I think you're right that he's not accounting for masking strategies. We've also only been aware that I may be autistic for little over a year at this point, and when we're both calm, we've had some pretty good affirming conversations about it.
Some U.S. states have registries and laws requiring that mental health professionals and physicians register autistic clients. They can be fined, disciplined, or lose their license if they don't report.
@autism101@actuallyautistic I'm from a registry state (NH) and it's one of the reasons I feel hesitant to pursue an official diagnosis.
The registry doesn't collect identifying data, thankfully. However, the idea is to collect data so legislators have a picture of how many people have been diagnosed, at what age, etc to be better able to make legislative decisions regarding what programs are needed.
In theory that sounds like noble intentions, but trouble being, I don't exactly have a lot of trust in the state to fund programs that are helpful.
Went out to see a friend's gig tonight with my partner. It's rare we get to go see somebody play together and not be playing himself. It was fun, but I'm finding myself restless and impatient now that we're home because I was NOT done socializing when my partner's social battery ran out, partly because I got cornered by another autistic friend who almost never to events because of social anxiety, so I didn't get to socialize with anyone but him until he hit his fill line and left, and there were a few people I'd really wanted to touch base with more while I was there. Trying really hard not to be upset about leaving before I felt done.
One of the most frustrating things I find about verbal conversations is how sometimes a conversation feels like it's going on smoothly and then a hiccup happens.
A misunderstanding. An unexpected comment. Maybe two people started talking at the same time. Something like that.
It's like somebody took my brain and shook it like an etch-a-sketch and I've completely forgotten what we're talking about, what I was going to say next, and I'm dysregulated.
And it's a thing I've noticed happens with my partner as well, and when it happens with us at the same time, it's double distressing because the expectation we have is the other has tracked the conversation well enough so we haven't gotten completely lost and can get caught up and get back on track but in reality we both lost the plot and are frustrated with the other for not retaining it.
@actuallyautistic#actuallyautistic Does it bother anyone else when someone folds your laundry for you? I do appreciate the effort and the intention, but half the time I have to go back and refold everything because it wasn’t folded the way I need it to be for me to put it away or organize it properly. I would rather just do all the folding myself lol. Idk, I know that probably seems selfish but it does irk me sometimes.
@chevalier26@actuallyautistic I'm kinda the opposite on this issue... I wish I could have somebody wash and fold my laundry for me because when I do my laundry on my own, I wash single loads multiple times because I forget they're in the washer until they stink, I forget to pull things out of the dryer, I accidentally put things that can't go in the dryer in the dryer.... and by the time the fold and put away part of laundry comes, I feel so overwhelmed and done with the task that I tell myself I'm going to do it later, and then most of the time I don't do it at all until things start to feel too chaotic (and that takes awhile).
I just sorta live with piles of clothes everywhere (including my car because I travel regularly and there are clothes that are at this point clothes that live in the car and are only worn when away), and have so many clothes that I'm never quite sure where anything is but have a rough idea of where most things are. It's very easy to forget what I own.
I just found out that my therapist's office is closing due to an reorganization of the non-profit it's a part of, so I'll need to find a new therapist to transfer to or decide to discharge.
In true to me fashion, I downplayed the impact that this change is likely going to have on me and more pinned my rage on the systems that be failing and deflected to inquiring about my therapist's plans from here.
I'm of mixed opinion on what I want to do next. The mental health crisis that landed me there was for the most part resolved, and in the past few months I've felt like I might be ready to move on from it. But it's so hard to get in with anybody, I'm not against being transferred... but I also don't wanna start over again with a new person but also I don't feel quite ready to end therapy.
I'd really rather go the route of music or art therapy if I was to continue with therapy, but that would require figuring out how to fund such an endeavor because insurance typically doesn't cover that.
But the for the moment, I'm feeling kinda bummed that my run with my current therapist is wrapping up into it's end and a bit meltdowny about it.
@servelan@pathfinder@actuallyautistic Yeah, I've been poking through the list of practices that my therapist's office provided, doing web searches for any info I can find about them... and thus far, I feel discouraged and uninspired. I have a state health plan that not everyone takes, so my options are pretty limited.
Has anybody seen any good videos talking about what autistic burnout is that would be appropriate to send to loved ones to explain what it is and how it affects an autistic person?
I'm too burned out to sift through search results to find a good one. Looking for a video because the friend I want to send it to does better processing audio than reading.
How do you guys handle friends who have the sort of sense of humor where they "play fight" over trivial things for fun?
I find this sooooo triggering because I can't tell when good fun turns into abuse and controlling behavior so any hint of it even in good fun is really upsetting.
@dweebish@actuallyautistic I think this is a big aspect with the situation around my friend. He and I do not have this play fighting dynamic, but he does have it with several other friends as well as his new girlfriend. I have always been uncomfortable with some of his friends because they were engaging in this behavior in front of me before I really felt we had reached the intimacy level to feel comfortable to consent to it.
