What's your escape?

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The worlds from various books, movies and games. Dino Crisis for one, I think of scenarios involving the facility and characters, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pokemon.

I also rely heavily on nostalgia, I need it, I keep things just for the memories associated with them. I would die without nostalgia, it sounds stupid but I can't really explain it. I play Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on PS1 because of the memories associated with it and the music in it.

I also like to remember things that happened to me that I enjoyed, like when I went with my dog to a field near our house and just sat there listening and watching the world go by.

my room...with the doors closed.

RPGs

Yes I too enjoy beer with jugs

Daydreaming of cartoons or hearing music in my head usually relaxes me. As cartoons are my special interests, so it really helps me during hard times of stress!

Cartoons are fantastic! My favorites are Tom and Jerry, Popeye too.

I like meditation. But my mind can have other ideas. One time, I was so traumatized that I involuntarily went very far away - mentally. Everything there was very dark and black. Meanwhile, here in the physical world my mother was standing in front of me shaking me and screaming my name. From the dark quiet place I became aware of her voice - it was little and very, very far away, like on the horizon - if nothingness can have a horizon. I started toward it and then was looking out of my eyes at my mom.

Another time, I was extremely unhappy when I was 14 and my mind just checked out for two whole weeks all on its own. I have no memory of the time at all but everyone said I just went about my business, even going to school and everything - I was just on auto pilot. When I came back, I didn't know any time had been lost except for the date and what we'd covered in school. I was two weeks behind.

These are dissociative states, when the mind retreats to protect itself. So, yes, I have a place I go in my mind, it's just...different and I don't know that I want to go there. I would like a pretty place

My apartment is also my escape.

I like reading about other peoples inner sanctuaries, there were a couple of people who described theirs on here. Mine is a hidden waterfall in a large forest, where I just sit or lie there enjoying nature. Usually alone, but sometimes I invite someone else. I would love to find a real place like this, but it's so beautiful that many people would want to go there and then it wouldn't be peaceful any longer. So I'm happy to keep it inside my head for now. The other place I used to go sometimes is like a two story rec room/treehouse that was coloured brightly and had all the entertainment I could ever ask for. Since painting my real room the colours of that imagined room, I haven't gone back there because the room has come to me.

Real world escapes are too many to list, but one really good one is google maps street view where I just fly to a random place in the world and go for a walk. I've found some really beautiful places by doing this. It's quite exciting and calming at the same time. It would be really exciting if future technology somehow permitted us to walk off of the street into, say, a forest. I could search for my real waterfall.

(although technology is pretty impressive already: Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos augmented-reality maps)

Internal mental sanctuaries never quite did it for me. Even as a child, I always had to physically escape to a place where I couldn't easily be disturbed.

One of the good points of growing up in a city is that there were always empty buildings to crawl into and explore. I would always disappear into various abandoned buildings in the neighborhood, sometimes coming home with injuries. But I liked having large spaces to myself.

I also had a thing for tunnels and vents until I got too big for it.

When I posted this thread, I was aiming towards people describing their inner escape, not their real world escape. It's pretty clear that outer world escapes for aspies would be their obsessions, most of the time, anyway...

I posted this thread very late after a chat on the phone with another aspie with whom we discussed this topic, and she told me that it would be interesting to see what sort of mental escape other aspies have, so I posted this thread.

My inner escape is a big empty ballroom that is on the ground floor at daytime. It is summer outside, and large curtains are hanging over the windows, closing them completely but with daylight still coming in. The room is completely devoid of furniture except for a very old piano at the other end of the room. The vast emptiness of that room is very calming, and the warmth of the sun also helps me feel happy and secure. As long as the sun is shining, everything is alright, the world is still turning 'round. It's quiet, and if I were to open the curtains, all I would see would be nature underneath the blue sky. No people, no annoying cars, no pollution. There are no obligations and nobody who will bother me. I can just pace around the room and contemplate...

My escape's usually in my little made-up world of dinosaurs (little childish), but my other way to escape is down the highway or country backroads.

I do this all the time. I find my internal life is way more interesting than my external life most of the time.

I used to do this as a child quite often. I used to imagine myself as a surgeon working with a group of other people, because human anatomy was my obsession and I dreamed of becoming a surgeon. Now, I like imagining myself being sociable and going to parties and doing other stuff that I could never do. I also like to imagine myself in different situations in the future. For example, meeting someone and having a dialogue with them, or doing something crazy...