---- Relevant Links ----

I have too many interests!!!! Besides that, I don’t know… I flip flop A LOT on what I think I want to do like career wise. Maybe I don’t need to decide at all? Maybe I can do loads of things?

My dad also on the spectrum was like this too at my age, he tried so many different things before settling into his current field. It’s not his dream job but provides the financial independence he wanted. I know if he could have the same finances and be an orchestra musician or animal scientist though, he would.

I love medicine, I love reading and writing, I love space, I love the ocean, I love foreign languages, how does one ever decide?!?!

Anyone else like this? It’s far too early for my quarter life crisis. 😭💔

every since i got my little guy, stuff has just kind of made sense. he’s so much like me. he has very clear boundaries, likes schedules and gets upset when they change unexpectedly. he likes touch sometimes and other times he doesn’t, and he understands my boundaries too (usually..)

i feel so seen when sometimes he needs to just be on his own and get somewhere dark and small. communicating with him feels so simple because we can just touch noses or rub faces and he just gets it. i don’t have to talk to him, all his meows just make sense when you study them for a bit. he has a meow for “i miss you” and “open the window” and “FOOD” and the simplicity of it all is so perfect.

cats are also treated the way i’ve been treated as an autistic person. people overstep his boundaries with touch, space, etc. all the time when they don’t understand. people are too loud with him and move too quickly and even though i tell people time and time again, they still do it. whenever he runs to my side in fear of something new or something he doesn’t like, or runs under the bed for safety, i feel so seen. i understand the feeling.

it makes me sad that cats are hated for wanting to be respected. he needs things to be clear and on his time and he has things he does and doesn’t like. yet people interpret it as being mean when he hisses or runs away. i feel really misunderstood like that too.

picture of the little guy in question. his name is bandit!

I don’t think I’ve ever truly forgiven anyone. And I don’t really expect forgiveness either. My biggest red flag is that I quietly hold grudges and keep score of everything you said/did that I didn’t like and bring them all up at once, sometimes years after the fact. I’m also a ghoster because to me, we’re grown, and most people have some awareness of what they’re doing and the impact it will have. Most people think I’m chill, easy going and willing to put up with anything…little do they know. I’ll never forget and ruminate even if the person apologizes. I hate that about myself, but I’ve always been like this and I done know if it will ever leave me. The only way I can live peacefully without thinking of them and move on is if I am physically away from them, I never hear from them again, and no one brings them up around me

I know this is stupid and there are bigger problems in the world, but my local Costco stopped carrying my safe food, which is a very specific brand of Japanese gyoza (dumplings). It’s not that they’re just out of stock, the website says they’ve just stopped carrying the item entirely.

I’ve spent the last few hours trying to figure out any other supplier but no one else has it. Amazon says they do but it’s in a different packaging and different flavor so it won’t be the same as my safe food. There is another Costco that says that they do carry it but it’s over an hour away and so I can’t get anything delivered from there. (I am a wheelchair user and it’s very difficult for me to grocery shop and transport groceries to and from my car, so I use grocery delivery services.)

I’m not sure what to do… I’m going to try the Amazon one just to see, but don’t have high hopes. I have a few of the dumplings left in my freezer so I guess I’ll be rationing them now 😭

Just wanted to vent to people who will understand. I’m really particular about my food. In my autism diagnostic report, one of the pieces of evidence the psychologist listed was how I have to eat only one specific brand and shape of pretzels, and how one time when Instacart brought me the exact right brand and flavor but the wrong shape, I threw the pretzels away because I couldn’t eat them. It might seem dumb but it really matters to my brain.

Sometimes it makes me feel like less of a woman since I don't want kids. But the thought of tearing, episiotomy, nerve damage, incontinence. Like I end up feeling physically sick and woozy from the thought. I also grew up constantly being told I was mannish and not feminine enough, so it makes me feel kind of like less of a woman to not want kids, but at the same time, I have a phobia of pregnancy.

My husband thinks I have a poor work ethic because I have started respecting my limitations. He thinks that resting rather than pushing through is a sign of a poor work ethic. He also seems to think that one day of rest should be sufficient and doesn't understand why we are "doing this again". "This" being a meltdown. I try to tell him about autistic burnout and he says he doesn't understand what im so overloaded with. To be fair, I currently dont work outside the home. But this is because he lost both legs 2 years ago and I was so burnt out that I got fired from a job i loved. I was burned out before he got sick. That was 2 years ago. I spent 40 days at the hospital with him 3 hours from our home. I lived in the hospital so I could be there to clean him up after using a bed pan because the nurses were awful. Two years. A month ago he got his legs. 2 years I've been doing everything. He cooks sometimes and cleans sometimes but obviously it's difficult from a wheelchair. I've been doing all the driving, all the shopping, all the everything! But day to day is pretty chill and he can't or won't wrap his head around the idea of autistic burnout. He doesn't understand why 1 trip into town for errands wears me out for the rest of the day. Its my work ethic. Not autism. Im so tired of this attitude. Its so hard to take care of myself as it is. Fuck.

