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Learning/unlearning coping strategies

belles12345

I am interested to discuss what coping strategies you have learnt (or unlearnt) since discovering you are autistic/have an ASC.  

I am in a period of trying to 'unlearn' (apologies if this is not a word...I'm tired to check right now) a specific strategy that has enabled me to get by in the world.  That is, pretending to be someone different to what I am, the person I want to be.  I am finding that by letting myself be myself, that I am starting to connect a little more with a few other people (albeit with many mistakes along the way and starting to feel like I have 'regressed' from my previous 'false self' that uses learned phrases to a point where I now feel barely capable of talking in a full sentence, but I think it's the best way and why should I feel ashamed of trying to be myself).

So if anyone would like to share their strategies for coping, both useful and otherwise, please do.

I hope this makes sense.

Parents

  • Also something I have done a lot of, before and since diagnosis, is committee work. That might seem an inappropriate activity.

    However if they are well managed, people speaking one at a time, and no background noise, I manage fine. If people start talking at the same time or laughing a lot it gets stressful. Also I cannot do the social chit chat that goes on at the end of a meeting. Means I leave promptly.

    What I do find is it provides contact with other people that I wouldn't get through having difficulty with social situations. It is structured and predictable. At the same time it gives me a lot of experience of interchange I wouldn't otherwise have had, which helps inform social encounters, and gives me a bit of role play to use.

    Committees seem to me a good environment for people on the autistic spectrum to flourish in, though I can well understand many would find it as frightening as any other social situation.

    I'm sure though there are other people, not diagnosed perhaps, who seem to join committees, because it gives an opportunity to talk about special interests at length, hopefully if it is the right committee for such dialogue - consider all the railway and other transport groups there are. And I do often meet other autistic spectrum people on committees.

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  • Also something I have done a lot of, before and since diagnosis, is committee work. That might seem an inappropriate activity.

    However if they are well managed, people speaking one at a time, and no background noise, I manage fine. If people start talking at the same time or laughing a lot it gets stressful. Also I cannot do the social chit chat that goes on at the end of a meeting. Means I leave promptly.

    What I do find is it provides contact with other people that I wouldn't get through having difficulty with social situations. It is structured and predictable. At the same time it gives me a lot of experience of interchange I wouldn't otherwise have had, which helps inform social encounters, and gives me a bit of role play to use.

    Committees seem to me a good environment for people on the autistic spectrum to flourish in, though I can well understand many would find it as frightening as any other social situation.

    I'm sure though there are other people, not diagnosed perhaps, who seem to join committees, because it gives an opportunity to talk about special interests at length, hopefully if it is the right committee for such dialogue - consider all the railway and other transport groups there are. And I do often meet other autistic spectrum people on committees.

Children
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