Hygiene problems

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I respect you for sharing, and I can't help but to think that it's something that you can learn or improve on, if you want to, and when you're ready. Of course not if you also have physical reasons; not able to reach, etc. I'll share that I couldn't handle my own toilet hygiene until I was much older than most boys when they learn and practice. Maybe that led to my being a clean freak as an adult. I can't judge or speak for you, but in my case, it was just that I told myself it was too tricky to do, and there seemed to always be a way out of learning. The same scenario was true for me with many other things which "just happen" for other people... From learning to ride a bike, to even LEARNING how to be intimate with a woman. Yes, I had to learn that. I'm 43, and there are still many things I don't, won't or even think I can't do... But I also know that I can continue learning new things as long as I live. So can you, and that's a fact. Again, I can't judge what, when, or how for you, but you can.

Charles

I'm almost OCD with showering. I take two everyday. I put on deoderant everyday. Even when I'm not going anywhere. I can't stand being dirty at all. It's a bit of a sensory issue. Especially the soles of my feet and hands.

Being hungry reminds me that it's time to eat, too, but if I'm stuck in a particular mindset, I won't be able to act on this knowledge. It's part of a neurological impairment, not a matter of intelligence. It's not what you know it's being able to do what you know. And that's without getting into the stuff Anbuend mentioned (some of which I have experienced in the past). There are so many reasons why this isn't as simple as it sounds.

Sometimes, people learn skills and lose them again. Sometimes they have a lot of difficulty learning them. Sometimes they learn them but for various reasons can't put them into practice - these include physical and neurological impairments that make it difficult or impossible to do so. Sometimes it's easier to learn things in ways that may not make sense to other people (unconsciously integrating the learning without realizing it) and harder to learn things in a way that other people expect.

I guess what I mean is, I think many people here are pretty good judges of their limitations, and report them honestly, and I know I find when someone starts telling me that if I just tried harder to learn I could overcome particular problems that have already proven intractable, that I get frustrated and have a difficult time continuing the conversation.

I am SOOOO bad about this that I actually had to resort to logging my food every day in a food tracker so that I would get the right foods in my body. It was ridiculous and nobody ever understood it. Now it all makes sense. Logging food actually works if you can make yourself do that. You will have to backload a lot (eat a lot of calories later in the day) if you are like me and get hyperfocused and just cannot stop to eat otherwise. With logging the food I know at some point in the day I will get the right macros and calories to sustain me.

Yeah, these generally aren't things that improve for me. Rather the opposite: Even when I used to be better at them, they usually go away again. I can't sustain them. I've had people turn me into an "improvement project" over various things like this before. They put all their energy (and have me put all my energy) into improving one particular skill. Sometimes it doesn't improve at all. Sometimes it only looks like it improves. Sometimes it sort-of really improves. But then, even in the "best" scenario where it sort of improves, they learn something important about my skills: The moment that I am not putting all of my extra energy (often energy I don't have) into doing whatever the thing is, it goes away again. Because all they've managed to do is get me to use my emergency reserves, and once those reserves are exhausted, I'm back to normal. Because of that, I find attempts to "improve" me really irritating at best, and dangerous at worst (because I often need those emergency reserves, for actual emergencies).

For me, there's a combination of things that go into making just about any and all daily living skills difficult. All of them are pretty inflexible in the end. I'm just saying these things for informational purposes. I don't attach the emotional significance to things like this that a lot of people do, so please don't feel sorry for me or think that I'm trying to make you feel sorry for me or anything, that's just annoying and pointless.

One, perception of the world. First off, my body is just perceived as one more part of the room or wherever else I am. It's not perceived as internal to me, nor separate from my surroundings. So any sensory information coming in from my body is pretty much not going to be easy to sift through to understand anything. Then there's the fact that any information I get from anywhere is pretty close to raw sensory data, a lot of it kind of jumbled up in certain ways. A lot of people here don't have this issue, so it's foreign to them, but it's like ... I don't even know the words at the moment. It's just almost entirely uninterpreted, and interpreting it expends energy. And in order to interpret it, you have to know that it's there to be interpreted, then hope that you have the mental energy to interpret it, and so on. And if I'm in any new place, and haven't had time to build at least a rudimentary map of my surroundings to place all the information in, then often it can just literally turn into a totally incomprehensible jumble. I mean it does that even in familiar places, but new places almost guarantee it. And that includes any data I get from my body.

