Advice from anyone with asd level one

Hello Nefilim !

Welcome to the community!

I hope you’ll like it here. The members helped me a lot — I got very sad after my diagnosis and wrote here under the topic “sadness after diagnosis.” Everything is collected here so we can re-read it.

It was about a month ago. I still remember one part: “happiness is found in unusual places.” That calmed me so much. When I unmask at home, or whenever I can, I try to let myself enjoy my little sensory or cognitive happinesses.

Best wishes!

Thank you Ma.ra. Hello to you too, there are a lot of threads on here to read, i should try doing that instead of getting upset reading the news. Luckily i have had a lot of time where i haven’t had to pretend to be something i’m not when masking and draining myself  but i think that’s part of the problem, i have a lot more time to think about it all too. It would be great just to be able to switch off my thought processes sometimes lol

What is it you actually have problems with? Start with them and look for ways to make them better. That's it really. You can read a lot.

Finding ways to sleep and relax is the key. You can't avoid all stress, some things are just harder, the issue is making sure you can cope, tag you allow recovery tine and it is sustainable. You have to push a bit to achieve things.

Try to understand yourself by paying attention to how you feel. Look for patterns, journal if necessary. Look at when you are irritable, anxious, frozen, fawning scared, etc. and look at what lead up to it. Did you have too much coffee, not sleep well, drink some alcohol, skip breakfast, forget to drink, have too much work, etc.

Once you know how you behave you can plan around it. Often just knowing makes it less bad.

What is it you actually have problems with? Start with them and look for ways to make them better. That's it really. You can read a lot.

Finding ways to sleep and relax is the key. You can't avoid all stress, some things are just harder, the issue is making sure you can cope, tag you allow recovery tine and it is sustainable. You have to push a bit to achieve things.

Try to understand yourself by paying attention to how you feel. Look for patterns, journal if necessary. Look at when you are irritable, anxious, frozen, fawning scared, etc. and look at what lead up to it. Did you have too much coffee, not sleep well, drink some alcohol, skip breakfast, forget to drink, have too much work, etc.

Once you know how you behave you can plan around it. Often just knowing makes it less bad.

Thanks Stuart333 you’re right i do tend to get hung up on the negatives, i was told i catastrophise or something like that so i need to try to stop it. 
i have a mask for sleeping that helps sometimes and regarding weight I’m considered obese but i wouldn’t say i look particularly big on the outside. I need to lose weight though that’s for sure and need to exercise more!

You don't need to get hung up on problems, everyone is different. You want to look for when you are calm, when you are not calm, when you are struggling or find it harder to do things, then look for why.

When calm, you can think straight and do what you want to do. The more uncalm you feel the more nervous energy is being used up. You only have so.much.

Sleep is the number 1 issue for regulation and coping.

You may want to look at a machine to help with the apnea if you haven't already. If weight is a contributory factory then you may want to consider that too. It is worth it. Exercise help regulation too. Nothing crazy, just a 10 or 20 minute walk.

I struggle with sleeping a lot, i have severe sleep apnea so that doesn’t help :/ i don’t drink alcohol or coffee though so i don’t worry about those. I get irritable a lot though mainly with noise so i bought some noise cancelling headphones to try to cut that out.

I will try to write down things that cause me problems like you said. Half the problem is i don’t know what the problems are or don’t recognise them yet.