Travelling tips for female with AS

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Hello everyone,

I dont know how typical this is, but I have alot of trouble being away from home. Im taking a trip over seas (south-east asia) soon and am needing some coping mechanisms for being away from home.

Basically how it usually happens is that I start to feel really sick (usually only happens at night), and then I start freaking out a little.

Im meeting my boyfriend's family over there and I dont want them to see me having an anxiety attack.

Does anyone else experience this?

Will you be in an hotel or living with your boyfriends family? If you are in an hotel, I´d refer to the weather and see that you can have everyday a little timeout evening time in the hotel to easen your thoughts. If you will live with your boyfriends family, then I can only give you my condolence from my experiences. (So not about those people, I dont know them, but being 24 hours a day involved with people and family-routines I am not used too, makes me simply weird.) In that case, maybe you can plan some vacations into more silent places like museum or hiking with only you and your friend, to get some rest?

If you want these people to become your extended family, you might consider having a conversation with them about your sensory overload issues. You'll have to weigh the costs and benefits, of course, and you may decide to wait to have that conversation, but it may make sense to explain the situation before anything upsetting happens.

I also find traveling very hard. The tricks that I have developed are:

Develop some routines while you are still at home that you will be able to take anywhere. For example, I drink my coffee in the same cup every morning (so I take the cup wih me), go on the same websites, wrap myself in the sme blanket. At night I listen to the same music on my iPod before I fall asleep. It may not seem like much, but little things that are familiar can be enormously grounding, at least for me. In preparation for a trip last year I bought a really comfy light fleece blanket to wrap myself tight in, I wrapped myself up everyday so that I learned that this is a safe place, so when I took it with me overseas I still had that. You need to set this stuff up before you leave though.

I bring some tv shows that I would normally watch at home. Can't tell you how many times when I've been overseas and seen The Simpsons and it straight away makes me feel like there is order in the world.

Take some photos or video of your home.

Take time to do nothing. This can be really hard when you are traveling because you feel like you are wasting opportunities if you aren't always out and about. But be clear that this will be vital to you.

People get really funny about the food too, like you're missing something. I find the food one too many sensory issues to deal with while traveling, so I go easy on myself and just eat whatever I can cope with easiest. That often means a lot of packet/junk food, so I try to eat very healthy in the weeks leading up to traveling so I don't feel malnourished later. I lost a ton of weight when I spent 6 weeks in Thailand and Vietnam. I didn't get sick or anything, and I do like the food normally, but my senses couldn't take regular meals. I look like a skeleton in the photos

Hope these helped.

Hey,

Please share with me some traveling tips, I am going to travel to some adventure places with my family and in my family, I have two little kids, So please suggest me some traveling tips.
Thank you in advance.