What is your biggest problem right now?

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What is the biggest problem in your life right now that causes you the most stress? Are you able to pick just one of your problems, point at it and say: "This. This is the biggest problem I have." Or do you have so many bad ones that it's impossible for you to pick just one? Or does your life not have any problems that you'd consider serious at the moment? If you do have a problem like this, do you think you wouldn't have it if you weren't autistic?

When things get too much, I restrict down, and have less capability to cope with social situations and unfamiliar places. I'm already not great at them anyway, but ehh. I'm just cancelling something else I really wanted to do, but know getting there is past my limits at the moment. There's a reason I barely go outside, apart from work and the supermarket.

It's my biggest stress today because work has recently announced that we will be forced into regular moves around different roles. Unlike my current independent programming role, some of these necessitate social things with groups of strangers, and some have regular travelling to different locations.

I can't do those. I literally can't do them. They're claiming that we can just work on our weaknesses etc. - I've been working on them, hard. This is what I'm like after years of working on them, and I'm proud of where I've got to. But I will get scored with low performance if I'm unlucky enough to be placed in one of these roles that are not appropriate to my abilities, and that could have a big impact on my career.

School and having to write three more essays and take one more test before the semester ends and I get to go on Holiday break. I have others too, like not being able to have/keep a job and problems with my family, but once school ends, I think things will be easier for a little while (until next semester starts).

OCD. It’s been killing me the past year and a half, and my mom is literally paying me $200 to go on medication because it is so bad and I refuse to go on medication (I’m very stubborn; that doesn’t help when trying to deal with OCD!). I was born with OCD, and my first major obsession was moral scrupulosity, and now, one of my obsessions is that I’m a psychopath. Go figure.

OCD isn’t just anxiety, either. Because I delayed treatment for so long, it has literally changed the way I think and my emotional state, which might never be good again. OCD causes DP/DR, depression, memory issues, and all sorts of extra junk I have to deal with. I have a severe case of OCD, with sometimes up to 1,000 compulsions per day. My obsessions are basically constant, and I have had about 5 hours in the past year where I have felt peace. My main obsession currently is mental illness, although I have been through almost all of them (with the exception of physical hoarding/contamination obsessions and POCD/ROCD). I don’t believe I would have OCD or even traits if I wasn’t autistic, to be honest. OCD sucks, but in some odd ways it has helped me become a better, empathetic person. I don’t believe that people suffer for no reason, so fingers crossed something good will come out of this!

The same problems I've had since I was very young, Autistic social difficulties and Autistic anxiety. NTs give me crazy anxiety because I can't figure them out and I can't tolerate their aggressiveness.

Constant bullying - even at this age of 42, incessant rudeness, violating personal space, workplace politics, misread social cues, misinterpretation sarcasm, over-reaction to various stimuli, misread intentions, and in short - they don't leave me alone.

Is it too much to ask for NTs to leave me in peace? Do I have a sign on my head that says "I need social interaction with rude NTs?" Ugh. Constant over-stimulation has me leaving one job after the next or simply getting fired because I had a meltdown at work. Or, co-workers got weirded out because I stimmed too much.

I had an anxiety attack because I accidentally broke some cases of glass at work, and I did the typical Autistic thing and paced frantically back and forth, freaking out, stimming like crazy, hitting myself, didn't know what to do or say, basically locked in an emotional turmoil because I didn't know how to handle such an unpredictable situation. This scenario has happened so many times in my life. Sudden trauma locks me in a frenzy of indecision and I pace back and forth and stim like crazy. Later, I meltdown. Man, it was like a scene from the movie Rain Man when the smoke detector went off and Dustin Hoffman's character (Rain Man) freaked out.

I did all that because I was afraid an NT would see what I did AND see me in that Autistic state and, several NTs, including my boss, DID see me do all that. Social difficulties as usual.

It has come to the point that wherever I am, in whatever situation, I have a running total number in my head of how many NTs there are in my immediate area and whenever one of them leaves, my anxiety drops. And, whenever another NT enters my area, my anxiety grows.

The fewer NTs, the better and I'm a happy boy. Some of you may think that this is simply hatred of someone else. It isn't. It's just a lifetime of a trillion bad experiences with NTs that have been built up over 40 years. It's a dreadful fear of NTs and their hateful bullying. Pure and simple.

_________________
*** High Functioning Autism - Asperger's Syndrome ***

ADHD, OCD, and PTSD.

Keep calm and stim away.

Mine are depression and self-harm, to the extent that I'm really worrying about whether I will be/should be hospitalized for it. The depression is mainly focused on feeling worthless and like I'm nothing but a burden, and is at least contributed to by my parents holding me to NT standards I can never meet.

My other main problem, which is either tied with that or a close second, is getting a job. I keep checking out things that look promising only to find that there's some part of the job that I can't perform, and the ones I do apply for, I never hear back from. If I didn't have the selective mutism that comes with my autism, I could probably find something I could support myself on, even if it wasn't a great career. Not being able to support myself plays a large part in my feeling like I'm a burden.

My biggest problem is chronic sinusitis. It isn't even a real problem at all and not worth taking seriously. And it'll always will be -- never mind anything, even problems that autism could bring.
Really, I see a lot of humans forget, stutter, represent themselves badly that they get told, fall and broke their bones, get broke and heavy with debt, become depressed, being anxious half the time, have a break down, wet themselves in public, being mobbed or bullied, whatever.
But I do not see anyone else sniffling half the time. Even the other problems are worth mentioning than this.


If I have a problem that is worth taking seriously with right now, it's not mine, but another else's trial -- family problem. At best, it's a short term one and everything will be back the way it was. At worst, a long term consequences of someone's life and health.

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A place to live and an income.
I don't have either right now. I am at least inside now, but I haven't had personal space for the last two years. I can't isolate, and it's really difficult to function without that.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though. SSI and a place. Then a couple of months or so to isolate, decompress, get back to music and martial arts. Then I think it's back to school again for a while.
Those are my two biggest problems right now, and the shortest version of the story that I can tell. It sucks because I was doing better than I've ever done before, right before I lost my place.

Being open with my family about all my issues, my diagnosis and being on disability benefits. I'm not looking forward to Christmas holiday when the family get together

- Severe dysphoria and unending problems with my SRS. I'm on several surgical waiting lists and they are always torture. Wait, wait, wait while dysphoria eats you alive.
- Housing. Or lack thereof.
- Employment, and being ashamed of working the job I work. Even then, I only get casual hours - two days in the last two weeks isn't enough to cover the first and second problems. To solve them I need money. To make money I need a job I can actually stand with consistent hours.
- Relatives. I just cannot.

Perhaps you have so many problems you feel like you are living inside a salad spinner. It would be interesting if an NT was transplanted into my body/life and then listed what my problems are. I only consider something a problem if it affects me emotionally. A battle with severe depression and anxiety has been ongoing and at times life threatening. A pressing issue is some dental work that I have put off and can’t afford.

Oh and I forgot to add that the problems are directly related to having an ASD.

NT's in my workplace. All the issues mentioned in this thread.

Being Social

My biggest problem in life is work and financially supporting myself. I don't think I would have this problem if I was NT (as in no mental challenges) because my peers seem emotionally and physically motivated to work full time and their emotions don't hold them back so much.

The only thing I really struggle with at the moment is finding the motivation to practice for my piano classes.