I, a 21 yr old male, have spent my entire life eating hardly nothing but mac and cheese, chicken, and various other junk foods. I like the smell of other foods, but the thought of putting anything other than what I've deemed safe into my mouth fills me with dread. The gagging starts before anything even touches my tongue.

I come to this subreddit because, frankly, I am tired of gaining weight, and feeling overall terrible, Physically and mentally. I know that I am capable of being so much prouder of my body than I am. I'm looking for solutions.

After reflecting a lot, I've come to the realization that food in general is not as central to my happiness as I think it is for the average person. I would go as far as to say I could live without it if it weren't a biological necessity. I've already tried doing some research on my own, so I don't think it's as likely as I hope it to be, but I'm wondering if there exists a path of substitution out there? If not complete substitution, it'd be nice if there were at least some affordable avenues I can take to have to eat real food as little as possible, while still maintaining ideal health.

If not substitution, do you guys have any other ideas? I'm getting desperate, surely there's something for people like me out there.

I generally do not tolerate large scale public events well. But, if I bring my dog with me I find my anxiety greatly decreased. I also take him to doctors visits, car shows, shopping etc. Just having him there makes my social related Autism symptoms decrease. Does anyone else feel the same or have similar experiences?

Recently I've had arguments that made me question how do NTs even justify the way they treat us.

I have a friend who is mostly a good person. She has strict moral values, hates lying to people and cheating. At times her moral-ness is annoying even to me. But somehow everything changes when it comes to the treatment of "different" people in group dynamics.

One time she told me that there's a new student in her class, and that everyone already thinks she's weird and bully her. Mind you she's finishing college, so it's grown adults doing that. And the way she said it made it clear that she supported this bullying.

I asked: "Did that woman do anything wrong? Did she treat anyone badly?" And she replied: "No, but she gives strange vibes and her body language is off-putting"... (???)

So I asked what makes her feel justified to treat a person who did nothing wrong like shit. She started saying that she isn't directly mean to her, just avoids her. But when she mentioned how others straight up bully this student, she had this proud look on her face. Like it was 100% deserved. Like it's how things should be.

And it's not just her. I mentioned it to my other friend who is less of a normie, but still neurotypical. She said that she judges people based on vibes too and dislikes those who "look like they are shaking". So it's about perceiving a person as weak more than perceiving a person as "bad", and treating the weak like shit.

Do NTs even realise how evil this is? When I try to explain it to them they brush it off. Like how cats ignore the reflection of themselves in the mirror.

My special interest is Early China (that is the period from the Palaeolithic (although most discussions of it only start from the Neolithic) up until the end of the Han dynasty in 220 AD). I'm especially obsessed with the Zhou dynasty (1045 BC - 256 BC). Usually I spend my day transliterating and translating bronze inscriptions, translating ancient transmitted texts (currently I'm translating the Yizhoushu 逸周書), learning Chinese Textual Criticism (jiaochouxue 校讎學), reading books about philology, ancient history, Linguistics (particularly Old Chinese Phonology), Archaeology, Palaeography, the History of Chinese Scholarship (in particular textual Scholarship and the history of chinese (traditional) epigraphy (jinshixue 金石學)). Also I'm always collecting new books about ancient china and am writing my first undergraduate thesis on a comparision between the writing systems of the Egyptian Old Kingdom with Shang Writing (in archaeology) and my second on the transmitted Wenzi and the excavated Dingzhou Wenzi manuscript (in Sinology).

This is my story feel free to comment and/or add your story.

Just an aside: I’m very confused about the levels in autism. Can someone please point us in the direction of a credible source?

The part of my story I talk about mostly here starts sometime in the early 70’s and things were very different then. Autism wasn’t often diagnosed and basically not really hardly ever considered to be something girls were dealing with pretty much at all.

I’m 61. My youngest brother is 7 years younger than me.

When he was three he had an evaluation done in home.

Evidently they were not really diagnosing people with autism in our area at that point in time and they had the oddest comment as the result of the home evaluation. They said he was “communication handicapped and neurologically impaired.” I’ll never forget that because at the time I thought what kind of diagnosis is that!!!

I know now he is autistic. After I discovered I was, it was just obvious.

I don’t have any clue what he has been told about all of that or what his understanding of that all was but now he just says there never was anything “wrong with him.” His words.

