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

My gp has heard from the adhd clinic. They want up to date bp and weight. Are meds coming soon (not soon enough!!)

must get blood pressure down!

Ooh exciting!
Getting there at last.

Is anyone still up?
I have tickets (standing) for eras tomorrow with my swift mad AUdhd daughter.
I thought I could do this....... but
Why am I standing? Why does my daughter want to get to the front? Why did I think this was a good idea? Panicking a bit - I know it’s first world problems but I’ve been up since 4 being worried about noise, crowds, travel and getting to and from the hotel 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ I can do this, right? What do I need to do to get through it.

I'm up.
You can do this, it will be a long and exhausting day, and you can probably write off the next day or two for burnout, but today will be awesome!
Hopefully the focus of the music will overcome the stress of the crowds, but if it gets too much there are always quiet spots to retreat to and calm down. If you miss a few songs dealing with a meltdown it's ok.
Just do your best and try to roll with the inevitable breakdown of any plans.
You've planned ahead and done what mitigation you can, now just enjoy it.

Thank you, I needed to hear this.

This is excellent advice!

I hope you have a great time @QuitChewingMyPlectrum . I often think the anxiety before these things is much worse than actually being there. No doubt you'll be wiped out afterwards but I hope you have a not-too-busy week ahead so that you can recover.

How is everybody?

We were promised sunshine this weekend and I'm so disappointed that it is cloudy yet again. The weather has always affected me so much and I'm finding it unbearable over the last year or so. Every time there is a day or two of acceptable weather it vanishes again so I can never really relax with a settled period of something resembling summer and when there is sunshine it always seems to be on days I am working.

Does anybody else find that the weather affects them this significantly? I think part of it is a sensory issue, that I cannot stand being cold and especially the wind. Cold winds even in summer just ruin it for me. I hate the feeling of it on my skin, and it makes me cold and the unpredictable nature of it really bothers me.

I can cope with cold if it is a clear, still day like winters in other countries (I was fine in -20 with appropriate clothing and the sun shining!). The problem for me is wind, and the greyness. The endless greyness. 😭 When the sky is overcast I feel claustrophobic and the grey light makes the whole world look grey, the colour drained out of it like an ancient photograph. It is a physical sensation, like a weight pressing down from the clouds, a sad sepia photograph of the world with all of the life and colour sucked out of it.

I think it's a combination of sensory issues (sensitivity to touch and cold) and hypersensitivity to colour and light. Apparently many autistic people perceive far more colours than average NT people so that must impact it as we lose more from the dull light making everything more dull, like someone painting black watercolour paint over a painting.

And I think life experience has exacerbated these issues for me. As a child I was miserable in winter, refused to go out on rainy, grey and windy days. Then living when a young adult in housing with no heating and being constantly freezing made my hatred of the cold worse, and so many wasted summers of this weather has made me increasingly aware of it when time in other countries made me realise that what people here consider a heatwave is normal spring weather in much of Europe and many countries enjoy beautiful sunshine and warmth for the majority of March to September. 😩

Sorry, long ramble just this is bugging me a lot. It may sound trivial but on top of everything else is actually has a very significant impact on my ability to cope with the other struggles of life so is very frustrating. 😖

@PartyPartyYeah how are you doing now? I have thought of you and hope that you are managing to get through the days ok.

Ha yes there needs to be an impairment in communication skills to get a diagnosis but like you I consider my communication good...

Clear communication for the win rather than waffle where you have to read between the lines..

@ThreeBeanChilli

I absolutely agree with this!! I am so sick of the mantra that autistic people struggle to communicate. I am starting to think that being NT is a communication disorder not the other way around.

How is being clear a bad thing? Or using words to mean what they actually mean rather than saying something else and expecting people to guess what it is. Why do we need to "read between the lines" when perfectly adequate words exist to express what you actually mean? And why on earth would doing so be considered to be a bad thing?

I am finding it all increasingly bizarre. The most infuriating part is when you have expressed exactly what you meant perfectly clearly using words to mean what they mean as defined in the dictionary and an NT person - because they choose to speak in riddles and not say what they mean - presumes that there is some hidden meaning in what you've said that doesn't exist: they infer meanings that literally are not there, then accuse you of saying whatever alternative meaning for the words that they have invented for no apparent reason and become offended at their own imagined, made up thing that you never actually said at all.

I want to scream "if that was what I meant then that is what I would have said. It wasn't. What I meant was exactly what I said."

I'm starting to doubt many people's ability to understand basic English. Staff at my children's school are a prime example of this, but I won't go into that again!! 🤣

I think I said some of this on previous threads so apologies for yet another rant on the topic but... aaaaaargh!!

I can't agree more! I'm a fantastic communicator and am very clear and concise I can also display empathy more than appropriately.

I've been told many times how easy I am to talk to.

I've now managed to train my managers and wider team in how I communicate best, received verbally or written. Funnily enough, everyone seems to prefer my way because all know exactly what's expected of them

Yes, I'm heartily sick of that old trope about autistic people lacking empathy.

