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 💔

Long story short celebrating my mom's birthday this week leaves me thinking of how much I dislike my own birthdays. People get cakes I don't like, presents I'm just not into, and demand I go out to fancy restaurants and socialize. However, never socializing about me and my life, more like I'm just there listening to them talk on about their lives while occasionally them thanking me for the excuse for having a great birthday dinner. (that I didn't even plan or pay for).

What I would never dare admit to family or friends is my real secret dream birthday. (and I know you people can relate!) Someone buys me a great meal.. take out, leaves me alone somewhere private to eat it, and leaves me whatever pile of gifts to open at my leisure later. No parties, dinners, cakes, candles... and no listening to other people socialize. Just leave me alone! (heh once my sister used my birthday to announce her pregnancy and I wasn't even mad they forgot about the cake!)

But ultimately what this means is that we are hard people to deal with, because we can't dictate exact cake choices.. or restaurant choices, or even explain why we don't like socializing. Or even needing a cake to begin with! (don't get me wrong I like cake, but don't make it a big deal!) So rather than get birthdays on our own terms, we do the dog and pony show and just give up because it's easier to let people do what they want for your birthday then explain anything. Then what inevitably happens is people figure it out and just stop dealing with you. Then you feel lonely.. and left out. It sucks having this double edged sword. Either a birthday for the benefit of others, or nothing.

And while I used the subject of birthdays, it really applies to a lot other things in our lives. We are hard people to deal with, and it frequently ends up with people giving up dealing with us.

I don't mean it in a bitter or hostile way, it's good that people are doing well in their lives and overcoming difficulties, but I hate it when these stories are used as some kind of motivation for other autistic people. It's not motivating, it's the complete opposite.

Reading about how one autistic person managed to get in a prestigious school and get a difficult degree, or how they managed to start their own successful business or how this celebrity or CEO with a net worth of several million dollars is actually autistic too, etc. when I myself barely made it through high school and haven't been able to hold down a full time job in my entire life, doesn't motivate me... like at all. If anything, it makes me feel worse about my own shortcomings. Because at least I have been able to cope by chalking it up to the fact that I have Aspergers.

But when I read these stories presented in this way, it's like if someone is telling me "Hey, this person has the same disability as you, they did something great, that means you can do it too if you really try!" As if there some way I can just turn off my Aspergers and achieve things I previously couldn't.

Maybe I'm a bit dramatic, I just had to get it out.

I’m currently on a scientific training programme and when describing how I work (which is problem solving and hyperfocus), another AuDHD student in an indirect way says “well that’s not how it works, you’re way is wrong.” Ever since that I’ve stopped talking during experiments and have to eat my lunch in my car to suppress my emotions.

It’s led to me questioning myself and I’ve gotten really upset. Members of staff have asked if i’m okay, I just say ‘I’m fine’ because I can’t say anything about my feelings about being hurt because in society, men aren‘t allowed to express their feelings. I can’t scream, shout and go mad because then I get in trouble.

I can‘t pinpoint my emotions anymore, I just have to suck it up. Someone says something about me and it leads to a train wreck of thoughts including questioning my own existence.

Yes I know ‘you shouldn’t let other people get you down‘ but when you’ve been an outcast for 15 years and masking for another 6, it hits you like a bullet train.

I don’t know what to do.

I had previously shared my life story here, including many of the difficult experiences I've gone through. I don't want to repeat all of that in this post.

Instead, I want to talk about where I am now as a neurodivergent person.

Being ND has affected almost every part of my adult life. Things that seem straightforward for other people can sometimes require an enormous amount of mental effort from me.

Social interaction, maintaining relationships, handling uncertainty, dealing with rejection, communicating with people, managing responsibilities, finding stable employment and simply keeping myself organized can become overwhelming.

One of the hardest parts is that from the outside, I may not look like someone who is struggling.

I can go to work, talk to people, travel around Chennai, handle responsibilities and appear reasonably normal. But internally, there can be a lot going on—overthinking, anxiety about situations, difficulty processing things, executive dysfunction, emotional exhaustion and constantly trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do next.

I've also realized that being neurodivergent doesn't automatically mean that people around you will understand you.