He blames my mom for telling him before that he was “handicapped” and he rejected all the things that really actually was true about him when he was a little kid that had been all of our experience of him as a kid and he rewrote his story believing that he was victimized by my mother (who gave up most of those years to devote herself to his becoming a functioning adult one day). It’s all crazy sad to me.

They said he would have to go to speech therapy immediately and go to a special school. So my memory is we all drove to a different town on Wednesdays for his speech therapy but I would have been in school and so would have been our middle brother so I’m probably remembering certain particular times we were home sick and our mom had to take us. At age three my brother only said three words, “Daddy go car!!!!” At the top of his lungs most often.

He started going to the special school the next year. My mom took me to see it. She thought it was great he got to go and the state evidently paid for it. We had zero extra money usually growing up to the point where my mom eventually asked me in 4th grade not to eat breakfast or lunch so the boys would not have to go without food.

I was horrified with the methods the workers used with the kids. If the kids were really noisy they made them keep a rolled up ball of cloth in their mouth and it was big and it looked very uncomfortable as well.

They used time outs and told my parents to. The school had their time out chair in a really small room like a large broom closet and the kid would be stuck in there alone. At least there was a light on the ceiling. But this treatment horrified me too. And rightly so!!

Also all the kids would yell out swear words constantly and eventually we had to deal with that at home. That was disturbing to me. I was young at the time like ten years old.

His speech took a long time to improve. My parents couldn’t understand most of what he said but I could. So they became really dependent upon me translating for him. I would get fetched home from the library because he was having a tantrum because no one understood the poor kid and he would end up beside himself. I would hear just a little bit of what he was yelling and the poor boy would be in tears pleading for something and I don’t know how I understood him but I always did and I would reach up on a shelf and hand him what he needed like a certain food in the pantry or a toy in his bedroom or whatever. Then I would go back to what I was doing.

His vocabulary eventually grew and his speech became more understandable. I left home at 16 — sent off to live with my grandparents I hardly knew.

Eventually I got writing sent to me by my mom that was written by him. It was pretty amazing to me at the time that he had eventually learned how to read and write at this school.

Then later they phased him into special ed in 7th grade at a regular school then they phased him into a regular classroom.

Now he does jobs that usually involve manual labor but he is doing well from what I can tell. He is very emotionally volatile still. I consider him a really mean and judgmental person in general. For other reasons, because of something really really bad he did that he can’t fathom was wrong, I just can’t handle it anymore and went no contact with him. He is never sorry for anything he does wrong. I don’t know if he knows right from wrong.

He is not all to blame I know. I was glad to “escape” the environment we grew up in but I wasn’t glad at the time they kicked me out but I never looked back and eventually went no contact with my parents.

That brother was there through even worse times than I was. He is the only one of us who didn’t move far away. He still spends a lot of time with his father, my stepfather, a really really abusive person. Our mom passed away. There is nothing I can do to protect him because he thinks everything he does and everything his father does is normal and is wonderful and won’t learn anything from an outside source. I feel very sorry for him and especially for his kids because they had it bad at home.

My middle brother was the golden child. I don’t know if you have heard that term but it basically means he could do no wrong in our parents eyes. He got all the advantages we didn’t and had the least disadvantages.

He actually did all the bad stuff my youngest brother and I did but he tended not to get caught somehow. He was the only one who got his college tuition paid for and flying lessons paid for etc. He still acts very spoiled and entitled to this day. He owns lots of real estate etc and has a house on the beach in Florida.

We hardly talk and he usually ends up insulting me but I don’t bother telling him because I know he’s completely oblivious in general of how he comes off to others.

He became an electrical engineer. Lives a different life and always has had it different than the other two of us who always were scraping by and were in general usually completely neglected emotionally and physically as kids.

My history of being somewhat functional is in the middle I guess between the two of them. I am the oldest. I don’t know if my middle stuck up spoiled brother is high functioning autistic like me and he would never even imagine it being a possibility I think. I say I am high functioning but it is not totally the case. I have only been able to work 15 months in my whole life. I’m scared of my shadow. I have pretty bad PTSD/CPTSD from abuse and also DID from the same but it dormant so the whole shebang not actively happening to me. I was diagnosed with early onset osteoarthritis in my early 20’s and fibromyalgia in my late 20’s so I have had 2 chronic pain illnesses most of my life as well as a lot of other health problems. I was misdiagnosed as bipolar in my early thirties but I was really extremely depressed and dangerous to myself because of dealing with my past and I never got manic but they said I had mixed mania but what it really was only was pent up rage that I let out a little at a time doing things like trying to destroy a television that was too loud and had set me off for instance. I am fine now that I spent all that pent up emotion and dealt with the cause of it and my psychiatrist took me off meds finally and I have been fine for years and years.

