Autistic women assemble! #3

[Nepmarthiturn]

This is a thread for autistic women to connect, chat, vent, laugh, share and seek advice and solidarity (small talk and word mincing not required). 😊

Any autistic women newly finding the thread are very welcome to join us (even if awaiting diagnosis) but we'd be grateful if others could leave us alone please…

Previous threads:

1

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/4777843-autistic-women-assemble

#2
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/4865805-autistic-women-assemble-2

I want someone to write me a realist routine and make me stick to it 🤣

I crave routine but am utterly unable to make one/work to one.

Life doesn't allow for rigid schedules for routines. We'll mine doesn't - there's always someone needing something doing.
My need for routines and having a somewhat clean home is fulfilled by using my planner to schedule in a day in the week each week where I'll spend about half an hour cleaning the bathroom (yes I timed it, otherwise it feels like I might take two hours or something and is so daunting I won't even start). I wrote down the logical order in which to clean everything. Tweaked it the next time(s) and now don't need it at all. That's now my routine.
I also put on my planner when I am going to hoover and with a repeating symbol next to it and don't cross it off until I've written it in for the next time. And other repeating tasks same.
I don't think I have ADD though so this probably comes easier to me.
Early last year I printed out a whole massive deep cleaning plan for the house but had given up by March after washing the windows for the first time ever in a victorian terrace. NGL that was exhausting!

I have diagnosed ADHD and ASD and you will not find a cleaner more organised house than mine which is what baffles me. I mean maybe it is the OCD part of me but currently you could eat your dinner off my floor the house is that clean. Now I do work from home half the week and in between doing bits I will clean or do laundry or whatever but everything has a place and everything is in that place!

I'm the same, but to me that's the ASD and love of organisation / can't live with mess. It's the part of ADHD I don't really identify with as I don't struggle as such to keep on top of things (I'm only struggling a bit now due to physical disability in my 50s) But my remote controls are always in a neat line, as are all the tins in my cupboard, clothes in colour order in wardrobe. I've always linked my OCD tendencies with my Autism and it details that in my Autism report.

I'm exactly the same.
Everything in order.
It actually pains me when I look in the cupboard and discover that DH has failed, yet again, to place the tinned food in neat lines, with their labels facing forward.

Sometimes, to my dismay, he shoves them in upside down.

@TheShellBeach any judge would grant you a divorce on those grounds. I like mine the same, spaced out so i know what I have and need and labels front and forward. Only an insane person wouldnt lol

I have just been shopping and have reorganised my fridge. I feel a sense of calm now.

@TheShellBeach any judge would grant you a divorce on those grounds

🤣🤣🤣

Hello
I'm new
I've just scored 38 on that AQ50.
No diagnosis.

DD9 is waiting for her ADHD / ASD assessment.

DH thinks I have autism.
My sister apparently has it and ADHD (undiagnosed)
My brother has ADHD

Not sure where to go from here. Progressing a diagnosis is a scary thought.

I just looked at the aq50 ….

”it does not upset me when my daily routine is altered”

who’s pissing around with my daily routine?? Why would you do that? Just thinking about it is raising my blood pressure!

”numbers fascinate me”

why wouldn’t they? If you look at the numbers in a business they tell you all you need to know! Numbers are the key to everything. If you’re no fascinated my numbers you’re not fascinated by life!

Ha ha when I read through that, I was saying "doesn't everybody?" in response to most of the questions.

Does anyone with autism have a very good sense of smell

my husband can’t smell the smoke I can from others clothes and I find it hard to believe as it’s so obvious to me

@Zok yes! I once smelled my way to an ice cream parlour from about 500m away and round several corners when I was a kid. I still can't bear the smell of perfume and airfreshener if it is remotely strong.

@Zok definitely, I went to a funeral yesterday and really struggled with all the hugs and smells of perfume and people's hair. I had to have a shower when I got home because the smell of perfume stuck to me.

I have always struggled with strong smells. If I'm out and someone near to me has a strong perfume on I find it hard to enjoy or focus on what I'm doing. I do think that particular sense is heightened for me.

Yes but I can close my nose off to smells too which is good as smells sometimes can make me vomit.

I'm another that has a strong sense of smell (which ramped up to epic proportions in pregnancy) I've always put it down to sensory aversion of so many particular smells, though, rather than an actual ability to smell more iyswim.

I've also got a lot of allergies, including allergic asthma which means I react badly to perfume, cleaning products, aerosols etc. DD is the same.

There are two!! 😆

Useful diagram though, @RainbowZebraWarrior

This is an interesting topic because my question would be what is meant by "man's brain"? There are physiological differences in male/ female brains however, a lot of the differences in behaviour are down to social conditioning. So there differences between female autistic behaviours/ thought processes and female NT behaviours/ thought processes may simply be that we are less susceptible to the social conditioning around female stereotypes than NT women.

Exactly! I mean, numbers are the basis with which everything can be described and understood, the foundation of science and all human knowledge. Mathematics is the universal, fundamental language underpinning the operation of computers, our own genetics, brains, bodies and behaviour, physics, chemistry, biology, the entire universe.... space, time and matter. Without numbers nothing could be explained at all in any meaningful way that constitutes more than a conjecture!!!

I do, ridiculously so. Great for collecting perfumes, cooking (excellent sense of taste too as a result). Has drawbacks though... when children were small and nappy changing. Or that time I got stuck behind a rubbish truck in a traffic jam and didn't switch the car's airflow to internal only fast enough and ended up vomiting out of my car window...

OMG yes!

Shocking.

I am furious with myself for missing the second mistake when I looked through that thing the first time

Our older DS (also autistic) has come to the village for a week. He's staying with the DS who just moved here.

Older DS is really happy to see that his younger brother has settled in here, and is calm and cheerful, rather than permanently distressed as he was when he lived with his father.

DH and I just took them for lunch. Life is good.

@TheShellBeach 🤣🤣

I guess this must be why at work if people need stuff proofreading before it goes to publication it is me they ask. 😁

Not that you'd know it from my careless, ungrammatical posts on here which are littered with typos! For formal documents however, it drives me mad to spot an error once they are in print.

This is fantastic news. And your win about thw warden!

Please let some of your good luck rub off on me. I have had the week from HELL. Will explain later, kids have decreed I am not allowed to now. 😆🙄