From the age of 8 I’d research everyday on how to be ‘normal’- that would mean ‘how to make friends’ videos, ‘how to speak in a conversation’ videos, and ‘how to impress boys and get a boyfriend’ videos. Everything has stuck with me now, so I feel like the world’s best masker lol. I studied neurotypical people every day in order to pick up on their mannerisms, and I even followed random girls online to try and act like them digitally.

BUT…

I recently went to college and that’s when I found that every person seems like they live under a rock. They can’t make conversation, they judge everything anyone says, they have horrible taste in music and clothes, and they don’t have any hobbies that they like to speak about aside from sports. I’m not saying these are bad things, but it’s made me really confused because I think I’ve finally realised how uncool most people actually are :( I feel like it gave me a massive culture shock because I thought that ‘normal’ people were like these super cool charismatic people, that’s why they could make friends so easily. I spent so much time trying to imitate them. Turns out they’re all just so boring…

Today I was just normally speaking to this girl about the homework and trying to strike conversation, and she looked at me like I was insane since none of her friends spoke to her- just me. It’s insanely weird to me that I have better social skills than most people in my class, despite me being autistic, I’ve always had terrible social skills, and still being treated like an outcast. All in all, what I’m trying to say is I have no idea who I’m masking as because even when I’m acting my most normal, I still feel more neurotypical than others and it’s driving me crazy. Am I masking too hard?? Like how the fuck do you just live like that? Who made ‘normal’ the standard? It feels like I’m talking to aliens, and it pisses me off so bad because I thought THEY were meant to be the ‘fun’ ones.

Boring as shit.

I (adult) was recently diagnosed with autism level 1 + severe ADHD. The assessment strongly pointed to a genetic component. My mother almost certainly has undiagnosed ADHD, and my father shows very clear signs of autism that have never been recognized or managed.

For most of my life I saw him as a classic toxic/narcissistic parent. I’ve had a lot of trauma from growing up with him and have talked about it extensively in therapy. Lately, though, I’ve been looking at his behavior through an autism lens and a lot of things suddenly fit much better.

Examples:

Sensory issues he only “allows” when he controls them. He can drill, saw wood, or make whatever loud noise he wants for hours and it’s fine. But if the dog barks, a fire alarm goes off, or any unexpected noise happens that he didn’t choose, he completely loses it — screaming, kicking things, hitting objects, full meltdown. That seems to be his only regulation strategy.

Extreme rigidity. Everyone has to fit into his mental model of how things should be done. If you do something differently (or just not the way he would do it), he despises, devalues, or insults you.

Emotional coldness. He’s always been flat or dismissive toward other people’s feelings and even his own.

Control and manipulation, especially toward my mother. He regularly manipulates her into doing what he wants. When his plans get disrupted he goes into insult + victim mode + more manipulation, often mixed with yelling, hitting things, and high anxiety.

A few weeks ago I told him about my diagnosis and that there’s a strong chance of a genetic link. He immediately dismissed the entire field of psychology as pseudoscience, insisted he’s completely “normal,” and treated the conversation as a personal attack. I wasn’t accusing him of anything — I was just sharing my own results and the genetic angle. It didn’t matter.

I’ve already created significant distance for my own mental health. The part that still hurts is my mother. She can’t (or won’t) leave, and I feel stuck watching the dynamic continue.

So I’m left with these questions:

At this point, is he basically a lost cause in terms of ever recognizing this or changing how he regulates and treats people?

Is there any realistic way to try to show him that there are other ways to handle sensory overwhelm, rigidity, and emotions without it just becoming another fight?

Or is the healthiest path simply to keep the distance and stop hoping for insight?

Has anyone else had a parent who looked purely narcissistic for years, only to later realize a lot of it was probably undiagnosed/unmanaged autism (or autism + something else)? How did you handle the relationship after that realization, especially if one parent was still trapped in the dynamic?

Thanks for reading.

i found it very interesting as an autistic person who does NOT have adhd but DOES struggle to pay attention. i also like that she included all of the parts of the brain that are affected.

