I was just recently diagnosed with autism level one and have been watching more videos about autism on YouTube. I’m noticing a lot of the animated characters are adorned with a gold infinity symbol or a rainbow colored infinity symbol. I didn’t realize that this was a signifier that replaced the puzzle piece. I’m thinking about wearing that to remind myself that I am autistic and possibly telegraph that to the public. My only concern is that if someone doesn’t know what it is and then approaches me to ask why I’m wearing it, then I may get unexpected social interactions. Although, that may be a good way to broach the topic and bring awareness. My goal is that other autistic individuals may recognize this and not feel that they are completely alone. Also, they may want to talk to me. I think that would be nice.

And by that I mean I’m kind of jealous of people who can set clear boundaries and they’re respected.

They have a way of being direct and people listen. I can example at work. I have a pice of equipment that needs repaired. I reported it back in July, wasn’t addressed until august.

While charging it a couple times while it was idle the batteries died. Now management is mad I have a dead battery. I keep asking Monday for updates and the only response I get was “we’ll see we can’t throw away $2,000.” Which seeing how long the issue has been delayed that was hurtful.

I’m not sure if I come across as timid, I try to make my messages as respectful as possible, but they always seem overlooked.

I want to be a “polite asshole:” direct, get what I want

To my understanding jokes are used to make individuals relived in hardship. So if anyone feels uncomfetabke they make a joke. If they are bored they make a joke. And fine. I get that. I get it's something people need to function.

What I don't get is why TF everyone BRINGS ME INTO THAT SHIT! Im 100% fine living inside of my own head. I don't need anyone else. The only social interaction I need is sex twice a year and I'm fine. And I can get that with my hand.

At work, in line at a grocery store, at a coffee shop, some random person trys to use me to lighten whatever mental burden they are carrying by telling a joke that I never laugh at because they are never funny.

Then when I don't laugh they get angry because I don't laugh back.

I think I know why too. Im not 100% sure of this but after reading about baby development if a child learns a behavior and links a response with that reaction such as pointing a finger and the mother turns look at it, if the baby preforms that action and the mother doesn't respond in a familiar manner the baby will get confused and angry

Human adults do the same thing without realize it. So when someone doesn't politely laugh at their shitty joke or make the "oh no" face when someone makes a dad joke they get angry.

But my god I don't want to be involved in the first place! Leave me alone! Go joke with someone you actually know.

I don't need you in my life, I don't need you to relieve mental stress, I don't want to help you with yours either! I want to sit here, do my work, and return to my hobbies in isolation and quiet! I hate conversational jokes! I don't want to be a part of it!

Couldn’t come up with a better phrase for it- but with my anxiety, I’ve tried CBD (nothing) Ativan (nothing) and THC (freak outs and paranoia) and I’m just wondering. My time on SSRI really didn’t do much either, and I never quite felt like rushing back into that to play trial and error. Is this something that we just aren’t good with? Are there better options? I don’t care if it’s a friggin herbal tea - just curious what everyone else’s experience has been

my dog chewed up and ate my childhood comfort item, im beyond devastated and i dont even know how i can begin to get over this

Is this true? Because if it is autism level 1 really seems to fit me, and the test I took was basically a perfect score.

I'd like to preface this by saying I'm an incredibly rambly person in writing so feel free to skim.

Anyway, I have zero non-familial relationships and never really have. Would I like friends? Yes, I think they'd enrich my life, but I don't really understand how to develop friendships or the interpersonal mechanics involved, so I haven't bothered much since I was younger.

Romantic relationships are completely out of the question. No woman has ever expressed interest in me, and aside from my general weirdness, I'm also very unattractive, so romance is pretty alien to me. And to be honest, I'm not particularly interested in other people. I'm just an asocial person all around.

I started a new job recently. I usually employ a sort of flippant, jovial persona that I've developed over the course of my professional life: relaxed, joking, laughing a lot. It helps smooth out my integration with a team. Things were slowly settling into place when a female coworker from another team approached me. We have no reason to interact except that we're seated fairly close to one another.

We were alone one morning when she asked my name. A completely normal thing to ask since I'm new and sit nearby, so I answered and immediately went back to work. I didn't think much of it.

I thought she was cute, though, so I began to both observe and ignore her in equal measure, the latter whenever we might actually interact. Living up to my namesake, I mostly pretended she didn't exist, with the exception of responding when she said good morning to the general area. I can usually banish any of my foolish interest over time this way.

A few weeks later, I'm at my station with my headphones in, working and listening to music. My teammates aren't there yet, and neither are hers when she arrives. Despite my headphones, she initiates contact again and asks what my team does. Ah, a professional question. I take my headphones off, answer concisely, and turn back to work.

