Talking to my therapist about being a bit frustrated (in lack of better word) that I'm not sure if my ability handle sensory input is decreasing or if I'm just more ware of it.

"It could be both." ...

... Sigh. Gee, thanks 🙂

(It absolutely could be both, and I'm not at all unhappy they said that, but... I would like to know! Thanks! 🙂).

#ActuallyAutistic #MyExperiences

For my autism diagnosis I filled out a long questionnaire in advance. I saved a copy of it and I find it really interesting now to be able to refer back to it.

I find it especially interesting how many things I didn't know, even after having thinking about possibly being autistic in some detail for some months.

My autistic discovery is still ongoing, but I come a long way in ~14 months.

For stimming (question was longer):

I don't really know. It's only more recently I have started thinking about this may be a thing, and I'm having a hard time really understanding what may be part of this and not.
One thing I have noticed is at times when I sit at my desk my hands will automatically fidget with things on the desk. E.g. I had a cable tie (bendable metal in rubbery casing) which I was opening and closing to the point where the metal broke and I had a wooden fork from takeaway food which ended up in many small pieces without me thinking about it.
I have noticed a couple of cases of this. While I was sitting on my couch and filling out another question in this form, I noticed that I was rocking my food up and down, and I have noticed other similar minor cases lately.

Based on reading / hearing about stimming I have tried a bit seeing if anything with motions helped with feeling calm… but, haven't really found or noticed anything concrete yet.

For if I did anything like that when I was younger, I just don't know - I find it really hard to remember things like that from so long ago.

#MyExperiences #ActuallyAutistic
@actuallyautistic

I really would like to know, if the fact that I feel more (mild) sensory overload on weekends now than in the past, is because I'm more aware of how I'm feeling, or because I'm less able the handle the sensory load less...

Weekends means interactions with kids and partner, more constant background noise etc. It's not really any one thing, but just cumulative many small things.

I do unfortunately think it's more likely reduced capacity. I had sort of thought my burnout had stabilized, but now I'm wondering if I just wanted that to be the case...

Brains remain stupid and hard to understand...

No particular point to the post, just something I have been thinking about today since I started noticing the pattern...

#MyExperiences #ActuallyAutistic

I saw (part of) a TikTok this evening which was a "podcast" panel discussion talking about a question they seemed to have been asked: "We invited everyone in my child's class to a birthday party, except the one autistic child. Am I the asshole?".

That landed deep in the feelings. I didn't know I was autistic until ~30 years later, but... I do remember not being invited to school birthday parties... It wasn't frequently the case, but it did happen (where I knew about it). I don't remember too much about it, but I do remember, and with my SDAM brain most of the things I do remember long term are stuff which made an emotional impact.... so, yes...

On a positive note, all the initial comments on the video were clear "Yes, you are the asshole." and the actual video I saw was from a person replying ("stiching") the original video making "fake" / example phone call to autistic kids parents talking about a birthday party, fundamentally, so they could decide if it would make sense for the autistic child to attend or not (even with best intentions, given sensory environments of such events, it may just not be feasible in some cases) and what had been done to try and make it more inclusive from the start.

I didn't actually watch the original video other than start, as it was not clear where that was going and not enough emotional spoons in case it went poorly...

PS. to be explicit, I don't have spoons at the moment to even marginally discuss best way of handling the nuances of what's best to do for the "birthday question". Just wanted to share one of the few cases where I can look back and perhaps understand my autistic childhood a bit more in retrospect...

#ActuallyAutistic #MyExperiences

Once again I really wish my brain could translate what I mean into words, but I find it _really_ hard.

Expressing complicated technical topics in words, no problem. It may take me a bit in preparation, but I never find it to be hard.

Expressing emotional topics etc. into words - blank and brain resists hard when I try. Really feel like I'm fighting my brain which would rather net. I want to express something, but my brain does not.

Alexithymia sucks.

#ActuallyAutistic #MyExperiences @actuallyautistic

Sigh, I got yet another cold. They are not too bad, but last forever (normally 3-4 weeks) and reduce my available spoon some for the period. It does get milder later in the period, but clearly still there.

So the main reason I wanted to mention this (other than a bit of venting 🙂) is, I'm wondering if any other autistic people have the same issue of cold etc. lasting much longer than for most people?

I knew the long colds have been the case for me for many years (read: including before COVID-19), and my GP (doctor) response was basically "that sucks - doesn't sound like something which anything can be done about, or to be worried about".