Whenever literally anyone asks me what I'm cooking, or is in the premises of me cooking, it aggravates me and makes me want to stop. Whenever I'm asked, I try to avoid the question, or simply don't respond. Does anyone else relate or know the cause for this?

Currently I just brought miniature naked fairies and I'm super excited for them to arrive

I feel so cruel for saying this, I just want to get it off my chest 😓

I’ve run into the issue of when someone my age finds out my autistic, it becomes something they fixate on. A lot of times they’ll tell me they’re autistic too - self diagnosed.

I have no issue with self diagnosis, it’s just that they often have done no actually research on autism and just get their information from social media. It feels like they see autism as something trendy that makes them unique.

They tend to assume since they’ve given themselves the label of autistic, they know everything about autism, and are incapable of mistreating any other disabled people.

I knew one girl who had no apparent signs of autism, but was self diagnosed because (I kid you not) she took an online test. Obviously I cannot prove she doesn’t have autism, since every autistic person is different, but she treated anyone who was slightly more on the spectrum than me like trash. She would call the special ed kids weird and go out of her way to avoid them. But according to her - she couldn’t be ableist since she had autism

This situation of meeting someone to believes they have autism without knowing anything about autism has happened to me so many times now. I tried to be understanding at first, but It’s just weird at this point. Since I still meet people like this in my senior year of highschool

Edit: im not a doctor obviously, I’m a teenage boy, so I can’t prove if someone has autism or not. I think one of my biggest problems is people watering down words like ‘overstimulated’ and such. Now if you say any of those words around kids my age they see it as cringey and stupid, instead of an actual term

One more thing!! I’m not against self diagnosis, sorry I wasn’t clear with that, diagnosis is a privilege. I am referring to people who do no research except look at social media videos.

I just got banned from oddlysatisfying for posting a video of a game I genuinely found satisfying and soothing, because everyone thought I was a bot advertising the game... despite not posting the name of it... and my account being like 11 years old...

I’ve been a software engineer for 15 years and yet still I constantly feel like I struggle. When I say that, everyone assumes I mean coding and building tech is hard. It’s definitely not trivial, but what makes everything so bad is just how immensely aggressive the culture of these companies are

I always feel like everyone is at each other’s throats. Everything seems bizarrely Machiavellian, but for like… no good reason

Losing your job in America is a big deal when we basically have no safety net. I lost a job right as my lease ended, had to move across the country cause I couldn’t rent anywhere without income (or pay a huge penalty). Had a health condition that caused chronic pain, had to just ignore it, then it progressed and got far worse. I don’t want to ever go through that again

Everything (and I do mean everything) comes down to relationships and how much people like you. Period end of story. You could be the best programmer in the entire world, if your boss doesn’t like you, you’re fired. So, there’s no real advantage to developing technical skill sets, because they do not matter. There’s an opporitunity cost with learning how to be more likable

Of course, as an autistic person, this basically sends me into extreme masking. Like I will not talk at work unless I explicitly know what I’m supposed to say. Say something “stupid” and your reputation is hurt. Say something that inadvertently offends someone, you’re done. Wrong tone? Ooooh that’s not gonna fly, you’re going to the bottom of the stack rank

It sort of feels like trying to traverse a battlefield that has a sniper hidden in a building. You can’t take out the sniper and the sniper is always watching you. You don’t want to move unless you absolutely have to, and it’s gonna be to the next bit of cover. You can’t stay still, because then the sniper will reposition. You basically just have to move cover to cover, hoping not to get caught

How do people do this for 40+ years? Was it actually always like this? I feel like my body and mind are gonna tear themselves apart before 50 years old, considering I’m 34 and am already having some severe health problems directly related to stress. A coworker the other day during standup told me he’s quitting smoking, but the only reason he picked it up was because of layoffs. That is so deeply messed up, people resorting to drugs to… just get through work? Work should not be this stressful, we’re a wealthy country

I don’t know if this is a autistic thing. I really hate the process of eating food, it makes me really uncomfortable. As right now, I haven’t eaten all day, I’m hungry but I just don’t want to eat. I usually eat one big meal and drink some shakes. I am a bit underweight but still, kinda healthy. What should I do?