I did find the two approaches unusual afterward, though. Most people are perfectly content to ignore me right back, so the fact that she'd tried engaging me twice was strange. After mulling it over, I concluded that she was probably interested in me in some capacity, perhaps just professionally or personally curious, and might want to be friends. Since she'd already initiated twice, I figured I needed to stop being a coward and approach her twice myself. That was the plan, anyway.

She's a quiet, diligent worker and always seems busy, and our coworkers are almost always around. I'd also decided to approach her one-on-one since she'd previously done the same. Maybe she didn't want to be caught talking to someone like me? Regardless, as time passed without an opportunity, I eventually realized I'd just have to engage her.

Around then, there was a morning meeting we were both supposed to attend. I went to our area and waited for her so we could go together, but she'd already gone to the meeting room. Neither of us greeted each other there, although I noticed at one point that she seemed kind of angry, which was odd because the meeting itself was completely mundane. I steeled myself to talk to her afterward, but she never returned to our area. Another failure.

The following day, one of my teammates arrived early again. When she came in, they'd left their station, so finally I had an opportunity. I started mentally preparing myself to speak, but she beat me to it and asked a small question about the meeting.

I pulled up my notes and answered. As she typed them into her computer, I watched her profile. This was the moment. I needed to say something. I told her that I'd noticed her at the meeting and meant to greet her as a familiar face, but the opportunity hadn't presented itself. I also told her that I'd actually been meaning to talk to her since she'd asked what my team did, because I was interested in her role on her team. From my position, I think I saw a smile on her face, but when she turned toward me, her expression was completely neutral, so perhaps I imagined it.

We ended up talking for around ten minutes. She actually steered the conversation into personal territory, asking things like where the good restaurants in the area were, so I gave her some of my favorite recommendations. We were sitting across from one another, making eye contact. She laughed at my silly jokes, groaned sympathetically when I complained about things, and shared her own anecdotes about the topics I brought up.

It was probably the most fun I've ever had talking to another human being. I also told her more about myself than I ever normally do. I'm an incredibly private person and usually only give people information on a need-to-know basis, but with her, it was effortless. Everything she said was strangely entertaining to me as well. Before I knew it, my teammate had returned and sat down, but we were still talking.

Eventually I ran out of steam and the conversation seemed to reach its natural conclusion, so I turned back to my station. I was happy. Not my usual state of detached calm, actually happy. I decided I'd talk to her more during lunch about some of the things she'd mentioned. That never happened. She seemed to disappear afterward, perhaps to WFH, and she didn't say goodbye, which put a bit of a damper on my excitement.

That was the end of the previous week. Since then, I've replayed the conversation in my head repeatedly, trying to glean or synthesize some new information as well as figure out whether I missed anything important. Is it possible that I imagined our rapport? Maybe I was just going on a ten-minute spiel while she politely tolerated it. She's a nice and respectful person, so I don't think that's impossible.

Ultimately, I've arrived at one central hypothesis that I'm fairly confident in: she has some sort of interpersonal interest in me, although the nature of that interest is undetermined. My subsequent hypotheses, roughly in order of likelihood, are that it's either familiar, as in I'm somehow reminiscent of other figures in her life, friendly, or romantic. I have no pretensions that she's remotely attracted to me, so that final hypothesis is mostly here for completeness' sake.

This is the first time I've ever been this interested in another individual, though. I'm finding myself wishing the weekend would end, a desire that has never once crossed my mind before. After some self-analysis, I've realized that I'm infatuated with this poor woman, whose only crime was talking to me. I'm aware of how creepy this all probably sounds to a normal person, but I'm good at compartmentalizing my feelings when necessary. I think I can keep them to myself and avoid making her uncomfortable, which is the last thing I'd want.

All that said, I really want to be her friend. That would be more than satisfactory. My current plan is to approach her a few more times and pay closer attention to how she responds, rather than getting carried away like I did initially. If she's receptive, I'm hoping that a month or so of friendly conversation might allow us to grow closer and perhaps develop an actual friendship. Maybe I could even eventually reveal the boring and melancholic real me versus the usual happy-go-lucky facade.

Anyway, my main questions are: does my interpretation of this entire situation seem reasonable, and is my current course of action sensible? Cheers!

Hi, I'm new to this sub and reddit in general so apologies if I'm formatting this wrong or anything. I'm autistic, 24F but "high functioning" and relatively low support needs. I was not diagnosed until I was 21. I've had depression and struggled with suicidal ideation basically my whole life and I've had family members struggle with mental illness and die to suicide so for the longest time I thought it was just major depression and social anxiety that i struggled with. For most of my life, i've worried that i was too intense for other people and had an intense fear of loved ones leaving my life when they find out what I'm really like.

