Is It Perfectionism?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcUW2X5U43Y

@dramypsyd your webminar on #AuDHD burnout was affirming and really insightful. Thanks a lot for all the resources you're sharing with us and your advocacy work

I hit neurodivergent burnout in 2020 and have limped through life for four years before meeting a therapist who finally saw through my mask and helped me start the healing process.

One thing that makes me absolutely never ever question my ADHD diagnosis:

When people use the phrase ‘distraction free’. Like, as in a distraction free device, workflow, app, phone, tablet, eink, etc. etc.

One thing that is as sure as the sun is that I will ALWAYS find distractions. That’s just how my brain is wired.

It’s frustrating to think about the phrase ‘distraction free’ because I genuinely have no idea what the experience or end goal is like.

Autistic Minds and the Anxiety Connection #actuallyautistic #anxietyrelief #socialanxiety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcgNsqm2xLM

To my fellow #neurodivergent folks with ovaries: you know how your brain and body can work one way when estrogen is the dominant hormone, and a totally different way when estrogen drops? And by your 30s you don't love it but you're sort of used to it, and might even have gotten to a point where you mostly don't blame yourself for it anymore?

Perimenopause is coming. It can last a decade or more, and begin in your 30s. It can mess with the neuro of it all, too, and *because* you've done so much to work to understand and optimize around your usual hormone cycle you might be less inclined to think it's a hormone thing, and start the blaming yourself cycle all over again.

So just an fyi, and please try to be gentle with yourself.

I’m now convinced that cognitive dissonance is a significant contributing factor in autistic burnout, which is a big part of why masking is so bad for us.

Do any #autists out there have experience of living with & caring for a relative with end-stage #dementia?

I'm finding it very difficult. Any tips or advice, please?

#AskingAutistics
#ActuallyAutistic
#ADHD
#AuDHD
#dementia
#carer

Teehee, I have nothing ready to reheat for lunch and yesterday I ate the main ingredient for today's meal, because I had forgotten why I had bought it. I figured it'd go bad if I didn't eat right away because it'd put it in the fridge and forget about it. My usual safe emergency food is giving me the ick now and my new safe emergency food will need to be cooked in the microwave for 20 minutes. Long story short, that's how #audhd will make me eat cereal for lunch. It's fun, so fun.

Because I was so often misunderstood growing up, my default strategy was to explain myself better.

I understand now that it doesn’t work that way, but a part of me still believes that it should and keeps trying to get the words just right in order to feel safe.

Today, I did a task and waited until I had finished to have my treat. It can happen! Not sure if I enjoyed it more, because of course it was chocolate, and I inhaled it as soon as I sat down

In advance of a situation where you won’t have a lot of energy, it’s good to give general explanations beforehand (when you have the energy), so that in the moment it doesn’t look like you’re making excuses and the other person doesn’t make false assumptions.

Heya @actuallyaudhd folks, I'd love your advice on my ritalin trial:

• Currently recovering from Autistic burnout. My autistic experience resonates more with #AuDHD folks than not. I developed (maladaptive) strategies to mitigate, but they fall apart when am tired: distractability, impulsivity, forgetfulness, time blindness, RSD
• Psychiatrist prescribed methylphenidate under a tentative inattentive ADHD diag. MPH is the only molecule allowed in my country.
• I started 20 days ago with Ritalin 10mg (extended release) and slowly ramped up every 5-7 days, up to 40mg this morning
• Low side-effects every time I increase the dose (nervousness, brain fog) taper down in a couple of days
• Unfortunately, no significant positive effects : no improvement on focus, distractability or productivity outside of specific interests. Marginal improvements on mood that can be attributed to sunny weather and exercise.

Would it be worth trying Concerta? Higher dose? Instant release? Am I just not ADHD after all?

John Cleese voice:

Right! Spoons. I'm getting sick & tired of you all melting at the first sign of having to do something, even something as simple as clearing up your own mess.
Now, I want you to pull yourselves together, get changed for setting foot outside the house & then proceeding to get on with the task set.
…
Are we clear?

