Hey everyone,
My name is Athena and I'm a 27-year-old woman from the Netherlands. I've been diagnosed with High Functioning Autism when I was 17. I'm currently working hard on my master research and am really hoping to graduate in a few months.
My biggest problem is sound input. I hear everything and process everything, I get tired quickly from sounds. I have to carefully think about everything I do, how tired will it make me and will it be worth it. Every time I go to university I get really tired (it's a two hour travel, and while I'm there people talk). On my own birthday I can't spend longer than an hour with my family (most of the time). I can't watch an hour of TV without thinking about if it'll be worth it. Basically I'm limited in everything I do.
When I was 15, I started to have severe depression, there were several causes. One of them was that sounds were very tiring for me and so I had very little energy. Eventually they gave me antidepressant medication and that helps tons!
Then a few years ago I again had a downfall, where every sound freaked me out and I couldn't do anything because I had so little energy. That's when I started the current medication. I can't be on them for too long though so I'll have to go off them soon. I'll be glad to hopefully lose the many side effects but I am worried how tired noise will make me.
One of my other problems is uncertaincy. I find it really difficult to deal with uncertaincy. For a long time I thought I could handle it allright, but the stress keeps building up and my various coping mechanisms all have flaws (ie. I self-harm, I buy things, I move items around so they're straight (OCD)), I'm trying to do these things less and am finding myself even more stressed in the process.
Once I'm graduated hopefully I'll be a lot less stressed, the stress has been gradually building up as I've got closer to graduation so hopefully once I'm graduated it'll go down again. I plan to go off the medication and take a long break.. I need it!
I found this forum via Google and am hoping to find some people here with similar problems, to maybe meet some new online friends. Social contacts tire me, so online is the easiest for me as I can think about my response much longer than in a normal real life conversation (where you also have to pay attention to eye contact etc). I don't have many real life friends, I mean friends that I meet up with. I have my family and my boyfriend, I have some online friends that I message or email or talk to on other forums.
My biggest hobby is reading, I read a lot of books and love it. I also love to look at my books (and Kindle) and to organise them. I also love to spend time with our animals, I live with my parents and we have two dogs, two goats and many chicken (I think 30ish). When I was younger I loved to write however other than writing emails, messages, forum posts I haven't done any writing in a long time. I had the dream of once writing a novel, about what it's like to live with my HFA, and wrote bits of it. Maybe, some day.. I also like to watch films and tv series (but can't do this too much) and I like to play video games (I can only do this by bits also).
I think that's enough information for now, I look forward to meet some friendly people and read some nice posts
.
My name is Athena and I'm a 27-year-old woman from the Netherlands. I've been diagnosed with High Functioning Autism when I was 17. I'm currently working hard on my master research and am really hoping to graduate in a few months.
My biggest problem is sound input. I hear everything and process everything, I get tired quickly from sounds. I have to carefully think about everything I do, how tired will it make me and will it be worth it. Every time I go to university I get really tired (it's a two hour travel, and while I'm there people talk). On my own birthday I can't spend longer than an hour with my family (most of the time). I can't watch an hour of TV without thinking about if it'll be worth it. Basically I'm limited in everything I do.
When I was 15, I started to have severe depression, there were several causes. One of them was that sounds were very tiring for me and so I had very little energy. Eventually they gave me antidepressant medication and that helps tons!
Then a few years ago I again had a downfall, where every sound freaked me out and I couldn't do anything because I had so little energy. That's when I started the current medication. I can't be on them for too long though so I'll have to go off them soon. I'll be glad to hopefully lose the many side effects but I am worried how tired noise will make me.
One of my other problems is uncertaincy. I find it really difficult to deal with uncertaincy. For a long time I thought I could handle it allright, but the stress keeps building up and my various coping mechanisms all have flaws (ie. I self-harm, I buy things, I move items around so they're straight (OCD)), I'm trying to do these things less and am finding myself even more stressed in the process.
Once I'm graduated hopefully I'll be a lot less stressed, the stress has been gradually building up as I've got closer to graduation so hopefully once I'm graduated it'll go down again. I plan to go off the medication and take a long break.. I need it!
I found this forum via Google and am hoping to find some people here with similar problems, to maybe meet some new online friends. Social contacts tire me, so online is the easiest for me as I can think about my response much longer than in a normal real life conversation (where you also have to pay attention to eye contact etc). I don't have many real life friends, I mean friends that I meet up with. I have my family and my boyfriend, I have some online friends that I message or email or talk to on other forums.
My biggest hobby is reading, I read a lot of books and love it. I also love to look at my books (and Kindle) and to organise them. I also love to spend time with our animals, I live with my parents and we have two dogs, two goats and many chicken (I think 30ish). When I was younger I loved to write however other than writing emails, messages, forum posts I haven't done any writing in a long time. I had the dream of once writing a novel, about what it's like to live with my HFA, and wrote bits of it. Maybe, some day.. I also like to watch films and tv series (but can't do this too much) and I like to play video games (I can only do this by bits also).
I think that's enough information for now, I look forward to meet some friendly people and read some nice posts
.