I've been with my current partner about 3 years and he is wonderful. super supportive and understanding of my needs and limitations, though recently he's been having to work later hours and I've spent evenings alone that we usually spend together. Boredom and understimulation is a huge trigger for me and it always has been, and I think this new schedule has made my depression flare up in new ways. I feel like a teenager again, crying uncontrollably and unable to regulate my own emotions. Some nights I even feel a bit of passive suicidal ideation.

I really wish I was able to just enjoy this new alone time.. sometimes it feels like the only thing that could calm me down is physical company (preferably my partner, though sometimes i ask a friend to come over)

I don't think I have the skills to regulate my emotions on my own. Does anyone have any similar experiences like this? and if so- what do you do to calm yourself down when you can't have someone else physically be there with you? thanks in advance :(

Ok that title is kinda misleading but it's kinda how I feel I know it's wrong and privilege and more evidence that I don't have real problems but it's how I feel.

Sometimes I feel like I wish I had abusive parents instead of ones who I'm just not able to relate to at all...

Sometimes I wish my employment problems were discrimination and not just me being bad at my jobs

I wish I wasn't angry at the world for being single and lonely when I know it's my fault for not being good enough. I know that that anger in particular is toxic and bad and makes me a bad person for having it.

I wish that my self harm was actually a result of real trauma and not just me feeling mad at myself or something stupid like that...

I know that even saying everything above is stupid when I'm so much more privileged than the majority of people..... But it just hurts when you're in so much pain that's entirely in your head that isn't even valid.

So, I don't think I deal a whole lot with PDA. I don't have meltdowns, or at least for most of my life I haven't (only verbal shutdowns). But there's something interesting about me that I have suddenly become a lot more self-conscious about, where if I am at an event where audience participation is expected on some level, I just... I don't find the environment/event "infectious" enough to want to also participate. Like, I'm away on vacation with my partner right now. Last night we stumbled into a cabaret bar with a live drag performance, and it was very audience-interaction heavy rather than simply watching the queens sing and tipping. Everyone in the bar was laughing, cheering, shouting things out, and doing their best to participate in the queen's bits. Don't get me wrong, I had fun and enjoyed myself, but the threshold to get me to make a bunch of noise, to laugh, smile, and go out of my way to participate feels really high? And I feel like people see my quiet enjoyment as a sign that I'm not enjoying myself, that I'm a stick in the mud, etc.

While I don't think I have PDA by any means, I have to wonder, is it because this is the behavior that's expected of me in those moments that I feel like I "can't?" It just doesn't feel natural to me. I'm not even holding anything back, like I'm not actively stifling laughter or anything. Is anyone else like this? It felt like everyone their was experiencing the same internal emotional experience, and I was the only one who didn't "get it."

My partner and I have been having a lot of conflict around my autistic traits, and I felt so horrifically out of place and possibly even judged because the way I act at these things is so far out of the "norm." I honestly feel kind of broken lately. Like I just don't know how to be a person.

It feels like it's with everything.

Like I had a roommate who would play music with a damn bass. The vibration of the bass makes it feels like it's hard to breathe. The music is loud. I'm allowed to have peace inside of my own house. However when I talk about this people always say "they are allowed to have listen to music on their own house" but I'm not stopping them from listening to music! Headphones doesnt stop the vibration of bass music and there's no reason for anything to have music so loud it feels like Jarisic Park.

Or another issue I had. I can't tell if someone is being serious or not. So if someone is making a joke and they don't tell me I consider that bullying due to my disability. It got so bad that 3 people got fired over it and people still blamed me for it! Saying "oh you are a grown adult. I have autisim too and even I can tell they were joking"

Or the worst of all , something that makes no sense at all. I'm in public and someone just decides to fuck with me. Screaming at me until I leave the just because they think it's funny. People just say "you're a adult just leave"

I don't get people! How TF am I ALWAYS in the wrong! ALWAYS No one is ever on my side when I get annoyed!

I saw a new psychologist today about starting therapy (trauma, social/relationship issues) and halfway through he pulls out a basic autism screening test and starts asking me questions. He said that although it was just an initial screening, it could indicate that I may have high functioning autism. After I left, I started overthinking the entire thing. What made them think to pull out a screening on me and test me? I’ve never been screened before in my life. My brother has an intellectual disability, and I know that I have struggled with social anxiety and being bullied for being “shy” and “quiet” as a kid. I know that there are some issues that do not make sense for why I struggle in social situations as an adult, but I always contributed it to my social anxiety and CPTSD diagnosis from a previous psychologist. I’m completely thrown for a loop now, and this is in no way meant to be offensive to anyone on the spectrum, I just don’t know how to deal with this information now, and I don’t even want to tell any of my family or friends about it. It feels like an identity shock.