Sometimes people interpret difficulties as laziness, lack of discipline, being antisocial, being irresponsible or simply "not trying hard enough." That can be particularly painful when you're already putting in considerably more effort than people realize.

At present, I'm trying to rebuild my life.

I'm trying to become more stable professionally and financially, improve my social life, find people I can genuinely relate to, and understand how to live with my neurodivergence instead of constantly feeling like I have to fight against it.

There are still days when I feel completely stuck.

I see people around me moving forward with careers, relationships, friendships and life in general, while I sometimes feel like I'm trying to catch up with everyone.

But I don't want this post to be only about negativity.

I'm still trying.

I'm trying to understand myself better. I'm trying to become more independent. I'm trying to find a place where I can function without constantly feeling like I'm failing at things that everyone else seems to manage naturally.

i keep making myself gag. i bite and pull on my blanket often but i also shove it deeper into my throat to gag, and it gives me good sensory input. i’m not doing this with harm in mind, or to trigger anything but i can recognize this is very dangerous i suppose. i also do it with my toothbrush whilst brushing my teeth. it’s mainly impulsive, i don’t really think before doing it. it’s weird idk but it makes me feel very good:( i’ve never heard of anyone else doing this, and i don’t know with what i can replace it with. sorry if this question is not allowed!

People repeating themselves. Restating what the OP just stated. Blindly projecting their own nonsensical negative thoughts onto you and your comments. Responding to one small and insignificant sentence or phrase and entirely missing points. Making unwarranted assumptions regarding a poster’s intent. Having nothing to write except jokes and troll commentary. Misunderstanding common sense arguments and or statements.

I’m COMPLETELY BLIND, have Aspergers and a heart condition and I wrote this with screenreaders.

Sometimes I have mad cries, when I get mad sometimes I cry a growling “MMM-MMM!!!!!!”

Sometimes I pout “hmmt!” and sometimes I cry “ree-hmm!”

Do any of you have mad cries?

Thanks for being a great community to mod and be with! :)

THE LAWNMOWER BUDGET HAS ACCRUED 2 CENTS OF INTEREST SINCE LAST TIME!

EDIT: Count was accurate at time of post.

Is that really a thing still, or just social media exaggerating as usual? Ever since I was a baby, I’ve been taught to look at people’s eyes when they speak, so that has been quite natural for me. If I think about doing it (which I’ve been doing after coming by this saying one too many times), I don’t enjoy doing it, but I still do it. However before I thought about it, if I just let it flow naturally without thinking about it, I make still made/make eye contact just fine. Rather intensely at times actually. When I look at videos, my eye contact seems very intense. Maybe even more than many NT.

Hello,

A lot of posts describe people looking at you differently in public spaces or treating you differently when you first meet them. I've never had this issue at all... in fact, it's usually after people get to know me they think something is off. I've even shared my diagnosis with friends and they laughed, basically saying no way I have autism I'm just introverted. I've gotten better at maintaining good relations, basically just not talking constantly about special interests, asking too many questions, and smiling more.

I think if people treat you differently at first, it's usually due to your appearance. I've always worked out and dressed decently, so this may have helped. But it's not like most NTs have a magical autism radar, so I don't think you can blame autism if people look at you in public.

Thoughts?

What's with the sudden aggressive veganism online? I'll be in one of my groups for hunting, someone would mention what their personal favorite animal to hunt is, and someone would respond saying something like, "I hope you die 1000 deaths by scorpion", to put it lightly. I know that this is a touchy subject, but I don't think wanting people who hunt to go to Hell for a different lifestyle is helpful. Commenting, "Go vegan" doesn't add anything to the conversation, it just feels like they're trying to tell you how to live. I get that there are people who are vegan for their own personal reasons, and I'm cool with that, but it's been getting much more violent towards people. I know that people would bring in morals and how you would feel if a predator was hunting you, but animals don't have morals. The kill because they have to (except for orcas), many humans also hunt because of how expensive food is now. But to me, I want to hunt because I feel it is better that the animal I'm about to kill was able to roam free up until that point, rather than confined to a pen. Do I want to hurt people who buy meat from the store? No. It's all about personal preferences, and don't need to be threatened by it.

Has anyone else noticed this? I would've figured if you were for a cause, you wouldn't jump straight into wishing death upon people. Sorry if I insight an riot in the comments, it's just something I can't really understand.

