Life...Dreams...Hope. . . Where do they come from? Where do they go my brothers and sisters. :-(

Home working has made a massive difference to me with this. I spend 100% of my time in the office masking and trying to be the professional/humble/well adjusted worker they want but when I get home I actually physically cry because I'm so so tired of working AND having to put on a hypothetical play all day.

Working remotely has made the difference for a few reasons. One, it means I'm valued by the quality of my work, not my persona at work which feels RIGHT to me. Secondly, I can turn my camera off in meetings (a work adjustment for me) and this means I have to mask much less in meetings. I hardly have to mask at all nowadays.

This could potentially be terrible advice cause since I've started working from home, I never leave the house and don't really see my friends much. Bt it definitely made me feel more motivated with work and it's given me dreams and aspirations with my career that I previously thought would be impossible. 

Thank you. It's not terrible advice. What you say makes perfect sense and I'm sorry you have to deal with such exhaustion at work that you literally burnout the moment you get home. I hope life gives you at least what you give because that means you get 150% which is my idea of a better life. If people only got what they give, this world would find balance between the givers(150%) and the takers (50%).

I am just so burned out, I have zero support IRL. Walked away from all the fake friends 7 years ago, any family that I was feeding with my energy, I stopped giving that energy and lo and behold, they found other people to feed on rather than give me even 75% of what I gave them...

I am just lost now and I'm thankful to have people like you that understand even if the advice doesn't apply to my life, you at least care about a total stranger, more effort in your response than those connected by blood give. Family really is an F word...

Kefka said:

I am just so burned out, I have zero support IRL.

Have you tried therapy? Reading your comments makes me think you would benefit from connecting with your authentic self and realising that you don't need to do all this stuff for others - ease off on this and give more of that energy back to just being you.

Coming from such a long time masking I expect this to be difficult but with your self professed higher IQ you should be able to rationalise the situations and formulate appropriate responses with little mental effort.

With interations with difficult family members, setting boundaries is a key part of this.

A therapist with knowledge of autism is a huge ally in being able to realise all of this, but you have to be open to accepting help.

Between the therapist and this site I think you will have plenty of support to deal with all of this,

thank you Ian. I'm burned out right now but I want to say I agree 99% with what you say! I'll post further when I can, and thanks for the truth bomb my friend!

Autriker thanks for coming back to my 2nd thread.  You are literally one of the first 2 people that took a vested interest in my struggle so honestly, thank you so much.

I don't have the energy to look into litigation I'm literally using everything to speak to you guys because I have no positive outcome devoting what little I have left to them.

The only reason I'm not completely burned out in zuccada mode is because people like you and TheCatWoman actually understand so I force myself feeling like a corpse to continue explaining except I don't have to anymore here, because you understand my fear. . .

Always being trapped without a way, to ever escape this fate...Being Autistic,I apologize if I'm weird Autriker I am matching my words to musical connotations and beats. I cannot help this, I played music(Piano) by ear from age 4, now I can't because I slit my left wrist in half, all tendons and nerves 7 years ago.

I apologize if I'm too graphic, this was 7 years ago not how I am today yet I can review it objectively if that makes sense.

I feel like I masked to hard that I literally turned the knife on myself..Does that make sense to you? Or am I off my rocker?

It's funny. Within the first 4 words you said, I knew where you were going with this. It's nice to know I'm not alone in inf dumping on someone I respect. You're awesome dude and it's nice to see that I really don't have to explain that your first 4 words\ explain everything.

I'm trying to say, it's nice to choose to explain to understand a friend who will in the end, comprehend the stance, of explaining an info dump in 4 words and I don't misunderstand you or take insult. That's the beauty, we understand each other see. . . Love and Peace.  .  .  . hope your free! Much apologies, I just recently connected to being ND, I speak in connotations musical innovations...

Kefka said:

I have major issue with the psychiatric industry that as long as they can give someone a dangerous medication, it's worth diagnosing.

It has been my experience that the psychiatrists of this world treat peoples issues with drugs while the psychotherapists deal with the same issues using therapy techniques.

Some conditions need drugs to effectively regulate or treat them, but autism is not one of these.

Some on this site believe in self medication using a number of psychoactive drugs, but it is harder to say who is more dangerous, enthusiastic but untrained amateurs or trained but narrow minded professionals.

You live in the land of litigation, can't you sue them?

Classical mythology pedant here, many apologies. Prometheus had his liver eaten by an eagle each day, then it regenerated over night, also brought fire to mortals.. Sisyphus was the one with the boulder.

