Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi, I’m new here. Sort of.
I’ve been dipping in and out of this forum for the last 5/6years, usually only reading what others have written rather than actually participating myself. I find socialising, even online, very difficult, but I’m trying to overcome that by introducing myself and participating a bit more.
For the sake of introductions...
Im a 31 year old female on the spectrum, I was diagnosed by my local Health and Social Care Trust in 2016. I have no partner or children, live alone (apart from my dog), and have dedicated most of my time to studying. I am in the process of completing a PhD and also teach within the university I attend, but am currently on a leave of absence due to burning out... once again. A lot of people mention their passions or special interests in their introductions, I’m not sure this counts as either, but I’ve been preoccupied by notions of justice for as long as I can remember. I also love animals and enjoy reading, listening to music, organising things, running, playing the PlayStation and a number of other pretty typical activities.
By participating more in this forum I hope to build some confidence, learn new things, hear about other people’s experiences of living with autism, share my own experiences, and maybe even make a friend or two (even if they are only online friends). This is already longer than intended so I’ll wrap up here and just say thanks to everyone who was brave enough to share their thoughts and experiences here on this forum, you’ve helped me a lot without even realising it, so thank you, I hope I can do the same for someone someday.
Hi everyone, thank you for replying. I panicked a bit after posting to this forum and retreated a little so I’m only seeing these responses. Now that I’ve seen how friendly everyone is, I realise how unnecessary all that worrying was! I’m not sure what the norm is in terms of replying individually to comments etc, especially since it’s been a few weeks since I logged on, but thank you all for the warm welcome and sharing a little about yourselves. I look forward to chatting with you here. Thanks for making me feel welcome.
A belated welcome from me.
As Plectrum said, our social anxieties don't just disappear when we're online, and my welcome is belated as I've only just returned from a spell away from the forums to recharge my batteries a bit after getting in a bit of a tizzy about obsessing too much about what I post and how much time I spend here.
Just Me said: I’m not sure what the norm is in terms of replying individually to comments etc
As it's an autism website, we don't really do "normal". People's communication habits and language skills are extremely diverse, so we're generally a pretty tolerant crowd, and if someone is getting a bit impatient, someone will usually pop in to remind them of this.
When individual replies are awkward because you've had several responses, there are a couple of other ways that you can address specific members. To insert a quote (like the one above), just select the text that you want to quote using your mouse, and a little button will pop up allowing you to insert it into your reply. You can also "mention" someone by typing the '@' character followed by their name (a little "autocorrect" style list pops up to help you find the name that you need). In both the cases the forum member will get a notification so that they know you responded (if they have that feature enabled).
Best wishes.
I continue to get waves of anxiety that make me retreat after a spell of posting, but that is probably because this is the most social thing I do and I'm still learning to manage how quickly my batteries run dry after a spell of activity.
One tip i learned: you can only edit posts for a while and it seems not delete them after someone has replied, due to thread parent/child node dependencies. So if there is some stuff that is more private , put it in your profile and you can change that from time to time, and if you ever want to leave you can erase what is on your profile or refresh it. And no one can see your profile without an account.
If you post something and really want to backtrack, you can edit the post afterwards for a couple of weeks ( I haven't worked out exactly how long). Now that I know, it seems I'm less in need to actually doing it because it was the anxiety more than the real need. I have only posted, regretted and deleted once, and made a few edits along the way (mostly fat finger corrections )