Autistic women assemble!

[Nepmarthiturn]

...only if and when you're not feeling antisocial and want the entire world to +%$¥ off, or course. 😉😆

A few of us were talking on another thread and thought it would be nice to have a support/ chat thread on here to share interests/ challenges/ parenting issues or whatever we feel like. A little community of autistic women on here that we can dip in and out of but will be supportive and friendly and people who actually get it.

Might also be a nice counterbalance to all of the horrific posts about autism that we find here so regularly!!

P.S. Have deliberately posted this in chat rather than in the ND Mumsnetters topic because it will hopefully reach more people who would like to join in. I didn't even realise that section existed for a long time and often miss threads there as they don't show in active and expect I'm not alone in that. However, in posting this here, we will be relying on the people with obnoxious and ignorant views about autism who so regularly post on Mumsnet, to demonstrate to us their allegedly superior empathy (ha!) and please just leave this thread alone: it's not for you. Many thanks!!

Oh they do.
It's weird. On one thread somebody will thank me for being kind, and on another, someone will berate me for being unkind.

I wouldn't even be surprised if it was the same person with a name change. 😆

Most people are very strange.

Don't take it to heart. Your comments here shine through with how kind and gentle you are. Speaking plainly and being direct in your communication style (and expressing an opinion on a discussion forum when people have posted to ask opinions) does not make you unkind.

Many people are just extremely odd and will ask a question even though they don't want the answer, just validation. Or wilfully misinterpret things. Or project their sensitivities onto you. Or in many cases simply lack basic comprehension!

Thank you.
It means a lot to me to read that.

Honestly mean it - I have seen some of your comments on other threads too and never anything unkind. Ignore the nutters!

I've been coming back to the thread periodically but haven't posted. I was a little afraid of posting and nobody replying (I have killed many a thread!).

I wrote a whole post on Thursday because we'd gone on a trip to our local wildlife park, where we were meeting our best friends and their child (so a nice, comfortable, relaxing day - our one bloody treat in half term) only to discover when we got there that one of their mums had tagged along. I don't know this lady at all, and it threw me into complete panic because it was a new person. I don't do well with new people! I still enjoyed the day overall, but less so than I would have. It was so much more difficult, and I had complete burnout and shut down when we got home.

I'm glad to be back to school and our routine!

Ooh, surprise person 😖 Always tricky. It's like you were walking along a broad pavement on a sunny day, wearing a summery outfit and light sandals, and suddenly, bam, flat on your arse because you slipped on ice. What the hell was ice doing there? I wasn't expecting ice! And it's not the ice's fault, and you would've been fine if you'd only known there'd be ice, but heyho, get yourself up and dust yourself off. You'll have a sore bum for the rest of the day, though.

I apologise if that made no sense, I'm operating on unsanctioned doses of Elvanse instead of sleep.

Oh no @CaptainCallisto I can totally understand how that threw you out. @JarByTheDoor 's analogy is brilliant. Aside from the surprise, it changes the dynamic too and is so much more exhausting trying to interact with someone new than with a friend you know well and are comfortable with.

I am on a 3 hour training course this morning and I'm already completely shattered!! Way too much talking and too many people.

I want to be in the garden in the sunshine!!

I'm still here as well, lots going on and I wish I could just lay in bed for a few days and not have to do a thing but that's not going to happen lol. I can't actually remember the last time I had a lay in (well a lay in that was later than 7am).

Here, miss!

OK, I'm going to talk [type] about myself, which is a very autistic thing to do. I've probably said before I got my autism diagnosis in my early sixties (I'm 65 now). I am ADHD, PDA and GAD but haven't sought diagnosis. However, if you're 'one of us' you'll know how difficult these things make everyday life. I'm a carer for my dad (91, autistic), not arduous work but time-consuming, and all my executive function and spoons seem to be used up when I've finished that.

Today is Wednesday and I'm completely overwhelmed, as usual. Coming up this week
a) Friday. Dad's big housework day, he has a shower and I can access the living room to minimally clean in the twenty minutes available. Often do four or five hours on Friday morning with two hours later in the day.
b) Saturday. Hopefully daughter and her family are visiting dad. Requires a deep clean throughout and extra shopping. And extra thinking.
c) Monday. Plasterer at my house, kindly arranged by daughter. I need to be out three days, but might be able to go home at night. But someone will be in my house. Complete spoon-digester. No spoons already.

Further horror of things not done -
Report to police regarding man who knocked me down
Stop an old insurance that's wasting my money but might return a few hundred pounds
Admin for dad's legacy business. I used to cope ok with that before I had to take over his housework, shopping and life admin.

There's probably more but I've thought as much as I can about that, now. I was reflecting on how my spectrum differences of ability affect my life.

