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Does anyone feel more Autistic some days than others?

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KT67
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03 Nov 2020, 6:07 am

In a negative way (I believe autism isn't 100% negative), yes.

Every time I have had a meltdown lately it has been when I didn't take my medicine at the correct time of day. I have anxiety medication.


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Edna3362
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03 Nov 2020, 6:14 am

Unsure.

How should I describe this? It's more like...
The process or demand internal order, and take or tolerate with worldly chaos.


Me being 'more autistic' is more to do with demanding more order and less to do with unable to take or adapt chaos.

How I'm able to process it, versus odds with perceived chaos -- otherwise, what constitutes a 'good or bad day', had little to do with it.


Demand over order can manifest in ways autistics are supposed to inherently 'expect' the world 'should' be.
The personal definition of routines, 'rightness', black and white thinking, predictability, whatever considers 'rigidity', even perfectionism.


TLDR...
I'm being 'more autistic' if I demand 'more order', usually more than I'm able to process or accommodate.


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Pieplup
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03 Nov 2020, 9:38 am

Edna3362 wrote:
Unsure.

How should I describe this? It's more like...
The process or demand internal order, and take or tolerate with worldly chaos.


Me being 'more autistic' is more to do with demanding more order and less to do with unable to take or adapt chaos.

How I'm able to process it, versus odds with perceived chaos -- otherwise, what constitutes a 'good or bad day', had little to do with it.


Demand over order can manifest in ways autistics are supposed to inherently 'expect' the world 'should' be.
The personal definition of routines, 'rightness', black and white thinking, predictability, whatever considers 'rigidity', even perfectionism.


TLDR...
I'm being 'more autistic' if I demand 'more order', usually more than I'm able to process or accommodate.

Isn't that only one side of being autistic?


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03 Nov 2020, 10:01 am

I also have the good and bad days it seems that when things get out of sorts really is hard to deal with.



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03 Nov 2020, 11:06 am

This is one of my primary challenges, that my functioning ability can vary quite a lot. It’s extremely frustrating because people see me at my best and assume I’m always capable of that, and if I don’t show it, it’s only because I’m not trying hard enough, don’t care, and/or just don’t want to do something, and nothing I try to tell them can convince them otherwise (for example, I don’t think a single person who’s met me in person believes that I actually have selective mutism, including my parents and also psychiatrists - every time I try to explain that sometimes I am literally incapable of speech they point out that I’m talking just fine right now, insist I just don’t want to talk, etc.). All this has done is teach me that my best is never good enough, because nobody believes it really is my best. So incredibly frustrating to face these assumptions on a daily basis when in fact, the very opposite is true - I do care, at least attempt to do many things I don’t want to (otherwise I wouldn’t ever come out of my bedroom), and usually I do try my hardest.


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Edna3362
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03 Nov 2020, 4:35 pm

Pieplup wrote:
Edna3362 wrote:
Unsure.

How should I describe this? It's more like...
The process or demand internal order, and take or tolerate with worldly chaos.


Me being 'more autistic' is more to do with demanding more order and less to do with unable to take or adapt chaos.

How I'm able to process it, versus odds with perceived chaos -- otherwise, what constitutes a 'good or bad day', had little to do with it.


Demand over order can manifest in ways autistics are supposed to inherently 'expect' the world 'should' be.
The personal definition of routines, 'rightness', black and white thinking, predictability, whatever considers 'rigidity', even perfectionism.


TLDR...
I'm being 'more autistic' if I demand 'more order', usually more than I'm able to process or accommodate.

Isn't that only one side of being autistic?

Order in context, is not limited to routines, repetition and predictability.

But more in line with... 'Presence'.
Resonating with this world along with everyone else's. It's the distance between 'their order' from 'my order'.

Crappy description I know. I did say I was unsure how to describe it.


Being 'more autistic' in my case, does not translate to 'having crappier executive functioning' or 'being less social' or even 'chronically shutting down/verge of meltdown all day'.


Show Spoiler
A more autistic yet just as functioning version of me is more cerebral, taken the idea of logic and order in extremes, being hyperverbal in a sense it's no longer understood by laypeople...
Cannot help but noticed more things, think even more differently, special interests and obsessions are just as stronger.
More sensory issues, just able to process and act upon issues minus reactivity.
And a lot of social hassles, much to other people's annoyance and theory of mind is thrown out of the window.
This does not necessarily translate to productivity and cooperation -- or even passing. A few people can figure how to reign me in such state and use it productively.

A more autistic yet just as dysfunctional version of me is what everyone else is basically describing if not worse. :lol:
No amount of accomodating or reining could help.




