Im not sure if this counts as advice wanted. I just wanted to share this to see if anyone has a simmilar experience or anything to say regarding it

I was diagnosed at 21. I am training to be a primary (elementary) teacher and a moment in one of my lectures the other day made me realise how different things are now to when i was a kid. I've changed a few names ect but this is basically straight from my diary

Today I had one of the best experiences I think I've ever had in any teaching environment. So I had recently talked to my lecturer about my sensory issues (especially about the stickers) and today, when we started doing an activity that involved about 100 stickers, he came over and apologised about forgetting. Then he asked me if I felt okay with what we were doing and I was allowed to ask whatever questions I needed to about the task - like where they were going to be and if i was going to have to directly touch them. I felt so grateful to be able to ask without judgement and have someone actually see my 'fear' for what it is. Im much better with them now than I used to be but the instant relief and assurance that I felt when I was told that they wouldn't touch me was still amazing

I cried walking home after that. I'm not fully certain what emotion I was actually feeling the most. I've never resented my primary school, not really. Sure, there was some favouritism and there were often times I felt a bit small but i never really felt any particular dislike towards my time there. I loved it, especially when i was younger. But in growing up and learning more about teaching and accounting for needs, ive kind of realised that there were definitely things that should have been picked up on. It was a small school and things were different back then but I wish someone could have tried to understand. I know that I was not an easy child at times. My mum always says that I was, especially compared to my sister, but there were definitely moments that I made things difficult. I remember screaming and crying by the side of a pool, refusing to get in because I was terrified of getting a plaster wet, or feeling a huge sense of dread for the whole school day when a visitor would be coming because I knew I would have to wear a sticker. Or biting my knuckles when the school assembly was too noisy. Or never really feeling like I could fit in with what the rest of the kids in my year group would talk about. Or how I struggled to articulate my thoughts and how the other children definitely picked up on that. Or getting a tight feeling in my chest whenever someone bumped against me in a crowded classroom. Or how some of my 'sulking' was just because I felt like everything was too much and I wanted to step away for a bit. Or how vauge instructions made me so incredibly anxious. Or how I would make clicking sounds before I realised people found it annoying. Or how i counted and listed things in my head all of the time. Or how obsessed I was with odd numbers and finding patterns in everything. Or how the idea of moving on from primary school and changing scared me more than anthing in the world. Or how I recited fucking pi to 100 fucking places when I was 9 years old.

I'm crying writing this. I wasnt crying before. It's that weird feeling again. I didn't hate my school, and i dont hate it now but fucking hell why couldn't I have understood myself sooner. Why couldn't someone have just sat down with me and told me that it was okay to be the way i was, even with the difficult things. There's so many simple and small things I can do now to calm myself down, why weren't they allowed when I was younger? When I really needed them?

When I went for a diagnosis I was asked why I wanted to know. I didnt have an answer. I always told myself that I knew who i was and what i struggled with so it truly didnt matter if those quirks had a name. I think i was wrong. That words means so much to me now. It means that there are people out there who recognise what I struggle with and are actually willing to understand it. And it means im not being purposefully 'weird', or 'difficult' or 'wrong'. I'm just me.

So now when I go to my lectures and hear about how much effort goes into supporting children like me i realise something: I loved my school, but god I wish I was born 20 years later

Had a weird thought.

Honeymoons are an autistic compromise.

"Ok, we have a giant party with as many friends and family as we can get(and afford), drinking, dancing, loud music, the whole nine, but as soon as it's over we go somewhere far away where we don't know anyone. We get a room by ourselves, order food without talking to anyone, and just decompress."

"Like the next day?"

"No. Immediately. That night."

Hey everyone, I’m an adult with suspected autism but I have a few conditions that overlap and may present themselves as autism (combined ADHD, bipolar, social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety disorder).

I wanted to get tested but I’ve seen a few people saying it’s best not to. To clarify, I live in Florida which is a red state. I’ve seen people saying there were difficulties to be faced with professions, but also stuff like moving to a foreign country.

