Hi ppl,
I am really new to the idea of being autism and since it becomes clearer to me to understand what this means to my life today and in the past, i am feeling a lot more stressed which leads to shutdown over shutdown.
Oft course I can name some triggers like public transport without ANC or some situations at work where I need to talk to customer I really dislike. Those were things I ever hated.
Thankfully I built up a collective working environment and being my own boss , which means that I can change at least everything in my working day pretty easy. BUT it is really hard for me to unterstand what is good for me and what is not good, cause this was nothing I ever learned in my life before. It was more often like “eat that frog, life is hard!”. I now try to reduce stressful activity and find more time for me and try to guess my needings but struggling in figure out what is not good for me. I dont feel it in the Moment it happens but shutting down a few hours or days later.
How did you isolate triggers and how do you handle them, if they are not that easy to cancel or you dont want to lose sbd? What do you do in a shutdown situation when you cant escape easily?
Same problem here! I’ve been doing my own self discovery via introspection. I started a list on my phone literally called “shit I don’t like” and have built it up from there.
I started with “windy days” and put it in my phone. Mulled it over a few more days and I could expand and reflect. I connected the dots, so to speak, about other things I don’t like…hair dryers, fans pointing directly at me, vacuums, hair in my face, blenders. The grouping of these things can be given broader labels that are more overarching such as “loud bursts of noises” (too much audio stimuli), and “wind propulsion at/near me” (too much physical stimuli).
Took me a few months to build up a substantial list; and I’m still adding things every few weeks as I experience the world around me now more aware of “me” in the world.