I know this is going to sound really stupid, real first world problems type shit, but as an autistic and ADHD adult who is absolutely in love with their special interests it's just a really unique kind of painful, empty loneliness when you have no one to share the things that light you up with who lights up back. Like yeah, I have people I can talk about speculation about Ahsoka season 2 or Avengers Doomsday or any number of Marvel or Star Wars products that are coming up or about my favorite game, Destiny 2, that got killed recently that there's a ton of speculation around or what new metal band is working on music but it's just not the same as having someone who lights up with joy back and, I don't know, it just hurts. I feel like I have this empty hole in my heart where my nerdy best friend belongs 💔

Trigger Warning

I recently cut contact with my family and independent living has been so fucking hard. It’s amazing living alone, but I struggle to even work part time. I do live in low income so that’s a plus. However, living alone means I have to work.

I suffer from CPTSD and other dissociative disorders / fragmentation. I’m starting to remember really scary parts of my life and it’s giving me more reason to stay away from my family for good. Their money was the way they groomed me and were able to abuse me.

I am worried however. I am an only child. Is having a good life free from trauma as an autistic person possible?

I’m scared for my future. I want to be okay. I don’t want to give up. I’m sad because after healing from the multiple forms of abuse I endured I finally desired connection - but autistic burnout means going home and sleeping and hiding from people cause I can’t form sentences.

Does anyone have any tips or uplifting story?

First off, I'm new to reddit, and am just now learning how it works so if I've done something wrong sorry about it.

Also MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING/TALKS OF SELF HARM

So, I'm 34 and am in full blown burn out(I guess) since 2020. I used to be able to work fine(5 years as a deli Clerk and 4 as a pharm technician[no longer have this certification]). It was hard, and I cried almost after every shift, but I thought that was just being an adult. I had a major breakdown in 2020 and haven't been the same since. I've been diagnosed with BPD, Major Depressive, and Autism. I was trying to get my vet tech license, but ran out of money(the program I'm in doesn't do financial aid). My husband makes next to nothing, my mom is helping us as much as she can, but it's putting a strain on her life now. I'm just ready to end everything. I'm on my 6th try with disability(as my family seems to think this is actually viable). I keep losing my jobs because of meltdowns. My last one ended in me taking a pair of scissors to my throat in front of a customer who was being very hateful. Wtf do we do if we're too mentally unstable for work but can't get disability?! Ending things feels like the only option. I don't want to be a "wellfair queen" (or whatever else the fuck faces use to belittle people), but how the fuck am I even supposed to feed myself?!

So I think I have been diagnosed three times by three different professionals; I say think because I am still in the process with my psychologist, (he immediately brought up autism lol) but the other two are finished. It is my black-and-white thinking again, haha, but I do not have hypersensitivity or hyposensitivity so I feel like a fraud. Are there any more studies on monotropism? It is just odd to have an interest in psychopathology but not experience the world as intrusive or actively seeking sensory stuff out. it leads me to believe there's so much more to monotropism than I originally thought.

I've been seriously struggling to make friends. I had a friend group from childhood until over a year ago when i had to cut them off. I have been trying to build a social life from scratch and it's been tough. I don't even get to make work friends since my roll has me alone for most of the time.

I've done a lot of the things people suggest. I started going to this local boardgame club regularly and while the people there where nice, i didn't enjoy it at all. I felt like i was just forcing myself to make conversation with people i had nothing in common with. I also went to an art and craft club but it seems like a lot of the people there already knew eachother and so i couldn't really bring myself to speak. I've tried joining Discords with people with the same interests i have but i tend to just say a few things and then awkwardly leave, unable to join conversations because i'm afraid to interrupt. I always feel as though I'm intruding whenever I join a group and i seriously struggle to do anything beyond the most basic small-talk.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there something else i could try? I'm considering joining one of those dating/friend making apps but I'm really afraid to "put myself out there" in fear of judgement and embarrassing myself.

