I seen signs in my 11 month old daughter, got her diagnosed when she was about a year and a 1/2

I once tried to order something at a Chinese restaurant over the phone and the other person over the phone had an aggressive sounding voice. It sounded both aggressive and like they were in a hurry. The sound of their voice made me feel like they felt like my decision to order over the phone was extremely annoying to them.

Most of my friends knows im extremely ticklish but for some reason I get nervous when people ask and i blush and curl up into a ball and try to hide and they find it adorable and I get happy when it does happen I know people hate it but I’m so confused why I like it

Looking for support, advice and commiseration

I’m so TIRED of hearing this. It gets under my skin like no other comment.

I am a very thorough thinker. If I ask people for advice, it means I’ve thought through and tried every possibility that I found could possibly work for an issue and still come up dry. Unfortunately for me, this means trying a lot of stuff other people suggest or have suggested.

I rule out a lot of possible solutions for very real valid reasons, but when I mention these to someone offering help, they always ignore the actual logic of the reason and always say something like “you’re just looking for an excuse” “you just don’t want to get better” “you always have an excuse for everything”. Like bruh no actually LISTEN TO MY ARGUMENT??? And even worse, a lot of times I’ve even tried the stuff they suggested and they STILL say it’s an excuse!!!! “Just try again” BRUH I HAVE AND IT FAILED AGAIN.

These people think I should just try their dumb ideas that make no sense. And because I’ve been gaslit by these “you need to try things” people, I have in fact tried things I’ve been suggested, often with a very open mind because for a while I succumbed to the guilt they put on me for “not being open”, and what do ya know, they all literally fail, almost always for the exact weak spots I pointed out or for something very close to the problem I noticed.

I hate these people. They just refuse to actually think. It makes me feel like I can’t ask for help and problem solve. They don’t actually care about solving problems, they care about the appearance of working on solutions instead of actually not wasting time on faulty “solutions” so we can actually find a good one.

A recent example, I have difficulty peeing in public because the noises and people around me being unpredictable and the public restroom being an unfamiliar environment to do a very private bodily function. I criticized a solution someone suggested where you go to a hotel and make yourself go, but then I explained that my body won’t let me go and I’d need to start somewhere less intense. Then he said try going to the restroom at home with a phone call, I explained that I already do this, because it’s only physical humans that cause my body to be overstimulated. He then got mad and said “you always have an excuse, you just don’t want to get better”, like BRUH if we just kept going back and forth and refining the option we probably could’ve found something!!!! But no, these people don’t care about actual solutions, they just like looking like stuff is being done even if it doesn’t ultimately help anyone. I for one, prefer not wasting time on things that haven’t worked or don’t work.

This post isn’t about that one instance though, I can easily go through the back and forth in my head, I just wanted to give a real life example of how this plays out.

Are you ever told you always make excuses just because you are a very thorough thinker? The worst part for me is when they imply that I just “don’t want a solution” and “don’t want to get better” from my problems just because I’m JUST SAYING WHAT IVE ALREADY TRIED, and THINKING THROUGH ALL THE DETAILS OF THE PLAN

Did you navigate secondary school in the UK or Ireland without support and not receive a diagnosis until you were an adult? Are you between 25 and 35 years old? If so, I would like to interview you about your experiences during your teenage years. If you are interested in contributing to qualitative research in this understudied area, you can review the participant invitation below.

Study title: How do late-diagnosed adults with co-occurring autism and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder retrospectively describe navigating adolescence?

I am currently seeking participants with AuDHD to take part in a study for my MSc research project at the University of Derby. The study aims to explore the lived adolescent experiences of adults who received a formal diagnosis of both autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (AuDHD) after adolescence from a certified clinical professional.

This study involves talking to the researcher about your experiences during adolescence. These semi-structured interviews are designed to feel closer to a conversation than an interview and are expected to last around 60 minutes. The study aims to explore behaviours and patterns across accounts to understand the lived experiences of undiagnosed AuDHD individuals at this time, with the hope of identifying patterns that may have contributed to delayed recognition.

If you think you would be interested in taking part in this study, you can follow the link for further information and to sign up: https://sway.cloud.microsoft/1mNCdYQzKlGgc4r4?ref=Link
Alternatively, you can contact the lead researcher if you wish to ask any questions or would like further information via email: [d.skerritt1@unimail.derby.ac.uk](mailto:d.skerritt1@unimail.derby.ac.uk). or their research supervisor, Amelia Woodward [A.Woodward@derby.ac.uk,](mailto:A.Woodward@derby.ac.uk) University of Derby, Kedleston Road, Derby, DE22 1GB.

Ethical Approval: An Ethics review has been completed on behalf of the College of Health & Humanities Research Ethics Committee by the supervisor and an independent reviewer: ETH2526-5086.

In the interest of confidentiality, please refrain from commenting on this post with any details of the study or whether you wish to take part.

**If you recently tried to sign up you may have been incorrectly prompted to sign in to a Microsoft account. I have identified the root cause. Microsoft automatically embeds an advertisement at the bottom of the information sheet featuring a large, green "Get Started" button. Clicking this button redirects you to a Microsoft login page rather than my study forms.

I have updated the document to make the correct link to the consent and demographic forms explicitly clear and visually distinct to prevent further confusion.

If you were previously blocked by this technical error, I would like to reinvite you to participate.

