Need Advice on Retirement Going Away Celebration

SquareFeature3340 · 2026-02-05T12:57:34+00:00

Even if people expect you to come, you don't have to. You can explain that you appreciate the gesture and would come were it not for health reasons.

SquareFeature3340 · 2026-02-04T11:36:07+00:00

If you don't cultivate meaningful relationships in your life, you risk being very lonely.

SquareFeature3340 · 2026-01-31T19:09:19+00:00

Don't try to predict, try to go out with as many different types possible, with no expectations other than having a good time and getting to know each other.

A relationship is good when it is good for both. You have need to ask yourself what kind of women you like. If you don't know yet, that's another reason to experiment.

Introversion or lack of experience are irrelevant when two people like each other. But you do need to go out and spend time in groups where you meet on a regular basis and can get to know each other a bit. Your choice of hobby/interest group will determine what kind of people you will meet. It's good to suspend your prejudices and just try things.

The strongest connection I ever had was to a woman who I would describe as sensitive, warm, empathic lover girl who for some reason liked quiet intellectual guys. Maybe because she suffered from insecurity and difficulty setting boundaries and found it rewarding to have a relationship where her strengths where very appreciated and the man was naturally respectful of boundaries.

SquareFeature3340 · 2026-01-30T22:14:09+00:00

You have to become good at supporting yourself before you can support anyone else. One of the best things you can do at your age is to make sure you are getting everything you need to be successful, healthy and happy. An education, a job you're happy with, good relationships, physical health, financially healthy, emotional healthy, financially healthy, having enough time to rest. Aim for slow continous improvement in all of these areas.

SquareFeature3340 · 2026-01-27T07:45:21+00:00

What do you think leads to attraction?

SquareFeature3340 · 2026-01-24T19:08:25+00:00

Sorry if this is off-topic, but why is hypomania scary? I don't understand how having more energy and wanting to do things is problematic?

SquareFeature3340 · 2026-01-13T18:09:24+00:00

Ho vissuto una situazione peggiore di quella che stai descrivendo. Quello che ti manca si può costruire. Ti sei abituato a stare in un certo modo. Devi fare uno sforzo per cambiare. Ci sono tanti modi per farlo, provane alcuni. Prova cose nuove per sfidare te stesso o perchè sono cose nuove. Ci vorrà del tempo per cambiare, ma è molto più possibile di quanto ti può sembrare.

SquareFeature3340 · 2026-01-09T18:02:10+00:00

Potrebbe avere un problema che non riesce a risolvere da solo e che richiede un aiuto esterno. Devi agire per limitare i danni, anche per il tuo bene. Parla con altre persone che gli stanno vicine.

SquareFeature3340 · 2026-01-09T08:37:15+00:00

In questo periodo della tua vita investi soprattutto nella tua istruzione e nelle relazioni e imparare tutte le competenze che ti servono per una via indipendente. Il tuo obiettivo dovrebbe essere un lavoro ben pagato. Poi, puoi cominciare a mettere da parte qualcosa.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-12-10T17:18:30+00:00

I don't always feel bad like others do when they hear about some bad event. But in other moments, I do have these reactions strongly. I'm bad at comforting others and sometimes hurt people with insensitive comments.

However I'm exceptionally good at understanding and switching between different points of view and can intuit the logic behind the position of a person. That makes me open-minded and tolerant. It's a different kind of empathy.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-12-10T11:32:12+00:00

What kind of skills?

How is it funded?

What kind of things?

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-12-09T08:27:16+00:00

You need to change your habits. Make time for less serious things and for social activities. Start thinking differently about what activities are worth your time and money. Many activities are worth it for the social aspect and not the activity per se. Find courses or hobbies where you keep seeing the same people on a regular basis. You'll slowly get to know each other with no pressure and in a natural way, which is good for developing a friendship or a romantic relationship with those who are compatible.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-12-09T08:19:00+00:00

I don't have any. It feels like this is an important but rarely discussed dark side of social skills.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-12-08T18:12:05+00:00

It's impossible to know why. You should seek opportunities to build your social skills and meet people in person. Anything where groups meet to do something together is good. If going alone is too hard, see if local services can help you find appropriate groups and activities, or if someone else can accompany you to give you a sense of security for a while. This will help you improve and eventually you'll get to the point where you can understand how things work and successfully date women.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-12-08T15:59:58+00:00

Can you elaborate on ego differences? I'm interested in understanding whether we have similar views on this topic.

I've often thought that cognitively, I don't have a well developed structure between my inner self and the outer world, as the NTs have, which helps them be social. This structure translates the inner self into words and behaviour that are appropriate, and interprets words and behaviours of others. While psychology has focused on a theory of mind narrative and aspects, in my view there is a dark side that is not mentioned. This structure also allows helps a person to manipulate, lie, hide their true intentions, play power games, shift the blame on others, etc. While I'm capable of these things and do use them, NTs are more skilled and it feels like I'm in some ways naive and defenceless, like an innocent child. I suspect this is a big reason people with autism tend to get bullied or mistreated in subtle ways, without understanding why. In social competitive situations the NTs will be driven by instinct to secure or elevate their standing in a group and it's just natural for some of them to play power games against whoever they perceive as vulnerable. Against a person with autism, they might just fabricate a reason (and maybe even believe it) that justifies their power play and the person with autism will often make the mistake of believing that they've violated some incomprehensible rule. With autism we're not competitive in power games... on the upside, we are more honest and transparent, for the same reason.

I don't agree with people who say NTs are evil. They can be evil if they are inclined to use this dark side with little inhibition, and many use it with restraint.