In any case...
My reproductive cycles are very relevant to how I deal with the world.
Observations from others had seen it. And yes, I may be anemic.

But no special diets here.
More or less attempted, but even that's too inconsistent in my case. :?


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04 Nov 2020, 12:48 am

dragonsanddemons wrote:
This is one of my primary challenges, that my functioning ability can vary quite a lot. It’s extremely frustrating because people see me at my best and assume I’m always capable of that, and if I don’t show it, it’s only because I’m not trying hard enough, don’t care, and/or just don’t want to do something, and nothing I try to tell them can convince them otherwise (for example, I don’t think a single person who’s met me in person believes that I actually have selective mutism, including my parents and also psychiatrists - every time I try to explain that sometimes I am literally incapable of speech they point out that I’m talking just fine right now, insist I just don’t want to talk, etc.). All this has done is teach me that my best is never good enough, because nobody believes it really is my best. So incredibly frustrating to face these assumptions on a daily basis when in fact, the very opposite is true - I do care, at least attempt to do many things I don’t want to (otherwise I wouldn’t ever come out of my bedroom), and usually I do try my hardest.

I can relate to people thinking my issues are caused by different reasons and being confused by how things vary


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04 Nov 2020, 1:09 am

Edna3362 wrote:
Pieplup wrote:
Edna3362 wrote:
Unsure.

How should I describe this? It's more like...
The process or demand internal order, and take or tolerate with worldly chaos.


Me being 'more autistic' is more to do with demanding more order and less to do with unable to take or adapt chaos.

How I'm able to process it, versus odds with perceived chaos -- otherwise, what constitutes a 'good or bad day', had little to do with it.


Demand over order can manifest in ways autistics are supposed to inherently 'expect' the world 'should' be.
The personal definition of routines, 'rightness', black and white thinking, predictability, whatever considers 'rigidity', even perfectionism.


TLDR...
I'm being 'more autistic' if I demand 'more order', usually more than I'm able to process or accommodate.

Isn't that only one side of being autistic?

Order in context, is not limited to routines, repetition and predictability.

But more in line with... 'Presence'.
Resonating with this world along with everyone else's. It's the distance between 'their order' from 'my order'.

Crappy description I know. I did say I was unsure how to describe it.


Being 'more autistic' in my case, does not translate to 'having crappier executive functioning' or 'being less social' or even 'chronically shutting down/verge of meltdown all day'.


Show Spoiler
A more autistic yet just as functioning version of me is more cerebral, taken the idea of logic and order in extremes, being hyperverbal in a sense it's no longer understood by laypeople...
Cannot help but noticed more things, think even more differently, special interests and obsessions are just as stronger.
More sensory issues, just able to process and act upon issues minus reactivity.
And a lot of social hassles, much to other people's annoyance and theory of mind is thrown out of the window.
This does not necessarily translate to productivity and cooperation -- or even passing. A few people can figure how to reign me in such state and use it productively.

A more autistic yet just as dysfunctional version of me is what everyone else is basically describing if not worse. :lol:
No amount of accomodating or reining could help.




In any case...
My reproductive cycles are very relevant to how I deal with the world.
Observations from others had seen it. And yes, I may be anemic.

But no special diets here.
More or less attempted, but even that's too inconsistent in my case. :?
re-readig the post. I feel liek this makes a lot more sense if we replace the words order and chaos with stress and idk a good word that's the opposite of stress. [/color]


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I run a discord for moderate-severely autistic people if anyone would like to join. You can also contact me on discord @Pieplup or by email at [email protected]


Edna3362
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04 Nov 2020, 3:51 am

Pieplup wrote:
re-readig the post. I feel liek this makes a lot more sense if we replace the words order and chaos with stress and idk a good word that's the opposite of stress. [/color]

Stress is just the part of the dichotomy than the dichotomy itself.
I can be more autistic without the high stress or heightened vulnerability.

It's more like a learning disability...
Of everything -- more to do with body-mind, self-other, internal-external...
Maybe two and two of, maybe, well, everything.

Gestalts just went crazy than usual, but that may not enough description.



Well, maybe I found the term and it's description;

It's like experiencing what was called 'autistic fragmentation' more than usual...
Which is supposedly an outcome of extreme stress and meltdown.
Without EF as a buffer, it leads to stress, shutdown and meltdown.

Yet with reliable EF with less stress levels involved...
Which just meant without the bodily panic, without the painful overwhelm, without the distress or high stress or succumbing to it out of sheer quantity, lack of filters and incomprehension.