Me giving myself a mental pep talk.

Dear light-sensitive people, can you please share experiences with or recommendations for FL-41 glasses?

I am looking for something that will help me navigate the harsh lights at my work place. I do have a rather small skull, so I often have to look long and hard for sunnies that don't slide off my nose. Hence, I'm looking for FL-41 glasses that have a relatively small fit. Do you have any recommendations?

Do you have any other advice that you can share? Thanks!

Autistic Energy Management

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjWpCV6on88&t=3805s

Keep sorting out what you need to sort out. It will get better.

Sitting in a garden or being in nature in general is such a beautiful thing to my detail-oriented #AuDHD brain. Especially in Spring. There's an infinite number of things to see, to discover, to examine. I wonder if neurotypical brains understand the depth of beauty this holds for me, how soothing it is to indulge in the details of nature for hours.

I hate these realizations. That a special interest has become a special compulsion and is becoming destructive. Destructive in a sense, in this case, I'm sure there's actually, literally destructive ones too, that it claims all my time and doesn't allow me to do anything else. If I spend time on something else, the guilt I feel is enormous. So I've dropped a lot of other things due to it. And I've started to make my autistic burnout worse again by putting so much effort on it. Effort that an autistic burnout worsening, with its skill regressions and memory issues nullifies, which I've also started to notice, and which makes my anxiety over it even worse.

I know I need to back off or drop it altogether, I've had to do that twice already; once really back off but not drop it, like "I really don't even want to do this anymore, but I can't drop it, so I'll just do one task a day, just to keep it up", and once I dropped it totally, but a happenstance brought it back into my life. I guess I'm going towards the latter again, I can't really do "I'll just putter around with it".

But dropping it totally has its problems too, it's like a bad breakup for me, I tend not to want to have anything to do with or remind me of special interests, or people, I've had to drop. Not healthy, I know, but here we are, I haven't had a chance to address *that* problem yet, and learn to deal with it. And to be honest, right now I'm feeling *exactly* the same feelings about this interest and engaging with it, as I felt about my last, troubled relationship (in which, funnily enough, I also was engaged in). Could I have a few more emotional pathways, please?

I guess this is kinda uniquely AuDHD issue. You get into things on ADHD-impulse and then the autistic you makes them way too big and important part of yourself and gets really distraught about things that end up in the doomboxes (yes, I have several, literal and metaphorical, including a doom blanket covering one doomed project because it's too big to stash anywhere).

Speaking of which, as I've tried to make "special compulsion" a thing, could we make "special impulsion" a thing? "Oh, I'm just gonna take a stab at this thing..."

Now I feel bad about writing this, instead of doing that special impulsion. But, lets learn, lets grow a bit, and instead of me doing my penances by trying to claw back the lost time by putting some eeextra effort in it today, I'll just leave it, go out, get some sushi.... Tell you what, I'm not even gonna obsess over wordings and such in this post, rewriting it over and over again. Right after I finish typing this, I'll just hit Send and be on my merry way.

...and then I'll do my penances

When did autism become a spectrum diagnosis?
I think the problem with the mainstream perception is that most people still think of autism as it was before it was a spectrum.
Like, I was clearly "Asperger's Syndrome" when that diagnosis was created, but it was mocked so heavily as just being an introverted nerd disease that I never bothered claiming it.
But now that we have Autism Spectrum Disorder, everything should be much clearer and easier to understand.
But, for people not close to it, it's still stuck in the old ways: if you aren't profoundly disabled, you aren't autistic and if you claim to have autism, you must be profoundly disabled.
So claiming it when you are not profoundly disabled creates doubt.
But the US government continues to push that it is profoundly disabling so they can round up people on the spectrum and treat them like cattle.
I don't even know if they are being disingenuous or acting in good faith.
But this mismatch of what autism actually is versus what people think it is is going to get us killed.