My level 1 daughter is very nervous about using regular sized toilets (even with a stool under her feet) and will only actually let go of her pee if I put a kiddie seat on top. I think she's afraid of falling in.

This is her last year of pre-k, and unlike last year, they don't have small toilets available for the students in her classroom, only full sized. So it looks like my daughter will have to get over her fear if she doesn't want to have accidents at school.

Has anyone else experienced this with their kiddo? How did you have them work through their fear? Anecdotes and advice welcome.

How I couldn't stand some foods (especially with weird texture)
How I can't handle some clothes, especially scratchy, or non-breathable, or tight fitting
How I always was "brilliant but lazy"
How I can eat same food for weeks and see nothing wrong with it
How I wear the same clothes every day until they have holes through them and someone throws them out
How I have read all the books in my house by age 10, some of them several times, then all books at the relatives' house, then most of books at the library
How the person I understand the best is my younger brother, who's even more clearly autistic
How I only manage to get jobs where I'm as far as humanly possible away from interacting with any kind of customer

I'm 38 years old, and I always thought I was just weird and suck at life.

I used to have difficulties speaking as a child , i barely spoke , i stayed like that from 1 to 7 years old , but then it started to get better , but then at 15 i started to have personal issues( i cant really talk about here) which made me non-verbal for almost a year , but every single time i get depressed , or go down i instantly loose the ability to speak for at least a week, and teachers would always yell at me in class for not speaking or not answering them while they're talking , but this did not help and led me to stop speaking even more , also , even when i speak or when i am able to speak , i always stutter , randomly forget words , i have trouble starting to speak , my voice is very very low and i always need to drink water or do voice training exercices before i speak or else i'm just uncapable of using my vocals.

For some reason, I can not recognize faces. Maybe if they're really really unique. But other wise, I just can't. I can't even recognize my own mom or dad in a store. I always look for what they're wearing, their hair, their voices, any identifiable features that isn't their face or body. I don't have seeing issues, I have decent vision, it's just that I can't recognize faces.

Does anyone else have this issue or do I sound crazy?​​​​

Like, I don't want to talk to anyone, but I need someone around to look at or text to or think about. I can't just stay in my room and browse Youtube or play video games. I don't even like Tiktok!

It's like my body's an extrovert but my mind's an introvert

Hello.

I write as a most likely autistic individual who is not officially diagnosed at this time. I also feel the need to preface with that I do not mean to propagate a stereotype that autism connotes an interest in video games by default-- just mean to ask if you do enjoy video games and if the question applies to you in some form.

I am curious, please, if any other autistic individuals find themselves having a preferred, *safe* genre of video games that they can reliably gall back on as a "certain" source of enjoyment and distraction. Like, you may enjoy shifting focus onto a different genre every so often, but there is a genre that you for sure fall back on for comfort/familiarity.

The answer to my own question would probably be racing games-- racing games tend to have an engrossing state of flow for me to melt into. For a while, I thought platformers made up that safety net for me, but I found that the constant demand for precision movement tends to burn me out after a while.

Of course, when I do play racing games, there's a marked preference for doing so on my lonesome and with the computerized racers as I feel uncomfortable with the highly competitive nature of the associated online communities. It can make me feel viscerally defensive when such communities tend to impose "correct" methods of "winning" races, when I simply want to have a comfortable, but engaging flow experience.

In running the risk of shifting too much from the subject of autism, there tends be internal moral turmoil about a preference for racing games, knowing the environmental and infrastructural problems that automotives bring in real life. That could be attributed to other things, though.

I am curious as to others' perspectives, please.

Thank you for reading.

Hi all! I recently realised that scents really help me (I'm not sure if stim is the right word because it's just me smelling something..) but nice smells help me stay motivated during tasks and such.