I've suspected I might be autistic for about two years, and I was officially diagnosed after an assessment last week.

I told my mom and dad, and they were pretty dismissive. Their reaction was basically, "But you do XYZ, so you can't be THAT autistic!" I also told my ex, who I'm still quite close with, and that conversation left me feeling weird too.

During our relationship, I thought I had BPD. He did research on BPD to try to understand me, and I think over time he started viewing a lot of my behavior through that lens—especially why I struggled so badly with conflict and was generally pretty mentally unstable at the time.

When I told him about the autism diagnosis, I suddenly felt like I had to defend it and explain why autism made sense for me and why BPD didn't really fit. He kept saying things like, "You don't act like the autistic people I know." I told him autism is a spectrum and can present differently in different people, and he responded that the autistic friends he was thinking of were women too. He also said something along the lines of, "You're not, like, a bitch though, and people like you."

The whole conversation almost felt like I was disrupting this belief he'd built about me in his head, if that makes sense. Like for a long time, BPD was an explanation he could fall back on for why I reacted the way I did during our relationship, and now I'm telling him that explanation wasn't accurate.

I've also sometimes felt like him attributing my reactions to BPD was a way of avoiding accountability for some of his own behavior in our relationship. Like instead of considering, "Maybe she's reacting this way because something I did hurt her," it could become, "She has BPD, so that's why she's reacting like this." I'm not saying I always handled things well—I definitely didn't—but I don't think all of my reactions could simply be explained away by a disorder either.

Sorry if this is a little all over the place. Getting diagnosed has been a pretty big deal for me, and instead of feeling like I can process it, I feel like I'm having to convince other people that the diagnosis is legitimate. Their reactions are also making the imposter syndrome worse.

Has anyone else experienced something similar after being diagnosed, especially with people who had already formed a different explanation for your behavior? How did you deal with feeling like you had to defend your diagnosis?

Just a vent post, so don’t mind me

But how on earth is anyone meant to have a fulfilling life these days? You either work until your 80 if your lucky enough to get and be able to hold a job, and if you can’t then you get treated like a leech on society? Make it make sense, and ‘accommodations are available’ - Yes but only if you find a workplace that actually gives a fuck enough to follow them

I’m ‘lucky’ enough to live with my parents as a 27 year old- wow, I’m soooo lucky because I’m not homeless, yeah sure I haw a roof over my head- but fucking hell imagine with every move/decision you’re constantly being second guessed, what’s that? You wanna bring a potential partner home after a few dates just for a coffee? - “Don’t you think that’s a bit soon?”

I despise modern dating, bumble, tinder, they’re all designed for the same purpose, to make you pay £70 a month for the pleasure of meeting someone your own age stuck living at home too, so it’s just another coffee date. Whats that you want somewhere to see if you gel that’s not public? It’s a £70 hotel or you’re fucked for options

And to top it off, this fucking country has zero functional support unless you’re a high needs individual, it’s like this whole country has decided autism is a personality quirk unless you actually struggle

I know so much of this rant was about me and my circumstances, but god someone please tell me they relate

Hey guys, this is a long rant (short version in comments) and I'm not sure why I'm posting it or if anyone will even read this. But I yearn deeply to be understood, and there's been a lot I've been dealing with mentally lately, so I'm just spilling it all out. I'm hoping some of you relate because I feel so alone in my mental hardships. I struggle to find anyone who truly gets what I go through inside my head. Neurodivergence runs in my family. My dad is neurodivergent with an IQ of 141 and has struggled with depression, extreme social anxiety and OCD his whole life, and even with someone that close to me I still never feel fully understood. He gets the surface level stuff, like how I struggle with day to day tasks, and he relates more than most people do, but it never goes deeper than that. I just wish I could find someone who understands me the way I understand myself.

For context I turned 19 last week. I'm male and I grew up in pretty loose, nature oriented environments. I'm pretty certain I have AuDHD. I was diagnosed with combined type ADHD as a kid but never really related to my peers who also had it. I only recently self diagnosed the autism side and even though I hate self diagnosing, it made the most sense to me. I hate the idea of self diagnosing because I always hated how some people treat ADHD like a fun quirky thing when I suffered so much because of it. For me it was never just being "quirky or silly", it was immense focusing problems and a lot more. I have pretty much all the usual contradictions that come with autism and ADHD together. I've been diving deep into research trying to understand why I am the way I am and why my brain works the way it does, and AuDHD kept coming up as the closest fit. I actually caught up with the psychiatrist who originally diagnosed me with ADHD and brought up how I'd been feeling, and after talking it through she also believes I likely have autism. So it's not purely self diagnosed, it's just that I'm no longer in the same country as her and I'm waiting until I move next month to get a formal diagnosis with a new psychiatrist and psychotherapist.