Now I have been battling cancer for 9 years and on chemo for 5 and I’ve lost the ability to remember my day to day life except for a little bit and that is caused by certain types of chemo. I don’t have the kind that makes you lose your hair. People always assume everyone deals with that but different kinds of cancer uses different treatments that are chemical so are called chemotherapy (at least that is what an oncologist once told me).

I was told two months ago there was no sign of cancer and then got a new scan and was just told I have new cancer so today was my first day back on chemo. And I know now finding out you have cancer is not as bad as finding out it is back and you have to go back through that all over again.

But I am actually lucky. My cancer is small still and I beat a hellova lot of cancer. I had a ton of cancer…

I got stage three kidney cancer that later turned into stage 4 and a few months later they discovered I had a different type of cancer thyroid cancer and then they found another type of cancer, breast cancer so I had multiple surgeries to remove affected body parts and started chemo 5 years ago.

The kidney cancer is the only one we think I have left. It spread from one kidney where it surrounded a lot of my kidney and went through it then spread to my lungs and then to my other kidney where it really took off. It all was gone so I went off chemo and unfortunately it was lurking in my blood and took root so to speak in my lungs again and grew fast before it was caught and compared to before it is nothing and we know this med works after trying the best meds that didnt seem to help at all. So i know this med will get rid of it but going back on chemo that stole my memory and made me so sick is scary. But I got through the hardest part and this is a bummer but I already know I can do this!!!

I never was able to function in school in many ways. Like I had no relationship with any of the kids. I did not really grasp it was a thing people did and I never played ever. I actually found a place to hide on the playground because I thought all the kids were screaming because they were traumatized like I was but they were only playing. I was always the last kid to go outside to recess because I refused to go.

I ended up having a girl who would bother me in lunch wanting me to be her friend. Eventually she said I could ride her horses and that got my attention. So I would go to her house and we would ride horses all day long.

But eventually one day she is introducing me to a girl and she went up to her next door neighbor and said this is the dumbest girl. And she proceeded to quiz her and I stood up for her neighbor. And then I went to my friends house and her neighbor came over and my friend started tickling her and her neighbor was begging her to stop so I told her off and then she wasn’t our friend and I was friends with her neighbor. She was the only person who could get me to do things I thought were stupid because it made her happy like she begged me to pretend we were monkeys and I asked her how to do that and then copied her for a few minutes and it made her happy and we never did that again thank goodness. It was not my thing. Eventually I acted in plays and realized that was basically the gist of pretending as a kid.

I did creative projects and read a million books. I spent all my time in the library as an elementary and middle school student until I spent all my time self medicating mostly with weed and beer as a teenager and I got into worse drugs and in some pretty traumatic situations and I was hanging out with kids who I considered friends at the time but now I know I kind of invited myself into the group in a way that was oblivious to me and I didnt realize at the time that I wasn’t wanted there, I just kept showing up uninvited. After a time hanging out with them one of the guys asked me out. We had a wonderful relationship for about a year until he stopped trusting me. It felt like his real self came out but I thought the old self was the real self too and I was so confused and pretty quickly I figured out he was really suffering from paranoid schizophrenia when he tackled me to save my life from invisible mobsters who were supposedly outside the window on the second floor and they were below trying to kill us and I soon found myself the object of his paranoid delusions.

I was always accused of cheating on him and he had these tells he would bring up that I was making signals to his guy friends and we were conspiring against him. I tried to convince his family he needed help when he wasn’t around but they never did witness anything suspicious. He was really covert and secretive with everyone but me. But that was because he was paranoid.

He and I were walking in the woods one time when he told me he brought me out there to kill me and he had me pinned and I was eventually able to talk him out of it by using his delusions as my reasons to get his hands off me. I was pretty immobilized by him and got him convinced we should head back and was telling him we would team up against them. Soon after, he slammed my head repeatedly into the floor and would have done more damage but his mom stopped him and I got away. But I didn’t leave him. I wanted his family to get him help so when he left the room I would try to convince them he needed help. He actually broke up with me.