The first paragraph of your writing is amazing advice and the 2nd is LITERALLY exactly how I feel...

I mean I don't know your life so I can only reference off of mine, but at 4 years old I was tracking hurricanes from the Cape Verde islands off of the African coast into the Caribbean because I live in Southern New England which roughly once in every 50 years receives a hurricane on what's termed the dirty side, the side moving in the same direction as the winds are spinning, which results in events like the Hurricane of 1938 which killed over 500 people, many were sucked out to sea on the beach because senior meteorologists would not listen to the new generation of which one brilliant 20-something man successfully tracked this storm and TOLD the senior meteorologists, yet barometric pressure was not understood by them as it was something only younger meteorologists would of been taught.

They took his mathematical paper and threw it in the trash...less than a day later, innocent families were getting sucked out to sea when a 20+ ft storm surge came onshore. Here in Rhode Island we built the infamous "hurricane barrier" because our Capital in the smallest state (everyone here only needs to drive 45 minutes to reach any part of the state so any Rhode Islander pretty much knows a friend of a friend of any other) was inundated with 18.5 feet of seawater. This is only a 15 minute drive from my home. There are still marks on our skyscrapers "--- the water was this high."

I apologize. I'm trying to provide examples of ultra young hyper-focused memories and I just realized I am info dumping and still masking in some of my writing(over-explaining to someone I don't have to mask too) and thoughts sometimes.

Your 2nd paragraph is literally what I think about philosophically. As far as getting decent family or even a decent human to diagnose Autism as opposed to me having to do it myself then confront the psychiatrist and psychologist that were drugging and misdiagnosing me with their own job only to have them admit they believe I am but couldn't find a cure...I don't even know where to begin...

All of my pillars - physical, spiritual, mental and emotional have all been greatly eroded if not outright broken. Like you, I cannot help but to imagine, If I met one single person that didn't just tell me "you're so smart" or "where did you get your degree?"  or one competent medical worker, how would my life have turned out?

Because for 12 years I was an auto-didactic horticulturalist and ran a hurricane tracking website on FB for anyone on the eastern seaboard which resulted in a woman and her 3 children getting saved before their house was submerged under 24ft of storm surge in North Carolina.

I can never remember the name of the hurricane yet remember every odd detail about it's nature. It went through an unusually cool pool of ocean water around the Gulf Stream and Bermuda, which made the NHC call for a weaker landfall, then at the same time it faced vertical wind sheer (I apologize, if you live on the coast you have some understanding of this, if not, I'm sorry for info dumping so much but you're in a similar mindset to me so you'll either love it or hate it :-) .) so the NHC(National Hurricane Center) issued a further weakening, yet I continued to see a powerful low pressure and jet stream that would impact this system basically negating the 2 factors causing a weakening and instead having the opposite effect.

I was not the only storm tracker that felt this way and soon the internet was filled with the opposite of the forecast from the NHC. The woman I spoke of, called me saying she had just moved to North Carolina from Michigan and never experienced a hurricane.  The NHC told her to stay put with their forecast, yet she knew mine for about 4 years so she asked if she could call me for further explanation.

I explained the above to her and she decided to evacuate with her 3 kids as a single mom. Her house was gone within 24 hours, she called me back to let me know what happened. I hyper-focus on my passions so intently that I wonder if I could just put it all together, would I be able to be truly masterful in some area I never thought capable?

When I'd sell my plants to nurseries, people would often ask questions about pests or disease on their plants and microbiology and entomology were my forte' so I would go into ridiculous info dumps that could last 1 hour but the customers loved it because I was just stating almost like a computer all the ways to stop the pests, diseases or how to properly fertilize. So when I finally stopped focusing on the subject and focused back on the person there were already people writing down what I was saying and asking me what college I graduated from.

That's the sad problem. I did go to college for psychology which is kind of why I understand just how egregious it is for the NT psychological community to brush aside such a diagnoses as not being worth bringing up because it cannot provide a medication kickback from the pharmaceutical industry. 

To them it's not a big deal, both from personal and professional understanding, it is a big deal and the ramifications of not telling their patients what they know, simply because they can't profit from it, is IMHO a violation of medical ethics and a major problem that many adult Autistic people face from them not understanding that the diagnoses is important and there doesn't need to be a cure if that makes sense.

If your still reading this, I greatly appreciate as I truly do connect with what your saying and the result is me info dumping to you because I know you get it and so the extra energy to write all this is worth it. I just want to say thank you for just understanding which is far more than anything I've had in my life through family or NT doctors.

