Hey y’all! It’s been a long time, glad this thread has been revived (thank you @FourteenEyes@hexbear.net ).

I have gone through the process of getting diagnosed since the last post. Turns out I have ASD! Thank you for giving me the tools to go through this process.

I think my breaking point for getting diagnosed was when I felt like my coping strategies weren’t working anymore. I felt like I had to get some help because things were not sustainable as they were.

I’ve used endurance sports in order to numb/quiet all my emotions, my anxiety and my body. I’ve had moments where I’ve had panic attacks because I did too much while not letting my body recover. I felt like if I’d stop I’d have too much time to ruminate on negative thoughts. It used up all my time and I did that alone, so I didn’t see or talk to anyone for weeks. It was horrible (but looked socially acceptable). I’ve used fawning in my past relationships, which burnt me out emotionally, it took so much out of me in the long run.

I’m trying to heal now and to have healthier coping strategies (and to lessen the need for coping). With sports, I’ve learned to let go, to listen to my body a bit better and to find other people like me in order to make things more social. It’s been a long process. As for fawning, I’m definitely still struggling : it’s literally my job to help people do their tasks. I am now at a point where I can do everything and can help entire teams of people. I feel like I am putting too much on my shoulders and it takes a toll on me. In my personal life, I am trying to put boundaries, to learn what I like and to find my “strawberry people”.

As an aside, since I’ve finished reading this book, I have read the following books to help in my journey :

• “Autism Relationships Handbook”, “Unfuck Your Brain” and “Unfuck Your Boundaries” by Faith G. Harper
• “Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment” by Amir Levine

If you ever have any other books that have helped you (not necessarily related to ASD), feel free to add them to this thread!

Passages that stood out to me were the ones that talked about emotional response to sensory overload, coping mechanisms that allowed for continued masking (like exercising to stay thin, substance abuse to pass as normal, and strict rule following), and dissociating and suppression of the self to keep others happy. All of those I’ve struggled with personally, but really the entire chapter felt like reading an old diary.

This book really changed things for me, though. After some self-imposed isolation to deal with everything, and finally recognizing the way I coped and stumbled through most of my life not addressing some severely repressed trauma, really brought to light all the ways my neurodivergence was making itself known. Anger and frustration during the process of acknowledging my cptsd (which arose from undiagnosed autism) and chronic depression, eventually made it impossible to pull off fawning, so I pissed a lot of people off after they realized I was no longer going to even attempt to act normal anymore. I became borderline alcoholic for a bit, smoked so much weed, and when I tried to talk to people about it the resounding response was “well who isn’t?” and “everyone’s doing it”, essentially normalizing substance abuse as a means of keeping up appearances. I burned out quickly after that, dissociated, and the depression was about as traumatic as it could get for several months until desperation led me to seek help in the form of books and online communities. I lost a ton of weight running to manage the stress and tire me out enough to sleep, which I later realized was yet another coping mechanism that needed regulation. Eventually I found answers to my questions, others who had faced the same struggles, and a new sense of self I hadn’t had before. I started to actually learn about who I was, and accept things about myself that I’d been desperately hiding from the world, in many ways thanks to Dr. Price. I did end up cutting a lot of people off, definitely upset many others with new boundaries, and finally got sober (going on 4 months!!). I’m still struggling with social stuff, since it takes a lot for me to trust others still, but I’m no longer pretending to be someone I’m not. It’s an ongoing process, and even though it’s lonely some times I am much more comfortable with myself and my wants and needs now than a couple years ago. I wish it wasn’t so much to deal with, and it’s hard to not look back with a sense of longing for things to have been different. I still haven’t discussed being Autistic with many people, and I worry about possible repercussions or animosity with that.

I would highly recommend Codependent No More by Melody Beattie if you struggle with emotional dependence and toxic behaviors. It started me on this journey before I found the book club. Thanks for posting again, this book is awesome and worth a read.

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I’ve already read this, but I really would recommend it to any Autistic.

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Also a link to the previous thread https://hexbear.net/post/2278759

I started reading this book recently and haven’t taken part in the book club discussion until now. I picked it up because I have been doing volunteer work with kids, some of whom are neurodiverse, and I want to be a good volunteer for them. Hexbear has spoken highly of this book so I picked it up. I recognize and can relate to some autistic traits as described in the book so far, but as far as I know I’m just a weird but neurotypical middle aged person.

Anyway, one thing I’m struggling with in the book is that I recognize a lot of behavior described in the book in myself and other people I know, but to different degrees. The book spends a lot of time talking about masking and hiding autistic traits to fit in with neurotypical society. It isn’t always clear to me what the difference is between masking and things that I think loads of allistic people do. For example, I’m cishet male but I don’t share a lot of stereotypical masculine interests like meat, sports, fishing, cars. I’m not that fit, and I am more introverted/bookish. When I was a kid all that meant people called me gay, so I learned to feign interest or just prompt others to talk about their capital D dude shit. This is masking because I didn’t want to be made fun of for being effeminate. I’m sure other people do analogous things to fit in to groups they don’t naturally belong to. Similarly, I don’t speak to everyone the same way - I use different language when talking to my child, my partner, my parents, my colleagues, my online friends. I have a lot of education and I speak to other academics differently than strangers I meet. This is code switching. I also very regularly think about and view situations in the context of climate change and ecocide. I can’t help but see the foundation of skulls that our society is built on. That makes me sad, but I keep it to myself 99% of the time. Is that masking depression/anxiety or is it just being polite and not being a downer all the time? All of these examples are things that I’ve observed to be pretty common among loads of people, they don’t seem to be specifically autistic behaviors.

None of the above is particularly onerous to me anymore and it doesn’t cause the same type of stress as described in testimonials from the book. Is the degree of difficulty that people have with this kind of behavior the distinction between allistic and autistic people? It doesn’t seem like the behavior itself is the distinction. I mean maybe I’m way out to lunch and the behaviour I’m describing in myself are truly uncommon and I’m actually realizing I’m neurodiverse but i think that’s just stealing autistic valour. In any case, I think the book would be stronger if it highlighted in more clear terms how some of these traits can manifest in neurotypical people and how exactly they differ from autistic people.

Regardless of the above, I’m finding the book very useful in how I think about engaging with kids. The general rules about support/accommodation seem really widely applicable. Being a volunteer with ND kids that don’t know you well can be fraught, but this book is helping me take away good general approaches.

Thanks for the tag! It’s finally the weekend here so I’ll read and get my thoughts down. Good to see this back up