Mindfulness and ASD

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Seeking peoples' thoughts on Mindfulness. I have been practising it and found it to be beneficial. However, this clarity has also brought forward some occasions of weakness and anxiety that I never felt before. I feel like my stress threshold has been lowered. I am very much an 'aspie actor' and rely on my inner-mind scripts and lines to prepare for the next interaction. Is Mindfulness like washing your hands with disinfectant and killing the GOOD germs as well as the bad?

Welcome to Wrong Planet!
The therapist who diagnosed me really recommended practicing mindfulness. I feel it's been beneficial in reducing my anxiety levels, because I don't get as caught up in negative thought loops. The only possible downside is that anxiety used to sometimes motivate me to get things accomplished that I might not have without it. But overall it was a good recommendation, and I want to continue the practice.

I'm not sure how you are doing your mindfulness. Maybe it is opening the hatch to things that are usually ignored. I learned to meditate, and did it a lot in my 20s. The effects seem to have lasted over a decade, but I didn't see why I should be spending time on it when most people did OK without, it seemed. Still, it got me through the darkest hours. Now that I know about my AS, and about the abnormal stress levels of modern life, I see the need, and try to make time. It can sometimes really pay off by preventing confused, wasted efforts. I think of it as on the same list as sleeping, excreting, and exhaling - taking out the garbage.

I practice mindfulness using breathing.

Thanks all for your thoughts on that. Appreciate it. Regards,

For me, water is a pleasant aid for mindfullnes. Water in different ways. Water on my skin, the sound of water at a waterfall or a small river, the fresh smell of water brings me into a status of mindfull. If my ears are submerged in the swimming pool, it also gives me a very pleasant feeling, so I can hear my own breathing very well. The sound of the ticking of the rain on the roof feels relaxing. When rain is frozen, i mean snow is very amazing for my mind. It feels like a bedsheet that covers me. In the video below i was sitting somewhere-erewhon near a small river, a river with a little waterfall. Even when i think back at the moment from years ago it did feel like e medicine for my mind. And last but no least, without water i shoud not have a mind at all. So thank you very much Evolution for the water.

I get a little annoyed it's become 'the thing' to recommend all the time. Like all things, it doesn't work for everyone for various reasons. Anything to do with mindfulness and meditation etc really irritates me (ends up having the opposite effect and making me angry and more stressed). I don't know what it is about it exactly, I remember first reading about it and thinking it sounded very sensible and practical, but I think in practice it ends up being too vague and woo-like for me.

Mindfulness with a solar-lamp.
Life can be very easy

I got recommended mindfulness when I was doing CBT but we soon realised that at times when I'm very stressed it does way more harm than good to do as it results in me berating myself because I can't concentrate. However when I am not at a crisis point it is very good at lowering my levels and I tend to stop going in harmful cycles that used to go on for days. Of course I slip up here and there but these used to first last months, then weeks then days and now maybe like an hour. In general it has been positive for me

STORY: Mindfulness in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: a Systematic Review and Narrative Analysis:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 016-0074-0

Anybody reconsider learning and applying 'mindfulness,' which may be helpful during the 'Stay at Home' directives where the days/routines have been seemingly blurring together lately?

I've done a video about "MINDFULNESS" almost 2 years ago on my YouTube channel.

It took me a while to recognize that the reason why I feel as though I need to go for walks outside when I get upset is because it was my earliest self-discovered from of mindfulness. My dad, thankfully would recognize this too, and rather than stopping me from absconding, would just follow along with me, offering a bike or a route to take. Not much talking was usually involved though. Now a days, I live far from my family and I take myself on my own walks.

What do I mean that walking outside is an exercise in mindfulness for me?

When walking outside, I can't help but look at the nature around me, the beautiful sky, the smell of the sea, or the humming sound of insects. I let myself give into just perceiving the current state of that which is around me. In doing so, I temporarily remove myself from thoughts of past conflicts, even ones recently past, and I forget to think about my fears about the future. I go from perceiving my present environment to slowly recognizing how I'm feeling presently, but without the cast of other characters who would like to tell me how to think and feel.

From outside, I can orient myself. I can see more clearly what is a life emergency and what is not. From outside, all of the NT socialites whose worlds are so bound up in each other's opinions of one another, in their social efforts and punishments, they seem like funny little cave dwellers who can't perceive a world outside their own to me... and I feel free and content to be myself.

Mindfulness in corona-times.

Because of my solitair lifestyle mindfulness is actualy my basic-mode. Mindfulness in a group i cant, in a group its the opposite of mindful in my brain.