Show Spoiler
Imagine effects of meltdowns or shutdowns... But without the fatigue, stress, overwhelming encumbrance, or even headaches, etc.
It was affordable to not to try and 'keep it all together', or have automatically dissociate to cope because there are no low batteries and sanity involved.

The world was more intense and completely without a border -- that includes a library of scripts, but all it's data was lost yet retrievable, yet scrambled -- yet not overwhelming or distressing.

It's just... Weird. Like, learning disability and processing disorder weird.
But it can be frustrating. :lol:

Yet it can eventually lead to stress, dwindling the EF, which leads to stress...
Which leads to --


Without the EF as a buffer and involving high levels of stress, just translates to usual overwhelm, leading to fatigue or exhaustion, shutdowns and meltdowns.



Yes, order and chaos didn't made much sense, but it's the closest I got at the time. :oops:


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04 Nov 2020, 5:03 am

Now that I know what autism is (Before I joined this site I did not know much at all), I can fully identify with this. Yes, some days I definately notice my traits more then others and therefore feel more autistic then others.


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04 Nov 2020, 5:31 am

My AS seems constant, but many other things affect my mood and performance, probably including a mild case of bi-polar. The interaction of my PTSD and sleep makes a big difference, but so does the weather - I prefer sunshine. If I'm not careful, I get dehydrated, which makes me too stupid to notice what's wrong.



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04 Nov 2020, 2:20 pm

bethannny wrote:
Some days I feel more Autistic than others. I feel like I can barely function on these days and they usually don't have a trigger and can just randomly occur.

Yesterday was one of those days, I felt like I couldn't hold a single conversation for more than a minute, every time I tried to talk I could barely get anything intelligible out except just the basic "yeah" "is that so?". I had to go shopping and as I was walking around I felt the urge to sit down randomly and for some reason or other I started to mildly stim (which I never do in public) and it caused a lot of people stare. I knew what they were thinking but for some reason I just couldn't to play the part of normal and the Autistic side of me seemed to be taking over. It was a horrible feeling, I felt like an animal.. or at least I sensed I was being treated like one.

This has happened to me before so many times, it's as though I just slip into my fully autistic side. I have no idea why this happens, the only thing I can guess is that it's sometimes (but not always) tied to the end of my menstrual cycle.
This is classic in Autism. Almost all of us have this. Whenever your stressors in life go up, your ability to function goes down. That is why the label "high functioning" is so bad and so deceptive. People see us on our good days and cannot see us when we struggle or don't have the ability to function so they think that we function at high levels all the time. But we don't, it's not possible. So yes, you are right, this is normal for us. The more stress you feel, the more your ability to function is affected.


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04 Nov 2020, 4:24 pm

I feel more autistic on days that I'm having a bad day then days In having a good day. Nobody wants me to understand them or them to understand. I feel like my brain doesn't work well because I have autism. On the forum at forum.philomando.org, anything you post to the forum is public. Emails and private messages are private unless it's to a lot of people, then, it's not very private. Teachers and parents have been trying to get me to use the school email for school purposes only and not during class without permission. I'm not the only person who is misusing the school email.


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04 Nov 2020, 5:08 pm

Like others, it is more about particular capacity to cope. I have more capacity on some days than others. But I am also learning ways to cope. While that might not let me "feel" less autistic, it does let me "appear" less autistic.



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04 Nov 2020, 6:14 pm

Jiheisho wrote:
Like others, it is more about particular capacity to cope. I have more capacity on some days than others. But I am also learning ways to cope. While that might not let me "feel" less autistic, it does let me "appear" less autistic.
I understand what you mean but for me, personally, I have learned the very hard way that it is not safe for me to appear less autistic than I really am or than I am feeling. That kind of masking has led me to have a lot of neurological deterioration.


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04 Nov 2020, 7:24 pm

skibum wrote:
Jiheisho wrote:
Like others, it is more about particular capacity to cope. I have more capacity on some days than others. But I am also learning ways to cope. While that might not let me "feel" less autistic, it does let me "appear" less autistic.
I understand what you mean but for me, personally, I have learned the very hard way that it is not safe for me to appear less autistic than I really am or than I am feeling. That kind of masking has led me to have a lot of neurological deterioration.


I am not sure I am talking about masking. I guess I have made strategies to navigate certain situations. Mostly it is being prepared to step back. It is understanding that others will not understand my ideas and for me to let go--I can be rather fixated. ;)

But I understand your concern about masking. Since I was diagnosed, I have understood that I was doing that subconsciously and not very well. But I have really been trying to shift to a position were I can be more myself, whatever that is, and find a way to live in harmony with NTs with my autism. Not sure that makes sense. I am still working on that and it will probably take a long time to break habits.