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Dealing with being overwhelmed??

Jay

Hi guys, I’m new here and recently got my diagnosis (June), this is my first post. So not sure if it’s relevant. 

But I was just wondering, in general has anyone got any tips on handling the feeling of being overwhelmed? I’m not sure if this even is because of my autism but figured this is the best place to find out. 

what I mean by being overwhelmed is for example I had to help my dad by doing his power of attorney request and help to speak his mobile provider as his phone wasn’t working. I spent all weekend thinking about this and was really stressed all day leading up to it. Snappy, short, distracted. I had this feeling that I had far too much going on and just generally felt overwhelmed. 

It took me a total of about an hour to do what I had to do and I just remember finishing it and thinking ‘why have I stressed so much over that!’

Parents

  • Welcome to the community.

    It helps to understand the theory of the monotropic autistic brain, That means we tend to have a single focus at any one time. Any more than that and it can lead to overwhelm.

    Try to do one thing at a time. If you find that thoughts about a future event are distracting and overwhelming you that's where mindfulness techniques can be useful, to bring your thoughts back to the present moment.

    I find that intense hyper focus on a special interest can help me feel less overwhelmed when there is a lot going on.

    I'm not saying that you shouldn't think about the future event at all. Planning for it can help reduce the anxiety. Set aside a specific time to do that planning, so that you can be confident you are prepared and do not need to think about it any more until it happens.

    Autistic people can find phone calls very difficult or even impossible, often due to auditory processing difficulties. It is therefore understandable that you were stressed about it. I'm pleased to hear it went well.

  • in reply to Autonomistic

    Hi Autonomistic,

    Thank you for your reply and some great advice there. So glad that it’s not just me that feels this way! 

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