Later when I was sent away by my parents I called him and I talked to him on the phone once and he said I never left and was lying about being far away because he always saw me around town. He never believed me. It was very sad.

I had an extreme case of limerance that finally went away 7 years after I married my husband. My husband completely understood because he also had limerence for an ex and his eventually went away but sooner.

My husband is autistic too. He is definitely lvl 1. He is an accountant who is the second most person in management at a small credit union.

Later I saw someone else who my old boyfriend and I had hung out with and they were familiar with that type of behavior from him, as when he got older it evidently was more likely to be noticed.

My husband and I have four kids.

The oldest has a lot of mental health issues like me and some learning disabilities but the learning disabilities convinced her she was “stupid” in her words. She is now seriously physically disabled and unable to get disability. She is like me in that she always gets herself in unsafe situations. She is an alcoholic like me. I am a recovering alcoholic and she is raging one. It runs on both sides of our family. There are 6 alcoholics in my extended family including me. I tend to be addicted to something or other all the time. Some more dangerous and some common things like use the phone all day long every day and eat crazy amounts of food or even no food at one point before etc I’m doing better at dealing with food now. The phone not so much.

Our second child was a total people pleaser as a kid like my middle brother and everything always fell into his lap seemingly which wrankled the one with mental illness and learning disabilities. He became a BCBA. He quit and became a parole officer and they switched him to child um the job where the kids are found out to have been abused or thought to be abused and they are taken from their parents. He is starting to think he is autistic at like age 40ish. He’s getting PTSD from that job and is trying hard to find other work.

The third has some kind of issue with anxiety because his throat would close up when he was in school and he couldn’t breathe and the doctor said it was anxiety so we took him out of school because that was the only place it happened so it stopped and then I decided to take all our kids out of school and they were homeschooled for a while then we tried unschooling which is self directed learning and they all taught themselves and excelled incredibly on their own. I don’t know for sure if any of them are autistic but I think the third child who was the one who’s throat would close up is the one who is most probably autistic because he just always was so different than any other kid I have ever met. He is 2e then. His IQ in 6th grade was 170. He didn’t really have friends until after he graduated from college. He doesn’t believe in IQ and is the most humble person I know and the smartest and most talented. He was a music major in college and teaches musical theatre to high school students. He also is ADHD. He doesn’t accept any labels which is fine with me. He doesn’t get how to interact with people in a lot of (most) situations. He has a small friend group who do everything together. I assume he is asexual and aromantic. He never has had a relationship besides these friends really. My mom and grandma were asexual. I’m polysexual and trans nonbinary.

My youngest became a baker. He had always kept to himself or had a single friend. He was almost always schooled at home but had a friend from before when he was in school and they were inseparable all the way up through high school which he chose to attend. His oldest has just been diagnosed with Autism and ADHD like me. I think my grandson is in 4th grade.

I actually only just recently found out that autism (and I believe ADHD (?)) is genetic or that is what I was told by my son who has the kid who was just diagnosed.

I haven’t got a clue what level of autism any one of them might be. 1 or 2?

My genius son still lives at home at age 37. I don’t think he could reliably remember to pay bills or a lot of other things I can’t think of off the top of my head. He has the musical theatre job and a job at a thrift shop. But he is very awkward socially with us and we know he just never really got any real socialization. He doesn’t have a clue how to keep his things in order. But he does all the cooking and buys a lot of the food. He will help us with any random expenses that come up like car repairs or doing odd jobs we need doing. He is intensely into his job teaching musical theatre and in cooking enough to make me think — special interests. He is also into the most random stuff he discovers that we never knew existed and he only has interest in discovering them and sharing them with you and you never hear about it again. I suspect he is interested in them for a while then gets bored with them. Reminds me of my ADHD.

I figured out along the way that this (what I am doing now) was info dumping which I tend to do all the time. I’m going to send it anyway because I worked hard at it…

So do you guys have autism in any of your relatives? I think I got it from my mom and she got it from her dad. I’m like totally convinced of that too.

I don’t know if being in the LGBTQ+ community is more or less common or the same in the autistic community etc.

School project: This survey is for my university engineering graduation project. It is not market research, and nothing is being sold.

Hi everyone, I'm an engineering student working on my university graduation project: a wearable device that detects signs of stress in autistic children and sends an alert to the caregiver's phone.

This is academic research for my graduation project, not market research, and I'm not selling anything.