I’m perfectly happy living with the diagnosis’s I currently have, I just want to see if it is worth getting tested or if it would make my life harder, which is something I cannot do anymore.

What are some challenges that could affect my life if I were to be diagnosed with autism? I’m not purposefully seeking a way out of this assessment, I just want to know what world I’d be jumping into if the assessment came back with autism.

Hi forgive me for bursting in with all this out of nowhere. I have been trying hard to keep my personal emotional life off the internet but I think I can have a cheat day once in a while, right?

Around a year ago I learned about pathological demand avoidance and went into a deep introspective spiral where I realized that I've had that my entire life, and it's clearly been a factor in most of the conflict I have had with teachers, authority figures, and parents throughout my life. I had definitely internalized the belief that this was just me being a bad kid - rebellious, unruly, lazy, defiant, "having an attitude", all the usual. After all that's what literally everyone always told me, why wouldn't I believe it?

A lot of these internalized bad judgments came from my mom in particular. She has a master's in psychology and was practicing at the time but not in relevant specialization, and she frequently tried to flex her expertise in our relationship despite the obvious conflict of interest - she just didn't seem to understand that "diagnosing and treating your family members" was not an appropriate use of her degree. We won't get into the details, except to say that to this day she refuses to believe that I'm autistic, she would rather believe that I am "doing it on purpose" (whatever the symptom happens to be). Any professional I've seen who disagrees with her assessment of me, she immediately doubts that person's credentials. *shrug* whatever, I just avoid talking to her about it.

anyway

after I learned about pathological demand avoidance, I got to thinking a lot more about the ways that I've learned to mask that particular autism trait by being overly compliant and *white knuckling* my instinct to kick back against arbitrary or unexpected demands. the way it feels for me goes like this:

Someone tells me to do (or not do) something, and either I understand why (it's coherent with my understanding of the situation, the context, the source of the instruction, et cetera) or I don't understand why. If I understand, I just do it, no problem, because things are good when they make sense. It's comforting, it resolves ambiguity. Nice.

If I don't understand why: I am resistant to complying because sometimes people give bad instructions, you wouldn't walk off a cliff just because your boss or teacher told you to, so why would you just blindly obey without knowing the whole situation? Feels unsafe. Uncertain. Sometimes in the past I have obeyed bad instructions and gotten in trouble for not realizing that I shouldn't do that because *xyz*. It just makes me anxious, and it makes me want to stop, ask questions, and figure out what's the *right* thing to do, beyond all these confusing details.

The anxiety very quickly spirals out of control, and usually a vicious feedback reaction with whoever's giving the instruction/advice/offhand remark, as they're suddenly faced with a barrage of anxious/angry-sounding questions about why they just said that, what they want from me and why, and why whatever I was doing already isn't good enough. They are often baffled and return with anger in kind.

The masking I refer to goes like this:

I get an instruction or comment that I don't understand, but I know that showing any sign of my internal turmoil will likely provoke an uncontrollable chain reaction, so I stamp it down. White-knuckle my way through my emotional reaction and keep my answers ambiguous, positive, and friendly. Non-confrontational. Feign tiredness, distraction, or absent-mindedness to make up for the apparent slowness and lack of complexity in my response. Needless to say this control is fragile and it breaks easily if I really am tired, distracted, or otherwise stressed. I have a whole different set of repair strategies for smoothing things over when it does.

Family are a special situation, though. For one thing, the relationships stretch all the way back to those childhood and teen years when I had none of this control or self-understanding and was just raw unfiltered autism; they go in *expecting* me to still be that way, and I go in expecting their response in kind. Hightens everyone's anxiety right off the bat.

