What stresses you out the most about your autism?

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I'm like this, too, to a certain extent. If I'm following a recipe, I have a very strong tendency to follow it line by line, measuring everything out exactly. If the recipe calls for a teaspoon of honey and I only have 3/4 of a teaspoon, I don't really know what to do (short of running out to the store and buying more honey). I almost always avoid substituting one thing for another unless there is a mathematically written equivalent somewhere.

Cooking impromptu is kind of hard for me without a recipe. I think that's why I prefer baking, because everything has to be more-or-less exact and you generally can't substitute.

Oh. I got thrown off by the description of the lid still being on the honey bottle. I go through this, or part of this too. I go to a lot of trouble to keep up with things in my visual memory because I have a lot of trouble finding things with my eyes. I have good vision, but I have trouble recognizing what I am looking at as being what I am looking for because of figure ground problems or whatever. I suspect it might have something to do with my CAPD. I read somewhere that hearing nerve impulses and seeing nerve impulses enter the brain through the same neurons. If this is true then my visual recognition problems might be logical.

At any rate when someone moves something and I don't find it where I was expecting to find it, for me it's lost, and I resent it when this happens because of my above mentioned problems relocating things. Often it's far more efficient to just ask my wife to relocate something for me than to waste a bunch of time looking for it myself. However, for me, when this happens, the frustration isn't overwhelming, though it can be extremely annoying.

Last edited by willmark on 09 Jul 2009, 8:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

i dont want to end up restrained every time i bang my head which is mostly when im really angry and stressed

The fact that I just don't seem to 'get it'. People tell me this all the time. I think I'm understand something and I offer a solution and then they say..."You don't get it, it's not that simple". But to me it seems that simple and I don't know what else there is to comprehend. People over complicate everything and it frustrates me because I can see solutions but apparently, it's not that simple!

Also the isolation that it has caused AND the depression. I can't even fit in with other aspies and it's like everything I do, I'm doing from the outside of the situation looking in, trying to get in but I can't. Even in a room full of people I know I'm totally alone.

As well as what I said above, I also think that my emotional issues have hindered me more than my AS. Existence stresses me out too because for me, there are too many questions and not enough answers.

Being sensitive to criticism. Tonight someone was negative to me in a sarcastic way and I of course dwelled on it all night, feeling hopeless for the first time in a long time.
Also, when I think I'm right I have to be right, and if people correct me I sort of look at them as though they're dumb. This happened while I was showing my mother directions on a map, then she was like 'but I enter from the other side to where your pointing.' Although I keep acting like I know more than her just because I used to study for a year in that area. I still think I'm right. Oh well, we'll find out who was right tomorrow.

The inability to think fast in social interactions. I am like a deer in the headlights. When the topic is about something I know well then I'm okay. If it is small talk or vicious office politics then I'm done for. My energy level goes from 100 to 0 in about two seconds in a bad or overwhelming social situation. It can take months of rest and isolation to recover from that.

WOW! This is AMAZING! Living breathing souls who actually describe their inner thinking in the same way as mine. "Is this really that rare?" he asks. I have inquired on the many forums that I have camped out on over the years, to see if anyone else experiences thinking the way I do, and I was ready, until two years ago, to conclude that the way my mind works must be some sort of freak of nature or something. Two years ago I met an online friend that feels kindred, whose mind also worked this way. When I speak in terms of someone feeling kindred, I am referring to someone who feels extremely familiar the first time I read one of their posts, or the first time I meet them. This woman is also an INFP, and she can feel when I am thinking of her. I have never met this person other than via email and windows live, and probably never will this side of heaven, and she hasn't been online for several months, but I greet her often day to day, and our communication is totally in image and inner knowing. She took the Aspie quiz recently an it reported her as likely an Aspie.

I'm debating with myself, wondering if what you say about "feelings" and "auras" is the same thing I experience. I describe it in different terms. I call it "feeling tone labels", and/or "nonverbal nomenclature". Everything in my memory has a feeling attached to it, that functions like a label, and I cannot begin to describe what they feel like, but each is unique, and I recognize words, memories, and people too for that matter, by their feeling tone label. When I read someone's post I also feel their feeling tone label which is part of their vibe. I have discovered from online experiences that when I suddenly feel someone's feeling tone label, that I have learned to recognize, seemingly out of nowhere, that this probably means that that person is reading one of my posts, or is praying for me, or pondering something I said for whatever reason. One some occasions I also co-experience their emotional response to whatever they were thinking. Often when I think about my online friend that I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I can feel her smile inside when she realizes it's me.

As I understand it, the part about words and memories having feeling tone labels is supposed to be more common among people who have a personality type that strongly utilizes Introverted Sensing. I have discovered from being on INFP forums that this is common among people who are INFP. I am not sure what other types also might experience this, whether it is only feeling types that strongly utilize Introverted Sensing, or if it is any type that does. I would not be surprised if folks who are INTP also experience this.

I wish folks would take the time to do a walk through with your ideas. That would allow them to explain what things they think you are not thinking of, and gives you the opportunity to defend the application of your idea in that newly explained scenario. Maybe they think they don't have the time to learn something new from someone who isn't like them. That would seem to be the kind thing to do, and it would not take a lot of effort. And even if they demonstrated that indeed your idea was too simple, you would learn from it, and they would establish a connection with you. I don't understand why that would be so hard.