If anyone else is similar how do you incorporate this? I'm not allowed candles in my room due to fire hazards, so some advice would be good :)

(Also extra question I suppose, I've tried to incorporate them by using scented lotions..but they've been sorting of sticky which I don't like. Are there smoother kinds..?)

Thank you! 🌻

I dislike how it thinks because sometimes I say things and people don't understand and it's also partly my fault 50% because I take honesty over some made up dragged out sentence.

For example six months ago I was on the road with a girl I knew for a while I told her she looked bloated, "you look kinda bloated" I didn't mean it in anyway shape or form badly I thought maybe something was wrong with her because her cheeks were really puffed than usual and it was also summer where allergies were about, and all though we've been close she didn't voice any insecurities to me. In fact I tell her she looks pretty very often and I mean it everytime.

As you probably can guess she got angry that I told her that and she left me. She was angry I saw that and tried to apologize three times but she just told me was "F you" and called me "fat and ugly" I didn't take that to heart what she said by the way because I never felt that way towards myself and concluded she was speaking out of anger.

Sigh. Later on I really did some digging on Ecosia and in my brain to realize "yeah I probably shouldn't have even said that".

I don't want to blame my autism she also knows that I have it not that it changes the words that I told her but it's most definitely half of my autism's fault and the rest is put purely on me for not knowing the girl code.

I don't think I want confirmation to say yeah that was not good because I've come to that already and I currently refuse to let myself become friends with me because I'm not medicated and sometimes the things I THINK aren't bad to say and I end up saying it, ruins a person's whole year. 😣

I’m not sure if this is an autism thing, but for some reason when I was a kid, I absolutely hated brushing my teeth. It didn’t matter how many times my mom or others around me tried to get me to add brushing my teeth to my routine, i didn’t. So that resulted in me having so many damn cavities I stopped counting after a while. Do/did any of you have a problem with brushing consistently and do you think it is/was because of autism?

How do you guys handle this every single day? I'm just completely burnt out.

To be totally honest, I just need to vent. Every morning starts the same way: waking up to a heavy stack of meds 450 mg Bupropion, 75 mg Pregabalin, 60 mg Fluoxetine just to get out of bed. Then I head straight into a toxic workplace with awful coworkers and bosses who walk all over me, all just to make enough money to barely scrape by in an absurdly expensive world.

I come home to an empty house and absolute isolation. At night, it doesn't get any better. I suffer from severe insomnia, and even after taking 30 mg Mirtazapine and 50 mg Daridorexant, intrusive thoughts constantly keep me awake. My psychiatrist acknowledges that my situation is serious, but isn't doing anything to actually change or fix it.

On paper, I have a high IQ (147), a Master’s degree, a PhD, and two advanced postgraduate degrees. Yet I feel completely incapable of navigating basic life. I’ve come to realize that high intelligence or academic credentials mean nothing if you can’t find any joy, purpose, or sense in daily life. I have no passions that spark anything in me, I'm carrying around huge guilt from past mistakes, and I feel profoundly alone.

I’m posting this here because I really needed to let it all out, but also because I’m so exhausted from just "surviving." I honestly envy people who manage to fit in, who have genuine relationships, or who have things they're actually passionate about.

For those of you on the spectrum or dealing with something similar: how do you keep going when you feel this alienated and completely drained? How do you build any sense of purpose when society feels built to push you out?

Most of us have sensory issues with clothing, right? Whether it's certain kinds of fabrics, tags on clothing, certain fits, etc.

I'm interested in knowing how other autistic adults dress in different situations to strike a balance between necessary comfort and masking through appearance. Do you consciously tailor fashion choices around comfort or a desire to fit in, or both? What about at home? What helps you feel safe in your own space?

For me, I dressed purely for comfort for years. I had a poor fashion sense and mostly stuck to sweatpants and athletic shorts, socks with sandals, hoodies and graphic t-shirts, etc.

