The autistic urge to collect + how I combat overwhelm

hi again it's Ash I hope you're having a good day so far in my last video I touched on this feeling of what I called autistic overwhelm and it really shocked me that that video did really well and a lot of you related to it and commented and left um some really nice comments for me to read a lot of you found what I was talking about relatable and I I just want to say I really appreciate it um I found your comments really encouraging and really motivating so uh I'm excited to keep making videos and hopefully you enjoy them a few of you asked if I could go into detail um about how I'm personally making changes in my life to battle overwhelm and that's what we're going to talk about in this video I by no means have found like a cure or like a catch all solution um but there are lots of little things that I do that I definitely think are helping and as part of that I want to talk about something which I think definitely contributes to that feeling of overwhelm uh which is what I would call the autistic urge to collect so I want to talk about that what that is uh how that affects me personally uh I want to talk about the relationship that we have with our possessions and then we'll go through how I personally am dealing with overwhelm or at least trying to and the steps that I'm doing and the things that I'm putting in place to help me so let's start with something that contributes to this problem problem hi I'm autistic and I'm overwhelmed but I can't stop collecting things my autism was diagnosed later in life at the age of 23 and that's a story for another video but it was after my diagnosis that I started to realize the association between my overwhelm and my inability to let things go according to the National autistic Society autistic people might become attached to objects or parts of objects such as toys figurines or model cars or more unusual objects like milk bottle tops stones or shoes an interesting collecting is also quite common we're also more likely to personify objects which makes getting rid of things harder it's also common for autistic people to have a comfort item or or many Comfort items um that can bring them a sense of ease um when they're feeling overwhelmed so it can be kind of paradoxical to get rid of these items that cause overwhelm when they actually comfort you and ease overwhelm so as an autistic person we can often have really complex and varied um relationships with our possessions the autistic urge to collect can also be associated with special interests often times if an autistic person has a special interest they will want to collect things to do with that interest this is a really big thing for me one of the main ways that I engage with my special interests is by collecting things to do with them uh I think one of the first really big ones that this happened with was the movie Big Hero 6 it was my special interest um from the age of 16 I think I was 16 when the movie came out um and it was a big um comfort media for me I would watch it over and over and over again very autistic things do uh and it was my special interest and because of that one of the ways that I engaged with it was collecting things Baymax became like a comfort character to me and therefore uh Baymax memorabilia and biger 6 memorabilia became comforting items to me I have way too many Baymax plushies I think I have like three of all different sizes I have this one that I got from Disneyland in Florida that I don't think you can get anymore like I don't I've researched this I can't find it anywhere online and then later I think my late teens uh Steven Universe was a special interest of mine still kind of is to be honest um kind of difficult now that the show has ended but again I collected a lot of things to do with that show I think it's very common to collect in that way when you have a special interest I think it's also kind of LED on by like this era of consumerism that we're in when a piece of media especially media when a piece if your special interest is a piece of media there is going to be an exorbitant amount of merch for it um but even if your special interest is a little more Niche it can still lead to that collecting um urge but the urge to collect for me at least isn't just physical items um as autistic people we are I'd say almost absurdly curious when it comes to information and this is something that is commonly talked about in autistic spaces this need to collect physical items but also information at the same time I've talked about commonplacing on this channel before and that is essentially collecting information in one space in one notebook when I say it's an autistic urge to collect I really do mean it is an urge it is like an intrinsic part of autism at least for a lot of us so collecting and personifying items and objects is an autistic trait but predisposition to overwhelm from cluttered and over stimulating environments is also an autistic trait so you can start to see the issue here that we run into so how do we as autistic people reconcile the urge to collect which brings us comfort and joy with the need to control our environments in order to avoid overwhelm especially in our homes which are meant to be a place of comfort and safety especially as an autistic person when the outside world can feel so overstimulating personally I started to realize just how much stuff I have after uni after uni I came home I'd been living with uh my partner Kieran but I came home to live with my parents for about a year and I brought all my stuff from uni back and then I had the stuff that I'd left at my parents house and I had like pieces of furniture that Kier and I had had in our place and I just it was all in one room in my parents house and I was just suddenly confronted with just how much there was and I'm a person who likes things I'm I like objects I feel like I have an obsession with objects because objects seem more permanent than experiences do so it feels to me or at least in my mind that like if an object makes me happy and an object is permanent then the happiness it gives me should be permanent too right but that's not how it works and as I realized how much stuff I had I realized that the happiness each possession gave me is often temporary it's not always there are some things that I have had my almost my entire life and