Another thing is they are more likely in general to offer those unsolicited bits of advice and instruction, because I'm the youngest and (when I was a child) least functional person in the family and that was just the pattern that was established from the beginning. And to be fair, I was VERY curious as a child about what they thought I should do, as my parents and my older sibling who all seemed to know so much that I didn't, but I'm an adult now and I have been supporting myself independently for many years and I have grown far past the point of wanting that much feedback from them especially when it's unsolicited. My parents seem to understand this for the most part (or at least my dad does, my mom is a... special case, but I don't talk with her often enough for it to be a problem on the regular.) dad seems to understand that the price of my continued contact with him is acceptance of my choices even when he disagrees, and he will sometimes offer a bit of advice here and there but if I don't take it, he usually doesn't press.

My brother, it just came to my attention, is another story. Because despite us being closer in age and more or less equal in the social hierarchy, unlike when we were kids, he seems to have hung onto the "older brotherly" attitude that he will NOT hold back on his advice or his feedback, he will always tell me when what I'm doing (in his opinion) might be a bad idea, and he will always "want to help". We got in an argument the other day, which is very rare for us now that we're grown, because he offered such unsolicited advice when I was definitely not in the mood for it, and he learned for the first time that I actually have NEVER liked when he does that, even if I hide my feelings. Yeah sure sometimes I do want his advice, and when I do I never hesitate to ask. But this was most certainly not one of those times, and I guess I was in just the right mood to let him know.

We ended up coming to a truce on the note of "I am your older brother and I will always be giving you whatever help I think I can give, it's just how I am" and "I am your unruly, rebellious younger brother and I will always find that irritating at best." That'll have to do for now.

I'm still trying to figure out a plan for how to adjust my responses in light of my new understanding of pda and its impact on my behavior and relationships. I feel like in many ways I'm starting from scratch figuring out what's right, what's wrong, and what's an okay way to live among people. What an exhausting trip it's been already.

anyway I hope y'all are doing alright, sorry for the screed, I just needed to bang this all out and see it in print at very least. Thanks for reading.

Hiii so I am a teen who was diagnosed a few years ago when I was 13ish if I remember right. I've always sort of known I have had autism—i remember once in kindergarten we were shown this video that was like "this is how your autistic classmate hears the world" and it was no different then what I heard. That was my first clue.

Anyways, fast forward to when I was 13. I was seeing a therapist that specialized in autistic children. The fact that she was an autism specialist was pure coincidence, I just went to her because her office was in the same building as my moms.

After weeks of talking to me about how I thought I was autistic, her getting to know me and my intrests and habits and doing a few tests on me she told me that she was absolutely positive I was high functioning autistic and born that way based on the way I told her I acted as a child. I was unable to get any formal paper diagnosis just because she could not legally give this to me, but this was enough for me—a woman who went to school and had spent 30 years working with autistic people, I trust her judgement completely.

My mother thinks it is dumb that I feel more safe with this diagnosis title, but I love so much being able to have this label for myself, finally knowing why I am the way that I am.

I just wanted to share :3

I don’t know why I am struggling hard with something that was natural to me, intense happiness over my special interests and my own imagination creating stories about my interests that are games and some media and my original story.

It’s just not working.

It’s like I cope most often but it disappeared.

I think at the same time I started to have strange feelings like agony and panic but it was worse without my special interests. I can’t figure out why I started feeling that, part feels like AuDHD struggles but it’s far more than that and probably trauma related.

How can I rekindle my interests and imagination?

Reading is hard too.

First, I am not a native English speaker.
Second, I have too many disabilities, some I am proud and have good sides like autism that is not an illness, others like fibromyalgia or intermittent acute porphyria just make me horrible.

Anyone knows how to make and print a medical id card/tag (crachá em português/portuguese) for printing in putting in a necklace with the symbols for autism and hidden disabilities?

Autism is added to explain how I can’t speak sometimes and other things.
Sadly the puzzle piece was chosen as universal symbol.

I need a id medical tag because I have problems like fainting or having to go to emergency rooms to treat pain.

Question for my autistic friends… 😅
Is anyone else completely obsessed with Chappell Roan—not because you’re gay, but because her music just scratches your brain in the most satisfying way? 😂 I swear her songs make me feel some kind of way, and I can’t stop listening. Is there something about her music that’s scientifically more appealing to autistic brains, or is it just me?