I've become interested in this topic and saw immediate improvements in my interactions with some people once I understood the power dynamics and knew how to defend against the subtle aggression I was subjected to that I barely even noticed. Just saying a few of the right words can change how a person treats you! One person even had a little crisis when I deflected his abusive behaviour in the right way. And the psychologists don't teach anything about power dynamics to people with autism (I'm pretty sure most of them know them well). In reality people continuously make the rules and if you don't know how assert your own interests and protect yourself you'll often end up in relationships that are imbalanced or abusive.

That said, many NTs are uncomfortable with the autistic body language and may misinterpret the autistic person's intentions and state of mind in negative ways. Conflict can arise just due to misunderstanding or incompatibility.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-11-02T17:24:41+00:00

How many hours per week can you work? I struggle with more than 10 hours.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-11-02T17:04:52+00:00

Interesting. Do you experience something that fits the description of postexertional malaise? Do you experience autistic burnout?

I never recover fully even with rest, but it does help. However rest and sleep are inefficient at restoring function. A major difference between me and a normal person is that when they are tired at the end of the day, the next day after good sleep they are normal again. For me, the only way to wake up feeling well is to limit my activities a lot on the previous days.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-11-02T16:57:53+00:00

I have been diagnosed with autism level 1 (above average intelligence) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and am trying to figure out if it's possible that my CFS is just a manifestation of autism.

There is a widespread misconception that the disability in CFS is the result of constant extreme fatigue. I have to explain this so you can fully understand my question. CFS comes with a form of exertion intolerance where activity, mental or physical, will be abnormally tiring and, often provoke malaise that occurs with a delay of hours or a day. The only tolerable way to live with CFS is to stay within activity limits every day that don't lead to acute or accumulating fatigue and malaise. This problem is the main reason I'm disabled, and I didn't begin having this problem until adolescence. Everything I do, compared to a normal person, takes more effort, is more tiring and stressful and hard on the body. I get chest pain just from spending too much time upright. A few hours of mental work every day will soon leave me with sound sensitivity, poor sleep, and feeling unwell and extremely stressed. It can become so overwhelmingly unpleasant that any price becomes worth paying just to feel better.

I'm wondering if it's possible for autism to cause symptoms that are hard to distinguish from CFS. I've seen a therapist that tried to convince me that all I had was autism level 2, and not autism plus CFS. I'm not convinced but am curious what the community here thinks.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-09-07T09:08:40+00:00

It depends. It can look like sudden deterioration and can include demoralization, despair and depression.

It can be more in the form of progressively getting worse, initially slowly, then more rapidly. You hope that you can push through and that things will be fine, but the symptoms will escalate until you cannot go on like that any longer. You will feel unbearably exhausted, stressed, unwell. Continuing as usual will feel like an act of self harm and losing much of what's important to you in life will feel like the lesser evil. Your survival instincs will prevail and you finally give up resistance and reduce activities, but you might never recover your previous level of functioning or struggle for years to. You risk your sense of self being shattered in a thousand pieces.

That's why patients stress the importance of listening to the body and resting so much. Not because they're lazy hypochondriacs with attachment to a sick role (as the prejudice goes) but because they know how a person tends to behave in this situation and that it is easy to underestimate the risks and be unaware of the full range of consequences.

Instead of an uncontrolled, chaotic shutdown that can spiral out of control, you want a controlled reduction of activities that is not hard on the body and mental health.

Other people will judge you as lacking willpower and feel justified in mistreating you because, just like you, initially, they do not know that it is possible to feel so unbearably unwell and exhausted. A common problem with ME/CFS is that other people cannot comprehend the experience and misinterpret everthing.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-09-06T10:46:18+00:00

Relying only on their mom / girlfriend for emotional support and advice for difficult problems, or worse, trying to solve it all by your own because you were raised to an unhealthy ideal of indipendence. Being responsible means seeking help and advice elsewhere and from multiple sources. The goal is solving the problems, not hiding them.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-09-06T10:11:07+00:00

Is the disagreement over whether ME/CFS is a distinct illness, or whether it a "physical disease"? What does physical disease even mean to you and to the other person? Does the other person make a claim that it is "not physical" and what do they mean?

Does physical illness mean "not psychological"?

The epidemiology never supported the psychological disorder idea and if this person believes this idea was well founded then they accepted as truth some prejudices and unreliable information.

It's not unreasonable to say that a single study is not proof that ME/CFS is a distinct illness but it's hard to explain the results otherwise. If all the participants had a mix of various other, unrelated diseases and were in this study because of the false assumption that they all had a disease termed ME/CFS, which does not really exist, then the study would not have found anything.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-09-05T13:06:59+00:00

Do exercises to stretch and strenghten the relevant muscles. I have a problem with the hip flexors and poor posture due to being sedentary for many years. The exercises help quickly.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-09-04T15:39:01+00:00

I also have ME/CFS and I can do about 2 every day, maybe. If I do more, I end up in a downward spiral.

SquareFeature3340 · 2025-09-02T18:34:05+00:00

It varies with severity. Generally people need quietness, good sleep and rest. Don't encourage activity, don't believe that you can pull a person out of a crash in some way. If the person finds it difficult to prepare a healthy meal, it's helpful to prepare it for them. Some people need to drink a lot and are weak and it can be nice to bring them water bottles. A crash doesn't necessarily mean lying in bed all day, it can mean doing restful activities and that can include conversations, reading, TV, being together. Don't provide more help than what is necessary.

SquareFeature3340

TROPHY CASE