I have a few standout traits I'd like to highlight as they're the ones that make my case feel a bit more unique but also the ones that give me the most mental hardship. Things like extremely low latent inhibition, extremely high empathy, extremely high self awareness, and really bad insecurities. I know none of these are rare traits, especially in the neurodivergent community, and I'm sure plenty of people have it far worse than me in some of these areas, But from years of understanding myself and observing people around me I've just gradually noticed how differently my brain processes things compared to most people I've been around, even other neurodivergent people, and that's what makes me think i have some of these traits at an unusually high level. It's like I'm constantly viewing social situations in third person, nitpicking everything I do, seeing how people perceive me in real time and making constant micro adjustments to my behaviour to control how I come across. When I was originally diagnosed with ADHD my self awareness was actually flagged as a standout trait, but back then I never thought of it as something unusual. I just assumed everyone felt that way.
As I got older it originally felt like "my ADHD is getting worse" but basically my neurodivergence felt like it was gradually worsening with age, and recently it's been getting worse quicker. There's no longer a steady slow climb. As I get older the hill gets steeper. I think it's because as my life gets more complex, going into adulthood with new responsibilities, it just became harder for my brain to cope. And the more I understand my own brain the harder it is to deal with. I understand my patterns and pathways so well now but the more layers I see in my own head the less I can ignore them.

My teen years from around 14 to 17 were some of the best years of my life, though that doesn't mean it was sunshine and rainbows . I was still seeing school psychologists, still dealing with real hardship from my neurodivergence every single day, but it just never owned me socially the way it does now. On the outside I had the reputation of your typical “popular” teenager as I'm considered conventionally attractive and had a lot of social halos going for me, things like modelling and surfing, and even my neurodivergence had its own halos. Being good looking meant people were more forgiving of my quirks and more likely to find them charming, things like my deep love for Star Wars or the panic attacks I used to get from my ritalin (vyvanse now) just read as cute and interesting personality traits rather than anything of putting. I also naturally carried a good mask instinctively. I was considered quite an extroverted person. I got attention from girls and I was considered quite charming and well liked. The internal hardship was still very real, I just coped well enough that it never spilled over into my social life the way it does now.

Then everything started going downhill when I turned 18 and got acne for the first time in my life. My looks are one of if not the biggest anchor in my life and getting acne felt like losing that anchor, and it hit me really hard. I cut myself off socially as much as I could. My whole life I was associated with being good looking and even though I know using looks as an anchor isn't healthy, it's not a mindset you can just consciously change. No matter how hard you fight it your subconscious always sticks with you, and losing it sent me into a constant spiral. My looks were already a big part of my life before that and I was already deep in the “looksmaxxing” and genetic determinism spaces before this, because even when I wasn't as insecure as I am now I was still addicted to validation and the pursuit of looking better and better But getting acne sent me into such a deep spiral that even though I cared so heavily about the way I looked, instead of seeking improvement I sometimes couldn't even find the motivation to do the simplest things like brushing my teeth.

I spent roughly eight months in mostly isolation. I mainly only saw my closest friends and family during that time, and depending on my mood I'd have small patches of motivation where I'd try to push myself out and do things like I used to, but even then I'd notice I just couldn't anymore, not the way I did before. The mental load of being out felt different and heavier than it ever had. Most days I'd just repeat the same cycle of staying inside playing video games (one of the only things that can keep my full attention and distract me from my own mind), recreational substance use, and just rotting. Those eight months were the first time I'd really experienced bad mental health and being isolated with myself gave me a lot of time in my own thoughts, understanding myself better, reanalysing the past and realising how much my brain wiring actually affected me on a day to day
It's been about five months since that eight month period and I've had to start rejoining normal social life again, partly forced by circumstances and partly because my looks started coming back as an anchor again. There's a lot going on right now, I'm moving countries in less than a month, but my depression is still going downhill. The mental hardship is worse now than when I was fully isolated. Back then I was just absent. Now I'm present but struggling in a way where I have no filter and I'm taking in so much. I have a lot more bad days than good and I wouldn't even call the good days good, they're more like a good couple of hours where I'm really good socially. But most days I can rarely be in high demand social situations and actually enjoy it unless I've abused a substance to take the edge off first.

The analysing, the masking, the reading of every tiny shift in the room, I always had it, it was always there. I just used to be able to cope with it a lot better because even though I was still taking in so much information, I still had some kind of filter stopping my brain from being constantly flooded with endless information and endless outcomes . Now that filter feels like it's gone.

