r/AutisticAdults

Like how does this work? Because I’ve tried simply telling people “thanks for the advice,” but they’ll get frustrated if they follow up and I didn’t try it (because it won’t work for me). Or worse, if I tried it and it didn’t work, people can’t accept that. Do I have to accept AND complete all advice given to me and then never complain if it sucks, or never refuse?

I’m at a point of no longer asking for advice so that when it’s given to me, I can just say “I appreciate you trying but I don’t want advice”

Just to be clear: I don’t feel gender dysphoria—I have no desire to transition to anything else and I feel mostly fine with the label of “man” being attached to me… it’s more like I’m… not human? I don’t know how to describe it, it’s just like existing itself does not “feel right” to me. Nearly everything feels like a daunting task and the way our societal systems are set up just does not mesh with the way I *exist.* It’s like my brain was designed for a completely different style of living from what we’re accustomed to here on Earth.

I’m not, like, saying I’m an alien or anything (as funny as that would be), I just don’t feel… human. It’s not like a furry thing either (have nothing against furries! just not something I find fulfillment in personally), I don’t feel like I’m “spiritually an animal” or something, I just feel like I fundamentally do not mesh with nearly every aspect of existing. Every single thing feels either awkward, scary, or forced. Taking a shower, brushing my teeth, putting clothes on, taking clothes off, going to the bathroom, eating, it doesn’t matter what it is or how mundane or repetitious it is. It doesn’t matter if I’ve been doing it every day of my life for the last 23 years, it just does not feel right.

Am I, like… expecting life to feel a certain way when in reality it never feels that way for anyone? Was there some grand lesson about living in modern society that I missed? Some expectation that I never fully understood and thus always expected more than what is possible? I just don’t know.

Can anyone relate to this? I’m assuming it’s related to my autism but I suppose it could also stem from the ADHD or the depression or the anxiety. Autism *feels* like the right answer, though. Probably a mix of all four, I dunno.

If you CAN relate to this, do you have any advice for how you deal with it? How to not feel like such an alien not just among other people but even in relation to yourself? And really—was there some kind of lesson or expectation for life that many of us just sort of… missed, growing up? Is life SUPPOSED to feel like this?

Hello, I need some help with my girlfriends dog, or just advice generally.

I'm wondering if anybody has any advice, or experience within a similar realm or situation here. Before I get too far into it, I want to just say up front, I'll already acknowledge and own that I am a significant part of the problem in this situation as well, so I already know I'm not helping the situation.

Without writing a novel anymore than this already will be, the long story short is a few years ago, my girlfriend got a new dog, and literally since the moment she'd acquired the dog, it's been a huge strain on our relationship. Now I have a dog and a cat, and she has 2 cats, and even though that many animals can be overstimulating at times, it's nothing compared to this new dog. It's an Australian Shepherd, and her friend who breeds them gave it to her, after she sold it, and then the owners gave it back (I secretly think they abused it and then gave it back) but who knows, anyway, this dog is extremely overprotective, it growls at me basically non stop for just being close to her, It either just lives in its kennel, or underneath her, goes everywhere with her, including the bathroom, and is such an anxious mess that is just has to sprint everywhere top speed making a huge mess in its path.

I generally like animals and don't usually have problems with them, I love my dog more than almost anything else, so I get it, but as much as it pains me to say it, I hate her dog. I think its made our relationship worse, it overstimulates me, it pisses me off, I tried for a long time when we got the dog initially to make it okay with me, but IDK what it is with that dog, and it's not just me, it is literally everybody else that isn't either my gf, or her friend that gave it to us. Those are the only 2 people that dog likes, and no amount of effort on my part has made any difference at all, so now I just don't even try. Last time I tried to get close to her dog when we were in the kitchen and it was underneath her, I tried to just pet her, and she literally pissed on the floor.

