Do you feel more autistic on some days than on others?

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Does anyone else feel more connected on some days and much less on others days? Sometimes for a day or two, I'm thinking that I am almost experiencing the NT world (i.e. I am doing well with eye contact, making conversation, etc.) then, the next day I feel very walled in again and I just want to sit in a corner and play with a string.

My (only) friend is a Psych grad student and he tells me that good and bad days like that should be natural depending on the amount of sleep I've gotten, levels of meds that I am taking, physical health, and how busy my schedule is, but I just have not read anything on the board about this from anyone else.

So, does everyone basically feel his or her Aspie-meter going up and down? If so, are there any tips to having more good days? ... or am I just the only one?

My abilities fluctuate greatly. My autism some days is really bad and other days I appear "normal" to outsiders. This goes along the other things I have been diagnosed with as well. The thing that does it is stress noise level as well.

Yes. Sometimes I'm a complete robot. Other days, I out NT the NTs. It's an utterly unpredictable power.

I guess good sleep, rest, relaxation, mediation, and eating right can all affect it for me. Also, moods. When I'm in the grip of some emotion, I'm terrible.

On good days, I pass for having Asperger's. On bad days, I'm more in the moderate autism range. Not even days... it can vary within a day. My abilities are all over the place.

Ofc. Sometimes I feel almost NT. Sometimes I'm neutral and sometimes I'm hyperactive-stimming, silent-and-far-away or totally off.

Yup.

In general the more stressed I am, the more Aspie I act.

I have autistic traits. I am gainfully employed as a nurse in long term care and can get along with people (most of the time )

When I am particularly tired or stressed, I have to be mindful. If I am at an inservice or workshop, I am also mindful.

When stressed and tired, I take things literally more, have trouble reading people (especially co-workers and acquaintances) and need to make a checklist of what i need to do so I don't get all disorganized and discombobulated.

At workshops, I need to be near a door so I can make a quick exit in case I get overwhelmed by the onslaught of new information. I would prefer to have pre-reading so that I can have an idea of what is going to be presented and some background information so that I can be organized in my learning. Unfortunately, most people in my line of work are NTs through and through and tend to have a different learning style than me, so I find workshops to be overwhelming sometimes, but I struggle through and re-read handouts and notes so I'm all up to speed on the material and concepts taught.

When rested and non-stressed, I can nicely phase in and out of my autistic side. I can be empathic with staff and especially patients and can phase back into my autistic side to be very analytical and meticulous. I like to think of it as having a minor superpower

Yes. Some days I feel so good I forget I have AS. Other days, I feel like I can barely function at a child's level.

Thanks everyone for the responses.

As a newbie, I am just learning about my AS and how it affects me. I am full of questions, but my therapist knows almost nothing about it and I am yet to meet anyone else with AS.

Wrong Planet has been such a big help.

I feel more autistic on windy days and it's been really windy here the past week. My aunt said it might have something to do with negatively charged ions in the atmosphere.

no

No I don't feel that way. But my abilities fluctuate more than most people I know. I just don't think I become less ormore autistic based on what skills I do or don't have at a given point in time.

Depending on the time of the month, there are days that I feel more autistic, and other days, that I feel *gasp* normal.

I don't know if I'm nevessarily less autistic, but when I feel physically good and not under a lot of stress I deal much better with things, and probably do less of the typically autistic things. When I'm stressed I become a very bad conversationalist, going from barely listening to ranting OT and I don't notice anything about other people (partly because I avoid looking at them). The main thing is the anxiety, I get so caught up in it I can't do much but try to deal with it, which involves staying away from people, mainly, and unfortunately some obsessing about problems that may not even be problems and trying to figure out what things are going to be like down to the littlest detail. I play out scenarios in my head and then my anxiety gets worse because I realize how little I know about what's to come.

But I'm trying an old strategy of mine, which at least seems to work for today, which is slowing down. I don't mean in any metaphorical sense of the word, but quite literally doing everything slower and more deliberately. It seems to quieten my mind. I don't know if I feel less autistic (however that would feel), but I feel less anxious about everything, including talking to other people and the diffuse tangled mess that is my future. Sometimes I think that aside from purely intellectual matters, I process and react much slower than NT's and it's trying to keep up the pace that makes me so anxious. Does that make sense from an autism-perspective? I don't mean not being able to do everyday things or social interaction, but having to do it more slowly, with pauses for contemplation, even though when it comes to intellectual learning I'm faster than average.