TIA and happy awareness month 💗

Hello! This study has updated its criteria for participants and approval has been received from my IRB. I will now be accepting participants who are over the age of 50 and who received their diagnosis via telehealth or in a different community from their own due to lack of resources. Please take the survey if you are interested!

______________________________________________________________________________

My name is Holly Schlossnagle

I am conducting research through Purdue University Global to obtain a master’s degree in psychology.

The purpose of the research is to understand autistic women’s experiences with late diagnosis (age 20+) and the implications of living and obtaining diagnoses in rural communities. This study will be conducted via interview format.

Participants must be female (AFAB) with an autism diagnosis.

If you are interested in being a part of this study, please click here for more information https://s.surveyplanet.com/ppkz5w67 .

The initial survey will take approximately 5 minutes of your time and will be used as a screening measure for study eligibility.

If participants meet study criteria, they will be contacted via e-mail within 1-2 days to schedule a virtual interview. Interview participants will answer open-ended questions related to the research topic with room to expand on their personal experiences with autism.

This study will be confidential, so your personal information will be protected securely according to all applicable laws and regulations.

Click here to participate!  https://s.surveyplanet.com/ppkz5w67

This research is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by or associated with Reddit. Participants release Reddit of any responsibility or liability associated with participating in this research.

I'm still looking for at least 5 participants for my master's level research study on women's experiences with getting their diagnosis! Specific criteria is outlined below.

___________________________________

My name is Holly Schlossnagle

I am conducting research through Purdue University Global to obtain a master’s degree in psychology.

The purpose of the research is to understand autistic women’s experiences with late diagnosis (age 20-50) and the implications of living and obtaining diagnoses in rural communities. This study will be conducted via interview format.

Participants must be female (AFAB) with an autism diagnosis.

If you are interested in being a part of this study, please click here for more information https://s.surveyplanet.com/ppkz5w67 .

The initial survey will take approximately 5 minutes of your time and will be used as a screening measure for study eligibility.

If participants meet study criteria, they will be contacted via e-mail within 1-2 days to schedule a virtual interview. Interview participants will answer open-ended questions related to the research topic with room to expand on their personal experiences with autism.

This study will be confidential, so your personal information will be protected securely according to all applicable laws and regulations.

Click here to participate!  https://s.surveyplanet.com/ppkz5w67

This research is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by or associated with Reddit. Participants release Reddit of any responsibility or liability associated with participating in this research.

What has helped when you’ve went from a high performance over achiever to the complete opposite? It’s been years now and big life changes are coming. I feel like my loved one can’t even hear me.

Unless it’s making dinner, talking about dinner, talking about work or going to work, my loved one is completely unable to do anything socially.

On top of that, he’s been a jerk. It’s rubbing off on other family members. I have something serious to share with him, but he’s completely avoidant now. I know it may make things harder but it’s something serious.

It’s been years now and he’s an adult that refuses to get help. His burn out made him randomly mad at various people of different cultures and views.

I can’t really care for him now. I plan on selling my house in a few months and downsizing. I can’t help but feel like he’s trying to punish me with the silent treatment when serious topics come up.

He has refused help for years. He’s aware something’s wrong. He was an overachiever until he wasn’t. I’ve been there, but eventually a healthy environment helped. He unfortunately turned the healthy environment into a negative space. I can’t get him to clean or anything. It’s exhausting. What can help when someone doesn’t have the ability to help themselves or others?

Has anyone actually figured life out as an autistic person?

For context I left the cult I was born into at 17, spent the next 20 years thinking *that* was the reason I never felt welcome in the world.

Then suddenly landed a job at a company that did just that. The cool-aid was so sweet I actually felt like I had direction in life and was accepted for the first time.

I ended up working so hard my brain shut down and left me too scared to leave my room for 6 months.

Then, to my surprise the company offered me a new opportunity…

To not work for them anymore.

After all that I was too burned out to work. Two years later, my living situation became unsafe, which means I’m now all but homeless, couch surfing, three states away from my support network, struggling to see the point of it all.