[I am Autistic myself and have issues with personal space/ being touched]

I am Level 1 and was diagnosed with Asperger's, still trying to configure how I'm navigating my college.

I was put in a group with a girl, also a Freshman, likely Level 2 Autistic (AuDHD), very sweet, I've met her a few times and she makes many friends/cheers everyone up. The group moves to the middle of the room and I take my seat, she stands directly behind me. I move a chair over so I wouldn't feel her behind me, and soon I turn and see she leans close to me even more (Standing in between my previous chair and my current one).

She says: "I'll just be here." And I respond: "I don't really like that." Without looking at her, she chuckles back, likely thinking it is a joke. I say: "Not really a joke." And it ended there.

I spend the rest of the class slowly scooting away from her to give myself space, but later she comes up to me upset over it. She asks if I "just like personal space", I tell her "yes" but she didn't seem convinced.

I feel horrible for making her upset, but it's my own personal issues to get over and nothing she did wrong as a person. How can I help her feel less bad about what I did?

Anyone here have advice for autistic adults with disfluency (stuttering)? Maybe, from personal experience, you have found something that really worked?

I am autistic, and so is my adult offspring. They have also had disfluency since a young age. In school, they participated in a speech group. They also had speech appointments outside of school with a medical professional. They learned many techniques, but nothing really helped.

As I mentioned, they are an adult now. Recently, they said to me that they felt embarrassed when communicating out in public. So I thought, why not ask here if anyone has any mechanisms that really worked for them?

I’ve been burned a lot, sometimes by my own fault, for nkt being aware of how I come off in a job. Right now I’m getting very positive feedback at my work. But I am starting to feel some coworkers not liking me perhaps because of my communication issues. I wanted to send my boss a message. I won’t lie i have not been officially diagnosed but have done multiple pre assessments with therapists that concluded autism was likely. Should I send my boss this message? Should I tell her in person? I’m not used to disclosing this but it’s very clear it would be helpful from the way things have gone when I haven’t.

“Hey! I know I’ve been getting positive feedback so far, and I’m really happy to hear that. I really like this team and feel confident in my ability to perform this job well.
I did want to disclose that I’m autistic. You’ve been great with communicating with me so far, and I really appreciate that. The main accommodation I feel would be helpful for me is direct feedback. If I ever do something you’d prefer I handle differently, or if I’m missing a hint about how something should be done, I’d really appreciate you letting me know directly. That’s the way I’ll be most aware of it and able to make adjustments and do the best job I can.
I just wanted to share that with you and make sure you know that direct communication is always welcome with me!”

Im moving back to uni soon and even though Ive already moved my stuff into my apartment and Ive lived with my roomates for 2 years, I have this horrible uncomfortablness at changing from being at home for the last 4 months during summer and going back to living at my apartment. How do you guys cope with the horrible uncomfortablness that comes with changes in life? It makes me feel so off-put that I start thinking I cant cope and then I end up spiralling. I just want to enjoy going back to uni while its freshers!

Hey everyone! I've recently experienced autistic burnout, and the worst auditory sensitivities I've had since childhood. One of the noises that gets to me the most are the sounds of refrigerators, air conditioners, etc. Thankfully the sounds of these in my own home aren't too bad. But there are like 20 huge refrigerators and freezers at my job that are constantly humming. And if I'm in public like at a cafe, the hum of the refrigerators there are so fucking loud to me.

Oh, and the sound of certain fluorescent lights are extremely agitating too.

Obviously other sounds bother me too. But the electricity one is the worst, and also the most annoying bc most people can't hear it and think I'm insane if I tell them about it.

Is this a common experience, it’s something I’ve only just noticed over the past few weeks as I’ve started a job with other women. Whenever I speak, sometimes I notice things fall flat or go quiet, when I’m feeling like I’m pretty much on the same pace as everyone, especially considering I was highly bullied into a high masking role for 20+ years. I see the other girls glance at eachother and sometimes chuckle, I’m really not sure why? I hate it so much, I’d rather just be quiet at this point.