For normal length, I just checked to be sure and as per https://www2.hse.ie/conditions/common-cold/#symptoms-of-a-cold "You will usually feel worse during the first 2 to 3 days before gradually starting to improve. Your symptoms will usually last about a week."

PS. This of course also means extended periods of not going near other people and COVID tests, which is of course its own "fun".

#MyExperiences #ActuallyAutistic

I'm really happy that I started talking to a therapist, and that I found one who is autistic.

I'm mostly posting this as datapoint for others, who may be considering it for the first time.

It took me years to "get started", where I sort of knew it would probably be a good idea as my mental health was not in a good place, but I couldn't get over the mental hurdle of starting the process for a while.

For me I do think finding an autistic therapist was absolutely key as (I think) it means they can much more easily understand me. At least it certainly means I haven't ever had to explain anything around autism.

PS. It's "talk therapy" (I think they called it) so it's mostly just... well, talking :-).

#ActuallyAutistic @actuallyautistic #MyExperiences

Sometimes I learn something interesting and possibly even useful about my brain.

On Friday my employer did something which made me extremely angry for multiple reasons all at once (details mostly not important here).

The interesting part, is that for me writing down the multiple different reasons of why it made me so angry actually helped reduce the "emotional" anger part a bit, which is useful in that it's a bit less all consuming.

Oh, and as a sort of sidenote, knowing that I'm autistic and how that affect some part of my brains reactions was really helpful here too.

#MyExperiences

To give an idea of what I can remember, from my "primary school", which I left ~25 years ago, I could probably describe fairly detailedly how the empty building looked with layout etc., but I can only recall a handful of "social situations" which happened there. For the situations, the best description I can give: It's like if you are shown a photo for a brief time so you have an overall idea of the situation, but very little details - and it's all a bit fuzzy. I couldn't at all describe how the people looked, but I can mostly remember who were there. I can for some of the episodes also remember there were strong emotions, though I can't really describe them - which is probably "standard" alexithymia.

So why am I talking about this on my "autism account"? While I haven't seen any data which indicate that SDAM is an autistic comorbidity (but given how little is known it's probably hard to say yet), it does greatly affect my autism discovery in not being able to look back. It also means I don't remember experiencing common autistic situations of being misunderstood etc., but I can see I have the reactions other autistic people describe e.g. with trying to preempt misunderstanding with detailed emails covering as many possible avenues for misunderstandings etc. This leads me to believe these things absolutely happen to me and my unconscious brain registered it and I "learned" from the instances - but I can't recall them.

I would like to make all this more coherent and concise, but I have been wanting to make this post for a month - so I'm posting this "introduction" now and will add more as I learn.

A huge thanks to @autism101 for talking about this on Twitter. It has made a significant impact for me to know this isn't just me, and made it easier for me to understand the impact of my memory on me.

#ActuallyAutistic #SDAM #MyExperiences

As part of my autistic discovery journey I heard many cases of people talking about how after they found out they were autistic, they looked back and in retrospect they displayed many obvious autistic traits. I never had that experience, since I realised that I simply don't remember. I have no problem remembering facts, including the events that happened and the parts I "needed", but I can't remember details of the situation. Since I never had a problem remembering things I had to remember (ignoring short term memory and general executive dysfunction here), this just wasn't anything I questioned before - but it was quite obvious now that I do remember things differently than many (most?) people. It's not something that has changed as I grew older - I just didn't think about it until recently.

A few months ago Autism-101 posted on Twitter mentioning SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory). That was one of those lightbulb moments - I suddenly had a name which just clicked and described what I experienced. On top of SDAM people a fairly new idea, and therefore in early stages of being defined, the descriptions I have found so far of SDAM are mostly fairly academic and not too great at describing how people really experience it, so I'm not certain I have SDAM - but it fits very well.

For reference, the main SDAM academic website describes it as: Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM) refers to a lifelong inability to vividly recollect or re-experience personal past events from a first-person perspective.

#ActuallyAutistic #SDAM #MyExperiences

I have become more aware recently that while loud or sudden noise is a significant problem for me which is easy to notice, low level continuous background noise also seems to be a problem.

(I need more "data points" to be sure it's this the problem, but I think so.)

The really annoying part of this is that I don't really notice it for a while (e.g. 1+ hour), but has been affecting me. Since I hadn't noticed it, I haven't tried to mitigate the issue. At the point I notice, the spoons have been used.

I use noise canceling headphones a lot of the time, but some sound still goes through so they help less for background noise, than with the louder noises - and I can't wear them all the time as that gets uncomfortable too.

#ActuallyAutistic #NoiseSensitivity #MyExperiences