Published on 12, July, 2020
So, after being pressured by family for a painful amount of time, I'm posting on here.
Firstly, I've been told by many I have some rather unique symptoms of Aspergers'. For example, I don't struggle with social interaction beyond mild social anxiety. After being friends with more than one autistic person, I've begun to notice more and more that I don't suffer from symptoms like other people. In fact, it's at the point where I've had to spend a long time with the university I go to in two weeks and explain everything in fine detail, and every time they made an assumption it was wrong.
And I don't doubt i have aspergers. I am oversensitive to smell and sound (though almost never overwhelmed), my head tends to do its own things and stick me in its obsessive loop and I struggle to 'put away' thoughts. I hope there's someone on this forum who's had a similar experience.
Secondly, I find it impossible to organise. Beyond impossible. I'm getting a dyspraxia assessment soon but to put it simply, sometimes I just don't remember. The spark isn't even there. When I have the moment of thinking on what I need to do, important things just don't come to mind. I can be telling myself every day for a week and remembering to do something and then I'll forget. And every method I've tried to keep organised has turned out bad. The last eight reminders on my phone went wrong in a variety of different and remarkably stupid ways. I forget to take planners around, lose them, never check them, or write in the wrong parts of them again and again until I can't find where I'm meant to be.
Has anyone got any good solutions/band aids to this?
GooseMachine54 said:I forget to take planners around, lose them, never check them, or write in the wrong parts of them again and again until I can't find where I'm meant to be.Has anyone got any good solutions/band aids to this?
I forget to take planners around, lose them, never check them, or write in the wrong parts of them again and again until I can't find where I'm meant to be.
I very much know what you mean about forgetting stuff.
Basically I do the same set things at the same set points during the day, week, month or year, by having made them into habitual activity routines over time ~ day in day out, week in and weak out and so on fourth for years. I found that using a wall calendar with days listed below each other, ticking them off at the beginning of the day, was most practical for me. Appointments get noted in where appropriate, like a personal organizer.
Making sure that set things are done according to what is most habitually alike at a particular time ~ social interaction days, shopping days and so fourth, means that things over time become automatic without having to think about them so much, and they just get done by rolling momentum.
Take advantage of your Autism and the need for established routine, and get yourself habitually organized sort of thing. A new long tern routine structure can take ages to integrate ~ but once it is habituated, the increasing experience of getting things done permeates through the confusion, and reorganizes the neural networks of the mind-body relationship for more efficient outcomes.
It does help to avoid feeling particular negative or positive when doing habituation work as being neutral about things allows habitual behaviourisms to integrate more effectively, especial if you feel positive about your mistakes and recognize them as retakes for the ongoing improvements.
If any of that helps perhaps?
Two problems:
a) I don't have that part of autism. I have no need for order and routine.
b) I've had calenders upon on my wall. Did nothing :/
GooseMachine54 said:a) I don't have that part of autism. I have no need for order and routine.
I don't do things rigidly the same way. Some autistic people do always walk the same way home and get disturbed if they have to go a different way. I'm sort of the opposite and like to explore, and I know other Aspies who are similar and hate being tied down or predictable. However, some things like keeping fit require regular routine, and with external encouragement and a lot of effort I did develop something of a routine there, so that it's now much less effort to remember or 'feel the urge' to exercise at some point on a given day.
GooseMachine54 said:b) I've had calenders upon on my wall. Did nothing :/
I have a to-do list on my wall that I've been ignoring. Again, that's become a habit, but a bad one.
Did you read the article on executive function?
https://musingsofanaspie.com/2014/01/07/executive-function-primer-part-1/
It points out that there are lots of different mental faculties involved in 'doing stuff', from being aware of time to inhibiting other behaviour. So, in order to narrow down the problem, could you say for roughly what percentage of appointments or tasks?
Yes, I get what you mean. "Organisation tools" are probably a good way for someone else to visualise my disorganisation and procrastination, but don't actually help me very much - they just add an extra layer of abstraction which is just as affected by my poor executive functioning as the tasks that they're meant to be organising.
I tried using one of those "thought cloud" programs once - where you can visually arrange tasks and sub-tasks to see how they are all related. I really, really enjoyed spending hours arranging all the fancy little symbols, arrows, text fonts, etc. etc. The results might have made an interesting work of abstract word-art, but it actually made my procrastination worse rather than better.