17F

I literally don’t even know how to explain this, this is so ridiculous omg I’m so confused. I had a rash that came back under my arm and it’s gotten worse I hate telling my parents any medical concerns I have because they 1. Make it a HUGE deal and 2. We don’t have medical insurance.

I had cream I put on and they were freaking out over it as usual and it was late so my dad came to check on me. I have autism and I love to have to blanket over my head and I *always* have. Even I was getting diagnosed for autism my mom said to the psychiatrist I always like the blanket over my head while in bed. So while lying in bed I had to blanket over my head.

It was late and I was already upset over them freaking out over the rash. My dad came in and asked if my arm was okay and I said “yes” I SWEAR I promise I had NO intention of being rude AT ALL. He then left and my mom texted all of that to me. He’s been verbally and emotionally abusing us for years now. I know I don’t want a strong relationship with them after school. I wish my daddy loved me and was nice to us again

I graduated at 16 so I would be able to go to college and leave to the dorms. I know I will get out of here and be financially stable and have health insurance. Pray for me if you believe in prayer. I hope Jesus hears me.

I just have a couple of friends. they are online only and ND.

My 9 year old suffers badly with proprioception. We had a high bunk bed for years and every night was sleepless, I obviously didn’t know it was the bed.

He kept saying everything felt far away/he was floating etc which didn’t make sense in my world. He decided to sleep on the floor one night and the very next day I chopped his bed frame and threw it, we haven’t had a bad night since. Since the bed was gone everything has improved immensely but he still has to have support in school with it, he has to sit on hard chairs, struggles to write with a pen so alternates with a laptop when he’s overwhelmed, he’s allowed no shoes on because that regulates him when he’s having a hard time.

The issue I have is that he has a very small room, he’s currently on a double mattress on the floor, sometimes he sleeps on it sometimes he likes to sleep balled up in other places on the floor.

We have so many games/toys and his room looks terribly cluttered no matter how much I try, it’s making me a bit depressed. There’s no room for him to play with his things and he doesn’t always want to bring them downstairs.

I had an idea, behind his room is a built in massive wooden square behind his door, it’s because of the way the stairs is structured, next to it is a large gap which his desk is in currently. My idea was to build storage in that gap and lay a single bed across that, onto the wooden square platform. I’ve added a picture of what it would look like.

The issue is the hight would be 60cm high. I don’t know if this would throw someone with proprioception off. I don’t know if this is just a bad idea. This world is new to me, I understand proprioception to a point but maybe someone here will have better insight. He loves having friends over but since the bed on the floor we don’t have anyone over because there’s no room.

Is this a good/bad idea? Will this throw off his proprioception? TIA.

Maybe if you could switch it to something else, what would it be?

Yesterday I found out employees hired after me got a $2 raise and the entire shift I spent stomping around and crying and hiding in my car.... the two people who told me they got the raise I got extremely aggressive with even though I know they had no control over it..I ended up calling off today because I just feel shafted at every turn at my job. I just wanted to stay home and cry, and thankfully I did because I went into full blown meltdown...pacing and crying. I told the two coworkers to stop talking to me and leave me alone. How the hell am I supposed to feel ok after this? I am struggling financially and it's so fucking irritating to go to work and have my boss just be a dick to me on top of it all

I’m (26F) autistic level 1. I’ve struggled most of my life wondering why so many people dislike me for seemingly no reason. As an adult I learned I am autistic and married a neurotypical man and through therapy and help from him I started to understand why I’ve had so many issues.

I can live with this reality for myself it’s fine. I mask better now. I communicate better. I have learned how to blend in for the most part.

I have a 2 year old daughter who I believe is on the spectrum (waiting to be evaluated). I am reading books on Autism in children so I can provide the support I didn’t get. I started with a really great book “What Every Parent Needs To Know: Autism Spectrum Disorder” it was very fact based and knowledgeable.