One of the odd things about being AuDHD and having executive functioning issues around cleanliness is that 95% of the time I cannot get myself to clean or tidy.... but then, one day... say, I puke all over the bathroom by accident or I explode a soda all over my room, and then all of the sudden a switch flips and instead of having a meltdown and becoming all helpless over it, I switch into "deep clean" mode and suddenly there's this seemingly endless well of energy for all things cleaning until I literally exhaust myself. On the bright side, my shit is going to be cleaner than it's been in months!
I think one of the most disorentienting things about being autistic but also having an autistic partner is that sometimes you misread their subtle social cues that they're on edge of a meltdown and then when it finally blows up, are taken completely off guard by the fact they're melting down because they seemed fine two seconds ago and then you're struggling to not meltdown yourself because of how taken off guard you were by the meltdown.
Had one of those days yesterday. Recovering and processing today.
So, it was good. Very emotional roller coaster. I thought my son was bored but he wasn’t antsy to leave. As we were walking out, he shared that he really liked it. It certainly felt authentic.
The story is focused more on a family and inter-generational perspective, which I think will make it more acressivle and relatable to a broader audience.
@btaroli Thanks for sharing what you thought about the movie. I was very intrigued by the trailer, and it looked like it had the potential of being a very thought and emotion provoking movie.... but wanted to wait to see what others thought about it before checking it out.
If it weren't for the fact that if you hold your hands out with your index and thumb extended and the left hand side makes an L shape (L for left!) and the right a backwards L... I'd struggle to tell the difference.
@theautisticcoach@actuallyautistic When I hit my fill line for "peopling" I find I tend to start to feel agitated and it's hard to pay attention to anything. I often start to disassociate from my surroundings. If somebody is really persistent with trying to engage with me when I'm done with people I can also react pretty negatively, and meltdowns are more likely to be triggered.
I'm thinking about this because I'm sitting in the next room listening to my parents visit with my aunt and uncle, but I get so overstimulated when there is a group of people and more than one conversation is happening within the group, and I do not know which conversation to track and participate in so I'm trying to track both.
I often feel like this is one of the things that makes me feel most isolated in groups.
A few times this week I found myself escalating to the point of meltdown due to me completely misreading social situations happening and reacting to them like they were traumatic events of the past.
It's always incredibly embarrassing when this happens, and anytime there's a meltdown there's a risk of dysregulating the people around me... which happened last night. My outburst triggered my partner into a meltdown, which triggered his roommate to emerge from his room screaming at us for our dysregulation being "unacceptable" which escalated my partner further.
It's not the first time we've had trouble with this particular roommate dysregulating due to our inability to keep it cool 24/7, and it had me realizing that I've been walking on eggshells and holding so much anxiety around him for years because every time my partner starts to get a little meltdown-y, I'm terrified he's going to emerge from his room and lash out and make things worse.
I'm back home and recovering now, but I just feel really sad about the whole thing and angry at myself for just jumping to conclusions and yelling my head off.
On the thankful side, the other roommate who was the person who had done the triggering thing both times I lost it this week seemed to get where I was coming from was able to help set me straight and help me regulate.
Home now, trying to process and recover. Being a person is hard.
My oldest sent me this. My head just exploded. The first draft of my first 3000 word essay in uni was 8000 words long.
My history essays at uni were labours of love. I could never understand the concept of “pulling an all-nighter” the night before the essay was due. How was such a thing even possible? You had to do hours & hours of reading, note-taking, reflection…
And then write & write & write all that stuff that begged to be said, and then cull & cull & cull & then rewrite to knit the remaining pieces together fluently… And somehow end up with a piece that sent shivers down your spine & got you an HD.
Didn’t you? Or was that just me?
When teaching narrative writing to teens, I could only teach it in a formulaic way. I could only write formulaic model texts. They were quite good, with some character development, voice, interesting vocab etc, but the structure was formulaic.
I could never imagine myself as a writing a novel. Quirky short pieces maybe, but not a novel. And yet my oldest wrote their first novella as a teen.
I need to lie down. Oh, I am. It’s 5am and my cat adoption excitement has woken me. I’m discombobulated. Again.
@Susan60@actuallyautistic This one was really interesting. I remember in my school days, I struggled horribly with papers where I was forced to adhere to the "writing process" and be forced to show the teacher my work because I pretty much skipped doing any sort of outlining or note taking and went straight for the first draft writing the paper as I was still researching, and edited as I went along so it never really felt like I was writing multiple drafts of a paper. I just wrote the first draft as my final draft, often ended with a word count which was much higher than expected, and I usually wouldn't start working on the project until 2 or less days before it was due. And unless I was being graded on the writing process itself, my papers usually came back with As or Bs on them.
Anybody know of a cheap reliable USB wifi dongle that doesn't drop every five minutes? The one my partner has apparently isn't strong enough, keeps dropping and I'm sick of dealing with meltdowns every time it drops because the part of my brain that can do technical troubleshooting doesn't work when i have to witness somebody having a meltdown.