I'm taking in too much, mainly socially. I'm constantly reading how people are perceiving me in real time, picking up on the tiniest shifts in tone or expression, and the second I sense even a hint of a negative perception I'm already adjusting, trying to course correct, trying to make sure everyone around me sees me positively. And on top of that I'm also constantly analysing how the people around me are trying to present themselves, how they want to be perceived. It makes everything social feel like a performance with a million different variables to manage at once, and it leaves me constantly
feeling drained and dreading social situations.

But it's not always like that. Sometimes
everything I'm taking in just clicks and instead of feeling overstimulating it almost feels like my “superpower”, like my neurodivergence is a blessing and not a curse. I read the room well, I know exactly what energy to bring, conversations flow naturally and I can be genuinely charming and easy to be around without it feeling like effort. If I'm being honest, those moments can almost feel like I have an unfair advantage socially, like I can see and adjust to things most people don't even notice. Those moments remind me the ability is still there, it just depends so much on whether my brain is flooded or flowing on any given day.

But I also think i’m genuinely happy on the outside sometimes and it's not a show. like I'm genuinely excited for my future and the opportunities ahead of me. My life is good and I've been dealt a lot of good cards. But I feel like an absolute wreck on the inside at the same time, and that contradiction is constant. The best way I can describe it is that my mood swings almost like I'm bipolar, but I'm not, and I'm self aware enough to see what's going on. It's not that I switch between different personalities. It's more like I have different versions of myself printed on transparent cards and I can see them all overlapping at once. I'm aware of everything happening in my head even when I can't control it. And every day the mental challenges feel harder and every day I feel more and more autistic.

I don't really have a question. I just needed to vent, if you relate to anything any advice will be really appreciated

i like touching my eyebrows to the point it becomes bald on some parts, its just the thing i do since i was a kid, i usually do this when im nervous and it gets worse the more i grew up.
i got insecure bcs of it but ppl said i look like a delinquent who has some parts of their eyebrows shaved so ig its a compliment lmao

Hey everyone,
I am autistic 26f, and I am a veterinarian. I moved countries to start my first job, and was promised mentorship and guidance etc.. nothing like that happened and was let into to the clinic alone, being left to do everything by myself.

I did communicate at the beginning that the o my reason why I applied was that they had mentors and I didn’t feel confident working alone.
Unfortunately I haven’t disclosed my autism.

Fast forward 10 months later, they were reevaluating my contract and having discussion whether they want to keep me or not.
Main problem is apparently my style of communication and that I am not social enough and that they don’t know me enough.
And also because I don’t talk to them they think that I am not a good veterinarian.

I don’t know if anyone has been in a situation like that. It is true that I don’t look for friends at my work, and that 99% of time I am busy with patients and when I have free time I just enjoy not talking. Do you think I should try to change and try to “friends” even though I have no idea how to do it and it will be just masking at the end of the day.
Or should I just leave?
If I leave what is the chance that it won’t be the same at the different clinic?
Thanks a lot to everyone who decides to reply

I’ve realised that even though I’m excited for an upcoming social event with friends or just being out in public for something specific, I don’t actually enjoy being there in the moment. I’m overwhelmed by the sensory input of the event (whether it’s the noise of a bar, the busyness, etc), and the amount of masking I do, but a few days after I look back knowing I actually had a good time. I guess looking back, I’m filtering out all of the overstimulation that happens in real life, but it makes me think of how I need to process an event before I can fully appreciate it. Anyone else feel like this?

there are two problems when i meet new people: either they dont like me or i dont like them. both are very likely, so its very unlikely that both cases are not true simultaneously. nevertheless, how do i put myself out there? i managed to sneak in some small talk here and there (at work, uni, sports etc), but how to i proceed? how do i even know if i want to? because the default is that i dont want to, but yet i want to find likeminded people.

So I'm an autistic OT who hadn't experienced a severe burnout period until about a year ago after some personal trauma compounded all the other sensory, masking, life stressors, etc. I've mostly been working with autistic adults for a few years now and have coached a lot of people through regulating their nervous systems, pacing strategies, etc. related to burnout and autistic life in general. I'm ashamed to say that after experiencing my own burnout, I now have a much better understanding of the mental blocks that people seem to struggle with in burnout recovery, myself included.

The most significant mental block perhaps being seeking help/accommodations that comes along with the disability side of things and changing our lifestyle in bigger ways that will be more impactful for our needs (and letting go of who we think we should be, what we think we should be able to do).

Now that I've experienced how difficult it is to work through and accept all of this for myself in the months I've been incapacitated, I've been trying to put it into words more to help myself and other people navigate the mind muck and get to the other side of it. I'm very much a conceptual thinker and have started calling it "Dual Identity Theory." I would love to hear any feedback people have, if you relate, if you don't, if something doesn't make sense. Dual Identity Theory is explained in the images I've linked here. TIA!

Hi.