Two, thinking. Or not thinking. Or something. When I'm not actively putting effort into it, what I call "thinking" is not what a lot of people would call thinking. It's like people have asked me what I was thinking, and I'll describe what was happening, and they'll say "No, what were you thinking about", and I'll describe what was happening, and it goes around in circles, because the bulk of my "thought" is simply the things that are happening around me as interpreted by my brain. But my brain doesn't automatically interpret as many things as a lot of people's brains automatically interpret. Like I was saying earlier about sensory input, often I get more the raw data, like visually I'll get the colors and stuff, like colors in specific shapes and formations, but I won't identify the type of object it is, nor will I necessarily know where one thing starts and another ends. I generally, unless putting huge amounts of effort into it, think and navigate the world almost entirely using more sensory than conceptual information. Conceptual stuff is for when I need to communicate with people or something, and it's not always possible even then. It fritzes out on me pretty regularly, or does other weird things to my brain. So when I'm going through the day, I'm not really able to use concepts to guide what I'm doing, as much as most people can. So I won't easily be able to use ideas about the world to order what to do when, or how to do things. (The things I can do, I do a lot by sensory stuff and motor memory and things like that all chained together in the right ways. As much as possible. So that I have to use as little conceptualization as possible. When I do use concepts, I can sometimes use them quite well, but it's again a "sprinting" situation where they are there and then gone, I can't use them over the long haul.)

Then there's doing the actual actions themselves. I have an autism-related movement disorder, usually compared to Parkinson's and catatonia as far as the general "family" of conditions. It's basically an amplification of the way autism already affected movement when I was growing up before it became a progressive thing (it's part of the reason I lost speech a second time, for instance, although another part was that the speech wasn't very connected to communication, so it's complex). Anyway. So this affects starting movements, stopping movements, switching movements, combining movements, etc. All of these things either can't happen at all, or take a large amount of effort. Because of this and other physical conditions I have, I normally use a motorized wheelchair to get around. It reduces the amount of movements I have to do in order to get places. The big thing is that if a movement is triggered by something (internal or external), I may be able to do it perfectly (typing is triggered by the presence of a keyboard, so except when exhausted I retain the ability to touch-type quite fast), but without that trigger it's either difficult and slow, or impossible. When such a thing is difficult... it's almost like putting in a large amount of effort to push through an invisible rubber wall, and after I've pushed through, the wall breaks apart and I can move normally for a bit before I hit another wall. (Also, all of these things affecting movement, also affect thinking, memory, and language, among other things.) If I can't get through that kind of "wall", all the effort in the world will just result in a meltdown or shutdown, nothing useful.

In practice, though, the world isn't tidily divided into sensory processing, thought, and movement. In the real world, you have to be constantly combining and switching back and forth between these things. (Keeping in mind combining and switching anything for me is hard.) More than that, there isn't just one task that has to be dealt with throughout the day, but many. And that adds unbelievable complications, including things about having to know what to pay attention to. Remember that I don't automatically interpret just about any sensory input so things like notes don't work because they just look like white things with scribbly lines on them and don't register as having an identity or meaning of their own. (And even if I left notes, I can't really follow most of the directions...). Most of my abilities are also sort of propped up on stilts. My "default" state is no or barely any concepts, not voluntarily moving, and not much if any interpretation of sensory information. I can "climb out of" that for limited amounts of time in limited ways, but the moment I stop concentrating, or the moment I do too much, everything goes crashing back to that default state. It's a mess. Also the more times I come crashing back in a really large, catastrophic sort of way (like from long-built-up overdoing things culminating in a massive spectacular shutdown), the harder it is permanently to get out of that default state. (So this has become harder throughout my life. When young, I had a stretch where I really gave it a run for its money, but I've been paying for that ever since. See the burnout thread.)

Most people, when they learn something... it's like they start out at level 5, climb to level 6, then to 7, then to 8, and they're always on firm ground. In my case, even when I know how to do something, I always start from level 0. Which, first off, is lower than most people even know exists. And second off, means that each time I do something, I'm putting together the pieces from scratch. Rather than being able to start from a more "advanced" level. That also factors into all this. Practically everything starts from level 0. No short cuts.

And that's just autism-related stuff. (Which is already enough to render pretty much all daily living tasks nearly impossible to do well, consistently, or at all.) I'm also physically impaired in ways that have nothing to do with autism. I had a big health crash a few years ago, after which my muscles don't work right. They basically don't let me use them much before they go limp. Among other things. Which means limited time standing or even sitting up. I basically have to live 99% of my life in bed ever since then, in order to render myself able to do enough to get through the day as well as I still do. (Without physically resting most of the time, I just turn completely floppy and can't do anything.) And that's besides the frequent migraines (which cause brain-fuzz and nausea even when they don't cause headaches, basically rendering my thoughts into mush) and various pain-inducing conditions that I haven't even got into. (A lot of both cognitive and physical issues run on both sides of my family, and i'm the lucky winner of a lot of weird genes. I wasn't kidding in another thread when I said that I'm not sure there are family members who entirely qualify as nondisabled.)