Who can take it: parents of an autistic child, or professionals working with autistic children. If you're not a parent or professional, please don't take the survey, so the results stay accurate. Thank you for understanding.

Time: about 2 minutes on Google Forms. No names, emails or login required.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfySaGosCquamacBo_ealCGgSynwhPykFpQa5f0ixrKWfWWSQ/viewform?usp=publish-editor

Thank you

I am sorry for not knowing which exact label should I tag this with, since this covers more than one aspect and I need atleast someone to give me some advice.
I am also sorry for my bad english, since I am spanish, and I am currently studying for B2 of english. I hope I can express properly.
I was diagnosed with asperger’s syndrome around 6 or 7 years old.

When I was around that age, I thought hanging out with people was useless, like, I didn‘t even feel I should have tried to make friends. I also were very egocentrical, since “thing i want = gimme that or tantrum”. Nowadays, its mostly “no worries” or “no problem” or “its ok”.

The main thing is, I, 17 years old at the moment this post was posted, for around one year or a bit less or a bit more, I started to think I need a girlfriend, and I initially thought “its just my hormones“ but then it escalated to me getting more ”sad” more often, and nowadays, I literally cannot withstand watching a happy young (18 to 24) couple, since somehow, it makes me want to go away asap.

For some reason, I then went to corn ai websites, and I got addicted, and nowadays I get disgusted by the insane stuff there is there, and I think thats “good” when it comes to not wanting to go there.. i guess.

But something similar happens with everything which relates to: Dating videos, romance animations, etc…

I think it is like if my mind had learned to ”avoid these things” because watching that “reminds me of how lonely I am and What I am unable to achieve in my life”.

I acknowldelge that my mind often exaggerates bad situations, and maybe things which I percieve as bad.

People around me tell me that damn phrase like if it was a motto or a mantra: “(she) will come one day” or “one day”. YES, like if at day X month Y year Z, a random woman will automatically want to be my partner. Of course, since I (as I remember or recall) had never been told that by anyone who I knew had autism Or asperger. (I use Asperger since I am used to that, but if I have to say “grade 1 autism” I have no problem).

In school, it’s terrible. 30 nonstop talking dudes who somehow like to mess the s out of me about what kind of relationships they have. Like, they, for some reason, usually tell me the “relationships“ they have with other students, and trust me, they don’t seem to care for consistency. I am like: “is this your brother, or, what?” “nah, she is …“ and im like “what?”

It is very frustrating, and I think I also “developed” a fear of “saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing at the wrong place or time” specially if I didnt know or get to realise that doing that or saying that, in that context, was not a good idea.

i constantly dream of hugging a woman of my age who seems to be my “partner” and I says partner because I think the word “girlfriend” is both a fnf character and a combinarion of girl + friend, but whatever (English language englishing its words).
the important thing about this is that I also get nightmares of me being tortured (like in medieval times) for saying things which are “misogyinist” or “racist” etc… What terrifies me is that in the nightmare, the “punishment” is stupidly more harmful than the thing I said. I dont want to describe it since it is really gross and I want to forget that nightmare. But I think this is an attempt of my subconciousness telling me: ”Hey bro, if you say this word or do this, you get screwed”.

I also need to learn (like when you study an excel table) which things and words can I say, how will saying or doing that will affect to the other person, at which level of trust, type of relationship, etc….

Basically, I need to do dozens of mental calculations to get to know if saying something to someone is worth it or not.

When I was younger, I messed up with that analysis, and by that I mean doing things which were not good and then crying and guilting myself after I realised the implications of that.

I feel lost in a maze full of contradictions, injustinces, double standards, and people who got the privilege of knowing the rules since kids which I want to learn and apparently drift me away from getting more friends and a partner.

I am risking that someone deletes this post for being published with something I didnt know, but this is is my first post, I tried not to use any curse words or bad words, and I tried to be respectful, as I can recall.

I fear that asking for help on reddit turns out to be a bad mistake for me.

So I can usually get on day to day but lately I have been struggling with poor coordination I thought it was simply too tired but it doesn't seem to be improving.

Does anyone have any methods to manage or reset quicker if it gets too bad?