Now we get to today, we were about to head upstairs to go shower, and I hear the dog sprinting across my hardwood to run upstairs, and I was behind her, so I turned around and stuck out my foot to block the dog on the stairs, I redirect my dog all the time with my foot, I don't think of this as a big deal, so I blocked her dog and kinda pushed (I barely applied any force) on her to tell her no, and go back to the kennel. Then my girlfriend got really upset at me saying I should have just let the dog run up the stairs and it wouldve gone back downstairs after we went into the bathroom, and I said I didn't want to be tripped going up the stairs, and then she said well it wasn't a good reason to kick her dog down the stairs. To be clear, I didn't kick her dog down the stairs. Her dog is such a manic mess that it literally trips over itself constantly, and she tripped over her legs slightly? Like her version of events would make you think I like punted this dog down the stairs, and the reality is it ran halfway up the stairs, ran into my foot, redirected itself, and tripped hitting the hardwood cause she was skidding out trying to sprint at 15 mph going back down the stairs. I understand how it probably looked from her perspective like turning around on the stairs and catching the last like glimpse of it, but yeah, IDK. Feet are also just how I'm used to wrangling dogs, which she knows. I foot block my dog all the time, or if we're on a walk and she's sniffing one spot too long, I'll nudge her butt with my foot to say like okay, let's keep going. I do it at my moms house all the time too, cause my mom will just leave the door wide open so I have to block her dog with my foot. I've never thought this was an issue.

Anyway, this led into a bigger more complex argument over the course of the next hour where we almost ended up breaking up. Her criticism is that I hate her dog, and that I don't even try to bond with it, which is true at this point, but it's because I already have tried, and it's not moved that dogs attitude even an inch. I did a lot of research with training my dog, and hers, and have tried so many different things in the past, and all it did was got me bit, and growled at, and again, I'm not the only one that dog has bitten. I honestly wish she'd just get rid of it, I had brought the idea up a few times in the past, but I don't even bother now because I know it's awful thing to suggest, but it's also just not going to happen. I think the part that sucks is, I do really love animals, and I wouldn't ever hurt her dog intentionally, so the implication from her already hurts, but the one thing that I do feel really bad about is that I hate her dog, and I don't know how to get over that at this point. I know like, the onus would have to be on me, not the animal, I'm the one being petty and immature about it, the dog can't help it, but like I just can't. I tried to tell her today like, every single thing it does just overstimulates me, and I don't know how that is ever going to change, it's something I wouldn't even know where to begin to like force myself to try and get over that at this point. I have a very low energy dog, and I guess maybe high energy dogs just aren't my thing. I guess it just feels hopeless right now, I'm not sure what I can or should do.

I am 24F and I have Asperger’s. This is my first relationship of 4 years with my 25M boyfriend. We live and work together and have been for virtually all 4 years.

We decided to mutually break up this morning because the spark is just gone but I’m still falling apart. He went out with friends right after this happened and won’t be home for a long time. I have no friends and no urge to do anything other than lie here but I’m too scared to sleep.

I don’t know what to do and these feelings are way bigger than I can handle. I do not know what to do when I do not have a support system please help.

I get overstimulated and overwhelmed very easily, and sometimes I start talking in a way that sounds angry or aggressive when it's really a feeling of desperation. I can raise my voice or yell too. My partner is also autistic and suffers from PTSD, and I know that my meltdowns stress them out. Especially if I raise my voice at them. I don't mean to, and I apologize every time it happens, but I'm scared that because it's autism, this isn't something I can change. I have no control over myself when I'm having a meltdown and it feels awful and embarrassing. I feel like a toddler throwing a tantrum. What can I do?

30NB (afab if it matters), autistic, ADHD, whole bunch of chronic illnesses.
How do I stop getting burnt out from basic everyday things (keeping my space clean, making phone calls, doctor appointments, socializing, cooking, shopping, and so on)? I'm at the point where I routinely have to take weeklong breaks from doing ANYTHING just because it feels like my body and brain hit a physical wall and I can't do anything else.