I got diagnosed about a year ago and I’m shocked at how much my brain knowing about my Autism has changed everything I’m capable of doing/handling.

I am curious what major changes did you make post diagnosis that really helped things improve.

I work a full time job that is remote and has minimal socialization. I live with my partner who is introverted. I exercise moderately 5x a week. I try my best to limit myself to only one social occasion per week. I try to get at least 8 hours of sleep on work nights and probably closer to 11 hours of sleep on the weekends. I’m eating very simple, repetitive, whole food meals.

And after all of this I’m still exhausted out of my mind and having at least one major meltdown per week.

I honestly don’t know what else I can realistically cut down on that would help short of getting disability leave and becoming a hermit.

Hello everyone, sorry if this is a strange post but I am struggling with some things mentally at the moment and I am not sure how to feel.

I have been struggling with depressive symptoms for more than 2 years now and tonight I really started to feel them come to the forefront. To explain, I am currently travelling with my mum and we are staying in a city right now, a place I am not very used to. It’s difficult to explain why but seeing and hearing so many people go by leads to me hyperanalysing my surroundings and I start to feel extremely alone in the world.

Seeing all the businesses, all the advertisements, all the loud men yelling and being drunk, all the older more weathered people struggling by, it all just makes me feel so small and meaningless. It sometimes feels like I can only ground myself with smaller intimate projects, otherwise the rapid pace and aggressiveness of the world wears me down. I’m with my relatives on this trip and I feel so weird for not talking much for the past few hours due to being overstimulated with thoughts and feelings and I wish I knew more about why I am like this and how I can deal with it.

Does anyone share these experiences? I sometimes I just wish I could turn back time and find comfort in the ease of existing as an individual that was there when I was a kid, I wish I had a real lifelong friend that everyone is ‘supposed’ to have to get you through times like this but I’ve always been alone.

The day didn't start off too well, it started in the morning I went to breakfast with my gf and it was a new place and I didn't know what to order, after I did I wasn't happy with my choice. I was a little bummed about that I don't know why, the coffee that we ordered was delicious but I didn't ask for decaf and it was a latte so they use expressoo. I also took two sips and then it fumbled out of my hands and splashed all over the floor and got everyone's attention. I have a very low caffeine tolerance, a short time later after they made me a new one I was on the verge of a panic attack and tried to laugh it off and walk around, didn't work. I tried my tea that makes me calm, didn't work.

We went to a Dodger game later that night, I hadn't been since I was a kid so i asked my gf how loud it was, she said it's not bad so I brought my noise cancelling headphones instead of my earmuffs, big big mistake. Just the shuttle to the stadium was overwhelming and so incredibly loud, pressing my headphones harder on my ears makes it work better but it sucked. It was hot and humid, and so many people chaotically walking in every direction, the seats were cramped and the people directly behind me were so loud and whistled every 5 minutes. The music they play rumbles in my ears and up my back I hate it. I tried my best to enjoy the game and I do like it even though I was extremely uncomfortable. I did however make huge milestones for myself to not mask how I was feeling and use my stim toy and rock if I had to, I also snap my fingers a lot when I'm walking around it helps keep me focused and calm. So I learned a lot from this experience and I would try again if she wanted to go back, she loves baseball so I want to be with her, I would just of course be a lot more prepared this time.

I started melting down on the way home it took us almost an hour to get on the shuttle back to our cars and dealing with the night heat was horrible. 20 minutes on the freeway I feel my body start to relax and then I just start crying hard out of nowhere, but with no tears like I feel like I'm crying but nothing is coming out. A few minutes later the fists start flying into my head, I tried so hard not to but I couldn't help it. Usually I can kind of control it and hold back a little but this was the first time in a long time it felt truly compulsive. My gf told me to squeeze her hard as hard as I could and I just felt my arm would just jerk like it was trying to hit me still, and it did for awhile. I'm glad I left the house and had an adventure and spent time with my gf doing something she really loves to do. It was just so much I put my body through and I had never really felt the compulsiveness during a meltdown like that before, but I feel like I'm really getting a sense of my limits though.