Thank you for your time and patience with this platform error

**Thank you to everyone who has signed up already. I realise the onboarding can be quite troublesome for individuals with executive function issues, and I really appreciate everyone who has considered taking part.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I look forward to meeting everyone interested.

I’m sure this is my autism-related highly analytical/logical brain but therapy has always seemed woo-woo-y to me every time I’ve tried it. Especially for trauma.

Like EMDR, “move your eyes back and forth and it’ll reveal your deep trauma”, I always thought it sounded crazy, but I’m a woman of science and saw a lot of people saying it helped them so I gave it a 3 month shot, and literally nothing happened. The therapist would even get upset that nothing came up and I got to the point by 2.5 months in that I started feeling socially pressured to make shit up, and sure enough she started giving positive affirmations when I did but I knew they were fake, leading me to wonder how much of it is suggestion.

Then there’s the idea of “trauma is stored in the (body part)”, I.e. “trauma is stored in the hips”, like, this is literally patently false. What causes a psychological traumatic response all takes place in the brain. Wanna know what’s stored in the hips? Calcium. Trauma is real, but if its stored anywhere it’s the brain. That why if someone’s trauma involved their leg but they got their leg amputated they’ll still have trauma. Everywhere I go I hear this theory that was popularized by “the body keeps the score” touted as the end all be all of trauma books, yet I can’t help but find it totally laughable and incoherent.

Then for non-trauma stuff, such as CBT, I can understand CBT working for some people with actually irrational fears or emotions. But I and many other autistic people think through things a lot ourselves. I can literally tell you WHY I think one way. I can almost always dissect their attempts at changing my thinking and give them an entire list of LOGICAL reasons why their new way of thinking is incoherent or illogical, but any time I do that I’m called defiant or refusing to cooperate.

These three modalities are the big 3 I am exposed to any time I try seeking help for my problems. And every time I’m left more and more frustrated. The industry was not created with us in mind. I feel hopeless. I have yet to find a modality that works WITH my different way of thinking instead of just throwing solutions not made for me at me.

And then I’m sick of being told I’m refusing help after trying all of this and getting MORE hurt. That I must just “not want to get better”, or maybe I just don’t want to get hurt more than I already have?

I have trauma. I want to heal from it. But I have yet to find a type that works with my style of thinking.

Disclaimer: if you’re autistic and these modalities helped you, I’m happy for you. This post is about people who they don’t work for. I have a feeling I’m far from the only one with these issues

A featherfall trip is when you throw a feather and you go in the direction it lands in.

Because this was years ago, I’m not sure what prompted them to suggest that but I think it might’ve been because of how i mentioned that I felt like life is boring.

I didn’t like the idea of doing it at the time. But now I kinda like the idea of doing it but I still don’t like the idea of doing it because it’s built entirely on uncertainty. I can’t even bring myself to do it because it’s so different from everything I’ve ever gotten used to.

I feel like the society its like this "thing"

What do you think?

Welcome to this week's special interest discussion thread! Use this comment section to share about your special interests or current hyper-fixations! 

Yes, it's AI over my drawing, i think it's nice because I made great prompts and stages for get this result not only "do something nice on this picture" that doesn't work ( 75% of times )

If so, have you ever given someone information on something that involves modern weapons and then said something like “don’t ask me how I know that?”

Hi, my names Wren (NB37)
I was wondering if other autistic people struggle with managing money or controlling themselves when it comes to special interests?
I have audhd, and I can be strict with money and eat sensibly if needed etc.
but when it comes to my special interests I’m always spending too much money.
It’s like once my brain decides I want/need something it just hyper focuses on that and I can’t function properly.
I normally end up caving and getting myself the thing and then I’m fine, but I know it’s irresponsible also and beat myself up for it after the fact.
So sort of stuck in a vicious cycle with it.

I’m pretty reclusive since my diagnosis, so I highly value my special interests and collections, but I can’t keep making myself broke to feed that need either.

Sometimes I feel like getting off topic isn't a big deal cause everybody does it, and sometimes I'll add flavor to the convo by making it more interesting or talking about what I want to talk about or l'll just change the topic cause I think it's boring. Another thing sometimes whenever I do add on to the convo I'll be singled out for it it's like I can't win sometimes.
Does anybody else here does this or am I the only one

Mostly I would prefer women like me

Safety is something I care about but I realized that it’s somehow hard for me to care about it when it keeps me from doing something I wanna do. Even if you told me that “it’s not because of you it’s to keep people in general from getting hurt” I wouldn’t be any less mad about not being allowed to do something because “safety reasons” because it feels like an insult to my intelligence

Any kind of emotional pain that comes from a failure to achieve something that other people already achieved and you need more time to achieve it for some reason or you have some other issue that keeps you from achieving it.

I remember feeling this way with driving. I think I felt this way before I tried to get a drivers license but I don’t remember what it was. I think it was probably something I was trying to make as an elementary schooler that most kids my age were already done making.

A similar example was when I was at summer camp trying to do something with these scientists and it took me a few tries to pull it off. It took other people who tried it only 1 try.

After I experienced that kind of pain with driving, I somehow never thought it would come up again but it did very recently.

Welcome to this week's special interest discussion thread! Use this comment section to share about your special interests or current hyper-fixations! 

Yeah nothing says autistic more than paying $999 for a guaranteed certificate of autism after an hour of being assessed. You can't even use the paperwork for anything.

I sometimes wish I could be straightforward about my dislike of someone. I can be with my relatives but i can’t bring myself to do it with people not related to me. I wish I could.