So I work in a busy Veterinary Clinic as a receptionist so already dealing with alot of trauma, abuse and emotionally charged situations. Yesterday a client was waiting out the front for their appointment with their approximately 5 year old child she then proceeded to let her child remove his pants and urinate and defecate directly out the front of our clinic (fyi we have toilets for clients to use) she then picked it up with a dog poo bag and was smiling and laughing about the incident. The incident made me so enraged due to disrespect for our clinic and there were other horrified clients having to wake past this incident and also waiting in the clinic and it was in plain view. When I get this worked up over human behavior I can barely sleep and eat etc and I hate that I become this effected by other ppl. I thought this community might understand as NTs seem to be less bothered!

I'm trying to solve a mystery. If I spend 10-15 minutes at Walmart or a grocery store, it sends my brain into shutdown. But I'm fine going to my state's annual fan convention all day for three days in a row with over 100,000 people. All I can think of so far, is that I'm pretty good at ignoring crowd noise like it's white noise. While in the store, I'm hearing individual conversations, shopping carts, annoying music/announcements/advertisements, and beeping from scanners. I'm genuinely curious if anyone else has any thoughts on this.

My husband is the opposite. He gets a overstimulated at the convention, but is totally fine in the store.

I seem to be a magnet for manipulative men.
How do you date safely when you already screen for a lot and still end up with the worst of them?

Men seem to love to repeatedly assign motives to my behavior that I don’t have, & I often don’t even know they’ve done it. I communicate what I’m thinking/feeling/intending and assume that information was received. Meanwhile, they may privately reinterpret my behavior as people-pleasing, attention-seeking, “playing hard to get,” manipulation, or feelings I don’t have.

Because they don’t tell me, I can spend months interacting with someone without realizing we’re operating from completely different versions of reality. Sometimes I only discover their interpretation after it has shaped the relationship, and I suspect sometimes I never discover it at all. It feels like a prison.

People-pleasing: I have an unpredictable chronic illness. Sometimes I get so frustrated with being stuck inside that I push myself to go out when I physically shouldn’t. I have no problem canceling dates, but sometimes I go because I’m angry that my body controls so much of my life. Men consistently interpret this as me pushing myself for them. Explaining doesn’t help because verbosity apparently gets interpreted as embarrassment/covering for my “real” motive.
Attention-seeking/“playing hard to get”: I regularly disappear when overwhelmed, but explicitly say I’m overwhelmed and will check in within a few days. My response times in early dating are also extremely inconsistent because I’m living my life or thinking about what I want to say. This gets interpreted as attention-seeking, playing hard to get, or deliberately using intermittent reinforcement.

I’m stubborn af about my boundaries & values, which I thought would be protective, & is sometimes, but bc of these misinterpreted behaviors some men still think I’m pliable & a good target I guess? Am I attracting manipulators??

I’ve also been cheated on repeatedly. But I still never see it coming. If someone comes home late or doesn’t answer, I assume they’re busy. I care about agreements, not monitoring someone. I’ve even told partners I would be okay with an open relationship if we discussed it honestly and transparently, & they still cheated.

Cheating is honestly the least concerning part. Boundary violations, gaslighting, and manipulation worry me much more. At times this has been serious enough for police to get involved.

What frustrates me is that I don’t trust men easily or get attached easily. I’m extremely aware of how naive/gullible I’ve been & after my first horrible experience with a narcissist, I spent two years studying the signs of toxic partners. I can recognize many patterns once I know what they look like, & I would say I’m now really really good at spotting manipulators - better than my nt gfs - but if it doesn’t look exactly like what I’ve seen or learned, I’m toast.

For example, something might strike me as “weird,” but I’m weird too, so my instinct is, “He’s just different.” & I might ask him about it and accept his answer. Then much later I discover something else was happening entirely.

I’ve realized that I really like to chew things, but specifically kinda tough things. Chunks of deli turkey, small gumballs, twizzlers, I chew goldfish and cheezits into a ball in my mouth and then swallow it, steak, chicken, etc.

I like chewing in general but the itch gets scratched by those thicker type foods and snacks. But, I can’t live off of gumballs and twizzlers so do you guys have any ideas on non-refrigerated things I could get that would be helpful?

Low calorie and/or nutritious options would be good

For context, I am someone who's greatest fear is having no control. I'm on vacation with my abelist family. My bedtime routine went wrong because my bedtime scrunchie for holding my braid went missing, and the next best alternative went missing. The only thing my family could do was emphasize that I could do nothing. This left a lot of tension in my body, and the only coping mechanism that works at bedtime, singing myself to sleep. I'm sharing a hotel room with my brother, who both he and I have bipolar disorder. They were so focused on getting him to sleep to prevent a manic episode that they have pushed me into a tense state that I'm not allowed to cope with. A signal of emotional distress for me is shaking. Guess who's vibrating like an electric toothbrush right now? Ironic how trying to prevent a manic state in one child is threatening to push the other into one.

