Autism

I’m not sure what you mean. What aspects of it?

I cope with loud noises with AirPods Pro with noise cancellation.

I cope with communication issues by practicing phrases and explanations.

I cope with hyperfixation by setting schedules and alarms.

What do you need help with?

I think one of the most helpful things for me has been changing the internal dialog that has been nailed into me since i was young—“you’re not enough,” “you lazy #%^*,” and a whole slew of things repeating in my mind when i disappoint others, am misunderstood, or can’t seem to handle/understand something that seems so basic to others.

Genuine encouragement that validates where you are right now (without any pressure to perform or do better) is i think one of the most powerful tools for us with ASD. Sadly, because of the social/career ladders and the way our society operates, a lot of us don’t have that encouraging voice on the outside to help us out. Many of the voices in our lives have misunderstood us and assumed our intentions were malicious when the reality was we just think and act on another level than others do.

If you are able to put yourself in an environment or with others that understand you and encourage you, do whatever you can to do so. If you are unable to do that right now, do what you can to practice changing all the negative words that play on repeat in our heads and beat us down.

Think about it—if you want a flower to grow, you aren’t just gonna beat it into submission and yell at it to do better, right? You give it food, water, and sun. You have to give it time and treat it kindly and gently. It’s the same way with a young kid who’s trying to learn how to walk.

The reality is, we have all given it our best effort even if it doesn’t show on the outside. That deserves to be noticed, uplifted, and appreciated. And i think when you do so, when you allow yourself moments to simply exist the way you are, you’ll finally see yourself start to grow in ways you never thought possible.

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By being lucky enough to have symptoms that are not disruptive enough to cause real problems.

... Until last year, when things got a bit much and I started hyper-fixating on negative feelings and bad things in the world. Still trying to figure that one out.

Embracing it, leaning-into it:

I'm not going to want to be socializing, and if solitude/isolation is the only way I can ever be happy, then why not accept that?

I'm not attacking me for not-being-like-acceptable-people, anymore.

I'm the way I am, & that's fine with me.

You want people who compromise their integrity for social-acceptability??

Get other people, not me.

Despise me honestly, instead of "liking" me for my rotted-complaisance, which I'm eradicating from me, but "acceptable" people can't afford to compromise.

Honesty/integrity is worth more than being "liked", to me, now.

Isolation isn't bad, actually..

It takes a few years to deprogram all the social-codependency-programming, but it's entirely doable.

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Masking, stimming, and avoiding situations I can't cope with

I didnt even know I had it until I was in my early 40s, I just thought most of the world was just fucking weird as shit

So I learned to mask pretty damn well

Sort of reinvented myself. Found out about it in the middle of a huge crisis and have been learning about it and my interaction with the world ever since.

Self isolation was a huge factor, both good and bad. Accepting what works and what doesnt. Unmasking massively. Losing shame from the life before.

The hardest part was to accept that I had been a doormat most of my life. That I still work on. Fawning as a coping mechanism. But I‘m putting in the work and cutting everyone out who thinks I‘m not enough or need to prove my worth.