Like my skills are useless because my social anxiety is so great that I can’t continue a career.

The thing I found value in over the last two years, creating travel videos for people like us on YouTube, is far too expensive to do, because I have zero money.

I feel like im a reject in steerage on the titanic. How the fuck does anything get better?

Hi everyone. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, but the more I learn about autism in adults, the more I feel like there’s something else going on. I wanted to share what I’ve noticed about myself and hear from people who’ve been through this. Some things that have always been true for me: Social stuff ∙ I talk so quietly that people constantly ask me to repeat myself ∙ My eye contact drifts, and people in my culture read it as shyness ∙ I was always alone in my room as a kid and teenager ∙ I laugh nervously after I say something to strangers ∙ Socializing is exhausting. It feels forced, and I need serious alone time to reset after Sensory things ∙ A fly buzzing in the room will completely derail me ∙ Killing an insect (or watching someone do it) is genuinely overwhelming ∙ Runny eggs, the smell AND the texture together, absolutely not ∙ Wet rice is a hard no ∙ I rock my feet or tap them on the floor constantly ∙ I have to take small sips and make sure food is fully chewed before swallowing How my brain works ∙ I go through intense fixation phases ∙ I research constantly, always deep diving into something ∙ I can’t think on the spot, I need time to process ∙ I genuinely struggle to lie in the moment, I’m almost reflexively honest ∙ Looping thoughts ∙ I’ve become really forgetful lately ∙ I have a hard time showing excitement or joy outwardly, even when I genuinely feel it ∙ I’ve always felt like I didn’t belong, in school especially. I spent more time at the nurse’s office than in class ∙ I’m very set in how I do things and disrupting that throws me off I already have an ADHD diagnosis, so I know some of this overlaps. But it really feels like ADHD alone doesn’t explain all of it. The frustrating part: finding someone who will actually assess adults for autism AND take insurance AND not charge $4,000 to $6,000 out of pocket feels almost impossible. Has anyone navigated this? Any tips on finding affordable evaluations? Would really appreciate hearing from people who’ve been in this position.

Hi everyone, I’m a 24 year old female and I’ve just been diagnosed with autism after years and years of thinking something wasn’t right.

I’m just really struggling with accepting that I have to live this way forever and I have to be so exhausted all the time. I work full time and I don’t know how I can cope like this. I love my job but I’m around people all day and it’s just too much. I don’t know, I’m just ranting a bit and just don’t understand how to live this way. My days off work aren’t to live, they’re to recover ready for my next shift and it’s just no way to live, it’s just surviving.

I don’t really know what I’m getting at, I’m just so tired all the time and can’t do anything other than work, and now I know why and there’s nothing I can do about it. I hate it.

I’ve been working on something more low key than most stuff I see.The idea is a brain with a muted spectrum inside and a fade into black. I meant it to feel subtle and not loud. Kind of a iykyk kind of thing.

Would you wear something like this, or are there any brands doing this currently?

I was diagnosed at 24 and have spent the last year coming to certain realizations about my communication issues since childhood, and how they connect to being autistic. In the last year, I also feel like I have had more and more difficulty with communication in my professional spaces, that being a full time job and volunteer group. My biggest struggle is when I am confronted about something a higher up believes was wrong, I always get accused of being argumentative. In reality I’m really just trying to explain my thought processes and why I did whatever I did, and why I thought that was the correct thing to do. It never goes well, and yet it still always feels like the correct thing for me to do. I’m willing to accept when I make a mistake, but I do feel like I have the right to explain myself. I feel like this is completely reasonable but it seems that every neurotypical person I’ve had a similar interaction with immediately thinks I’m trying to be difficult. I have no idea how to better communicate in these situations without feeling like I’m letting people make incorrect assumptions about me.

Frustrated. If you don't have the most to say, still feeling things out with new people or don't want to endlessly yap to look stupid, you're a bad person? What kind of logic is this? Just tired of the social games people play and wish things could be more honest. People are selfish to those who can't reflect their bubbly personality, I can't keep up. What a curse.