still make me as happy as they did the day I got them but a lot of stuff the happiness is temporary and that stuff that no longer brought me joy is just contributing to the constant feeling of overwhelm that I was feeling and it's when I made that connection in my brain that I started to feel more comfortable with getting rid of it it was around this time that I read Walden um which is a book by Henry David THU thoro I'm not sure how you pronounce his name um but it's a really great book I I compl completely recommend it basically he was this guy who um lived in America and he decided to take himself out of traditional Society essentially he built his own house um it's more like a shed really but a house on the side of a lake and he lived there and he planted potatoes in the forest and foraged and hunted and did a lot of um medit a work I guess you could call it not in the traditional sense of meditation but just pondering life I don't think I described that book very well but it it's really really great and there's a lot of great observations in there about uh Modern Life and the way that we tie ourselves down to our possessions uh we don't necessarily connect with nature anymore and this was written in a time that we wouldn't even really consider modern modern life if you know what I mean there's a great quote in Walden when he's talking about he lived nearby this small town and when one of the members of this town died instead of all of his possessions being he talked about purifying destruction like a bonfire or something like that instead of getting rid of it in that way there was an auction of his possessions and therefore it felt like an increasing in increasing effect on his possessions uh the neighbors eagerly collected to view them bought them all and carefully trans transported them to their Garretts and dust holes to lie there till their Estates are settled when they will start again I found that idea so interesting of like we go throughout our lives collecting our little possessions and our treasures and we hoard them in our homes and then when we die they're just redistributed again to different places and to different homes and that's not saying this that there's no value in having them it is an interesting thought of what is the point of me holding on to this thing I'm he talked about it like you everything that you own is tying you down you have to Lug it through life with you and if there isn't a value in something why are you still lugging it around now I still think there is value to owning things simply for the enjoyment of them but I think the issue comes and is really especially common with autistic folk when you can't or don't get rid of the item that no longer brings you that joy and speaking of joy that an item can bring you it was around this time that I um became familiar with Marie condo if you know her probably from her Netflix series I also read her books at this time I have both of them they're really really good I recommend them um essentially her philosophy I guess is decluttering through deciding what sparks joy for you and that's kind of the the main takeaway there's a lot of other stuff in there like she goes through the best ways to organize and there's a specific order in which you should do so I've tried that method it works um but I think sustainably you can't keep doing it like that every day so but I do think there is value in deciding what brings you happiness and keeping that it's not necessarily the only thing you should consider though there is a great quote by William Morris he says you should have nothing in your home that you don't know to be useful or believe to be beautiful essentially if something isn't useful to you or you don't like it you don't have joy from it you don't need it so I've been trying over the past few years to use this idea of joy and utility to help me declutter and it was really hard to start with especially as an autistic person I just find it difficult to let go of things but I found that the more I did the easier it was and the lighter I felt my space started to seem less clutch and that helped me feel less overwhelmed and I like the idea of choosing what brings you Joy because as an autistic person that means if you have things that are related to your special interest and they still bring you a lot of happiness and enjoyment in your everyday life you can keep them you don't need to get rid of them just because you have a lot of it there's no need to do that within this model you can keep those things just because we have this urge to collect and that can sometimes lead to overwhelm that doesn't mean that you need need to get rid of your collections it just means that I think we need to spend more time and actively evaluating the things we own to decide if they're still bringing happiness to us personally I found when I was started decluttering that there were some items where I'm like I like this I love this it does make me happy but I still got rid of it and I found that the joy that the item gave me was outweighed by the amount of relief I felt at owning less things and that's not always going to happen but it's definitely something to think about I'm like yes this thing makes me happy but if I take it away and I look at my space now it feels less overwhelming it feels less cluttered I don't feel over stimulated it's better for me and that is a choice that I sometimes have to make and I think it's important to think about that I'm also learning that there are other ways to interact with my special interests other than just going out and buying everything related to it don't get me wrong that is a completely valid way and if you don't have this issue of getting over stimulated uh by your home and by your surroundings and by your things go crazy by all means go crazy uh but for me I'm learning that keeping my the amount of things I own lower and don't get me wrong I still own a lot of things is much more helpful to me and getting rid of stuff doesn't have to mean throwing it away in fact I actively discourage you from just throwing stuff away personally I've been selling things on Vinted uh which means I get some money back which is great uh there's no sellers fees on there I'm not sponsored by Vinted but I really like that app it's really been useful for me uh I've been selling things at car boot fairs and then things that are