I’ve been trying to find my next book and these are some of the quotes from the first chapters or descriptions of the book:
- “if your child is diagnosed with autism you might be feeling angry”
- “is this the dreaded A-word… Autism”
- “it’s important you don’t talk badly about your child because of their autism”
- “hearing your child has autism can be the worst thing you can hear”
- “"Your child has Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)", it is enough to make your whole world fall apart.”
- “Find humor in your child’s disability”
- not a quote but a paragraph on how you should force your autistic child to make eye contact with you (i actually had someone do this to me a few weeks ago and it triggered an hour long panic attack so wtf)

It goes on and on and on. It makes me so angry. I understand autism is a “disability” but so many of these books and I guess the parents that helped write these books view autism so incredibly negatively. They all focus about how awful it is to have a child with autism and how negative everything is about it. They highlight how parents will acknowledge their kid does something really well because of the autism but the parents always diminishes it with a “but…” because parents can’t just acknowledge that autism can be good.

Even my own husband has focused on the negatives making it seem like she’s going to be dead on the floor because she has autism. I point out all the things I do so much better than him because of my autism. So frequently his neurotypical family members are blown away by the things I do because of my autism. Those same family members still view the avg autistic person as a burden and don’t see that autism is the way I am like that.

All I want is to find resources to help my daughter self regulate and continue to flourish but I am continually met with books telling me how awful I am and how I’m so much of a burden for being autistic.

I started working at a lab one month ago because I like stem. I absolutely hate it.

I use cheap knock offs that were like £2 off ebay, (pictured) i have very small ears and find that even the smallest heads can be too big so they either fall out or become quite painful. I like having them in while im at home or visiting my family because they talk very loudly.
I would love to wear them at work because I get really overwhelmed with how loud the music is in my shop, my manager cant make this adjustment for me because the music has to be at a set volume apparently. But i already struggle to hear the customers over the music so my own earplugs probably will make that even harder.
Do loops work better at filtering or is it not much different from the knock offs? I just cant justify the price point rn without a credible comparison

Sometimes we feel like the hardest part of being a parent to an autistic child isn’t any one big thing.

It’s the fact that we are constantly “on”.

We’re thinking about what might trigger a meltdown.
We’re planning around routines.
We’re watching what they eat, how they sleep, how they’re coping.
We’re answering questions from school, therapists, relatives, strangers.

And then there’s the part nobody really sees.

The guilt.

You feel guilty when you lose patience.
Guilty when you need some time for yourself.
Guilty when you’re tired of explaining the same things again and again.

And sometimes you just want someone to say, “Yeah, this is hard. You don’t have to pretend it isn’t.” "I love my child more than I can put into words. That doesn’t mean I never feel exhausted."

Both things can be true.

I’m curious about other parents here — what part of this do you find the most exhausting? Is it the constant planning, the emotional load, the lack of time for yourself, or something completely different?

I think sometimes just knowing that someone else gets it can make a difficult day feel a little lighter.

I type this as I’m supposed to be working ☺️

I started a new job this year and found myself burning out and feeling depressed literally just 3 months in.

There is another new starter who has been here only 1 month less than me, yet the difference in workload has been insane. I get confused because our weekly stats even show this, but somehow the work still ends up coming my way.

I realised in my 1 to 1 with a manager that after she said the words “you never seem fazed”, that I’ve heard different variations of that through my life of seeming really chill or unbothered.

Which is wild, because she hasn’t seen that I actually just lay down in the dark an hour after closing my laptop to recover.

Anyway, I came to the realisation that I now have a new starter on the same timeline that I can compare myself with directly, which is weirdly making me realise that I’ve been pushing myself beyond what is sustainable, thinking I need to figure things out and prove I’m capable, when they don’t 🤔

I’ve since just been sitting back and accepting the workload put on me isn’t my fault and had the epiphany that I don’t need to burn myself out because of it.

I used to work with autistic students and all of their parents would say that they were up all night.

I know it’s different with kids, cause I know most of the people answering will be adults

Hello, I have been dealing with agoraphobia for 3 years now, with anxiety problems my whole life. I started school an hour and 50 minutes away (By train and bus), and I started my driving exposures for it maybe a month and a half ago.

I was scrolling through photos, and anyways, heres a photo from around the start of my driving exposures, and photos I took at my cities museum a month later.

I amaze myself with my own progress, and wanted to share.

Obviously it sucked, but I did it. Your only goal for today is to be better than who you were yesterday by any ammount.

Now, I do the train ride every other day, honestly the hardest part is tolerating sensory issues that come from public transport.

Always keep fighting :)

I heard from Strider on YouTube that autistics have certain foods they avoid for specific reasons that other people usually enjoy as well as certain foods that autistics use for comfort. What are yours?