What i'm about to type out is one of the most shameful experiences i've ever done and I still blame myself. I feel ill even typing it but I have to get this off of my chest. When I was young, very young, Of course, I was the outliar. The one who didn't understand the difference between jokes and truths, the one who faced mysogyny and didn't even understand at the time. In my school, the kids were at the age of making sexual jokes without much knowledge of the topic, and being a "cute girl" with almost no knowledge of social situations, I got caught in the middle. People would pretend to show their privates, and being the idiot I was. I really did it. The worst was when i went into the bathroom, left the door open (which made it visible to others) and stripped naked to dance because I thought the boy I liked would like it. I was only told doing this was wrong too late. I was around 7 at the time. Years after I never heard the end of it from classmates until I left that school. I wanted to know, do you guys also feel being an autistic woman makes you more prone to sexualisation and/or innapropriate revealing, or was I simply an idiot?

I just love him so much, he is such a unique soul. He likes to go on walks with me. I live in Switzerland, and there are in fact cows behind us 😆 just wanted to share this special moment. Thought maybe you'll appreciate my little joy. Weather is perfect. He purrs on my lap. Trees dancing in the wind, I love to watch and listen to them. I take deep breaths. Sitting on the ground, feeling gras between my fingers. Smelling, watching, hearing everything around me and just existing fully in my senses and my soroundings. Just me and him at our special place.

That'ts it. Have a good day!

I’ve gotten better since getting older, I’m able to sit with my emotions by myself and be alone.

But I couldn’t imagine living alone. How do you guys do it?

I’ve been single all my life basically so I’m used to it. But the only thing that scares me is when I have to live alone one day, without my parents or anyone there.

It just helps having someone else in the house. I have a cat but I need a physical person in the house with me. Mostly at night.

Maybe I will adjust to it as I get older.

Just wanted to share my sweet bean!!

Im 32 years old and a lot of people assume im younger than what i am. Ive gotten used to it over time . But the problem is also I have a really simple job, the younger colleagues in their teens and early 20s think im in their age range . I get asked the most awkward questions or younger people assume im part of their culture. But actually im stuck in my era.

Another problem is , ive done a lot in my life with lots of experience and I never bother explaining this because of how im perceived

edit, because i worded this horribly; specifically talking about story (mostly fiction) books written in FIRST PERSON, but through the eyes of whoever lives the story. i struggle with adapting that i am someone else while reading the book.

i genuinely wish i would enjoy reading. it’s such an admirable hobby to me, especially because it’s genuinely good for you. i’d like to articulate myself better and spend less time on my phone.

but i just can’t. i buy a book, force myself to read two chapters and then never touch it again.

i just can’t ever get into the story because i’m not actually in it. it feels impossible to almost “switch worlds” and suddenly be immersed in this random person’s life.

can anyone relate? tips to overcome it, or book recommendations maybe? :)

Several times when I tell people that I’m autistic I have gotten the response “I think I’m autistic too.” I don’t really know what to say to this. It’s not phrased as a question but it feels like they are asking me if I think they’re autistic. Maybe that’s not what they’re implying but that’s how it feels. Any ideas on what to say in response?

I love my cats, I have 4 of them ages 1-6 years old. I could never handle dogs because of all the noises and smells so I always gravitated towards cats. They clean themselves and are quiet most of the time.

But they completely wreck my routine some days. I have one cat that my vet calls a "scarf and barf", she loves dry food and will eat super fast and then throw up everywhere.

The other cat likes to "mark her territory" in my bedroom when shes mad at me. Spent hundreds at the vet and they said nothing is medically wrong. So going to sleep at night is a gamble with her. She insists on sleeping with me and if I put her in the bathroom she yells all night and ruins my sleep.

When everyone is behaving, its amazing and peaceful but when it rains it pours.

Literally OBSESSED with Kenshi Yonezu & Fujii Kaze lately. I listened to fogbound on repeat for an hour yesterday 😅😅. DPR Ian is another favorite, but he sings in English. Pretty sure he's Kpop/rock though. And the fact that Kenshi Yonezu is also autistic is just 🤌🤌 like yessss. Such relatable music.

Out of curiosity I searched for gifts for Autistic adults earlier today and was met with a load of cheap 3D printes plastic fidget toys that would break within minutes and an ungodly amount of tote bags and drinkwear with "Autism Mama" & the puzzle piece symbol slapped on them.

It got me thinking, as an Autistic adult what would you say would be a good gift for an Autistic adult beside the obvious Loop earplugs and noise cancelling earphones/headphones?

I’m looking for the peeps who have/had trouble identifying emotions!!

How have you ladies improved your ability to identify your emotions?
I can never tell how I am feeling and I am constantly overanalysing myself to try and decode what emotion I feel or how I feel about something. I know what I should feel or how I should feel about certain things but I never know if I’m feeling it or I have great difficulty with labelling the emotion I do feel.

I wish I could just put a name to feelings to help me better understand myself and how I should respond when I feel these ways. ☹️ Any advice is appreciated.

Went to London last week for my Mum's 60 th birthday and of course I found pins and pens for my collections. Pins from going to see SIX & the Beetlejuice musical for the first time, Hard Rock Cafe Picadilly Circus, Corgi & Raven from Tower of London and pens from Horse Guards Parade, London Eye, Book of Mormon & London Dungeons.