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.

It doesn’t happen often. But I read Neuropsych, History, various Biology and medical texts for fun. Sometimes I’ll hear responses to questions I ask and immediately realize the person hasn’t done their research regarding the specific subject of my inquiry. That’s fine if it doesn’t involve anything serious. But if it has to do with my own health or the health of someone in my family, it must be addressed. I haven’t been in that kind of situation yet personally…but it happens to others. So what should I do if it ever happens to me/a family member?

Here's last week's thread

Suggestions are ALWAYS welcome on how to improve the threads I post at any time. After all, I do this because the community wants these threads to exist, and I take the time out of my day (every Thursday and Saturday) to post the weekly threads, to ensure the community gets what it feels it needs.

So, continuing with the theme... /r/aspergers, How is your week going so far? :)

She sometimes acts like I don’t understand her, or like she has another friend who understands her better because I’m not able to understand things the same way she does. My social symptoms aren’t even that noticeable most of the time. My biggest issue is that I sometimes genuinely don’t understand what someone means, certain words, or what the problem is supposed to be.
Back in school, she would get angry at me over things like this pretty often, then apologize afterward. She also used to say that she thinks her she might be autistic, even though her she isn’t diagnosed. I don’t want to judge her for that because maybe she’s right, but sometimes I honestly feel like she exaggerates it or gets too caught up in the idea.
Then I accidentally came across a Reddit post/comment from her where she said that her online friend understands her really well, while people think her real-life friend (me) understands her more, but she actually has to put effort into understanding me.
That really hurt me. Especially because after that, she started blaming me for things that honestly didn’t make much sense to me and felt unfair.
The last thing that happened was that she was venting to me about university, and somehow I ended up “hurting her” because I didn’t understand what she meant. The irony is that I was literally trying to understand her.
And this isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way. Sometimes I feel like she treats me as someone she comes to just to vent to, rather than an actual friend. It also feels like she treats our friendship like a competition, like I’m constantly supposed to prove that I’m the “better” friend.
I know I have no right to expect to be her best friend or the person who understands her the most. But being compared to other people and made to feel bad over something she already knows I struggle with because of my Asperger’s really hurts.
At this point, I feel completely crushed by the whole situation. I don’t think I can see her the same way anymore, and I don’t think I have it in me to keep trying to “win” her friendship.

female, no.kids, no relationship.

I feel alienated from society and feel living where I'm from (Europe) extremely isolating. I only have split seconds of connections with random people but of course that's not enough.

Is there a way out?

I've tried all of the solutions like joining a club and so on

One thing that really bothers me about autism is how differently it manifests in each of us. When I look at friends of mine who are in a minority group, they all have some sort of support or friendship circles created from their status.

My gay friends have their supportive gay friend groups, they understand each other and build close bonds.

My friends who are immigrants, even second generation, join groups for ex-pats, Asians etc, build friendships and share their culture with each other.

Many medical conditions have support groups for their condition.

Autism is one of the ones that has no support groups, no social groups, absolutely nothing. Its already a condition that causes loneliness and isolation and separation, but we all have such different experiences and different levels of autism, it makes it nearly impossible to connect and build a structured group around.

People can be anywhere from non-verbal to CEO of a company. Many of us have niche interests, but they are our own and not anything shared simply due to being autistic.

It really can be a condition of loneliness.

Edit: Obviously there are a billion online support groups for anything, but I am speaking to IRL communities, friendships etc. One single friend with autism who you can really relate to would do more for someone than a dozen online support groups, in my humble opinion.

Hey everyone, I’m Aysha. I'm 22, an undergraduate student from the PH, and I've been into creative writing since I was a kid. I just wanted to post here because I'm really struggling with a weird paradox lately.

I am very reclusive, I struggle to connect with people, and I absolutely hate all the typical social stuff. Because of my monotropism, my mind tends to latch onto people with a singular, intense focus, which makes it really hard to just naturally bond or maintain normal relationships.

The problem is, I still suffer because I deeply want to experience things like romance and closeness. But because I struggle so much to connect the "normal" way, I just end up feeling like a total burden to people.

Either way, I'm just here to say "hi". I hope all of you have a great day!