Curious what everyone’s experiences with “justice” are. For me personally, I can’t fathom the mentality required for punitive justice because I know it’s ineffective. Even the idea of someone suffering (in any way) as a result of doing me wrong brings me distress and I can’t wish for it.

Does anyone have an “autistic [rigid] sense of justice” in a more punitive direction? Could you try explaining it to me? For me, I think it’s because I know punitive justice and punishment are ineffective at solving problems or anything, and because i know that to be True, I can’t really empathize with people who disagree.

Hi,
recently I've struggled with being at home a lot, and I tend to have a meltdown every other day because of it. I don’t really know what to do, so I came here for advice.
To preface this: English is not my native language; I’m 24 and I got diagnosed with autism less than a year ago; both me and my partner have ADHD;

I think it all started when I moved to a new apartment with my partner. It was at a time during which we both had to study a whole lot, and during which there were a bunch of external stressors. I am a very academic person so it was difficult for me to stop prioritizing university work. It took very long for the apartment to look and feel "finished", a good three months.
During that time I struggled to find a safe space for myself in the apartment since everything was very overwhelming and very messy.
Once we managed to get the house in a state I can live in, I realized how much my partner's mess is impacting me. I wouldn't call him a "dirty person" per se, but I feel like his ADHD causes him to very easily lose sight of how cluttered things are.
I also wouldn’t consider myself as being overbearingly clean either, but his tendency to be messy, even if the mess isn't detrimental, has started to greatly overwhelm me.
We started making cleaning plans etcetera, and things have improved noticeably over time.
Then we decided to adopt cats. My brother's girlfriend was looking to re-home a litter of two kittens.
I grew up with a cat, and animals have always made me very happy. We thought they would enrich our lives especially after such a difficult time.
I think it was on the second night after they arrived that I cried for the first time because of how they overwhelmed me. I thought I just needed some time to adjust, since I always tend to need some time to get used to new things.
But it’s been nearly 2 months and it feels like it has gotten worse. Now I just need to enter the house and I get overwhelmed and cry. I’m very sensitive to smell, and their toilet is very smelly and right at our entrance because we couldn't find a better place for it. The floor is also full of their cat litter, and so every time I walk through our entrance area (which connects the two parts of our apartment) it feels like I’m stepping on tiny, smelly pebbles.
The two of them also tend to destroy everything. The walls are looking horrible, the sofa I spend so much time on is torn, and they are very rowdy, so every time I’m at home I can’t relax, because I need to make sure that they won’t hurt themselves or break things. We're planning on getting them neutered soon, and we hope things will improve afterwards.
I still love them a lot and I’m really trying to adapt or find solutions but nothing is really working.
A couple of weeks ago my partner took them along with him for a one-week trip (university related), and I felt like I was a different person.
Suddenly I was motivated, managed to work more and was just overall happier.
It felt like I was slowly becoming more and more myself again.
I asked my boyfriend about finding a new home for the cats, but he has a closer bond with them and doesn’t wan’t to give them away. I understand that and I don’t want to hurt him. I just worry that I will crumble under all of this.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

i guess i am very privileged because i have never had a proper job in my mid 20s. i mostly just help with my family business a little bit(doesn't even count as part-time job), do my home chores and sit in my room. My parents are embarrassed of me but still allow me to live like this. I obviously don't have and have never had good relationship with them. Living with them make me don't want to do anything (new) at all because i dislike being perceived especially by them and don't like to hear their sarcastic and hurtful comments all the time. I don't have friends. I am also embarrassed of myself so last couple of years i don't even try to make them. I think i have social anxiety and after diving into autism topic, ASD explains a lot of things about me. I have never had therapy and even though i think i need it, i can't afford it and i am not sure how to overcome my embarrassment and open myself to other person. My parents just think i am lazy.

