Curious: Do we have a right to avoid overloads?

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I think so, but I'm glad I didn't (wasn't? I can't remember the form of the question) because if it wasn't for scary stuff I wouldn't have felt anything.

I think you should have as much right to avoid an overload as you do to avoid a kick in the face.

But then rights aren't always enforced anyway.

Do you even know what autism is?

It's not simply a psychological condition, it's a biological one.

It doesn't just "go away" if you try hard enough.

Anxiety is treatable. Anxiety is not aspergers.

Aspergers wont ever go away, but you can learn coping strategies. These strategies are learned through practice.

Jason.

Even so it is ridiculous to expect every single individual regardless of what difficulties they face to come up with perfect coping skills to make up for all their difficulties.

Did I say that?

Jason

It seemed you were implying it, sorry if I misunderstood.

He never said that people were expected to come up with perfect coping skills, he said people should do the best they can and work on improving themselves (where 'improvement' doesn't necessarily mean 'make more NT' I'd agree with this)

We shouldn't stop and say that because we're autistic we can't change. We should say that because we're autistic we will always be autistic. We should say that we'll do what we can to improve but improvement must help us, not only others comfort in being around us.


I'm seeing a therapist every week to work on improving myself. That doesn't mean I'm trying to get rid of my autism, or that anyone expects me to become perfectly NT. It means that there's someone else who help me figure out how to cope. Someone who teaches me methods that help myself be happier rather than stuck in meltdowns.

I already apologized for misunderstanding, it was just kinda confusing...but yeah I kind of think it is up to the individual which things they would like to improve upon. There is no one size fits all 'you should do this' approach for these kinds of things. Its just from my experience of constantly trying to improve myself and beating myself up when I can't or couldn't in the past....So sometimes I feel like one has to pick their battles than trying to fight them all at once if that makes any sense. But maybe that is more or less in agreement with what was being said.

If you avoid everything that causes a sensory overload, eventually even the tiniest thing out of your control will cause you to have an overload. You have to expose yourself to some of it to some degree. A lot of it is unecessisary, but due to the nature of our society we have to cope with it on our end. I'm not saying it's fair I'm saying that's how it is. If you go your whole life avoiding it, no matter how almost physical painful it is...it's going to get worse because you will have never had any exposure towards it.

I was at a point where hearing someone butter toast downstairs caused me to have anxiety.

I went from that to having to cope to almost 24/7 disruptive disturbing noise at a hospital for 6 months. You doubt your ability to cope because it is easier to assume avoiding will make it better. Deep pressure input is the way to go. Function as well as you need to. You can cope with pretty much anything.

Also it really depends on each individual case and situation.

How is avoiding presenting in front of an audience the same thing as 'avoiding everything. Fact is there is really no reason in my opinion to spend a bunch of energy on something that is not required to live life. I mean I think if one has severe social anxiety for instance and is likely to have a panic attack or suffer in other ways if made to get up in front of people to present something it is reasonable for them not to be expected to do so.

Now this individual cannot hope to avoid all social situations, so they would need to learn some coping skills so they can deal with general social interaction they are going to have to deal with in life with less discomfort.

Also It is kind of inaccurate to say anyone can cope with pretty much anything........tell that to everyone who's gotten PTSD, that they could have simply coped with the experience that caused it. Sorry I just could not let that go without saying something because these sorts of issues are important to me for whatever reason.

I strongly think we should have a right to avoid sensory overloads, but unfortunatly the majority of the populous lack understaniding of our behavior. I wish i could walk off from work to avoid a melt down but instead i have to try and hold it in and wait till break and go to a secluded spot and let it out. Grab an energy drink to give me energy again listen to music hold it in best i can till next break or shift is over then let it out again. If i do not do this i will melt down at work and possibly get written up, or fired for my behavior at least thats what i fear anyway. If i do not vent from time to time the meltdown will get much worse and build up, possibly last for a day or more, negative thoughts will begin to manifest in my head negating my positive thoughts. I usually keep thinking possitive thoughts to prevent from having a meltdown. If negative thoughts keep building up however it gets worse, I myself start to think more negative and get into self hatred mode and get very angry at myself, and eventually want to cause physical harm to my self. Beyond this point it gets rather difficult for me to get out of. 90% of the time I prevent myself from getting to this point, but if further tormented from outsiders or stressed in self hate mode, i get to critical suicidal mode and cannot think as logical only logic is eliminating myself from the planet. This has only happened once and I hope it does not happen again. So to prevent this from happening is trying to find a quiet spot listen to music vent and think possitive thoughts and things get better.

The thread is about sensory overload, not just typical anxiety, and no, not all anxiety is treatable either, especially when it is the product of a biological condition and not just simple irrational fear.

I think you might be confusing the triviality of your own problems with the severity of the problems faced by people with autism, in your effort to find a diagnosis that you feel you can relate to. It doesn't seem like this is the one.

But you're talking about something outside the scope of the question. If he didn't disclose prior to the incident he can't say "oh btw I have AS and can't stand getting in front of crowds" while he is being written up.

Almost?

On the other hand, if you're overloaded too much, then you might also get more sensitive, and can get long term health problems, and sometimes even people who are constantly avoiding triggers are still getting too much input.

If someone acclimates, then that's good, they should controllably look into helping reduce their sensitivity. However it needs to be very carefully controlled.

If someone doesn't, and gets worse the more input they're around, then saying that this helps others doesn't change that that individual ends up being in a worse position.

I'm near constantly avoiding, even with my constant avoiding I'm in constant overload. If I wasn't near constantly avoiding I'd be near constantly dealing with migraines beyond just my tension headaches.

Personally, exposure makes me worse. I'm incredibly aware of this. I've made sure to track information beyond just how much I attempt to avoid. I used to live in a reasonably small town. Now I live in a city. Simply living in a city has drastically reduced my functioning capabilities to the point where its strongly reducing my quality of living and preventing me from doing what I want to do.

Deep pressure helps, deep pressure doesn't solve everything (and doesn't help everyone anyways). And "function as well as you need to" still assumes that you can function. When I'm unable to feed myself, then that's not 'as well as I need to'. When I'm unable to be happy with myself because I no longer have the mental capacity to do things related to my special interests, that's not 'as well as I need to'.

Well if its not already disclosed they could bring it up when asked to present in front of an audience, it would not have to escalate into an 'incident.' Especially if there are other employes who are fine with doing a presentation or even employees who are better at doing a presentation. Or maybe the person with autism in question will simply not get a job that requires that task.