Diary of an ASD Squirrel. Day 198 , Tuesday 14/05/2024
Up just before 6am for some reason that will have scientists puzzled long after the Unified Field Theory is discovered!
Breakfast is done & coffee is drunk.
I sit looking at my TL & feeling a strange reluctance to engage. It’s not that anyone has upset me or that I’m particularly triggered by a toot . I just shy away from interaction with the rest of the Fediverse.
Some of it is that I feel overwhelmed by the number of folk I have to respond to - I have to respond to everyone who mentions me or who greets the world at large, it’s an unconscious imperative for me.
Most days I love this level of interaction, it energises me & elevates my spirits, but not today.
I will engage with folk, because I feel that I will failed them & myself if I don’t.
Maybe a shower first though, prevaricating ….
Ok so the day got better & SM was engaged with !
Hit Fo4 this afternoon then the usual evening activities.
Final Thoughts.
Ok struggling at the moment , thank Nuggan it’s warm & mostly sunny otherwise it might be quiet grim!
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
Hey #actuallyautistic folks. What do you do for meltdowns with strong emotional and moral components, not just sensory?
I am hesitant to ask because mental health, trauma, and social and emotional dynamics are deep special interests of mine so I know a ton already, and I'm sensitive to being 'splained or talked down to right now.
But I also have some faith that the #neurodivergent community could give me some clear, practical tips and suggestions and I'm tired and alone.
[P] It's funny, the hivers tend have this social identity opinion that autism is violent, I find that quite odd. Be it online or off, I've never met an aggressive autistic person. I mean, speaking for my partner and I, were we to ever hit someone? We'd get upset about it. It's easy to feel the pain caused to others, but allistics don't seem to experience that at all. Not even slightly. How else did all of human history happen, exactly?
[P] How did autism happen??? That's the greatest mystery for me. I mean, look at us kind, cooperative, overly generous pansies. It's clear we don't belong here. How could this have happened? I sometimes like to think of an autistic world, where everyone's being a kind, cooperative, overly generous pansy and how idyllic that would be. No tribes. No wars. Just people having fun and enjoying life. Hiraeth. Just... hiraeth. I live that word. I want to go home.
Was rather busy work day yesterday. Wasn't fundamentally bad, but very exhausting. including frustrating of not being able to figure a problem out. I do know it wasn't a simple problem, but still frustrating and taking a lot of energy as my brain is running at 200% of sustainable use for long time.
Result was shutdown, which is still largely the case. Sitting in dark room not doing much.
Part of the whole, I can work - BUT... it has impact and only possible as part time .
Only very lately, I've started to understand how loud sounds affect me. It's a strange combination of self-controlled loud music (yes, please) and uncontrollable, sometimes sudden, loud sounds making me very tense. I mentioned a loud stop signal in a bus yesterday.
The tensest I get is when our dog, who just turned one, starts to whine at the end of a car ride. We try to teach her that she needs to be quiet in order to get out. When she's agitated it might take a while. It's loud and I feel empathetic and get very tense. I can feel it everywhere in my body. Another example is when she repeatedly barks in a small space, such as our sauna cabin by the summer cottage. It might reverbarate in the structures, and my head.
Another type of sound that gets to me is the sound of brushing. It's physically uncomfortable, has always been. The worst is when a tractor is brushing gravel off the road after the winter. Almost makes me shudder to think about it. Always wondered why it's so uncomfortable. Now with self-diagnosed autism I get it.
it's late, i'm tired, but i'm still in need: haven't been able to do my eye exam or replace my broken glasses. Keep me in your thoughts, throw me a dollar(literally singular) if you can via paypal and read my full needs on gfm
Earlier this year I started hitting a point of simultaneous fatigue and sensory overload in the early evening that I'm not used to, basically has me in dark cool rooms for the rest of the day to avoid shutdown.
Anyone else deal with this as a new symptom?
Coincides with the onset of a depressive episode but has been surprisingly persistent.
Diary of an ASD Squirrel. Day 198 , Monday 13/05/2024
Up early for some reason beyond this simple squirrels reasoning.
Tidied up after herself, did my chores & went for a walk in the warm early summer sunshine !
I cannot seem to find the impetus to get stuff done, I work best to a deadline & the only person pushing me at the moment is me, which would be fine but I have minimal motivation levels at the moment.
I’m wondering from day to day like a leaf blowing in the breeze, no direction, no purpose.
At least the days are warm now & a lot sunnier, saving energy is easier , my lone mission to drag our energy bills down is less onerous in the summer.
Final Thoughts.
I suspect that I am going through a depressive episode, I hope I come through to the other side soon.
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
I know people with estrogen have said their ADHD gets worse during perimenopause/menopause, but I'm wondering if people with testosterone 50+ also notice their Autism/ADHD symptoms getting worse. Especially more "inattentive"/stuck in their thoughts.
I feel like we really need more research on all of this.
Sitting in the bus after a day at work. Feeling tired. The meeting that ended the day dragged on and I stopped even trying to follow the discussion. I haven't listened to music in a bus in ages but now I find myself thinking that maybe I should buy a set of noise-canceling headphones.
The bus is hissing loudly, there are conversations that I can't hear which somehow makes them even more annoying. On top of all I'm sitting under a loudspeaker that plays the stop signal in a very loud tone. Shit, it rang again and startled me. Why does it have to be that loud?
I'm so proud of my boy and how smart he is! I've been having a lot of #SelectiveMutism days because of my #AutisticBurnout I'm experiencing since my father passed. Because I've been mute for a few days I realized I was having issues communicating with my boy Birger. He knows hand signals for things like sit, down, stay, up, etc, but redirecting him and getting his attention I realized I was depending only on vocal commands such as focus or using his name. This was proving to be a problem so I reached out to my trainer and asked for some advice on the matter. He suggested with the focus command that I add a clap or whistle, something I could do that wasn't verbal related. So because I had some words today we worked on him coming and focusing on me when I whistle. And it's working! He went under the couch today and I didn't know where he was. I whistled and he came right out to me and looked at me! Praise and treats were given of course, im just so proud! It's only been a short training session of this and he gets it! #ServiceDogInTraining#ServiceDogHandler#MothersDay#DogsOfMastodon#MiniDachshund#Dachshund#Autistic#ActuallyAutistic
Morning fam! It's the final push to make it to wednesday, and it's been over a week since my gfm got any attention.Sharing is the best way to help me out 🙏🏾💞
Since it comes up with some frequency on autistic social media, I wanted to share my experience with noise cancelling headphones as an noise sensitive autistic person with auditory processing issues. As always, this is just my experience.
I tried writing it for a Mastodon post, but it got way to long... so I ended up dumping it on my blog instead.
If you have any questions etc. do feel free to share.
Y'know, growing up, I observed a weird phenomenon in my life. After about a year of knowing a new circle of friends, I would get kicked out or excluded from that space. I had always understood it as, that's about as long as I can pretend to be a normal person before I accidentally show one of my more unusual or annoying traits.
Now, #actuallyautistic has given me the tools to understand that these are the moments I would let my masking guard down. When people sense I'm ND, they split.