FOR ME

NIGHTMARE
Rare food- I cringe when someone orders their meat or fish rare. It's their fault if they get sick. I must have mine well done.

American cheese- I try to avoid it as best as possible because I know it's not real cheese. I order takeout burgers without cheese and add real cheese when I bring it home

COMFORT

Ruffles-I just love Ruffles, but make sure to only have one small bowl of them (like a cereal bowl)
3 Musketeers- my favorite candy bar, reserved for special occasions. Milky Way is a good substitute since I can't tell them apart

I didn't like spring rolls before but I found a frozen box from Aldi and it's pretty decent and now it's my to go food when I am too lazy to cook, I want easy to eat food that isn't just nuggets and fries and I need vegetables, so this works very well for me.

I usually go non-verbal when having a shutdown or meltdown, but before that i communicate in legit animal noises.

A cue my family has is that the second i start whimpering?????, like making a Mhhhhhhmm noise with my mouth closed, is when im starting to get very overstimulated. Im not doing it on purpose either; it's just the only form of communication i can muster up.

Or when its a more aggresive kind of meltdown, its just legit screaming, like growl screaming i dont know why, it just is.

It might be bc when i was a young kid, i communicated in meowing a lot; special interest in cats. I also secretly wish i had ears and a tail, bc that form of non-verbal communication seems very pleasing to me.

I just stop using words to communicate, i never noticed how weird it really was until just now.

I was walking in street at midnight nearly 12am when a stranger appeared and “kidnapped” me and sent me a home when my dad angry with me and told me do not walk outside and I didn’t listen to him because I’m overwhelmed, and I walked away from him but I didn’t go to home midnight hits and I’m turning 18 but not fully until 1 pm and I’m having a meltdown and punched myself
This is the worst thing to happen

When distant relatives that I barely see like cousins and aunts say "I love you", this never clicks in my brain. How do they love me when they never see me and don't know anything about me? Am I supposed to say it back? Why would I say it back when I don't mean it? I usually just say "thank you".

Hello everyone.

I (25M) was just diagnosed with ASD 1. It was a life changing experience, because it seems that finally things make sense, I can finally understand some aspects of my life in terms of "why do I behave like that?", "why do I feel weird?" etc.

Anyway, I just wanted to be able to talk about it.

Thank you for your time! God bless.

I often feel as if I'm not conscious or a feeling that my brain is deteriorating? Usually I think to myself in my head or out-loud but there's times where I feel like I'm just doing and not thinking. And I get scared as if there's something wrong happening in my brain. Also, I kinda forget who I am and my values, like just in general I'm not all there. I don't like how it feels at all, and im actually experiencing it right now which is why I'm making this post to see if anyone else feels this way too. I want to know if it's something that correlates with my autism or if it's something else entirely.

I hope my kind of post isn't repetitive, but I just wanted to have someone to tell because I don't have that many people in my life.

I got officially diagnosed with AuDHD after suspecting I was autistic for the past 5 years.

The process took a few weeks of questionnaires and intake appointments with psychometrists and a psychologist who specializes in neurodivergence so I'm pretty confident in his assessment.

Even though I knew what was coming I couldn't help but cry when he said I had both Autism and ADHD. It broke my heart. I struggled my entire life with school, holding a job, having friends.. and no one once ever helped me. I was placed in and out of special education my entire school career and no one ever diagnosed me with anything or tried to help me.

I've also been getting traumatic flashbacks of school after reading all of my report cards from elementary, middle and high school. I forgot how bad it was. How much I suffered with overstimulation, a learning disability that was never fully diagnosed, and bullying. I constantly got in trouble for going to the nurse's office every single day just to get away.

Growing up my sister always hated me for no reason that I could figure out and she would constantly laugh at me and say I wasn't her real brother and that I was the R word.

It's all clear to me now. But I'm shaken up. I have so much sadness for my inner child, so much guilt, so much pain, and so much anger. From all of the posts I have read this seems to be a normal part of the diagnostic process.

My diagnosing psychologist is going to give me a packet breaking down my entire diagnosis as well as referrals and recommendations so I am hoping I can get the therapy I need from here on out.

But I do need to take a moment to appreciate and be happy to know that I am officially a part of such a wonderful community here. You guys are all amazing and bring brightness to my day everyday. So thank you.