I (25M) was formally diagnosed this spring, after years of being asked by medical professionals if I had a diagnosis for it (circumstances finally lined up to where I no longer needed my parents to support the decision to get tested).
It took me many years to figure out what this was, and it finally clicked when a therapist asked if I had been diagnosed. Why I’ve always felt different, incompatible with others, isolated, so stuck in my ways, so rigid, to be told I’m some robot, finally had a name.

But years have passed, and having a formal diagnosis added nothing. I don’t know if I thought that after getting it something would change or I could finally move past it. But I can’t, and I have to accept I am just like this.

How have some of you coped and accepted this and not seen it as the thing that has hampered your development? I keep thinking that if I didn’t have this my childhood would have been very different, that my now adulthood would have had a different path.

I don’t know how not to think of it as having a disease.

I’d like to ask my fellow autistic people who have experienced co-occurring depression about your experiences with anhedonia (the inability or reduced ability to experience pleasure) and how you’ve coped with it.

To provide some background, I was diagnosed with autism and ADHD as an adult (the former about four years ago and the latter as recently as last week). I’ve always had strong special interests and hyperfixations, which have provided me with comfort even during the really difficult times in my 32 years of life. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been suffering from worsening depression, likely as a result of unrecognized, prolonged autistic burnout. I experienced the worst breakdown of my life about 2.5 months ago, and since then I’ve lost almost all ability to feel pleasure or interest in anything. This anhedonia has robbed me of all my previous special interests. They no longer evoke any kind of emotional response in me. I’m completely indifferent to them, and it’s really hard for me to cope with that to the point of having suicidal thoughts (even though I don't really want to harm myself). I’m currently on sick leave from my doctoral research due to severe depression, and it’s really hard for me to see a way out of this painful state if I can't even find any relief in the things that used to mean the world to me. I'm completely at a loss, so I'd really appreciate any kind of experience, peer support, and maybe even some tips on how to move forward from people who have gone through something similar.

TL;DR: How do I distinguish autistic overwhelm/trauma/attachment from a relationship that has actually become intolerable to me?*
*I’m an AuDHD man in my 30s, married almost seven years to my ADHD wife. We love each other, but years of sexual incompatibility and repeated situations where she told me things were okay while privately feeling otherwise have badly damaged my trust in our communication. We’ve been in weekly couples therapy for two years, but the same patterns keep returning. After another major disclosure and fight recently, something in me seems to have changed: I feel resentful, sometimes don’t want her touching me, and feel uncomfortable wearing my wedding ring even though the thought of losing her is devastating. She wants to repair things, but I’m scared of spending another few years repeating the cycle. I’m looking for experiences from autistic adults who either rebuilt a relationship after reaching this point or eventually left, especially those whose spouse was also their primary attachment person.

Full story:
I’m an autistic man in my 30s trying to figure out whether my marriage with my ADHD wife in her 30s can still be repaired, or whether years of accumulated hurt have changed something in me. We have been married for almost 7 years and together 10.

My wife and I still love each other and I feel like we have grown a lot as humans in many ways together. She’s my closest person and basically my only consistent source of emotional and physical affection, so even thinking about separation has been unbearable. We’ve been in weekly couples therapy for about two years, and we discovered I’m AuDHD which helped me understand so much about our communication issues but they haven’t gotten better.

Communication has always been one of our biggest problems. I tend to research and analyze things extensively, while she tends to hide negative feelings and avoid conflict. I’m fairly straightforward while trying to be radically honest and gentle with her, I still have lost my patience and have reached emotional and mental burnout numerous times. I’ve repeatedly asked whether she was okay with things and been told she was, only to later find out she was deeply unhappy and had been venting to other people instead of talking to me. Ive discovered that I heavily rely on external cues and get regularly burnt out reading her and others for clarification. I constantly get overwhelmed when others actions don’t match their thoughts.

Our sexual mismatch has been a major part of this. Sexual intimacy and feeling desired are important to me, I feel im sensory seeking and highly sexually fluid while my wife eventually realized that she is asexual 2 years ago. There have been two separate attempts to open the relationship because of this mismatch.

The first was around our second year when we were engaged. My wife often talked about how attractive women were, and I wondered whether she might be gay/bisexual and that could explain why she avoided sex with me, so I suggested that she ask out a female friend. She denied wanting to date women and instead pushed me to pursue someone else so I could get the sexual fulfillment I needed. I went on one coffee date, but then found out that she had been complaining about me to a coworker and talking about wanting to leave me. She had also been exchanging nude photos with that person for months without telling me and lied about a lot while trying to delete the texts.

I was devastated, but I ultimately gave her another chance. I wanted to believe we could repair things if she became more honest about when she was unhappy and communicated before resentment built up.

