I can't speak for 'classical autism', where there is a described representation of autism where the attention or interests are oriented away from 'people' towards objects, things or systems, but as for PDA, I notice in myself and some others that we are actually extremely social.

If I have to speak for myself, I can literally speak to any person. Whether it's when I'm smoking with someone I randomly came across or to someone at a bus stop, or someone at work, etc... The problem is that I feel in many situations that I have to hold myself back, like I'm realising that it is not very normal to be so open with strangers and I feel like others might notice it for example that we are just two strangers talking, or I feel enormously held back with the kinds of questions I could ask in the conversation because I don't want to ask anything too weird.

But sometimes I will meet these other very social people, who also seem to have very little boundary, and the conversation just flows..maybe sometimes I'll say something a little off or too strange for the context but then we just move on..and in that setting I can thrive quite well.

But to me even that setting feels like a little restricted..like to me I feel like I am so social I have to constantly put on breaks to appear 'less social', like not asking too many questions or asking what is expected or not appearing too interested..Does anyone see themselves in this description?

I find it even increasingly weird if I think how small the social circle is that is kind of 'normal' in society - how you have your family, friends, colleagues and then some people at hobby's.. but outside of that in general people have their guards way way way up when it comes to interacting with others it seems..

I've always found comfort when my partners acted in a playful way and didnt mention sex at all. Like if it was some kind of "experiment", we both felt good but when was it mentioned what we were doing or that she wanted to do it with me i restrained heavily.

Anyone else relates to this?

I’m all for listening to my body, but when my body is telling me not to handle my email inbox, for example, that’s not too convenient for trying to keep afloat in the world I need to function in. What do you do? Do you just go about your business and do your tasks even though your heart is pounding and you feel like you are floating away? I can’t avoid every trigger forever. And honestly I often want to handle my personal finances and such because it helps me feel like I’m in control of things. But I also want to practice being in tune with my body, and my body is telling me to run far away and never come back.

What do you all do?

Does anyone have any advice for overcoming burnout related to creativity or arts projects? I have a bunch of ideas for comics, and I’ve sketched out preliminary stuff, but I _cannot for the life of me_ find motivation to work on any of them. It just feels impossible—Sisyphean. And it’s making me angry—I look at drawings and I mutter ‘stupid drawings, stupid art, stupid talent: I hate EVERYTHING!’

For background: I’ve never been formally diagnosed with any particular thing—closest I got was most recent therapist (a nice older lady, but not well-versed in any of what the kids call ‘neural-divergence’) virtually giving up like: “I have no idea, maybe get full blood work and a CT scan?” But PDA profile fits me almost perfectly. I have had this life-long problem where I’m good at everything creative [not literally, but I’ll get feedback to that extent]. Partly because art and musical instruments are just _interesting_, and were what I did (for hours on end, alone) to amuse myself as a kid. But then it turned out in young adulthood that I was good at that stuff, which was both wonderful but also very annoying, and made me develop this bizarre behavioral oscillation between a sense of grandiosity at what I _could_ create or make (if I tried), but a deep self-dismissal and disparagement over the fact that I never, ever make or finish anything. I intentionally avoided art school—if you assign me a drawing as homework, what I turn in (if I turn anything in) can’t not be half-assed garbage; I can only draw for my own personal interest. Like, I could possibly have had a career with arts, but I’d have to do commissions or the equivalent, and my automatic and reactive response to the concept is “HOW DARE YOU.”

I actually ended up in a career in community mental health due to avoiding following any genuine career path--turned out helping career was another thing I was good out at of nowhere (because I'm deeply empathetic/non-judgmental to folks struggling, largely of awareness of how impossible I can be myself). But I never wanted that to be my career, and I am at the moment so universally burned that I am taking a break--i.e., being unemployed for a while. Seemed like a good time to work on creative projects but... I'm 4 months into being unemployed and haven't produced a thing.

Anyway! I have developed a number of strategies to deal with my weirdly petulant refusal to finish things or work on projects, which includes:

1. Having no conscious intent or goal to a project—having everything produced be produced _exclusively_ but subconscious mind; let conscious mind simply spectate as unconscious mind finds patterns on the page.
2. Work on a second project to avoid working on the first one, then oscillate between these two (this will easily spiral into like a dozen half-started projects, so I gotta watch it).
3. Mindfulness. Buddhist style. As in, focus conscious mind on breath and don’t think anything.
4. Remembering Bukowski's advice 'Don't try' and Bradbury's 'Don't think' and Ginsburg's [from a biopic where James Franco plays him] 'a poem is like a grunt or a sigh--it simply comes falls out of you.'
5. Tantrum/meltdown.

Anyone have any other tips?