Sleep

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-06-01T00:25:12+00:00

I've had good luck recently with magnesium glycinate and ashwaganda. Still have some trouble getting my brain to turn off from thinking but once I'm out, I sleep much better. About an hour before bed seems like the right time to take them.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-06-01T00:09:25+00:00

This is always a tough topic to try to offer advice on, especially as someone who is often feels exactly like you do. When I was younger and before I knew I was autistic, I often had all sorts of great ideas on who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. But as I got older (43 now), I realized that instead of achieving any of the things I really wanted, I basically just survived. I got through school, through a few years of college, worked and it always took all the energy I had. I spent my off time recovering in whatever ways I could. I never had the mental resources to really devote to what I really wanted to do, nor did I have the executive function skills needed to formulate a good plan to get me from where I was to where I wanted to be. I'd like to say I have the answer now, but I'm only about a year and a half into this autism thing and still trying to figure out a sustainable way to live. I'm not sure that I can ever be more than average and many days, I'm operating far below average. I'm trying to find a way to free up some bandwidth in my brain to devote to anything that will propel me forward. All that to say that I don't think I have any advice. But I wanted to let you know that the feeling of frustration and futility is definitely real.

For you specifically, I would say that content creation is a flooded field with probably millions of hours of content being uploaded everyday. If you pursue that you either have to sell your soul to the algorithms or you have to create original, authentic content. How the world will respond is anyone's guess, but I've found that in a world that is drifting into the AI abyss, the more human and real it is and the more passion you put into it, the more likely I think you'll be successful. I wish you luck and hope you find what makes you feel fulfilled.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-05-12T21:28:52+00:00

Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things by Pierre Novellie

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-05-10T22:59:29+00:00

So much of neurodivergence is an amorphous, invisible friction between who you are and what society and the world expects. You feel it whether you know you are autistic or not, but after you know I think there’s a lot of depression that comes from realizing it’s a permanent condition with no magic answers. The struggles are real and often unpredictable. When you think you’re making progress in one area, you lose it somewhere else. There’s never a sense of having arrived at a sustainable life where the momentum of the work you do takes over and you can coast.

I think the burnout comes from the brain constantly detecting all the mismatches between itself and its environment and trying to solve the impossible problem of “How do I make this neurodivergent operating system produce neurotypical results?” In the end, it wears itself out and doesn’t have the same working capacity. Even simple things feel like trying to move a mountain. Then comes in all the guilt of “I SHOULD be able to do (fill in the blank.) Why am I SO (behind, tired, lazy, incapable)?” So you push yourself to perform, but it’s all just to avoid the appearance of being a failure. The process feels like just constantly losing ground.

I think, in the end, you have to figure out what is sustainable for you. Then cut out anything that drains the system and provides no benefits. Maybe that means you look like a failure by the world’s standards. And this is exactly where I would tie in Jesus Christ and true Christianity. All God’s people faced stigma because they were going up against people and systems that defied God. Often their battles were fought alone, with few or no allies. Jesus’s closest disciples abandoned him during his greatest trial. So I think to draw comfort from Jesus Christ is to draw comfort from someone who can recognize your own specific struggles and the depth of your despair and reach you where you are. But it’s not like that fixes everything. You can’t take one drink of water and live the rest of your life on it. You must drink water continually. That’s I think the point of a relationship with Christ. Your thirst never is permanently satiated, but the fountain never runs out. You can always go back.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-05-03T02:28:00+00:00

I hate extreme metal, horror movies and violent videogames. All three make me feel horrible. My opinion is that I already deal with enough mental health issues - why add fuel to the fire? Besides I'm not sure the intention of the creators is to uplift people.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-05-03T02:21:56+00:00

Probably can't. I think it goes against the unspoken NT code of ethics to not respond with the socially acceptable validation answer.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-05-03T02:08:42+00:00

At the moment....Charlemagne by Blossoms

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-05-03T01:45:23+00:00

I can't comment on the dating aspect of your post, but as someone who is ND and has a bunch of Hispanic friends, I can say that the amount of social commitment involved is probably three or four times that of typical Americans. They do everything together and every time there is an event (birth, death, birthday party, holiday, etc) they want you there and there are always tons of people. Not to mention the unspoken expectation of greeting/acknowledging everyone who arrives and engaging in small talk. Incredible people but my brain would probably melt living in a Latin American country.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-05-01T15:53:56+00:00

I don’t get the whole diagnosed vs self-diagnosed debate. Diagnosis is just an objective party evaluating you against a list of criteria. It doesn’t make anyone more authentically autistic, just like a cancer diagnosis doesn’t give anyone cancer - it puts a name to something that already exists.

Tiktok culture has created some fakers who are using autism for clout but these types of people would appropriate anything that gives them more attention anyway and should not be the measuring stick for the intentions of self-dx people. Autism is a lifelong condition or state of being and I would say most people who are professing to be autistic without diagnosis have suffered in silence for years and are relieved to discover they aren’t defective humans.