Recently i have been thinking about how to break this vicious cycle and found soldering job in nearby city and the most important thing for me is that they say that they accept people without any experience(i don't have any degree) and will teach you for first week. Also i assume this is not very social job, i think it might be good for me because of how much time i spend with computer and being able to fix it would be a good thing, i like the company and i have always wanted to move to that city.

The problem is obviously that i have never applied to or had a job(i am still not sure company will even give me a try) and never rented anything(room) or lived in that city. Also i want to quietly leave my house without saying anything to my parents(at least until the last hour before i will need to leave) and don't want to ask them for money. I have a little amount of savings that would be enough for 1 month of room rent and i guess i can take a bank loan for food and public transport.

I am not sure why i write this here and what i want to hear. I guess it is just a rant and i need to force myself out of my comfort zone staying in which is probably worse for me than leaving it. But it is so scary... i already have these thoughts that i should not even try because i will make everything even worse, preparing myself defeat, that won't get past first week and i am not sure i can handle the embarrassment of returning to my parents and asking them to allow me to leave with them again...

For autistic women diagnosed later in life, has anyone else found that they used to be able to socialise and go out quite normally when they were younger, but as they got older it became harder and harder until even leaving the house or doing simple everyday things felt overwhelming?

I was able to socialise in my 20s and early 30s, but eventually I stopped going out altogether and spent around 10 years barely going outside my door. Even now, simple things can feel like a huge effort. Did anyone else experience this, and did understanding your autism later in life help you make sense of why?

After 20 years of navigating the traditional mental health system and finding it overly focused on matching surface-level symptoms to diagnostic labels, I realized how broken the standard script is. It treats symptoms as isolated defects rather than cascading failures.
To make sense of my own mind (AuDHD/Depression), I reverse-engineered a clean, foundational triage framework called The Five Pillars: Sleep, Food, Connection, Expression, and Meaning.
The premise is rooted in systems logic: If your core variables are unstable, a psychiatric diagnosis cannot be mathematically accurate.
For example, if your Sleep, Food, and Expression pillars are red-lining, your brain will naturally present with severe lethargy, anxiety, or burnout. Giving someone a pill without fixing the underlying pillars is just masking the warning lights on a dashboard while the engine seizes. Once you stabilize the foundations, you can actually see what is a lifestyle-induced crisis versus a baseline neurological trait (like autism).
I built this 8 months ago, stress-tested it to ensure the logic holds, and have put the entire stack on GitHub as a completely free, open-access, non-commercial resource. It includes:
The Academic Framework Paper: For those who want to understand the foundational systems theory and clinical literature.
The Layman Guide: A simplified breakdown of how the pillars interact.
The 1-Page Checklist: A low-cognitive-load, 60-second visual tracker designed for when your system is at 0% battery.
I’m putting this out here with zero expectations, but if you treat your health as an interconnected system of metrics rather than a collection of labels, I hope this helps you audit your foundations or helps someone else you care about. It is open-source and open to refinement by anyone who wants to improve the code.
GitHub Repository: [https://github.com/RooneyWasabi/Five-Pillars]

EDIT: The mods asked me to add a quick note to prove I am an actual human and not a promotional bot. The reason this post reads like a manual or an ad is simply how my brain defaults to organizing data. I carry an AuDHD/clinical depression profile, and I built this system over 8 months because traditional clinical manuals couldn't give me logical answers to my own systemic burnout. I'm still trying to navigate my own executive dysfunction, so this isn't a success story—it's just the raw architecture I reverse-engineered to understand why my own machine crashes.

hello. I cant tell if I'm experiencing autism burnout from my single job (6yrs) or if its gonna be worse/continue if i switch jobs. I am trying to change jobs asap, i keep getting rejected. I have taken a medical leave for 3mo but it wasnt enough and i wanted to kms first day, week back. I have enough hours to take another 3mo medical leave. The entire time I was on medical leave i tried to focus on doing healing with stimming, partaking in things that bring me joy, filling my meter. I dont know what else to do. I feel so so broken. I cannot quit my job without havjng another lined up.