When people make outrageous statements about ASD people I ask them how that statement would sound if they replaced words like autistic, with gay, black or jew? Funny (not) how often the sentence or statement would be classed as hate speech.

I can understand why you're exhausted, I get the Prometheus feeling too, I suspect many of us do.

It's such a shame that those of us with high IQ, have ended up using to hide who and what we really are to the point that others are shocked, surprised, how would they have known "you seem so normal". I wonder what we could of done with if we'd been accepted from the outset and we had been allowed to flourish in our own way?

I hope I don't come off as arrogant by mentioning IQ. I only bring it up to use as another anchor point for what I'm trying to explain. It is not a benefit and is the reason I successfully masked until 40 as an average NT which resulted in permanent physical damage to myself, so it's really not something to boast about but it's relevant to explain how nobody detected this until I literally crashed into full shutdown for weeks which forced me to figure this out and forcefully bring it up with the doctors I were seeing for a myriad of mental health issues that I *never* had and suffering under medications that screwed with my head because they couldn't do their jobs correctly which resulted in my life becoming a living hell.

With 2 self-deletion attempts leading to me being clinically dead from not knowing how I was burning the candle at both ends by what I'd describe as hyper-masking, I ended up deciding to see a psychologist and psychiatrist 7 years ago. Here is the kicker. . .

I paid these people to help me and they labeled me 5 different incorrect diagnoses until I finally got the courage to approach them literally 3 months ago with the fact that I know without a doubt I am Autistic.

My psychiatrist who had misdiagnosed me with 5 diagnoses and given multiple different anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds as they shifted through their rainbow diagnoses of me, finally were able to see, when I told them it was more than likely that I am Autistic, my psychiatrist said "well I've suspected you are Autistic for the past 4 years, I just didn't want to tell you because there's no -Cure-.

Unfortunately the medical community is run by NTs that have no clue that for me and I'd assume for many who are adult Autistic as well,  just knowing who we are would have spared many of us a living hell which we wouldn't of had to go through.

I have major issue with the psychiatric industry that as long as they can give someone a dangerous medication, it's worth diagnosing. The moment they can't, they won't diagnose as was the case with the psychiatrist and psychologist who both agreed after 4+ years and me having to go to them to do their job for them.

What's even more bothersome though, is that the psychiatrist said no "cure." So NT doctors are labeling us as a disease when it's clear ND's are responsible for 95% of inventions? I mean Einstein, Newton, Tesla and Musk are all Autistic. I can't think of many NTs that are capable of hyper-focusing on a passion with such depth that it produces an invention.

So going back to these people, even different doctors, is pointless because right from the start they view us as a disease which needs a cure and because there's no pill to make us conform to their idea of 'normal', they don't even bother diagnosing which is their ONE JOB! 

They are so out in left field, they don't even comprehend, that the diagnoses lets a person that hyper-focuses, comprehend and understand who they are and that I don't need a cure, I need empathy and honesty, not what they did to me.

That is basically the shortest version of my story. Thank you again for advice, I feel like my life has been similar to the mythology of Prometheus, not his accomplishment, just his punishments,  always having to push the boulder uphill only to know it falls down to the ground the very next morning.

I know he finds purpose in each day which gives him a higher purpose in his personal hell and that is sort of what I am trying to do in my life. Just hyper-focus on music, anime and philosophy, tune out reality, and let myself try to autocorrect to the person I truly am as opposed to the masked person I've been.

I hope I don't come off as arrogant by mentioning IQ. I only bring it up to use as another anchor point for what I'm trying to explain. It is not a benefit and is the reason I successfully masked until 40 as an average NT which resulted in permanent physical damage to myself, so it's really not something to boast about but it's relevant to explain how nobody detected this until I literally crashed into full shutdown for weeks which forced me to figure this out and forcefully bring it up with the doctors I were seeing for a myriad of mental health issues that I *never* had and suffering under medications that screwed with my head because they couldn't do their jobs correctly which resulted in my life becoming a living hell.

With 2 self-deletion attempts leading to me being clinically dead from not knowing how I was burning the candle at both ends by what I'd describe as hyper-masking, I ended up deciding to see a psychologist and psychiatrist 7 years ago. Here is the kicker. . .

I paid these people to help me and they labeled me 5 different incorrect diagnoses until I finally got the courage to approach them literally 3 months ago with the fact that I know without a doubt I am Autistic.

My psychiatrist who had misdiagnosed me with 5 diagnoses and given multiple different anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds as they shifted through their rainbow diagnoses of me, finally were able to see, when I told them it was more than likely that I am Autistic, my psychiatrist said "well I've suspected you are Autistic for the past 4 years, I just didn't want to tell you because there's no -Cure-.