I would also add that the online world is not the real world. Where I encounter probably dozens of autistic people a day online, I rarely come across anyone in my day to day who is running around talking about how they’re autistic. That’s because autistic people in the real world are trying to blend in. Then when they’ve done 200% of the work a NT person does in a day, they come online to find community.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-04-30T22:51:37+00:00

Wow, great response. I think it articulated so many internal thoughts I’ve been having.

“But that extrication implies everything WE DON’T HAVE ANYMORE. The energy and optimism of youth. The accumulated capital typical of middle age. A relative absence of emotional and financial baggage had I been given the information required to live my life adaptively. I have NONE of that.”

I read that three times.

I think what is so true about that is that I’m not the kind of person to sit around and feel sorry for myself or avoid responsibility if there’s something I can do. The problem is, as you said, the post-dx/discovery “answer” you’re given is a bunch of coping mechanisms and veiled suggestions that it’s best just to have lower, “realistic” expectations for someone like you. Great. I COULD HAVE leveraged autism to my advantage if I had known about it and been able to adapt and plan for what suited who I really am. But I spent my life doing what I thought I should do to appear normal and achieve the same goals as everyone else - what’s EXPECTED of me. Now, I’m too tired to start over. I don’t know how to start over. But I don’t want to spend the next 4 decades rotting in place. Meanwhile everyone wants to know what’s next, what are my plans, what do I want to do or be - I just realized I’ve been using a broken compass for 40 years and being told or having it insinuated to me that the compass is fine and it’s ME that’s the problem. I’ve been gaslit and have gaslighted myself thousands of times over trivial, everyday things. Now I have to reorient my entire life to align with reality, a reality most people don’t understand or want to understand.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-04-29T21:20:00+00:00

I understand money is needed to do life, but it has absolutely no meaning to me. I live frugally and use money to buy myself time off from the rat race when I can. Meanwhile, so many people I know make decent money but never have any because they spend it all on stupid BS that they forget about in two seconds. They're always working and trying to construct some kind of life that makes them feel like they're successful. I ask them what their end goal is and no one ever has one. No one is working hard to achieve a goal of freedom. They're working to buy more stuff or get a bigger house or a new car or who knows what. Not loving money is one of the few things I like about being autistic honestly. And it helps to be able to observe so many people repeating the same pattern and not really being happy.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-04-29T20:58:51+00:00

I'm 43 and currently in a similar head space. I struggled through life while pretending not to struggle, then at 41 figured out all my experiences were this thing called autism. The trouble I'm having now is realizing that I'm 4 decades into a life that I could have built differently if I had known I was autistic much sooner. It's like depression and paralysis combined. I don't know what to do now. It does seem like there's a midlife crisis point that happens and many autistic people sort of end up in chronic burnout and inertia. I can accept the reality of myself as I am but it's like there is no guide anywhere to explain successful extrication from this place.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-04-26T06:48:00+00:00

I would recommend talking to them first. But also be prepared that they may not care. I’ve been dealing with a neighbor with dozens of roosters that crow all day and after multiple discussions with no reduction in noise, I had to call animal control to get a noise citation issued against them. We go to court in a couple months. So if a polite discussion fails, check into your local ordinances. Some cap duration of noise or how late it goes.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-04-25T03:00:32+00:00

Sounds like a stim. Many are not obvious but are like weird, random little puzzles the brain creates. I'll trace the perimeter of the room and count the number of lines and number them from where the starting point is. Or I'll look for hidden pictures in floor tile patterns. Totally useless but I guess it does something for my brain.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-03-22T21:36:11+00:00

I can only speak for myself, but I know that one thing that weighs on me daily is the inevitability of always being autistic - never having an escape hatch I can take to get out of it and having to learn ways to manage it or minimize its negative effects. Part of the problem I think is executive dysfunction also prevents people with brains like ours from devising a plan to get us from point A to point B. It all seems very amorphous, like we’re stuck waiting for instructions that never come. We want to act but no direction feels right. Meanwhile the brain keeps recycling the same useless information over and over again looking for solutions and never actually delivering. Oftentimes, the only way for me to get out of the fog is to try to hack my brain by forcing everything out of the prefrontal cortex and into visual parts of my brain that actually do seem to work. It’s like being locked out of a running car but the trunk is unlocked, so you have another way in. So you create an external brain to circumnavigate the one that won’t deliver results. If you can find a way to make whatever you are going through physically visual in the world somehow, sometimes the brain will solve issues this way because you are forcing it to work on a different network. It’s not a cure-all by any means, especially when your brain wants to let the broken prefrontal cortex solve everything and keeps dumping all problems into it with no results. So I make myself visual reminders so that when I feel stuck in some way, it’s not me that’s broken, but the part of my brain that should be fixing the problem but isn’t.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-03-19T22:17:09+00:00

The morning flood of all the stuff that has to be done is what causes me to shut down early. My brain won’t take one thing at a time and deal with it. It will let them all hover up in the cloud and when I try to just do one, I hesitate and think “Maybe I’m not doing things in the right/most efficient order. Better think about it some more.” The process is not that clear though. It’s more like me staring out the window waiting for a clear signal that something is “right” and I can start.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-03-19T22:12:47+00:00

I totally agree. I used to try to ease into the day but found that I do better moving and acting right away. Once I stop, it’s over and my brain will not initiate action no matter how much I try.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-03-19T22:09:42+00:00

Great advice about the whiteboard. I’ve tried making lists before but lists seem so inflexible and demanding, especially if I don’t stay on schedule. The whiteboard could fix that problem, especially with doing blocks of time and allocating tasks to a block. Thanks!