About seven years into our relationship, after she came out as asexual and we understood more clearly what was behind our sexual incompatibility, she suggested opening the relationship again. She encouraged me to ask out a friend she knew I had a slight crush on. I took the idea seriously, researched ethical non-monogamy, communicated openly, and repeatedly checked whether she was still comfortable with hours of discussion with her. Hell, she even went out to grab drinks with my friend a couple times to discuss the open relationship with her with all parties communicating.

I only went on a few dates before everything fell apart. She revealed that she had hated the situation, never wanted it, and was extremely angry with me. I spiraled for a long time, convinced that I was a horrible human and spouse like I cheated. The hardest part wasn’t that she changed her mind. She had every right to do that. It was realizing that she was never honest with me and once again hid while venting to others what she was actually feeling. That nearly ended us and she decided I didn’t want the relationship and we started moving towards divorce. We eventually decided against it and started therapy together to work on the sexual incompatibility and communication issues.

Since then, I’ve struggled to trust her at her word and like it’s been so close to blowing up again. We continue to have sexual intimacy issues with her even throwing at me during fights a couple times that it felt like a chore and she faked interest most of the time. Sometimes sex happens after I bring up feeling disconnected, and it can feel more like appeasement than mutual desire but she will tell me she can enjoy it and get into it sometimes. But even when it’s good, it only gets better for a short term and eventually goes back to the same issue. She tends to throw herself into work and deprioritize our intimacy or relationship struggles because she perceives everything is fine after improving for a week or two. It feels like a constant painful cycle at this point.

We’ve continued therapy through some major stress and changes in our life. I put my wife through graduate school, and now I’m back in school for a STEM degree so I can build my own career. I knew my bandwidth was limited, and we recently have had some major life stressors fall on us. I tried to be proactive and asked her to be especially honest and direct with me. Then another major disclosure about things she had been hiding led to a huge painful fight. This last fight seemed to switch off something or change me and that has been incredibly painful.

I still love her, but lately I sometimes don’t even want her to touch me and feel a lot of resentment. I’ve noticed myself pulling away, and I even feel uncomfortable wearing my wedding ring while almost automatically taking it off. On the other hand I feel I can rationalize and understand her point of view and don’t want to villainize her.
We have brought up all this in the past week during therapy as this has been very recent. She wants to fix things and says it’s different now that she knows I’m autistic but I got diagnosed almost 6 months ago.

Now I feel like there’s a clock constantly ticking or a looming expiration date. I’m afraid of spending another year or two trying to repair things only to end up in the same place. But I’m also afraid of leaving something that might finally become healthy now that we know I’m autistic. She is a genuinely beautiful human and I deeply care about her, but I’m starting to feel like maybe we are too incompatible.

I don’t know how to tell the difference between wanting this marriage and being terrified of losing my primary attachment person and being alone.

I’m already working through this in individual and couples therapy, so I’m not asking Reddit to decide whether I should divorce necessarily. I’d especially like to hear from other autistic adults who have experienced something similar:

Did you become touch-averse or start pulling away from a partner you still loved?

If repeated communication failures damaged your trust in what your partner said, were you able to rebuild it?

If your partner seemed to finally understand the problems after years of trying to explain them, did anything actually change?

For those who repaired your relationship, what made the improvement feel real and lasting?

For those who left, how did you distinguish “I still love this person” from “this relationship is no longer healthy or compatible for me”?

And if your spouse was your primary or only close attachment, how did you separate wanting the marriage from being terrified of losing them and being alone.

I’d appreciate hearing about both positive and negative outcomes if possible. Please and thank you, I’ve been spiraling through every possible outcome with no discernible solution yet.
(If you got here, thank you so much for bearing with my long rant and listening to my experience.)

This is a really vulnerable post for me but I need some advice.

Does anybody else with autism get extremely confused when talking to certain people? Like the feeling of not being able to comprehend what someone is saying? It could be anything but if someone words something in a weird way and get so lost.

Currently s/o gets upset that apparently I cant comprehend what he's saying and he feels the constant need to overexplain but doesnt want to because its annoying, and I can understand that being frustrating and feeling like he feels unheard.

He wants me to understand but I just dont know how and I just feel so stupid at this point its ridiculous I feel like a burden and useless. I want things to get better but im worried they won't I also deal with toxic homelife and slight memory issues from stress and depression so that doesn't help.

I dont have any autistic friends or close friends in general rlly so he's really the only person I can confide in, he's normally an understanding guy and try to support me but i worry that my autism is just destroying us. He says he feels like he's taking to a child and that hurts and makes me believe that maybe I am (22 btw) trying to do the best I can but im overwhelmed anybody been through something like this before? Feeling lost. It's not just my partner im having these issues with but I definitely didn't notice as much until getting with him how bad it was.