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I think I have ASD - what do I do now?

100skerls

Just another skerl
V.I.P Member
I have spent the past few weeks reading what I can and thinking long and hard about what else I might have if not ASD and I think I’ve ruled out the disorders that people who self diagnose might confuse for ASD. I am still awaiting my evaluation which is about 4 months from now but I’m eager to get my life moving in a positive direction.

I don’t think I have a desire to learn more coping skills because it is my opinion that coping skills (aka masking) have not truly helped me in ways that I appreciate much. I think I am satisfied with my capabilities to interact at the moment and I think I need to focus on my personal experience which seems to need my attention way more. Since I could remember I have been confused, scared, ashamed, and deeply sad. I’ve pretty much ignored all of that til now and now I want to try to help myself but don’t know what that means.

Essentially I think I’ve spent most of my life in a bit of a rut where everything is hard for me and it leaves me tired and confused and sad. The world makes me sad and all of the sadness I’ve experienced lingers with me and memories are triggered all the time by harmless things that remind me. I feel alone around everyone I know but it doesn’t bother me much because it’s how it’s always been. I think I don’t know who I am or why I am or what I’m doing and everyone agrees I tend to get stuck and unable to make progress the ways that young adults do.

College is taking forever and I can’t cope with normal levels of independence or stress. I lie to my family and say I am going back to school, want to continue with engineering, but frankly I feel I can’t continue and I’ve reached what feels a lot like a dead end. It’s almost like I’ve been bonked on the head and forgot who I am, what I’m doing, how to function, and how to move forward. However instead of forgetting I’ve just tried very hard to resist that I’ve never known in the first place and caused myself tremendous amounts of pain forcing myself to try to move forward, be normal, know who I am, etc.

My college experience/ adult experience so far has been so painful that I think I have ptsd and it makes me feel incapable of continuing in school as well as continuing as an adult (as someone who has to ultimately provide for themselves). I’ve taken a year off from school and have been taking semesters off before that since I started. I’ve also been unable to ever really take care of myself and have been on and off homeless whenever my mom and stepdad or my dad get fed up with me.

I tend to escape through my interests to deal with how hard it is to deal otherwise and my passions tend to annoy them because they don’t like all the books and crafts and things that result from my interests and feel I tend to make myself too at home and it makes them uneasy. So I’ve been just trying to not have any strong interests for a while and it makes life pretty hard to enjoy and I spend a lot of time reading on my phone. I prefer being outside but there’s just not a lot of nature to enjoy in Houston and they don’t want me messing with their garden. I still go on walks and look for pretty rocks along sidewalks but it’s not as effective for me escape-wise.

But maybe it’s for the better because perhaps I’m being forced to deal with myself the way I am and try to figure out what to do? Maybe that is good? I don’t know part of me thinks so but I also have a lot of nervous energy and fear of pending doom coming around the corner and those things are generally relieved by my interests.

So what have you done that has been helpful for you? If this sounds familiar how did you start “moving forward”? What have you tried that hasn’t been very helpful?

Also side note: am I in the freeze loop? I read about it and it resonated with me but I never get sick. Might be a result of my being a germaphobe but I’d guess I probably don’t frequently go through periods of time where my immune system shuts down because I can count of one hand how many times I’ve been sick.
 
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Welcome to the Forums! I hope you make new friends and enjoy your stay in the process! :)

One of our members who runs a Youtube channel has a video based on exactly what you're asking yourself.

 
Welcome to our little corner of the web. Hope you enjoy your time here. If you think you have ASD make an appointment with a professional to get a proper diagnosis and discuss future steps for you. Good luck.
 
Welcome to the Forums! I hope you make new friends and enjoy your stay in the process! :)

One of our members who runs a Youtube channel has a video based on exactly what you're asking yourself.



Thanks, I will check him out!
 
Masking may be a type perhaps, but not what I think of really as a coping skill. I think more like something like desensitization therapy where you expose yourself to something in increased ammounts to things/situations you have difficulty with. I'm no expert on it, but am sure there must be others.
 
I don’t think I have a desire to learn more coping skills because it is my opinion that coping skills (aka masking) have not truly helped me in ways that I appreciate much

Hi Welcome to the forums.

It is likely that you need professional help to determine the correct "coping skills" and a professional diagnosis will hopefully be the first step.

It's probably not going to be easy but nobody really does have it easy anyway.

Temple Gardin's success is based on her hard work you too can be successful.
 
If this sounds familiar how did you start “moving forward”?

Had to get on a different track, and needed a lot of help.

Also, very small steps, since I now carry loads of trauma and self-doubt that get in the way even when innate limitations do not.

I may never move forward in the way that typical people do, my path in life is atypical.

Accepting this has been difficult but making peace with my limitations and differences seems to be the only way for me to find any measure of success and happiness in life.

What have you tried that hasn’t been very helpful?

Pushing forward blindly, ignoring what was obvious from past experience because that's what was expected/desired from others or because I was not willing to compromise with myself.

Attempting to do everything without help.
 