of lower value or won't sell or I just don't have the time to sell uh I've been donating to local charity shops I'm still in the process of trying to distill the number of items in my life down to a place where I don't feel overwhelmed it's definitely a work in progress for me I still have a huge pile in the corner of our office that's just stuff I've listed online places uh to sell and I'm just waiting for it to sell and that does make me feel a little overwhelmed but despite all of my decluttering and going through this process the feeling of overwhelm still persists with me and I think that's because autistic overwhelm is twofold it's not just about the physical clutter and the over stimulation of our environment but it's about the mental clutter too the internet a truly miraculous and torturous invention as an autistic person the internet can really be a Lifeline we have all of the world's information at our fingertips but unfortunately we have all of the world's information at our fingertips our digital lives and the amount of information we expose ourselves to on a daily basis has a big part to play when it comes to artistic over well it's extremely common to experience mental overstimulation just from absorbing too much information far too often I found myself in an overwhelming due shutdown because I've spent like 5 hours on my phone and the sheer amount of information that I've seen in that time is just overwhelming especially in our current attention economy and with the rise of short form content the amount of information that we engage with on a daily basis is getting ever higher and higher this in itself can be overwhelming but I think the autistic urge to collect can easily translate into amassing a huge amount of digital bookmarks having too many tabs open uh saving things to look at later there's this one meme that I love um I think I've shared it on this channel before uh but I'll put it up it's look she's afraid of losing my pronounce a he but for the sake of the meme look she's she's afraid of losing ideas so she screenshots and bookmarks everything but now those archives feel overwhelming so she never looks at them yeah I think that summarizes it pretty well I actually read a book a few years ago called digital minimalism by cal newort um he's got a great series of books um on all kinds of things on um deep work is a great one uh digital minimalism is really good um for this particular topic so I highly recommend looking at his books but as I was researching into digital minimalism I found a subreddit and there is a lot of people on there who are experiencing this uh in particular this one post where someone says my worst anxiety is never ever being able to actually clear everything I mark down on the internet as to see it later and I think that's a pothole than that a lot of autistic people can fall into when it comes to our digital lives uh that urge to collect can so easily translate to there is so much information on the internet I can consume all of it I can mark it down to look at it later but then it can easily become overwhelming personally I've run into this so many times I'm still trying to work out how to combat this I am the kind of person that has at least currently I think I have three windows open on my internet browser on my computer and at least one of them has like 30 tabs open I think a good example of this um that I can think of is my personal experience with Twitter and I will be calling it Twitter um not X I'm not doing that I used to have a Twitter account and Twitter is great if you're an artist like me there's a lot of great artists on there it's uh not a lot of text a lot of images that's great for art I used to use Twitter to find inspirational artists and save inspiration and see what people are talking about and on Twitter there is or at least when I was using it I don't know if there still is probably on Twitter there is a bookmarks tap and I used to use that so much and then I also used to DM myself tweets from time to time and it got to the point where there was so many in my bookmarks that I couldn't feasibly look at them all there I'm surrounded myself with so much inspiration that I couldn't actually use any of it uh when the Twitter buyout happened and Elon Musk kind of started ruining the platform um I decided to step away from Twitter uh for a time and after about 6 months I realized I don't really need this platform anymore so I went through my bookmarks and I deleted them or I saved the images using the Pinterest extension on Chrome so that they I could keep them on my Pinterest boards but still with the credit link and then I deleted my Twitter and that Archive of bookmarks and DMS was either sorted somewhere I could actually see it or gone and the relief I felt after that was insane and I've started doing that with a lot of different places in my digital life I often use my Sketchbook as a place to work out and work through my feelings and on one particular day on one particular page um I wrote consuming is easy creating is hard and I stand by that it's way too easy to spend your time consuming and filling your brain with more inspiration and more information and more ideas um but actually getting ideas out of you onto paper is so much more cathartic and so much more productive I saw a quote that said creative contribution is the direct one-to-one replacement for chronic consumption and I think that's a great idea to think about when you're feeling overwhelmed especially uh digitally and online is to step away from consuming and to try creating something instead even if you're not a creative or an artist there is still something you can do if it's doodling journaling uh writing you making something physically like baking something making a meal for your family you can create so that's my little thing on social media and uh digital lives but when it comes to the information itself what do you do when you've got to this point where you just have so many bookmarks so much information swirling around in your brain and you don't know what to do with it I have such a huge issue with this I can't stop collecting information I have my commonplace book which I've talked about um I have moban Nichi Journal I have way too many notes pages on my phone I have notion with many many pages and subpages I have different notebooks for different things I have