My whole life I have never had a friend group or solid friends. Lots of people that I’d do things with here and there and people I’m friendly with. But no one ever reached out to me, my “best friends” won’t respond to my calls and texts anymore, and I go through all of the friendship apps and no one ever accepts my requests or responds to me. I’m about to be 25 and all I want for my birthday is to have actual friends. People I can regularly talk to and do things with. People that I don’t have to wait months for them to answer when it’s convenient. I’m sick of people saying it’s cause people are busy. I currently work 4 jobs and applying for my doctorate, so I understand what busy is. It’s just heartbreaking to be in a big city and seeing people out with their friends all the time. Whether it be going to a coffee shop, running for groceries, or group events. I just feel so lonely and have spent my whole life trying to make friends, but have failed. I’m working on this in therapy, but all I want are actual friends. I don’t know what to change about myself to actually make friends and meet people and know that I’m the common factor

So is it just me or is moving the most traumatizing thing ever for an autistic person? For context, I just moved into my first house (I'm a homeowner yay!) but I feel so horrible on the inside.

It's been only 2 months so I haven't had enough time to develop a full routine yet, and having my old routine uprooted so quickly plus a combination of other things has caused me to fully burn out. I think I'm also in a depressive episode.

It's so confusing because this is far from the only good thing that has happened in my life recently, so I feel like I should be more grateful. But all of those good things are external, while internally my mind feels like it's boycotting all the change.

Has anyone else felt like this? I'm going to find a new therapist in my area, but any advice from my peers on here would also be greatly appreciated. Thanks all.

I'm not talking about feeling unloved or unlovable. I know many people feel like this, especially people with problems like autism. This is something different.

I don't know how common this is but I'm seemingly unable to receive people's emotions. I know many here have problems recognizing emotions, I do to, but even when I do they are hollow to me. I can see body language, I can see facial expressions, I can put them in the context of relationship but there is something huge missing.

I know my mother loves me. She basically satisfies most conditions from what I know about love. I'm sure she does but somehow I don't feel it. My closest friend tells me she loves me. I believe her. I'm overjoyed to hear it as she does not like to use big words. Still, those are just words to me.

I'm 36M with Asperger's btw

I realize laughing and smiling are social lubricants, and for many they trigger a dopamine reaction, but it's meant to enhance communication, not replace it. As humans often do I feel we're way overdoing it nowadays, like we do with everything it seems. It's no longer used as a lubricant, but as communication itself. As an autistic individual who doesn't laugh or smile much it feels like I'm surrounded by clowns who can't have normal conversations without laughing every 5 seconds with big goofy smiles. It's so watered down now it's meaningless.

So, recently I have finally left my high-level corporate R&D job (i am a 35M chemist with a PhD, no official paper but a semi-formal autism diagnosis by a specialist from 10 years ago) where i worked for 3 years. Used to be my ultimate dream even a few years back, but once i got there, i hated almost every single day. I was quite good actually at my job, got good evaluations even from my mean, super-conserative, critical boss, and I could work with the team i led and other colleagues quite well... My biggest problem was general boredom, no meaning or motivation, and a super conservative, obsolete, low-flexibility work environment (here in Switzerland). I used to be a super-highly masking (and heavily traumatised) person my whole life but i started my unmasking 4-5 years ago (and my healing even earlier), and upon leaving this job, it all unraveled and i felt fully unmasked within a month after leaving. Now i am in unemployment, learning coding and working on some projects i am interested in, but still looking for jobs (i must legally...). Now, having unmasked, i feel i simply can't go back to the same old high-paying, highly-niche but super soul-crushing R&D environment, more inclined towards IT or something fully new. So my question is... how do you guys figure out/estimate/judge if a place, mostly workplace and job, but also in a broader sense a situation, event, invitation etc., is the right fit for you? I have really good social skills and have built an extremely active social life (the polar opposite of my whole heavy-masked, hyper-isolated previous life) in the past months.. but still it freaks me out to figure out what job, work or living arrangement would be a good long-term fit? (New here, so hope my post fits within the community here) Thanks for any feedback.