What I struggle with (as an AUTISTIC adult)

hello and welcome back to my channel if you're new here I am Sonam um today I'm gonna be talking about today I'm gonna be talking about the things that I struggle with still as an autistic adult now this is obviously a totally personal list just because I struggle with these things doesn't mean that every autistic person will but I just thought I would try and give you an insight into what it's like I mean I am kind of a well on the outside I look like I've got everything together but there is quite a lot of things that I there are quite a lot of things I struggle with internally and hopefully this will shed a bit of light on that sorry if I'm speaking a little bit softer I have a little bit of a sore throat today so number one sensory issues now this is actually something that I have felt is getting worse with time so if you take for example if you're in the UK you'll probably know the supermarket Asda and it's like the Walmart equivalent so basically going in there is an assault on your senses no matter who you are because the signs everywhere there's noise everywhere there are smells everywhere all all the time there's people everywhere and this is the kind of thing that can easily lead me into maybe not quite a meltdown for me but certainly shut down and so that's something that I have struggled with sorry and now that I live in the Netherlands they have a supermarket here called Albert Heijn which does has been trialing these autism hours so like one hour a week they turn off the fluorescent lights and turn off all the beeping noises and it's supposed to be really awesome for people with autism but it's kind of like I don't know why can't they do that the whole time why does shopping in a supermarket have to be an assault on the senses so for me we actually go to kind of like a Costco style place now for shopping and a huge benefit with that even though it's really big and there's a lot of stuff in there so it's overwhelming in some ways there's never anyone in there which means that I can take my time it's not too noisy and I don't get stressed out because I I sort of think I mean I make lists before I go to the supermarket because if I have to think on my feet I can't think when there is noise and stuff like that going on so that's kind of like the main thing that sensory issues impact in my life the other the other thing is when I do go out with friends or whatever or go to a bar the noise is sometimes so much because obviously they pump the music up to keep atmosphere and then when there's a lot of people if it's a small taste it's crowded there's like a lot going on and actually I struggle to hear and this is kind of part of the sensory processing issues I've had my hearing tested multiple times as a teenager because I had this problem even as a teenager where is like all the background noise you can hear everything the same so like somebody talking on the next table is kind of you can hear that just as well as the person next to you so if you have a situation where there's all this noise you know I spend most of these times just basically like try to like an old person I should get an ear trumpet but I really struggle to differentiate sounds unless I'm like talking right to the person now right there so if you're in a group situation I kind of excessive eight sit so the sensory stuff that's pretty much what it affects obviously when you are in control of your own environment inside your house you make adjustments to deal with that so you know you have the right kind of lighting and you can keep it quiet and so these are the things that don't really bother me too much the only thing that I would say is just like I'm extremely sensitive to things going out of my body things going on with my clothes um and so it's just like I just I'm just more sensitive than the average person but the sensory overload thing is really only if I go out to places like supermarkets I don't go to concerts because exactly that any kind of like festivals or anything like that can prove tricky but now I have a pair of noise cancelling headphones it is much better so number two loud and confusing social situations situations and what I mean by that is if you have a group of probably like three or more people but let's say you you have a group of six people and they're all having a conversation I struggle to keep track of that and I struggle to know went and deject so it seems like I'm interrupting because I'm trying to say something but I'm not I don't have this like natural sense of the conversation with a group of people whereas if it's one-on-one that's a lot easier for me to focus on so yeah I'm not really like a big group person I will say that the one thing that does help in these situations is alcohol because it like numbs my sense of trying to keep track of everything so that's maybe not like a good thing and I definitely used to drink alcohol when I was in my early 20s to try and help with this but obviously that's not really a great long-term strategy so these social situations can be kind of exhausting for me and that's really the thing is like I can I'm trying so hard to keep up and sometimes I can keep up but it's it comes at a price and the price is usually late that day or the next day or the next week depending on how much effort I had to put into so for example at my own wedding it was like it took me a couple of weeks to recover because it was just very intense seeing a lot of people that I hadn't seen in a while so you know it's it's things like that but now that I'm more aware of it I think I'm probably able to you know give myself the time in the space that I need number three is executive function know what is that you might ask you probably know if you're watching this video that it's basically the organizing and planning switching between tasks and like regulating your attention and regulating your emotion regulating emotion maybe is not so relevant at this point but executive function is the one part of autism that actually makes me feel like I have a disorder and it's something that I've struggled with my whole life and I don't feel it's getting better if anything it's getting worse because becoming a mother and having so much more sensory stuff going on you know everyday you've got a little child in your air in your face it makes me less able to do the other things that I usually you know I had a weakness before but now it's like kind of a deficit so I mean what this looks like in reality is that I'm sort of seem chronically disorganized but funnily enough to some people I seem organized because I have all these strategies that I'm desperately trying to enact and I have been trying for most of my life to do stuff like this the amount of planners I've gone through different ways to do things you know planning your meals planning your I don't know what it's not something that comes naturally to me and the hardest thing for me is