screenshots on my camera roll I have uh bookmarks on it pretty much every social media app that I have I have uh my very carefully curated Pinterest which I love I have Post-it notes that I write myself and it just feels extremely overwhelming personally I've spent a lot of time in I'd say the past 2 years uh simplifying my systems as much as I can I did a video um a couple of months ago on simplifying my journal system uh down from three books and a Rings uh down to one book and the same goes for digital life I've been getting rid of things so I no longer have uh notes pages on my phone the only notes page I have is a food shopping list that once a week my partner and I go through and I untick what we need tick it when we buy it that's it uh I no longer keep screenshots on my phone around once a week I go through and if I've screenshot something to look at it later I then file it away I do something with that information and I think that's like the number one thing I can recommend is if you're like me and you have this to collect and then you have these big Archives of stuff actually do something with the information file it away find a system that works for you but if you sit on that pile and let it grow it's going to overwhelm you I've already spoken about this a little bit but personally I find my phone and social media to be very overwhelming it's kind of hard to admit that because I think the dopamine that you get from social media feels so good and it feels like it's benefiting you um but if I think if we really think about it I think we all know deep down that it isn't really that good for us don't get me wrong I still use social media but I'm really trying to cut down um especially with things like Tik Tok that can be such a Time suck such an attention suck and also just feel so overwhelming with the amount of information and visual stimuli that you can see in such a short space of time so I'm trying to spend less time on my phone and the way I've set that up for myself is that I've deleted a lot of apps from my phone just to the essentials that I need and then things like social media I'm keeping on my iPad uh I use my iPad um to draw and to run my art business uh so I basically put all my social media on here as well so that it feels less like I'm just picking up my phone and doing it to distract myself or to procrastinate but because I'm going on here with a purpose it also helps that the iPad isn't really handheld I can't just carry it around with me all day another tip is to manage your notifications I think there's actually something called notification fatigue where if you just have too many you won't actually notice them uh or do anything about them when they pop up so now every time a notification pops up for me I just quickly decide is there something that I need to be notified about um does it actually prompt me to do anything and if no then I turn it off the only things I really receive notifications about now are emails and texts that's pretty much it speaking of emails if you're like me you find emails very overwhelming if I have more than two unopened emails I get stressed what I've started doing is setting some time at the beginning at the end of the day to go through my emails I also actively unsubscribe from things as they come up because I don't need all those marketing emails you don't need them when it comes to planning and du lists I have one calendar that is in my journal and that's where everything goes my habit tracking for the month is at the side that's it and then when it comes to to-do lists I have one big to-do list that you can see on the board behind me that's like just life things that pop up that I need to do they don't really have a um like a set time limit I can do them whenever and so when they pop up I write them on that list and then on my notion I have a little weeks thing I know that seems weird to have a calendar in my journal and then my weeks planned out on my notion but it works for me I also have a system for my camera roll as well so like I said I sort through my screenshots but my actual pictures I have one drive so if you have a Microsoft account uh it should come with one drive and I have the app on my phone so my photos automatically upload um and are sorted by month so I don't have to think about it and then every now and then I'll go through my camera roll and delete 50 pictures or so so that I can just stay on top of it I think the thing as an autistic person is that a lot of the time we feel overwhelmed just by the idea of trying to do something about our overwhelm um especially if you haven't thought about doing this before either digital decluttering or physical decluttering it can feel overwhelming but I found that as soon as you start you start to feel better even just one thing a day will help I'm still refining my systems and working out what works for me I'm definitely in a much better place than I was though and I'm really happy about it I wouldn't say I'm entirely there yet but I can start to see it take shape in a way that I'm comfortable with um so I'm excited to keep going and if you have any tips or if you want to talk about your systems for managing overwhelm I would really love to hear it I'm going to put some resources and links uh around this topic in the description if you want to look just some things that have helped me personally and if you have any of your own that you'd like to share I'd really love to see it in the comments okay that's it for this video I hope you enjoyed it I hope there was something useful there for you um I'm really enjoying these like chatty rambly videos um they're quite fun for me they're quite cathartic in a way too to talk about things but if you liked it uh please leave a comment um if you have any tips that I haven't touched on or an experience that is different to mine please say something in the comments I'd love to start a discussion about it uh my next few videos are going to be mainly art related I've been feeling in a better mood mentally at the minute so I want to try and use that to make some more art so hopefully you'll enjoy that okay I hope you have a good rest of your week and I'll see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: Ash Ricketts

Views: 3,027

Keywords: autism

Id: naP-BFfdYJc

Length: 27min 14sec (1634 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2024