Constant Battle

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I'm having a constant battle in my mind. One side says, "I'm happy being me". The other side says, "Am I really autistic?". I just don't know who I am, and I don't know what to do. Can someone help me?

Hey hope you are doing okay.

If you are diagnosed, than their is a 95% chance roughly that you are autistic. It isn't a bad thing, autism gives you interests, and strengths in certain areas. If you are doubting that you are autistic, that's fine. It often means you doing well at adapting to the world around you.

I am diagnosed. But I don't think I'm adapting well, I still have meltdowns many times per week. I have only one friend that I haven't seen in three years. I can only socialize with close family members and animals.

When I see other autistic people's special interest, I wonder why mine aren't like that. My special interest is counting calories. It's confusing me.

I see what you describing. I am 16 going on 17 currently and what you have just described is how I was at your age. Maybe you are depressed and that is okay things do get better albeit with support. The most striking thing you often find out after that period is that many perceptions of yourself turn out not be true.

As for personal interests, well your profile picture is of anime, my guess is your interested in that as well as counting calories. You don't need to necessarily have one either, just be your own person and follow what you like. You'll still be unique, thing is about being autistic is that you often have a different very interesting perspective on the world.

It's such a common special interest for female autistics that they are often misdiagnosed with eating disorders instead.
https://spectrumnews.org/features/deep- ... -anorexia/

I think counting calories is a very useful skill amid the obesity epidemic that is going on. It can lead you to healthy eating habits and hopefully you will be able to influence or at least inform others of healthy eating habits. I seriously think that many people have no clue how many calories they consume each day and how much their body needs. So knowing the caloric content of food items is extremely helpful. Do you have an interest in becoming a nutritionist?

I'm hearing from the OP that she feels like she doesn't fit in with either group, autistic or not autistic. I'm hearing that in general she feels isolated. I found help in an eating disorder support group at school where we spent most of our time talking about relationships, not food. It was really helpful in lessening my compulsion. I don't know why.

Special interests of Aspies make it hard to socialize, even with other Aspies. Sometimes the interests are so narrow that you won't find someone with a similar interest, even on a large worldwide forum like this one.

Sometimes it is useful if you use it correctly. Three years ago I was anorexic, counting only 200 calories per day and made it at a dangerously low weight. I would write on a piece of paper, this is what time I'll eat, this is what I'll eat and this is how many calories it is. It was fun but scary at the same time.

I don't agree that counting calories is a good habit. It's perfectly possible to eat a correct amount of calories and still be terribly unhealthy.

Call me old fashioned, I just don't think obsessing about things having to do with your own body is healthy for anyone. Better obsess about something outside yourself, like Star Trek or horses or whatnot. I don't mean to be all judgmental about this; I understand that it's difficult. However, the sheer number of people of people with eating disorders in the world today means that you'll always find someone who will support some very unhealthy thinking.

I once read an interesting blog post by a nutritionist who was a vegan and who went back to eating meat. She pointed out that the vegetarian community was full of people with eating disorders, which I've long suspected. The comments section was a circus.

Learn to be kind to yourself, and to give your brain food that makes you happy, and then I mean healthy happy, not McDonalds happy. I've heard people say nice things about Kristin Neff and her talks on self-compassion. I've often found anorexic people to be too hard on themselves.

Somebody on WP described themselves as an "army of one", which I completely relate to. Are you an army of one too?

I think being conflicted is very common for autistics. I often doubt my diagnosis. But then I find so much comfort in sensory alone time, and how routines I find hard to break.

I wonder if you might be able to nurture a new special interest? (If you are finding Calorie counting destructive) My sons all time favourite is trains, but he will go off on a tangent for months at a time, so recently everything was about tropical birds, and before that woolly mammoths! So it may be possible to shift away from one focused interest, onto something that you enjoy and then just go with it, let it flourish.