the household stuff so you know for years I've tried to get onto a onto a schedule with like Monday actually in the kitchen and to use directly in the bathroom that kind of thing but then I will get thrown out of whack because I've got a holiday or something or a holiday that sounds like I'm always on holiday but like you know something will happen or maybe I'll have a guest that weekend or something like that my whole thing will get thrown off I'll forget to start again or it'll start but it'll start on the wrong day and then it's like the whole thing is out of whack and I can't pick it up again and so it's like my life is constantly trying to get back onto this schedule that I'm doing and a lot of the times failing but this is something that I'm on a waiting list for some support here in the Netherlands which is nice that they give support and this is the kind of thing that they'll be helping with like planning tasks organizing your life I mean paperwork is pretty much my nightmare and and it's hard for me to stop blaming myself because I've spent my whole life being like well I'm lazy or I'm stupid why can't I do this and so I'm finally just allowing myself to be like well this is the autism so how can i how can I work with it how can I work with the way that my brain works and this is something that's actually quite a lot overlapped with ADHD in adults too is this of chronic disorganization so that's something that I need to work on because it makes me extremely anxious to never have my in order but it's also something that is the hardest for me to work on right so what else relating to people and making small talk even relating to my friends is a struggle sometimes and like small talk you know people will chitchat about the weather and I'm like well I've got my app and I will tell you the weather forecast for the next ten days and look at the humidity I mean guys really so I think I just don't get the point of small talk and that's okay I think it's pretty pointless but it does make things difficult in terms of a social lubrication which is another thing I'm not very good at talking for the sake of talking which is funny because I really can go on quite a lot I'm aware of that especially on camera but it's difficult and I struggle to know whether I'm doing the right thing with arms saying the right thing or being emotional enough or a motive is my face making the right expression and when you're constantly trying to regulate rather than actually concentrate on the conversation it makes building relationships kind of tricky unless you are with another neurodivergent person I guess but it's the relating to people can be difficult because I know that I'm different from them on a fundamental level and so that's something that I'm trying to work on because I've spent so much of my life really trying so hard with friends and in the last year or so I've just been like a little bit more chill about the whole thing trying to like if if a friendship is meant to work out then it'll work out but like try not to push anything too much I wish you could see how she's so sweet but I don't want to move the camera um so yeah that's something that I do struggle with but I find that the older I get and the more I know myself the easier it does get because it means like if there's someone that I know I'm not gonna get on with I am not trying to make them like me or anything and it means that I sort of know who I'm gonna get on with a little bit better so that is something that it has got easier since I was a child as it's as a teenager but it is still difficult when the world expects you know adult behavior to have a certain level of social competence that I sort of feel like I'm not quite there yet and the last one we're almost that guys hang in there with me the last thing that I struggle with the most is internal monologuing and I think probably this is also similar for people with ADHD but almost certainly there are others with autism who feel the way that I do is that you constantly have something going on in your head it gets very busy in there and when I think I maybe it's said in the previous video when it when I'm the quietest on the outside sometimes that's when the most is going on in the inside and it's to be honest it's kind of exhausting that you it's almost like you have a driver in there that's just not letting you get any peace and I mean it doesn't help with the social situations like I was talking about you know trying to relate to people and trying you're concentrating so hard on picking up all their cues and thinking how am I doing this right am i doing this right and you're actually not really delving into a conversation with someone because you still stuck up and living in your own head and there are some times when my internal monologue is actually louder than the voices around me so I'm so deep into my own heads that I don't hear what someone's saying in the room because this is louder and that that's the thing it is exhausting living like that and I think that's probably the reason that have always been a big sleeper I really love sleep and it takes me a long time to catch up with everything and that's kind of like the price that you pay for being a high mascar as somebody who masks a lot and a lot of people be like oh you know like autistic um well no but that's because I'm trying so hard not to and that's a habit that I might break in the future it's I don't know but the price that you pay for masking is that you crash and you run out of energy and especially when there's so much going on in your head in the first place there isn't really a whole lot of energy to go around right so my throat is packing up little bit now I can feel it gone from a tickle into a horse sexy deep voice maybe not that sexy I hope that the county even picked it up alright anyway I hope you liked this video if this resonates with you please give me a thumbs up or leave a comment or let me know what you struggle with as an autistic adult because like I said it's really different from person to person and I think it's important that people know what it is that autism is and how it does affect us on a day-to-day basis so thank you for watching if you made it this far you are very welcome that doesn't make sense what am I trying to say you are appreciated yeah um sorry the words are not really coming out today but I wanted to make this video anyway um so yeah give me a thumbs up and share this it would mean a lot to me and I will see you next time bye you

Channel: Yo Samdy Sam

Views: 180,013

Keywords: what I struggle with, autistic struggles, autism spectrum disorder, aspergers symptoms, sensory overload autism, autism, asd symptoms, asd traits, adult autism, autism in women, autism in adults, everyday life, asperger's syndrome, sensory processing disorder, waht i struggle with, what i struggle iwth, waht i struggle iwth

Id: LKgoWZ3JHrM

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2019