(Peri)menopause and autism

Sitting in a forest with a book - yes - 100% relate to the bliss of doing that! 
I’ve also had a catastrophising mindset for much of my life. I think that autistic people are in general highly sensitive people and we naturally respond in very strong ways to so many aspects of life in general. Being highly sensitive is a strength as well as a weakness - I try to remember that. I also try to remember that many of ‘the demands of everyday life’ are part of a collective problem that most of society struggles with to a degree. I saw something the other day that said that our brains have not had time to evolve to cope with the pace of change humans have experienced in the last few decades. Go back a hundred or so years and we lived in a much quieter, simpler world where our lives would have been less complicated and definitely much quieter and less overstimulated. So if your mind is scrambled it’s definitely not just your personal failing, or you being weak or broken, it’s partly a reasonable response to a the slightly crazy world we live in now. Going back to nature, and finding peace in nature is a very positive and beautiful and very sane response to that. 
There are certain very helpful principles that I have learned from Buddhist philosophy that I try to keep in mind. The first one is ‘acceptance’ - try to avoid ‘fight or flight’ from the things you are struggling with - as this response actually increases our anxiety - try to get to a place of accepting and embracing how you feel. Be a friend to yourself, be kind to yourself. Secondly  - ‘impermanence’ - accept that everything is impermanent - things will change, our bodies will change, the things we love we will all one day lose, because that is the nature of existence. And impermanence is a good thing - if it wasn’t for impermance no child would ever grow up, the world would be chaos, and pain and suffering would go on forever. So embrace impermanence. Change is often very difficult for autistic people, so if we can embrace impermanence and change that will help us. Thirdly - in Buddhist teachings most suffering is caused by attachment and aversion. Being less attached to things reduces anxiety - and attachment sores in many forms - for example we can be attached to our idea of what we should be, or how we should feel, or how we want others to see us. I had dysfunctional parents and for most of my life I was attached to the idea of what my parents SHOULD like. They’re both dead now btw. But now I’ve accepted the fact that they simply were not the way I wanted them to be - and there’s nothing whatsoever I could or can do about that. And when I ‘let go’ of my attachment to the idea of what I felt my parents SHOULD be like I was able to just accept that they were how they were and stop struggling with that. Attachment causes us a lot of trouble. And aversion - ‘I don’t like this’ ‘I don’t want to be in this situation’ - and grappling with that and resistance to that. Change what you can change yes - but often in life things are beyond our control and there’s not point in fighting (or trying to fight) what we cannot change. You know that Christian phrase :  ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference’ - I try to keep that in mind (I’m not a Christian btw). The menopause brings many challenges but I do think it also brings an opportunity to find wisdom. It’s not for nothing that in stories and mythology there are ‘wise old women’ and witches etc - older women have huge value in many cultures. Your innate desire to retreat to the woods with a book is a very wise one in my humble opinion! What better response to this crazy messed up world than to go into nature and learn from a great book, or from wonderful inspiring literature! Trust your instincts, embrace who you are. This can be a wonderful new phase of your life. One of my favourite phrases from Thich Nhat Hanh is ‘No mud, no lotus’ - out of great suffering many wonderful things emerge. In life there is inevitably ‘mud’ - that’s the nature of existence - the key is to notice the ‘lotus’ - and to do what we can to help the lotus to grow. We can do this by cultivating joy and happiness in our lives. Buddhist philosophy is all about doing this. If you’re interested I’d recommend listening to talks by Thich Nhat Hanh, watching the Plum Village YouTube channel or listening to the podcast ‘The Way out is in’. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to benefit from Buddhist philosophy. Eckhart Tolle is also good at conveying some of these sorts of principles - but essentially he is conveying a more ‘watered down’ version of various eastern philosophies, and you might as well go to the ‘source’. Thick Nhat Hanh is the best communicator of this in my experience. 

Thank you for your answer. I would be interested to learn more about your experience as you approached menopause. I know that I am good at catastrophising. But even when I try to not look at the future, just looking at today, I am so overwhelmed, I don't know how to cope. I have a few things that calm my nervous system (for example books and trees :). But I find the demands of every day life so stressful that I mostly walk through days like a zombie, slowly moving from task to task, with melt-downs in between when things did not go as planned. If I could just sit down in a forest with a book (and with food I can tolerate, and clothes that do not bother me etc), I do assume my mental state would be better.  

Thank you very much for your answer. I have an autism assessment in 10 days. I assume a formal diagnosis will help me somewhat (being more accepting towards my problems). It is interesting if you think males also get more pronounced traits with age, I have not heard that before. For my assessment, one of my biggest worries is that I will be told that if my problems were not equally serious my entire life, then it cannot be autism. I was recently in contact with an autism assessment team due to the assessment of my daughter, and I experienced the person I spoke to as being somewhat outdated in their approach, with a focus on male stereotypes and a focus on low functioning traits. For example she said if my daughter can speak full sentences and the Kindergarden did not make complaints about her behavior, then it cannot be autism -  even if the school sent almost daily complaints for the past 10 years. As far as I understand, there are levels of autism (at least in the country I live in), and for example language problems are not pronounced at level 1. The lady said if traits were not labelled as severely different from 'normal' at age 3 to 5, then it is not autism. Such statements make me worried. I saw a scientific paper about autism in females and more than 50% of the participants first received their diagnosis at menopause. For all of these participants, their problems must have been missed earlier in life (not labelled severe enough to warrant an assessment/diagnosis).

I think it is often the case that the menopause can bring autistic traits more to the forefront, and also exacerbate things like anxiety etc. I definitely experienced this. Try to make a point of not focussing on what will happen in the future as you cannot possibly know what will happen - it’s perfectly possible that your symptoms could also improve - it’s impossible to know so there’s no point in worrying about that. How you feel is likely to fluctuate rather than just go in one direction (either better or worse). It’s probably much more helpful to focus on what you can do right now to find helpful strategies to make life easier for you day to day, Finding ways to sooth your nervous system, and finding positive things to focus on that you enjoy. Getting rest, finding things you can still get pleasure from, doing what you can to take some of the pressure and stresses out of your life where possible. Basically focussing on your overall well being, and really taking care of yourself as you make this very natural transition into this new phase of your life. I have found that it’s challenging at times, but there are also silver linings, and I think you can ‘come out the other side’ of a lot of menopausal symptoms and be in pretty good shape overall. 

Hi and welcome to the community. I'm a post menopausal woman, and I think that my autistic traits have got more pronounced as I have aged, although I thought that happened to men as well as women?

I found working difficult, but I was able to reduce my hours to part time in the 7 years leading up to my retirement, which helped me cope. However if that is not an option for you, I suggest you ask your GP to refer you for a formal diagnosis of autism. Here is a link to the articles on this website about getting a diagnosis:

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/diagnosis

I hope that this community gives you a feeling of being supported and not alone in having these issues.