Just finished a teams training where we did Myers Briggs. Has anybody else here done this through work etc? I remember doing it maybe a decade ago and can't remember what the result was last time, I have heard they can be inconsistent. Interesting, anyway. There were charts showing percentage prevalences of different types in the general population, in men vs women, and also in different types of roles so it made me wonder if there is probably a different distribution in autistic people, and in autistic women specifically. I think it is very likely there would be.

I am so with you on this! People have booked 9am meetings in my diary all week and it is killing me. My brain does not function until at least 11am. I keep dreaming of the holidays pre-kids where I did nothing for a week and lay in the sunshine reading and then swimming in the sea on repeat for a week or two. Maybe in another 15 years! 😩🫣

Is there any way you could get a break even for a few hours?

Sadly though once burned out, it does take a real break to reset and it can be impossible to do, so hard to cope with the relentlessness.

@StopStartStop that is a lot to manage. Physically and in terms of demands and responsibilities and that can be crushing.

Someone knocked you down? Are you ok? That's awful.

I've made a list of annoying things I need to sort out.

That's it, so far. Making the list has drained me.

The car thing was at new year, I had a broken finger (unacknowledged by medics) and a badly broken wrist. They thought I was faking and took hours to see me. I have real difficulty in thinking about it but I will have to write it up just to get the papers off the dining table.

It is so emotionally draining to deal with stuff like that isn't it? It takes a huge toll and I can't face it a lot of the time so spend far more time avoiding it than it would take to do it because I just do not have the emotional energy to go through the process.

Even things which should be simple always turn into a huge task because other people won't do their jobs properly.

I'm sorry you were hurt so badly @StopStartStop , and then to be treated like that on top, that's horrendous.

Ugh. DH is calling through to me to add something else to the list and I'm now overwhelmed and unable to do any of it.

I'm currently sitting in minor injuries with DS2, who has dislocated his wrist using the crutches he's on for his dislocated knee. We're an hour into an expected three hour wait. The strip lights are buzzing and one of them is flickering, the vending machine keeps making gurgling noises, and somebody is using a wheelchair that squeaks every time he shifts his weight. I genuinely don't know if I'll make it another two hours! DS has curled up in his chair for a nap, so I'm just mooching on MN trying to keep calm.

OMG that sounds like utter torture.
I hope you don't have to wait too long.

NOISE ugh. Noise needs to just go away.

I've just come back from seeing the practice nurse, and there's always a hideous music programme playing on the radio, in the waiting room.
AARRGGHH

What's wrong with a bit of silence?

Oh no @CaptainCallisto !! Your poor DS. 😔

Mine currently has a broken arm, I feel your pain. Hospitals seem to be designed to be the very definition of sensory hell. I hope you are seen quicker than expected.

What's wrong with a bit of silence?

Maybe the fact that it allows you to hear with the utmost clarity:

• the air whistling past a piece of snot lodged in the nostril of the chap across the room, with every in-breath, for forty-five minutes and counting
• the incessant, maddening tick of the mechanical wristwatch that, in 2023, someone is still inexplicably wearing only kidding, I love real watches, but silent ones
• the person who thinks that doing a big sigh and a clackety-chaired fidget every so often, with the occasional clock-glance with voiceless "humph!", will magically make everything happen faster
• and the intermittent, unpredictable, nails-down-chalkboard skrawking of cheap, blunt pencil on cheap, rough paper, as the woman five chairs away solves her sudoku, and the juddering, nauseating tongue-on-a dry-wooden-spoon sound of her occasional rubbing-out?

But yes, shitty random radio that's so mainstream it's not to anybody's taste, with the possible addition of a DJ with a "personality" who thinks he's funny, and local radio ads complete with jingles that don't scan but will stick in your head anyway, is just aural pollution 😞

We've been seen! The triage nurse bumped us up the queue to make sure DS was seen before x-ray closed at 5.30. Hooray for Bridget and her joined up thinking! We've got some shiny new crutches that he rests his forearms on rather than pushing down on his hands (which he's struggling to use, but will hopefully work out more quickly than he did his 'normal' ones!) and the usual ice it/anti-inflammatory meds advice. They've also put a flag on for the GP because they think he needs a rheumatology referral. His knees have gone 4 times in 9 months, and now his wrist, and they think it's gone beyond the basic hypermobility diagnosis he got when he was 3. That will put the total number of waiting lists he's sitting on at 6...

I've just chosen a comfort CD for the drive home (Tubular Bells 2) to cover up the sound of the fan in the car. I think I'll phone for a takeaway when we get home!

Poor kid. Must be awful for him getting injured all the time. My DS has been so frustrated now being allowed to do sports etc while his arm heals, I can't imagine what it's lile if it's pretty much constant like that. Good that they are going to look into it further now.

I'm feeling really overwhelmed. So much I need to get done for work and in my house and garden and admin stuff and it is like seimming in treacle, as fast as I can clear stuff there's more and more. I just want some mental peace with no obligations and am now so burned out that even the basic daily cleaning and cooking, washing, uniforms, packed lunches etc make me want to scream because by the time that is done, when am I meant to do the rest?