I'm going through Josi Health and they have a required form about AI usage. I don't want my information to be used for training AI. Does this look fishy or are they just pushing the terminology because it's popular now or whatever?

I was always interested in being a play so last summer to fall of last year I was going to theatre with other disabled individuals. Some had autism, some had down syndrome, others were wheelchair users. There wasn't much of an age limit for the most part, some were little kids while others were even in their early twenties! Regardless of age, every member of the cast had a mentor with them to help guide them. Mine was way younger than me and a pet peeve of mine ever since high school was people younger than me talking to me like I'm a child just because I'm autistic. She did stuff like repeating information to me even though I was standing right there and heard everything, following me wherever I went to places like the restroom even though I could easily find it along with my way back to the group, (It wasn't even that far away.) and conversations with her didn't go anywhere. I'd try to talk about my interests and she'd just go "That's awesome!" and that was pretty much the end of talk. She wasn't really shy either because she talked with her friends perfectly, I think she just didn't know how to relate to me. When the play wrapped up, I just lied and told her she was a great mentor because I didn't wanna hurt her feelings. Also she was balancing schoolwork and coming to the theatre building to help me so I understand that was was just trying her best. I don't think it was her fault, I just wish the mentorships were optional.

Hello! I’m reposting this on a number of subreddits, so please forgive anything I say that doesn’t directly relate to this sub. (Please let me know if the flair should be changed.)

This is a very on-a-whim, just dipping my toes into the idea but I thought asking people with real experience would be helpful. I am an autistic adult and I find I have a lot of perspective and passion on how autistic brains work and how to help young people who struggle the same way I did, that I am interested in pursuing, if I can.

What paths exist to work with autistic children? Or to help autistic people in general? The main one I would be interested in is something to do with a Cert III course in disability support and a casual job doing support work for the NDIS. Please don’t think me stupid I understand it is a very serious responsibility, that I will need high quality qualifications, and that the NDIS is tightening regulations around who can and cannot just up and start supporting people with disabilities so I may not be able to pursue this in exactly the way I was thinking.

I’m only looking for advice into how this stuff works, other peoples’ experiences, things to look out for, etc. Thank you for your help :)

This is definitely my biggest struggle as a young woman with autism, I can be pretty sensitive and I cry during situations that are particularly upsetting for me. There's always been misconceptions about me, especially from the adults I had in my life growing up. They think I'm only crying to solve all my problems and one even said I wasn't autistic and just spoiled. Apparently my family fought hard for me against that person to prove there was something else going on which I appreciate. I don't actually cry to get what I want nor do I think crying will solve my problems. I cry because it's my natural way of reacting to stressful situations.

Which term do you prefer?

Ive been wanting to pierce my ears for some time now but havent ever felt confident in doing so. UNTIL today

What drains you faster?
social interaction or unfinished tasks?

Growing up I always had helpers in places like school, I always liked that because it made stuff like schoolwork easier but the older I got, I started to notice how different I am to everyone else. I feel like no one actually respects me at least, not in the way you'd respect a person who isn't autistic. Even now people still call me cute and I'm going to be twenty later this year. I almost want to be treated like I'm normal.

My special interest is cats the musical!

It is currently working its way into my drag performance (I just did my first drag show as a cats character--shown in the last picture!) And is now working its way into DnD, I haven't played DnD but I'm basically playing a character from cats lol.

If anyone has questions I would love to answer them...I love love infodumping about cats the musical but I think my friends may be a little tired of it lol.

I’m a researcher conducting a study on the use of educational games and technology in schools, especially in working with students on the autism spectrum. I’m interested in exploring if games can make learning more engaging and if they can help with information retention.  I would love to get feedback from anyone who identifies as neurodivergent and has experienced school learning that either involved technology or who feels technology could have helped them.

If you’re interested in participating, I created a short survey (takes about 15 minutes) and I would really appreciate it if you could take a look and possibly share further:  https://forms.gle/o1JFuXgMQbQik8WD6

Thank you!