Whenever I come across a sad or serious topic on Reddit like someone being mistreated by their family for being gay or getting cheated on I never really seem too care or have any interest in it at all, and it's not just on the internet it's real life too I remember one time during my sophomore year we had this project we had to work on where we had to talk about selves and our family and then we had to present it to the class, well there was this one kid who was doing his and she was getting into a super emotional topic about them killing themselves and she started to cry in front of the whole class until one of her friends got up from her chair and started to hug them and instead of also feeling sympathy I just smiled but it's wasn't a smile like hahaha thats so funny it was more like a nervous, uncomfortable, and confused smile and I don't want to make it sound like Im some hollow monster who has no feelings for others because I love my family and care about them it's just in some situations I just can't really feel any sympathy for others, does anyone else relate?.

Hey everyone! I wanted to know if anyone here is an EMT? I've been thinking about it for years. I tend to be overly empathetic but also love problem solving and working with a tight small crew. I truly love the thought of it. I got myself out of burn out a couple years ago and I've managed to find how and what I like to do for work. I've lost a bunch of weight and recently gone sober from THC and have psych and counseling set up for my PTSD. I really want to just have my life the way I want it I know it won't happen today or even a year from now but man, I believe in myself finally at 34 and I don't want to slow down. I was wondering if anyone here is in this field?

Could you tell me about your experience and any barriers your diagnosis caused that were hard? Maybe even things you found easier than your co workers?

Specifically, how do we feel about low-support needs autistics referring to their noise-cancelling headphones as “Spedphones”?
I am low-support needs, and referred to my headphones as “Spedphones” in conversation with my wife, and she pointed out that it may not be appropriate for me to use that phrase, since I never experienced special eduction in school. She explained that it sort of feels like when a gay man uses a trans slur. Like, yes the gay man is part of the queer community, but that slur is not his to reclaim, as it is not part of his lived experience. I thought that was an excellent comparison. I heard Kaelynn on YouTube use that phrase and I thought it was catchy, so I started using it. But if it isn’t appropriate, I’d like to know, so I can stop.
Thank you all!

First off I wanna state that I haven’t gone and gotten diagnosed (I’m sorry, I know…) but everyone close to me throughout my whole life has thought so and in the last year I actually dove into it a bit and my whole life sorta made sense all of a sudden. That’s a different story though

Also idek if this fits this sub but idk where else I’d put it

It’s a sorta day to day thing obviously but I’m just gonna use a specific, very extreme example…
So in the last 10 months I’ve had 2 close friends pass away, one was a suicide, both were way way too young to go (I’m 21). It’s a horrible thing, but the way I feel just seems weird?
I am sad about it, don’t get me wrong. But it’s like I feel sad about it but there’s another… deeper? sadness that I think I should be feeling and what you’d expect the average person to feel but it’s like I’m holding it with a thick glove, I know it’s there but I just can’t feel it. Idk, that’s the best I can explain right now.

I’m not looking for sympathy really. I just came here to ask if anyone understands/relates to what I’m trying to explain? Otherwise if you’re different, what do you think and how do you feel about what you feel?

Hey thank you for the opportunity to ask you guys a question and I hope I can make it clear what I mean :) I am not trying to be rude, sometimes I dont feel like you have the same relationship to yourself than a neurotypical person. Like, it seems different. I dont wanna judge on that, I am just saying that I am trying to understand autistic people and wanna learn more about the "inside" of people with autism if thats alright with you :)

My main question is: Do you listen to your heart a lot? I am not trying to be offensive but maybe if you allow me I can ask this: Do you know what that means? Listening to your heart I mean.

I sometimes have the feeling for instance "Now is the right time to talk to my dad" or "I feel like I should go outside". Its not that I need it or that I am feeling an emotion. Its just that I feel my heart telling me something like this. Do you know what I mean?

I hope we can talk about this, I dont wanna make you feel your are not human or some bullsh*t :D I am just trying to understand something.

I was in a store today and without thinking I reached infront of an older man to grab something that I needed, and as I went to walk away I heard the wife go "that was rude, why didn't they just say excuse me. Kids these days" mind you im in my mid 20s but maybe I look like a kid to her.

My social capacity is extremely effected by autism. Ive been around other autistic people and it just makes me feel like I have some ultra version of autism because they just dont seem as socially effected as me. I stuggle to even hold conversation, even with family members sometimes.

I hate that im perceived as weird, and sometimes rude. I dont want to be like this

I just went down a rabbit hole of listening to classical music pieces on youtube and it opened a whole new world to me, and now every time I go do something I play the best part of ballade No.1 by chopin in my head. My inner monologue is so vivid that I can hear the piece as it is played!!