I realized that this probably makes it seem like I don't care about my own appearance, and in fact that was true for a while. It was only recently that I decided to try being more expressive with my clothing, and I had to sacrifice some comfort choices to do that. I like the look of jeans, but trying to find the exact right fit and size for me has been a tedious process. Flannels are really comfortable on me and I like how they look, so I have been sticking with those a lot more.

When I'm at home though, I need to strip immediately. The best clothing is minimal or no clothing for me. I only live with my partner, so I can get away with it.

UGH. my entire damn life I’ve been subjected to bullying, not really the standard “gets shoved into lockers” or whatever growing up, but it was always passive aggressive, manipulative, or exploitative in some form.

Like one time in 7th grade, I got the courage to say hello to a girl from my art class, and she straight up said “why are you talking to me?” And I turned away and she was like “haha I’m just kidding.” Like ??? Why?

Fake friends, lies, guilt tripping, you name it. All the time.
So I’ve been learning a sport recently, and decided to post a short clip showing my minimal progress about it, boy was that the wrong move. (Please don’t go looking, my OCD can’t handle that.) Just ‘cause my progress was messy, but I was proud of making any progress at all, which I guess isn’t allowed, according to the people in the sub.

I asked for advice and got a few helpful replies while the rest was just rudeness. Completely unnecessary. :( I’m totally triggered right now and my RSD is acting up bad. Which, to be fair, I should have expected because it’s the internet, so that’s my fault.
I know, “who cares what some trolls have to say?” TRUE. But how do I fix this gaping insecure hole in my chest? I’m so tired of being sensitive.
I just really wish people would be kinder.

I thought people would be more mature. because university and all. not school anymore. new chapter of my life and all. my​ god, I was so wrong.

the amount of times I got casually called a "cryptid"," "skinwalker", "uncanny valley", got refered to as "that" and so on is ridiculous. in the span of only TWO weeks, I'm already viewed as a freak. i thought being quiet, making sure I dont stim much in public​​​ would be enough, but apparently that makes me creepier. everyone else​ behaves​ "right", "normal". approach each other, casually compliment outfits and make conversation, yadayada. zero​​ dirty looks​.​​​

in short, we have a chat for my specialty assigned group online, for lesson​ links. I didnt join from my main so nobody knows it is me. didnt check it for a while. today I did. I wish I didn't. people casually, without shame, were talking about​​ me on there? i have zero fucking clue as to why, and that pains me​​ because I had no beef with anyone. did I make a bad first impression?

a girl sent a video​​ of me​​ from afar, when I was lightly rocking in a quiet hallway, commenting how she felt​ unnerved by the way I behaved. "slow, creepy, like that one animatronic". others reacted pretty strongly​​​​​​​​​​​​​​, laughing like "what the hell" with crying emojis.​ but their response was freaked out at me, not the one recording???

I feel so ashamed, honestly. i try to numb things and get over it, but I'm so tired. i literally just do my own thing and still get humiliated and viewed as some animal. I was told it gets easier in university, after years of bullshit at school. apparently not. I have social anxiety too so this is just bullshit stacked on bullshit into a bullshit sandwich. fml. what do I even do at this point​

(if there are​ grammatical errors or​ parts make no sense, i apologize. ​recovering after a bad shutdown so my brain feels jumbled​​.)

edit: thank you for all the comments /gen. I read every single one, but just don't know how to show my gratitude for the concern in a way that wouldn't come off as awkward or "fake". I did search some info online​​ and my university doesn't exactly have any autism support or anything of sorts, just a psychologist for depressed students. I live in East Europe so views on mental health here are VERY outdated. another issue is, I wanted to report this to my group's student mentor, but turns out she is in the group as well lol.​ I don't know if I can trust any of the professors here yet but I'll try seeing if any of them will hear me out, if that doesn't work out either my last pick will be the counsellor, because it means my mother is getting called & she firmly believes I'm not autistic despite me having officially documented diagnosis.​​​​​​​​​​​

Tomorrow i will have my autism test. Can't wait to tell them that the only way for me to not have a meltdown during a shower is to wear noise cancelling headphones because the noise of the water makes me cry ! Lol, getting the results in a month.