I go into a fullblown shutdown when that happens: I can't talk, everything starts to feel INCREDIBLY overstimulating, I lose interest in my usual interests and don't feel like anything's enjoyable (I do NOT have depression), and basically can't do anything other than shower and prepare food for myself, and even those feel like Sisyphean tasks. I've even started having meltdowns again, something that hasn't happened since I was 17 or 18. I do try to force myself to not lie around in bed all day and at least get on my computer and do some things, but it isn't helping.

My room is an absolute wreck because it gets messy when shutdown weeks happen and I have so much to do to play catchup with the daily-task stuff that doesn't get done then that I can't get around to cleaning my room completely, and then the next shutdown week makes it worse. It's messing up my relationship with my partner because they don't want to go into my room because they hate the mess.

I don't know why basic stuff everyone does in life feels like I'm having to climb Mount Everest, and the worst part is that this is even before I have a job, so I don't know how on earth I'm supposed to manage a job on top of all this.

Please help, literally anything would help. I'm so tired and sick of all this.

I’m almost 40 and I’ve struggled with ADHD, anxiety, and being on the autism spectrum for all of my life, and I’ve also been through some things that have resulted in me getting treatment for trauma.

I remember all of this being way more of a struggle when I was younger. Through a lot of work, I can honestly say that in the last 5 years or so all of these things are way more of a positive in my life than a negative now. I can focus, I don’t beat myself up when I get something wrong, and my anxiety is more so just a strong situational awareness now.

I attribute a lot of my success in getting to where I am to subreddits and groups for people that are still struggling with these conditions, but after I felt like I didn’t need them as much anymore I found that my advice was not what people were looking for even if they said they wanted help. A lot of people told me “then what you were going through must not have been so bad, if you’re doing so well now.” I’m not saying that I’ve never interacted with people who don’t seem as high functioning as me, but wow this can really hurt when I hear it. Years of struggling silently until I found these groups, barely accomplishing the basics, and I can’t say I’ve ever heard someone talk about what they’ve struggled with and overcome and had an urge to tell them that it must not have been so bad for them.

Anyway, I say all this just to say that I’m hoping to connect with people who have learned to take the good with the bad. It isn’t all good or anything like that. I just know now how to use the good and kind of direct the bad through a creative outlet. At some point this became a goal for me, and I was able to use my conditions to figure out how to do that. Now I’m wondering how many others have done the same.

I managed an hour of work today before I had to come home in floods of tears. I don't know how people do this every day without taking a long walk off a short pier tbh.

I've been in the full-time working world for 7 or 8 years. I've always struggled with it, and I know I'm not alone. It's been almost a decade of exhaustion, masking and overwhelm which inevitably leads to such awful burnout that I can't get through a day without melting down. I can't stay at any single job for more than 2 years.

It's started to feel embarrassing. I hate saying to my boss that I've got to leave the office because the cognitive load of different brief locations is causing a meltdown. Or that something went wrong in my morning routine and now I don't know if I'll be able to come in because it's taking so long to regulate.

I've already reduced my working days/hours, am using gov services available in my country (Access to Work, mental health workplace support) and got everything I could in place to make things easier. But it doesn't feel easier.

I feel like every time I'm on this cycle, it gets shorter. The gap between recovery and burnout is closing, things that I used to be able to cope with are triggering me at lightning speed. I'd never had to go home because of anxiety and overwhelm until about 6 months ago, and now I regularly have to leave early or take a day off. I become inconsolable so quickly.

I've tried to express this to my (NT) family, their solution is for me to move home and find a job local to them. They genuinely don't seem to understand.

Right now I'm genuinely scared. I don't think I can keep doing this without making myself really unwell, or worse, but I have no idea how I'll be able to survive if I'm not in work.

Sending all my support to anyone who's just barely clinging on today.