Unfortunately the medical community is run by NTs that have no clue that for me and I'd assume for many who are adult Autistic as well,  just knowing who we are would have spared many of us a living hell which we wouldn't of had to go through.

I have major issue with the psychiatric industry that as long as they can give someone a dangerous medication, it's worth diagnosing. The moment they can't, they won't diagnose as was the case with the psychiatrist and psychologist who both agreed after 4+ years and me having to go to them to do their job for them.

What's even more bothersome though, is that the psychiatrist said no "cure." So NT doctors are labeling us as a disease when it's clear ND's are responsible for 95% of inventions? I mean Einstein, Newton, Tesla and Musk are all Autistic. I can't think of many NTs that are capable of hyper-focusing on a passion with such depth that it produces an invention.

So going back to these people, even different doctors, is pointless because right from the start they view us as a disease which needs a cure and because there's no pill to make us conform to their idea of 'normal', they don't even bother diagnosing which is their ONE JOB! 

They are so out in left field, they don't even comprehend, that the diagnoses lets a person that hyper-focuses, comprehend and understand who they are and that I don't need a cure, I need empathy and honesty, not what they did to me.

That is basically the shortest version of my story. Thank you again for advice, I feel like my life has been similar to the mythology of Prometheus, not his accomplishment, just his punishments,  always having to push the boulder uphill only to know it falls down to the ground the very next morning.

I know he finds purpose in each day which gives him a higher purpose in his personal hell and that is sort of what I am trying to do in my life. Just hyper-focus on music, anime and philosophy, tune out reality, and let myself try to autocorrect to the person I truly am as opposed to the masked person I've been.

thank you Ian. I'm burned out right now but I want to say I agree 99% with what you say! I'll post further when I can, and thanks for the truth bomb my friend!

Autriker thanks for coming back to my 2nd thread.  You are literally one of the first 2 people that took a vested interest in my struggle so honestly, thank you so much.

I don't have the energy to look into litigation I'm literally using everything to speak to you guys because I have no positive outcome devoting what little I have left to them.

The only reason I'm not completely burned out in zuccada mode is because people like you and TheCatWoman actually understand so I force myself feeling like a corpse to continue explaining except I don't have to anymore here, because you understand my fear. . .

Always being trapped without a way, to ever escape this fate...Being Autistic,I apologize if I'm weird Autriker I am matching my words to musical connotations and beats. I cannot help this, I played music(Piano) by ear from age 4, now I can't because I slit my left wrist in half, all tendons and nerves 7 years ago.

I apologize if I'm too graphic, this was 7 years ago not how I am today yet I can review it objectively if that makes sense.

I feel like I masked to hard that I literally turned the knife on myself..Does that make sense to you? Or am I off my rocker?

It's funny. Within the first 4 words you said, I knew where you were going with this. It's nice to know I'm not alone in inf dumping on someone I respect. You're awesome dude and it's nice to see that I really don't have to explain that your first 4 words\ explain everything.

I'm trying to say, it's nice to choose to explain to understand a friend who will in the end, comprehend the stance, of explaining an info dump in 4 words and I don't misunderstand you or take insult. That's the beauty, we understand each other see. . . Love and Peace.  .  .  . hope your free! Much apologies, I just recently connected to being ND, I speak in connotations musical innovations...

Kefka said:

I have major issue with the psychiatric industry that as long as they can give someone a dangerous medication, it's worth diagnosing.

It has been my experience that the psychiatrists of this world treat peoples issues with drugs while the psychotherapists deal with the same issues using therapy techniques.

Some conditions need drugs to effectively regulate or treat them, but autism is not one of these.

Some on this site believe in self medication using a number of psychoactive drugs, but it is harder to say who is more dangerous, enthusiastic but untrained amateurs or trained but narrow minded professionals.

You live in the land of litigation, can't you sue them?

Classical mythology pedant here, many apologies. Prometheus had his liver eaten by an eagle each day, then it regenerated over night, also brought fire to mortals.. Sisyphus was the one with the boulder.

The first paragraph of your writing is amazing advice and the 2nd is LITERALLY exactly how I feel...

I mean I don't know your life so I can only reference off of mine, but at 4 years old I was tracking hurricanes from the Cape Verde islands off of the African coast into the Caribbean because I live in Southern New England which roughly once in every 50 years receives a hurricane on what's termed the dirty side, the side moving in the same direction as the winds are spinning, which results in events like the Hurricane of 1938 which killed over 500 people, many were sucked out to sea on the beach because senior meteorologists would not listen to the new generation of which one brilliant 20-something man successfully tracked this storm and TOLD the senior meteorologists, yet barometric pressure was not understood by them as it was something only younger meteorologists would of been taught.

