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how to get out my own head

aurelis

Heya,

I just wanted to share for some advice. As someone with autism, my mind is so stuck inside itself. It runs away with itself and I can’t catch up with it sometimes. I want to be able to operate with the affairs around me, and have some more discipline. I’m used to taking lots of things on, and then cramming last minute to complete them. It’s worked well for my life, but i reached a breaking point this year, and realised I lacked routine. It’s a challenge, but I’m trying to get more discipline in my life so I’m not just in my own head all the time. I don’t enjoy this. 

any advice on how I can get out of my head?

Parents

  • Sometimes when I’ve got a lot on my plate (which is the case right now) it helps to verbalise the tasks in front of an understanding friend. It can help to break the task down into the required steps (I’m much of a verbal processing type) and the person I’m explaining it to can make sure that I stay on track and don’t start logic looping or drifting off. While doing the task, I either like to write down the steps beforehand and/or find a body double (although that’s not always possible). Also, I try to do longer tasks in shorter intervals. That does not always work because I’m really bad at making conscious breaks during a task, but when I have the energy to do so, it tends to prevent me from burning out as fast as well as the constant drifting off because I bring myself to take a step back from the topic, thus forcing myself to think about whether I’m still on topic with my thoughts.

  • in reply to Emmalephant

    what do you mean by body double, and logic looping?

    verbalising has helped me when I do it. especially with close family. Because then I end up missing details and skipping over things and someone has to slow me down to go through that thinking process a lot more slowly. 

    I hear you with breaks. I really find that a big challenge haha.

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  • in reply to Emmalephant

    what do you mean by body double, and logic looping?

    verbalising has helped me when I do it. especially with close family. Because then I end up missing details and skipping over things and someone has to slow me down to go through that thinking process a lot more slowly. 

    I hear you with breaks. I really find that a big challenge haha.

Children
  • in reply to aurelis

    Body doubling is a strategy where you work alongside someone else. You don’t have to work together, it’s just that the presence of another person helps you to stay on track. It can be helpful, but that really depends on the person and situation. For me, it sometimes interferes with my aversion to being perceived while working, but as long as I trust the other person and they are also working on something, it keeps me focused.

    Now, logic looping is a term I established for myself to describe thought loops during a study process. Another term might be “falling into a rabbit hole” (although not exactly the same). It seems to be a rather common experience in the autistic community to just get stuck on objectively unimportant details. For instance, I recently tried to study for my upcoming biology exam and despite understanding the material, my brain got stuck on a very specific question. First I tried to just go on knowing that this detail is not relevant for the exam, but I wasn’t able to because my thoughts kept coming back to this question. 1.5 hours and several videos of university-level biology lectures later I finally found a satisfying answer to the questions that formed after having the initial question answered. 
    Do I actually have to know this stuff? No! 
    But would I have been able to go on without researching it? Also no.