Link in my Instagram @brianaubinyoga

https://www.change.org/p/mandate-autism-training-for-first-responders-in-the-united-states?recruiter=529872011&recruited\_by\_id=d7876340-06aa-11e6-8043-0347c7dbc98d&utm\_source=share\_petition&utm\_campaign=petition\_dashboard&utm\_medium=copylink&share\_id=fZsMRKkqXG

#policebrutality #autismawareness #autismacceptance #policy #petition

Hi everyone! Politics are very important to me, and when there's candidates I like I try to support them with what little extra money I can spare. However, I want to be more engaged, but door-knocking and phone banking are very difficult for me (talking to strangers drains me like crazy) and I often am very off-putting to most people so I feeling even if I could muster up the energy to engage with others I would only be hurting the campaign.

Does anyone here have any experience working on a political campaign as an autistic person? What advise would you give?

Possible tw for sh and mental health stuff.

I’m 26 and have been dealing with autism my whole life. I hate it. I don’t want to get into details because it’s very messy and brings out an ugly side of me.

Things haven’t been great for me. I grew up in a pretty turbulent house and my parents weren’t what you would call the easiest. We would get hit or smacked pretty often and I was really badly bullied in school to point I still have nightmares about going back. I am pretty sure I my whole time in school consisted of people making me believe i was stupid and my many failed attempts to prove them wrong.

I’m not sure if it’s because of my disability or just my overall low intelligence but I seem to be very forgetful especially when it comes to valuables. If it’s out of site it’s out of this universe wether it’s a pen,keys, wallet, £100 headphones given me as a birthday present. I have lost it all.

As you probably already guessed I have a really bad time with handling my emotions especially when I make mistakes which happens a lot.

When I got really emotional or angry or had a meltdown I would sometimes start hitting myself in the head with my hands. When I got in trouble for things or if I lost valuables or made mistakes with homework or writing I’d get smacked around or hit with slippers, fists etc.

Because of that whenever I have extreme bouts of depression or I feel like I need to punish myself I would resort to hitting myself.

A few days back I lost a really expensive birthday present given to me by my sister.

I have a pretty low paying job at the moment and forking out the cash to get them replaced put a huge dent in things and those horrible feelings and names I call myself came back. But this time I think I went a lot further than I thought. I was literally punching my skull with all my strength with my fists and even slamming my head on a tree.

The next morning I could see marks and bruises on my head. Thankfully it wasn’t any serious medical issues but my sister noticed the marks.

This can’t go on and this obviously isn’t Normal behaviour but I feel like I’m the only autistic person who suffers from this kind of thing.

I need advice to curb those feeling to head bang, harm reduction and improve my memory and or intelligence to make sure it doesn’t trigger me into spiralling again.

Lately even small things feel way more exhausting than they should. It’s like every task comes with a bunch of hidden steps, and my brain notices all of them at once.

It’s not just stress exactly. It’s more like every small task turns into a whole list in my head. Laundry isn’t just laundry (it’s gathering clothes, sorting, washing, drying, folding, putting away) and by the time I think through all of it, I already feel tired. And even when I finish something, I never really feel “done,” just moving on to the next thing.

Does anyone else experience this? How do you deal with it?

I have a written test tomorrow for my permit (I passed drivers ed when I was 16, but hated driving so I let my permit expire) but every time I read the drivers manual I get really panicky. Everyone keeps saying I need my license but I am so scared I’m going to crash if I drive. I’m so bad at processing a lot of information at once, and driving requires constant processing of so many different things. Has anyone else felt like this and still ended up becoming a good driver?

In drivers ed the instructor made me drive on the highway the first time I ever drove, and kept yelling at me to drive faster and to look behind me for way too long while changing lanes.. things like that. I was already terrified of driving before that, but that experience just added to it even more.

It keeps happening: I keep breaking unwritten social rules or doing socially unacceptable things and getting the worst punishments. For example, I see both genders going into both bathrooms at my college frequently (both men in women's bathrooms and women in men's bathrooms), but when I did, I got a meeting with student conduct and they banned me from living on-campus. And I recently made posts showing chat messages where I thought it was OK to talk about my sexuality, when sex-related things were brought up before (you check my post history for these message), however everyone got pissed at me and also kicked me out and punished me.