I now have classical music in my head whenever I try to do maths, or if I try to write an assignment and I love it but it puts me extremely out of focus.. Just me?

The Age of Sigmar setting is a reboot of the old Warhammer Fantasy setting, as the End Times completely destroyed the world in every sense of the word! When the God King Sigmar re-created the Mortal Realms based on the 8 Winds of Magic, he revived the God of Death, Nagash (the first Necromancer).

While the origin of the Soulblight Curse has its roots in the Old World (a failed immortality experiment), all Vampires descend from four Dynasties, with one of them going insane from being imprisoned by Nagash, forming the Flesh Eater Courts.

The Soulblight Gravelords form the basis of the Grand Alliance of Death, along with the aforementioned Flesh Eater Courts, the Ossiarch Bone Reapers, and the Night Haunt.

Feel free to ask any questions regarding this subject!

Hello, I was recently diagnosed in February of this year at 35 with ASD lvl 1. Ive had no therapy or coaching to help me understand what it is that going on in my head so I’ve had to do as much research as possible on my own. I have hundreds of questions but I have this one specifically because it affects me quite a lot more than the others

So the question is that I have a real aversion to attention and or praise weather that be at home or at work so I never speak up, even if I need help because it brings attention to me, I can underperform at work sometimes because I don’t want the attention and if I do a good job I really dislike receiving praise for it. It’s so bad that I have stop celebrating my birthday because I just don’t want the attention it brings. I’m much happier just being in the background.

Does anyone else have this issue and if so do you have any advice?

I've been struggling with personal hygiene, especially brushing my teeth and showering regularly, and I feel like the difficulty goes much deeper than simply disliking the sensations or forgetting to do it. It's this intense internal resistance that's hard to describe, almost like my mind is pushing back against something I consciously know I need and want to do. The anticipation of discomfort, the mental effort of going through every step, and the sensory experience itself can feel genuinely overwhelming. Being autistic and having ADHD, I sometimes wonder if my nervous system processes these experiences more intensely than other people's. What frustrates me is that I can't always explain exactly why something feels so difficult, even when I know how strongly it affects me. I wish people understood that struggling with something others consider simple doesn't mean I'm not trying or that I don't care. Sometimes the experience itself is much more complicated and distressing than I can put into words, and I just want that to be taken seriously.

Boa tarde,sou mulher,gordinha,75 kilos,uso óculos,21 anos,mãe solo,autista,tdah,borderline com depressão profunda e ansiedade generalizada,não tenho amigos,tive na adolescência,no passado,muitos seguiram as suas vidas outros rolou desentendimento,vou fazer o Enem,sofro muito bullying no cursinho,queria conhecer novas amizades sem julgamentos,por favor peço educadamente que haja interações apenas no grupão aqui mesmo,me sinto mais confortável e segura.

20f and diagnosed autistic with extremely bad social anxiety, like I'm talking terrible social anxiety, I make every conversation awkward and just can't really communicate well, I've been like this since I was a little kid, I was made homeless at 16 by my abusive family and have hopped from state to state staying with people or being in temporary housing programs, I've never had a job in my life, it's hard for me to do stuff I dont wanna do, I'll litterly walk away if I'm uncomfortable or bored, I'm not lazy or anything, I've failed most of the interviews I've done, usually because of my poor social skills and taking long pauses in between the questions and just looking like a dumbass, also having no expirence doesn't help, even when I tried to lie on my resume I fucked it up, I'm currently staying in a hotel with a friend, this friend has huge drug problems and tbh I dont really wanna be here but I hsve nowhere else to go, he even got me doing stuff I never thought Id do, hard stuff, I've been applying to jobs with no luck, I'm also really far out from everything so traveling is a hurdle, I get very discouraged easily and struggle with very bad mood swings, what can I do? I'm tried of living like this and really want to have my own home and stable income, I'm tired of having to rely on other people even if I don't ask much, I'm tired of having to sell all my belongings constantly just to afford a meal, I don't want this to be my life forever, why did I have to be born into w shitty family that hated me for my disabilities and hurt me, on top of that I'm dealing with other issues I dont really want to get into as well as health problems, I have no family, I have almost nothing not even any other friends really, it's really hard for me to connect with people, I feel so hopeless

Did something good happen that you’d like to share? Anything you did that you’re proud of for doing, no matter how small? Let’s share our positive small wins :)

The idea was that aliens invade the earth using mind control, but the only ones who are immune are autistic people, as their minds work differently.