So... basically I'm already operating at the top of my efficiency and abilities. As it is, I frequently overdo things and have to spend time recovering. And some of these issues seem to be progressive, so I've been losing ground in some areas for some time. So it's pretty unlikely that stuff I'm getting worse at is going to suddenly get better if I just put in some effort. The way my body works, raw effort doesn't work. Raw effort causes something, cognitive or physical, to simply do a BSOD (click the link if unfamiliar with that term). What works best is much more tentative and careful. But even being tentative and careful doesn't help me grow new abilities. It's already sort of an intricate dance to do what I already do without crashing too much. Never assume too much about who you're talking to. The language they're using could have really robust cognitive and physical abilities behind it, or... it could be a paper-thin layer just barely propped up on top of skills that are ready to fall apart at a moment's notice. Or anything in between. For me it's the second, even at my most eloquent. Being able to say the sort of things I've said in this post is the ongoing work of the past decade, and even so, these words aren't always there when I need them.

When I am really focused, I do not get hungry. The first sign that it is time to eat is when I start feeling ill.

I eat, because it is part of my routine. I eat because I want to chew on something. I eat because food is there. I rarely eat because of hunger.

Often what I first notice is that I'll have out of place emotions. I'll get really teary for no reason or something. And when I actually consciously notice it, then, if I remember to do so, I run through a list -- when did I eat, when did I sleep, how much time have I had a break from language/concept, have I had anything to drink, am I sick, etc. Sometimes even then I can't figure it out until more and more symptoms show themselves. But often the weird emotions are what tip me off. Of course by then, I'm seriously sleep-deprived, hungry, etc., so it'd be nice to have earlier warning, but I just can't monitor my body that easily.

I noticed that I got rashes every summer since I started working at a machine shop. I figured it was from a combination of heat and exposure to the coolant we used in the machines that kept me wet all day. I would even get rashes on my wrists where the coolant settled inside my latex gloves. Now that I have been laid off this summer I did not get a rash I think it was me having no contact with the coolant and staying dry.

I usually notice when I'm hungry, but actually convincing myself to go get food is often difficult - especially when it requires making food. I sometimes put off eating for several hours even when I can tell I'm hungry. Breakfast usually isn't a problem, because I eat it soon after getting up, and lunch is okay when I'm out of the house (I usually pack one to take with me), but when I'm at home for lunch or supper, I tend to put off eating for a long time. I do almost always get 3 meals a day, though, even if they're much delayed.

(I don't know if this is a transition problem or what.)

I used to have one of those red heat lamps in the bathroom, when we lived where it was really cold--that was so wonderful -- I highly recommend it, it might help you to be able to get out of the shower and dry off with a heat lamp, and it clamped to something high and shone down, so there was no worry of heater and tripping over cord or .. how close are the rugs and towels (firehazard) so... just a suggestion. It was quite lovely after a shower

I was just reminded of this time I was using patches for medication (wearing them for four days at a time). I had a very difficult time taking a bath or shower while I had a patch on - like it was an extra barrier between me and taking care of my hygiene. I had to switch to pills to get rid of this because nothing I tried worked to overcome it. It wasn't consistent - I could bathe sometimes, just not every time.

I really dislike going too long between baths, too.

If you live in the United States, I would recommend washing trousers every day, hair every day, and take a bath every day. However, the standards in your location might be different. I would be especially careful about appearance if you are looking for a boyfriend or husband.

I have had a couple hair stylists suggest that washing hair every other day is the way to do it, and daily washing can cause damage.

I live in the US and would NOT recommend these standards at all though I realize most Americans feel these are the only standards. I was fortunate enough to attend a part of my high school years in Europe and there I learned that we will not fall apart or get disease simply because we wear the same clothing 3 or more times before washing. I also learned that one can bathe far less than every single day and still be acceptable to other people.

Just saying...

I absolutely cannot wash my hair every day. It's horrible if I do. It really depends on the type of hair you have. Mine is thick and coarse. But I know people with thin, fine hair who have to wash it every day or it looks oily and flat.

I would love to have one of those red heat lamps. I've seen them before, maybe in a hotel.