I keep being an asshole without realizing it until after the fact and don't know how to stop.

My boyfriend (also autistic) doesn't wash his face or clean his teeth until early afternoon, and it's gross. I can't even sit next to him without smelling his rank breath.

Like a lot of people, he wakes up with crusty eyes and dry lips and foul smelling breath. I've tried encouraging him to wash his face and clean his teeth with me in the mornings (because I have the same issues but am aware of it lol so I deal with it as soon as I get up) but he just won't. I've tried telling him in a joking way that his breath stinks but of course that doesn't work because he thinks I'm kidding. Whenever he tries to kiss me before he's brushed his teeth I say "no, you haven't brushed your teeth yet" but he doesn't seem to get the hint with that so I am at a total loss here. He has demand avoidance too, so I have to be extra careful how I go about this.

I'm not sure how to actually talk about it because he's very sensitive and would take great offense if I just told him it's grossing me out. He had a partner in the past tell him he was gross (I assume for the same reason since he's amazing in every other way, but it also sounded like she never told him *why* she thought he was gross so that's entirely unhelpful) and he never really got over it and is extra sensitive to things like this, so I have no idea how to approach it without hurting him. I'm also just terrible at wording things when I can't be straightforward and say exactly what I mean lol so a script of sorts would be incredibly helpful, if any of you can work out how to word it. Thank you!

So I have been diagnosed for a while, but I’ve never been able to actually accept this diagnosis.
I think a lot of it stems from a deep shame of sharing it with deeply afflicted people, and I know this sounds horrible and maybe it is, but I just don’t wanna be seen as some incompetent imbecile.

I think this leads me to overcompensate for everything that I lack, so instead of accepting that I’m just not that social, or accepting that I burn out easily, I view it as entirely personal flaws that I can change with enough effort. I keep kicking myself whenever i do or say something “autistic“. I don’t know how to be at peace.

My life is going fine right now ish, I attend uni and i live in a small apartment by myself, I have a few friends that I see once in a while, but i just can’t stop comparing myself to my neurotypical classmates, I just feel so inadequate around them, and just in general. Why are the only options to either be pitied or to be seen as a personal failure? I guess the third option is to overcompensate your ass off till you burn out. I’m just tired, I want out.

I'm extremely bad with pop culture references and it gets me lots of weird looks when people find out I don't know most of them. When people are bonding over music I kind of internally panic because I don't know many artist names or their songs. Sometimes I stay silent and sometimes I pretend to know when it's clear I don't know....and they find out I lied about knowing and glare at me.

My lack of musical knowledge is so bad people get mad about it and act like I'm weird for knowing almost no music artists.

I’m an autistic man and I’ve never had much luck in relationships, but if I do find success one day, I’m frankly afraid of having children because I don’t want to pass on whatever gene causes autism. Thoughts?

27 M and I smoke at night daily in a legal state. It helps when the stims wear off, and I get sensory sensitivity to foods, sounds, etc. and helps manage my weird behaviors + sleep. It also kind of cure my autism temporarily and is more noticeable in social settings.

Does anyone medicate the same way, has it worked for you? Is this generally a bad idea?

I hate being perceived and always feel like I make a fool out of myself in the most mundane social situations. I leave them, will ruminate on them for hours and it feels like the person has judged me, is judging me and actually doesn't like me and just secretly hates me.

This probably comes from growing up neurodivergent (more specifically autistic with some other diagnoses) and never truly understanding the social interactions I was having. Even now I just hope i understand or am interacting correctly. There will be times where my tone comes out weirdly or I say something the wrong way and I'll get an odd look.

I just can't get over this feeling that everyone in my life secretly has this hatred for me. And what if the ones that know each other have secret meetings about it. I know it seems to be ridiculous to be this worried about in my 20s but this is something I spend a great deal of time thinking about.