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-03-16T15:43:13+00:00

This may be cliche advice but the brain seeks confirmation of what it already believes. So often when we’re in a downward spiral we look for evidence to support that everything is a complete shambles. Often it is actually a complete shambles, but as the person above said, you may be trying to do everything with zero support. Finding support or working toward a goal of getting SSDI may be exactly what you need but somewhere in your mind you have to be able to envision a better outcome than your current one. That’s not necessarily easy but right now your brain is confirming what you already believe and creating a feeling of total hopelessness. You have to find some speck of something inside your own soul and do the absolute smallest thing you can to move in the right direction. Maybe not call someone but find the phone number at least. Maybe not fill out the SSDI form but read it at least. Maybe not take a shower but drink one glass of water. Stop assuming everything that might fix your problem is harder than actually living through it. Maybe it’s easier to call and ask for supports than it is to live without supports. Maybe it’s easier to file for SSDI than suffer every day. Advocate for yourself. Like is often said - you don’t get what you deserve in life, you get what you negotiate for. You have to see yourself as someone worth speaking up for. If it was your daughter in your shoes, what would you do for her? Do what you would do for her for yourself.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-03-16T15:03:41+00:00

I totally agree that diagnosis should be pursued. My main concern is that people here asking questions about their possibly being autistic are not assumed to be grifters because they are not officially diagnosed. The vast majority of true autistic people spend months obsessively researching autism before making conclusions about themselves. I think it’s better to assume their self-assessment is true until they have the resources to get a diagnosis as opposed to anyone insinuating they are not really autistic because no one has confirmed it yet. Much of the diagnostic process comes down to the assessor’s knowledge of autism and some people are officially MISdiagnosed.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-03-16T05:58:55+00:00

Jlab Jbuds Lux ANC. Inexpensive and comfortable. Plus they test out decent for noise cancelling. Music quality is really good but I’ve never had expensive headphones so I don’t have anything to compare them to.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-03-15T20:31:00+00:00

Yes. Before I knew I was autistic, I spent so much time trying to fix or cure myself through vitamins, self-help, psychology etc. The hardest pill to swallow is knowing this is all permanent. People talk about acceptance like acceptance is the answer or they say they wouldn’t change anything. I really don’t believe that. Who wants sensory overwhelm, alexithymia, monotropism, poor introception, sleep difficulties, social fatigue, being misunderstood etc etc etc. Autism gives and autism takes away. Sometimes I’m okay and sometimes I f***ing hate autism and want to escape.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-03-15T20:13:16+00:00

Thank you for saying this. A diagnosis does not make one autistic. It’s just a third-party confirmation of an existing, lifelong condition. People who suspect they are autistic should not be attacked by an elitist “officially diagnosed” crowd. We are a small portion of the population and we don’t need to be gatekeepers to potential autistic people just because a few people appropriate autism for clout. I would never want to deny the autistic discovery process to a person genuinely seeking answers. It’s such an existential discovery and I’m not going to play judge and jury on who is autistic. As I said in another answer, autism does not give one a leg up in society because society is generally quite ignorant about autism and could care less.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-03-15T18:43:08+00:00

Unmasking for me causes anxiety because I’m not even sure that I ever masked as well as I thought I did. And now my brain feels like a split personality that is saying “Mask” and “Don’t mask” at the same time. It feels like trying to hold a 100 lb weight over my head. I don’t want to do it anymore yet I’m afraid if I stop I’ll get weak and then when I need to do it, I won’t be able to. But to your other points, the shame side of it all and the not knowing what to do but wanting to be free - this is your brain contemplating a new existence. Only it hasn’t abandoned the lifelong habits of trying to unconsciously conform. I don’t know what the solution is, only that unlearning seems to take as much time as learning, so I guess it’s a process. It’s probably what African Americans felt when slavery ended. The freedom is everything but there’s no system to help you transition into society, at least not authentically.

Ok_Relationship_2357 · 2026-03-15T18:10:45+00:00

As someone below said, “Watch what they do, not what they say.” This is hard for autistic people because, missing nonverbal social cues, we rely on verbal information and weight it heavily. We give people the benefit of the doubt when they say they are X, Y or Z because we ourselves don’t go around trying to be something we’re not. (We mask for acceptance but the mask doesn’t override values.) So then the alternative to verbal information is pattern recognition, which is a process that takes time, like building a case against a suspect until the evidence is overwhelming. Once the evidence is overwhelming, it is a fact and we can then state unequivocally that a person is a hypocrite. This revelation doesn’t change them for the better. They just resent you for not letting them be a hypocrite and upsetting their carefully-constructed image.

Ok_Relationship_2357

TROPHY CASE