They took his mathematical paper and threw it in the trash...less than a day later, innocent families were getting sucked out to sea when a 20+ ft storm surge came onshore. Here in Rhode Island we built the infamous "hurricane barrier" because our Capital in the smallest state (everyone here only needs to drive 45 minutes to reach any part of the state so any Rhode Islander pretty much knows a friend of a friend of any other) was inundated with 18.5 feet of seawater. This is only a 15 minute drive from my home. There are still marks on our skyscrapers "--- the water was this high."

I apologize. I'm trying to provide examples of ultra young hyper-focused memories and I just realized I am info dumping and still masking in some of my writing(over-explaining to someone I don't have to mask too) and thoughts sometimes.

Your 2nd paragraph is literally what I think about philosophically. As far as getting decent family or even a decent human to diagnose Autism as opposed to me having to do it myself then confront the psychiatrist and psychologist that were drugging and misdiagnosing me with their own job only to have them admit they believe I am but couldn't find a cure...I don't even know where to begin...

All of my pillars - physical, spiritual, mental and emotional have all been greatly eroded if not outright broken. Like you, I cannot help but to imagine, If I met one single person that didn't just tell me "you're so smart" or "where did you get your degree?"  or one competent medical worker, how would my life have turned out?

Because for 12 years I was an auto-didactic horticulturalist and ran a hurricane tracking website on FB for anyone on the eastern seaboard which resulted in a woman and her 3 children getting saved before their house was submerged under 24ft of storm surge in North Carolina.

I can never remember the name of the hurricane yet remember every odd detail about it's nature. It went through an unusually cool pool of ocean water around the Gulf Stream and Bermuda, which made the NHC call for a weaker landfall, then at the same time it faced vertical wind sheer (I apologize, if you live on the coast you have some understanding of this, if not, I'm sorry for info dumping so much but you're in a similar mindset to me so you'll either love it or hate it :-) .) so the NHC(National Hurricane Center) issued a further weakening, yet I continued to see a powerful low pressure and jet stream that would impact this system basically negating the 2 factors causing a weakening and instead having the opposite effect.

I was not the only storm tracker that felt this way and soon the internet was filled with the opposite of the forecast from the NHC. The woman I spoke of, called me saying she had just moved to North Carolina from Michigan and never experienced a hurricane.  The NHC told her to stay put with their forecast, yet she knew mine for about 4 years so she asked if she could call me for further explanation.

I explained the above to her and she decided to evacuate with her 3 kids as a single mom. Her house was gone within 24 hours, she called me back to let me know what happened. I hyper-focus on my passions so intently that I wonder if I could just put it all together, would I be able to be truly masterful in some area I never thought capable?

When I'd sell my plants to nurseries, people would often ask questions about pests or disease on their plants and microbiology and entomology were my forte' so I would go into ridiculous info dumps that could last 1 hour but the customers loved it because I was just stating almost like a computer all the ways to stop the pests, diseases or how to properly fertilize. So when I finally stopped focusing on the subject and focused back on the person there were already people writing down what I was saying and asking me what college I graduated from.

That's the sad problem. I did go to college for psychology which is kind of why I understand just how egregious it is for the NT psychological community to brush aside such a diagnoses as not being worth bringing up because it cannot provide a medication kickback from the pharmaceutical industry. 

To them it's not a big deal, both from personal and professional understanding, it is a big deal and the ramifications of not telling their patients what they know, simply because they can't profit from it, is IMHO a violation of medical ethics and a major problem that many adult Autistic people face from them not understanding that the diagnoses is important and there doesn't need to be a cure if that makes sense.

If your still reading this, I greatly appreciate as I truly do connect with what your saying and the result is me info dumping to you because I know you get it and so the extra energy to write all this is worth it. I just want to say thank you for just understanding which is far more than anything I've had in my life through family or NT doctors.

When people make outrageous statements about ASD people I ask them how that statement would sound if they replaced words like autistic, with gay, black or jew? Funny (not) how often the sentence or statement would be classed as hate speech.

I can understand why you're exhausted, I get the Prometheus feeling too, I suspect many of us do.

It's such a shame that those of us with high IQ, have ended up using to hide who and what we really are to the point that others are shocked, surprised, how would they have known "you seem so normal". I wonder what we could of done with if we'd been accepted from the outset and we had been allowed to flourish in our own way?