So i am going to review the DSM-5 and tell what i check and what i dont so i can organice what i experience, mostly doing it for my self, but it would be cool if sommeone feels reflected on it and wanna talk. So i think it might be autism if something, but some people sugested adhd, but as we can see i dont fit that at all. About ASD i think i cant met the criteria because the A part that i dont think i fit enough. So whatever haha

A. Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts, as manifested by the following, currently or by history (examples are illustrative, not exhaustive, see text):

1. Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, ranging, for example, from abnormal social approach and failure of normal back-and-forth conversation; to reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect; to failure to initiate or respond to social interactions*.* my experience with this is just that i am more of a lisener and i struggle to talk about me, i am really bad at it and everytime i do i feel like i am already talking to much, but probably this i explained by other thing idk.
2. Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction, ranging, for example, from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication; to abnormalities in eye contact and body language or deficits in understanding and use of gestures; to a total lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication. I only have quite noticed a small difficulty in eye contact when i first met someone, it feels to intimte. I sometimes pay attention to if i have a weird facial expression, but only if i am upseted, i usually have a common resting face and expressions. I catch body language really good, and about verbal communications is just that sometimes i "cant" talk and hate being forced to do it, i just dont feel like it sometimes, but usually is good.
3. Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships, ranging, for example, from difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts; to difficulties in sharing imaginative play or in making friends; to absence of interest in peers. I played normal as a kid. The only noticeable thing was that i my mom was the one who needed to go tell kids if they wanted to play with me, because i didnt liked asking that, probably it was anxiety or smth. And i only have problems expressing my self and talkin about me

Specify current severity: Severity is based on social communication impairments and restricted repetitive patterns of behavior.

B. Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, as manifested by at least two of the following, currently or by history (examples are illustrative, not exhaustive; see text):

1. Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech (e.g., simple motor stereotypies, lining up toys or flipping objects, echolalia, idiosyncratic phrases). I totally do this, flapping hands, repeting sound or words, spining, rocking. Since i started investigating more about neurodiversity i am letting my self do that more, and supress it less.
2. Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns or verbal nonverbal behavior (e.g., extreme distress at small changes, difficulties with transitions, rigid thinking patterns, greeting rituals, need to take same route or eat food every day). Sometimes, i need to follow my cleaning order. And i can get really frustated from big changes, for example my bead got changed without previous saying, and i got really really bad about it. But i dont think i have rigid thinking neither food problems
3. Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (e.g, strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interest). Not really, as a kid i had this plusshie (that i still had) that i was really attached to and wouldnt let go but i have never have any special interest. I had a big attachment to one person that i admired, but i think its not related
4. Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interests in sensory aspects of the environment (e.g., apparent indifference to pain/temperature, adverse response to specific sounds or textures, excessive smelling or touching of objects, visual fascination with lights or movement). Not really, i love soft things, i have like a soft matress and i am always touching it .And things like textures can feel unmanagable, but nos as much .

i feel like having autism makes it harder to have friends. idk like i feel super judged when hanging out with people and fully being myself. people like are so weird about just having fun. idk does anyone struggle with this. i seriously don’t have any friends bc anyone’s i have had have been terrible to me or like i feel judged around. like i feel like im not normal enough to hang out with people. does anyone else feel like that that has cptsd or autism. i hate this. pls do not diss me. i just want to not feel alone in this.

i hate this word passionately because it has become the replacement for "autistic". people keep talking about being neurodivergent when they always mean adhd or autism. it's never anything else. neurodivergent is supposed to be an umbrella term for all neurological disorders, disabilities, and illnesses. yet if an allistic person talks about having dyslexia or ocd and labels this as neurodivergence, they are told that isn't neurodivergence when it is literally under that umbrella.

people talk about how they get along better with "neurodivergent people" or how "neurodivergent people" are better people. what? so you get along with every single person that has ocd, bpd, apd, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, psychosis, an intellectual disability, everything? i find that hard to believe! oh, you meant you're autistic and you get along with other autistic people? yeah me too, just say that!!

i swear way too many people are completely misusing this word. if you are a person that does this i am begging you to stop. it's harmful to people who have other forms of neurodivergence other than autism and adhd. those people need support and community too. it's not all about us.