Helpful:
-spending some of my time (but not all of my time) doing things that make me happy, even if other people wouldn't understand why they make me happy. Trying not to be interested in anything is a fast road to depression, especially if other problems are also going on
-figuring out what makes me stressed, and then figuring out which of those things I can avoid and which ones are actually important, so I can spend my energy on the important things and not waste it on the ones that don't really matter
-learning about how autism affects the way I manage my time, social interactions, sensory differences, etc. and learning what other people have done with similar challenges. For example, I've realized that I don't organize big tasks or a large workload well in my head, so I always used to ignore it or panic and fail to get anything done. I've now learned to write out everything I need to do on paper or a whiteboard (my favorite) in small tasks or parts of tasks that don't seem too difficult, and then all I have to do is start picking small tasks off the list until before I realize it, everything is done! I also know that I can deal with people for awhile but if I do it too long I get tired, grumpy, and confused, so I do what I can to plan people-less breaks into my schedule. I also know that I don't naturally pick up on many social conventions so I make more of a conscious effort to observe what others do (without staring) and to read about what people do and why.
-getting more comfortable asking for what I need, including figuring out what I need and believing in my right to get what I need, and learning how to ask effectively
-Appreciating what I like about myself, even the things that other people don't understand

Not helpful:
-Comparing myself to other people: NTs are living in a world that was designed for them, so of course they have an easier time succeeding. It doesn't mean you can't be as successful as they are, but it might take longer and it might require a path that's a little different than the one they took.
-trying to be who others said I should be: sometimes it's useful to pretend to be what other people expect for a little while, but don't let them define who you should actually be. You're the one who has to live your life, and living it to other people's standards will just wear you out and make you miserable.
-continuing to throw myself into the same kind of situation again and again without stopping to figure out what went wrong or what I could do differently. I have to say, getting help from someone who knows more about autism (in my case a professor) was really helpful here

With school, have you figured out why you're having trouble finishing your degree? Are you not that interested in it? It might be worth looking into a different major, even if it would be a lot of work. I did (after getting a masters degree that I will never use and feeling bad about not getting a PhD because I thought I was supposed to), and it helped a lot. If you do consider a different major, is there a way you can try out something related to that field, like related part time work or volunteering? Is school too much work to do all at once? A lot of people benefit from taking fewer classes at once, so they can still keep making progress each semester without getting overloaded by trying to do it all at once. Slow progress is better than no progress. Once you have your evaluation, your school might also offer something helpful through its disability services department.

As a side note, I'd suggest going to your evaluation with the reasons you think you have ASD written down, including examples. When I had mine, I couldn't think of a single example of a single ASD trait during the interview portion because I completely blanked on them all, but I had my list with me so I could easily refer to that.

This forum is also always available with advice. We don't have all the answers, but you'll usually find someone who's had some kind of similar experience.
 
Had to get on a different track, and needed a lot of help.

Also, very small steps, since I now carry loads of trauma and self-doubt that get in the way even when innate limitations do not.

I may never move forward in the way that typical people do, my path in life is atypical.

Accepting this has been difficult but making peace with my limitations and differences seems to be the only way for me to find any measure of success and happiness in life.



Pushing forward blindly, ignoring what was obvious from past experience because that's what was expected/desired from others or because I was not willing to compromise with myself.

Attempting to do everything without help.

Thanks so much for your input. Taking advice from my loved ones to push forward when I felt like I should ease off has only led to failure for me as well.
 
-continuing to throw myself into the same kind of situation again and again without stopping to figure out what went wrong or what I could do differently. I have to say, getting help from someone who knows more about autism (in my case a professor) was really helpful here



Thanks so much. This is feedback I’ll be happy if I can receive from a professional and I appreciate your insight.

I found myself relating to a lot of what you said and I’m glad I’m doing some things that someone else has found to be successful in the long run. I have to get clearer on specific things that cause me stress and know when I’m heading for a shutdown, though. I also need to get better at asking for help.
 
With school, have you figured out why you're having trouble finishing your degree? Are you not that interested in it? It might be worth looking into a different major, even if it would be a lot of work. I did (after getting a masters degree that I will never use and feeling bad about not getting a PhD because I thought I was supposed to), and it helped a lot. If you do consider a different major, is there a way you can try out something related to that field, like related part time work or volunteering? Is school too much work to do all at once? A lot of people benefit from taking fewer classes at once, so they can still keep making progress each semester without getting overloaded by trying to do it all at once. Slow progress is better than no progress. Once you have your evaluation, your school might also offer something helpful through its disability services department.

I am really confused about whether or not it has anything to do with the subject matter. I feel like it probably has had more to do with my on and off homelessness and that fact that I was living with my alcoholic dad who was frequently not very kind and would lock me out of the house randomly and throw away large amounts of my stuff with no notice and then have no recollection of what he did the next day. The way I was coping with everything and the stress of school was by taking solace in my efforts to save injured and orphaned wildlife and felt when I could help them and spread awareness that I wasn’t totally wasting years of my life with the very small class loads, mediocre grades, and semesters taken off. I also found it very easy to take my mind off my problems completely when a life rests in my hands. But this made problems with my dad worse he didn’t like not knowing if I was going to be bringing animals home or not. Which I understand and understood at the time but felt it was the only way I could cope with what was a really terrible situation. However animals would sometimes die and that has really caused me problems I think. I also lost my childhood cat a year and a half ago right before Christmas (finals week, then my dad told me when finals were over he was kicking me out again). That’s when things really went downhill and I was just a mess. When things get really bad I can’t get out of bed or eat or do anything and existing at all is almost too much and I just want to be asleep for a few weeks to get away. I haven’t really been successful at putting myself back together since being kicked out the first time at 18 and I’m almost 23 now and I think my sensitivities to instability are the root of my hardships in school. I do like engineering and not sure if I’d rather study anything else. Maybe environmental engineering instead of mechanical. But I also somewhat feel I shouldn’t be making any big decisions for myself until I’ve got a clear head.
 
I also do need to take smaller class loads and I need to devote all of my spare time to studying to do well.
 

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