Aarrgghhh.

Oh goodness, you need to expand that to a worldwide programme @Mabelface and teach everyone to communicate like autistic people. Can you imagine how much of a better place this would make the world?! Not just for us but for NT people too. It's very interesting that having now tried your way of communicating they have expressed a preference for it.

@TheShellBeach that is a major bugbear of mine especially since academic research has shown consistently that the average autistic person has more empathy than the average NT person so it is factually wrong. This false stereotype seems to have been concocted because NT people - for many of the reasons in my post above - were not able to correctly interpret how autistic people were expressing their empathy, so ironically the stereotype was created by NT people who lacked the empathy to be able to understand that other people may communicate in a different way to them and presuming this meant that they didn't experience a very basic part of being human: characterising and treating autistic people as in some way sub-human which is pretty much the definition of sociopathic behaviour i.e. a total lack of empathy!!

I'm working on it, one workplace at a time 😉

Fancy a job at my children's school next? 🙏🏻😆

I also think this issue about empathy underlies many of the struggles autistic people face.

E.g. people denying autistic people are autistic because they are empathetic; people assuming someone who is just a selfish arsehole "may be autistic" because they - as a selfish arsehole - they don't show any empathy; NT people making a fuss like the world is ending if the slightest adjustment is requested for an autistic person even though most of us spend the majority of every day of our lives trying to accommodate and fit in with the preferences of NT people and how they have designed things to suit them, at great emotional and physical cost to ourselves, yet this not being appreciated or reciprocated at all; the presumption that you can judge how much someone is affected by their autism by how much it affects the other people around them, as though the autistic person has no internal world.... etc.

If they pay me enough 😉😂

Highly unlikely sadly! 🤣

I’m not great in the heat and humidity so I don’t mind the more pleasant temperatures that are going to come either Wednesday or Thursday onwards but it’s been lovely to see the blue sky

Humidity is hideous!

I think actually that's part of the problem in the UK and why many people claim 25 degrees js hot and also why the winters feel so awful despite being mild in terms of temperature. I avoid countries with very high humidity worse than ours like the plague.

But yes, some blue sky and sunshine for a sustained period isn't much to ask is it? In what purports to be summer, after it was kidnapped last year apparently!

Humidity is hideous!

Oh aye.
🤣

🤣🤣

Hello! Just found this thread thanks to someone posting that they had lost it, so that worked out well for me, thank you 😁

I'm not diagnosed or currently seeking one, but pretty sure myself that I am autistic. My husband was diagnosed at 17 and most of my friends are neurodivergent or suspected neurodivergent - I actually had three female friends message me and tell me they suspect they are autistic, all within a few days, just a few weeks ago 😆 (I actually belly laughed when the third one messaged cos the timing was so ridiculous!) Excitingly two are in the same friendship group so after getting permission from the second one to "out" them to a mysterious mutual friend, we now have a lovely little chat as the three of us going, which I entitled "I think I might be..." All three of us have diagnosed partners and sometimes get called the "normal" or "neurotypical" one in the relationship, and now we're thinking ummmm actually, about that... 🤣

But yes, being the only Mum in most of my social circles, I am delighted to have found this space! My LO is nearly 8 months so too soon to tell, but if she doesn't turn out neurodivergent in some way I will be very surprised haha 😆

Hi @Everythingwinniethepooh welcome to the thread.

I reckon it's the autistic people who are "normal" and not the NTs.
🤣🤣🤣

Hi @Everythingwinniethepooh can I ask why you aren't seeking a diagnosis? I'm interested purely because most of us here got to the point where we were having breakdowns, and therefore needed to know.

That said, it possibly comes down to age, and managing to a point in life whereby you don't any more. You seem very self aware and that's a great thing.

Welcome to the thread.

Thanks for the welcome both 😊 @TheShellBeach fair point 🤣

Re: not seeking diagnosis. Well for one thing I'm not sure I'd get one - my husband has been saying for years he reckons I'm on the spectrum but possibly not "enough" to get a diagnosis. Must say pregnancy and giving birth etc has really confirmed it for me that I am autistic though, I guess a lot of things become more obvious when under pressure 😅

But yeah a few things really - I've heard waiting lists are long, and it's a hard road to get there. Having to explain myself to the doctor or whoever, to try and pin it down, "prove" what I'm already confident about, sounds like a lot. And I'm not sure it would benefit me enough to be with the time/stress to be honest. I'm incredibly fortunate to work somewhere that I love, with a team who, by and large, "get me" (currently on mat leave but will be returning part time in Sept). My boss and I are pretty sure she is also undiagnosed neurodivergent, so that helps haha - so although we do sometimes "spark" off each other as we are quite different, we always sort it out and move forward. So I don't feel like a diagnosis would change anything much at work, which I think is a big reason for seeking diagnosis for a lot of people? And at home, as I say, my husband and I are very much aware of it and are used to supporting each other.