Pacing an activity to avoid becoming overwhelmed. Any ideas?

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My psychologist pointed out to me this week that I need to work on my pacing skills. When I start something I go so overboard and forget about everything else. I forget to eat, don't want to go to work or to sleep, and everyone in my life becomes an annoying distraction. Eventually I become so overwhelmed that I just fall apart. Like most things in my life, I do things in extremes- Black and white.

I know becoming overfocused on an interest is an AS thing. But I find that a lot of my behaviour is an attempt to try to control anxiety. I'm not even sure if I actually enjoy what I'm doing. For example I am going back to uni next year and travelling next month and I am obsessed with researching these two things at the moment. I feel like there is just SO much information that it is overwhelming, and the more I try to control my anxiety by researching it, the more overwhelming it becomes. I see one website and I see something and think "I should look up that" and on and on. And before I know it I've got 100+ webpages open, 5 hours has passed and it's 3am!

Can anyone relate to this?

I've been trying to come up with ideas to feel like I'm in control of the situation. Giving myself time limits to stick to, setting clear tasks and lists and trying to stick to it. But I'm not having any luck. I just can't seem to make myself stop the task once I've started, usually until I'm on the edge of overload and shutdown.

This is a tough one.

My problem is that even if I set a schedule, it is difficult to get my mind out of the groove that it is in. So a timer can go off and I acknowledge that it went off and "switch" to another task but that other task doesn't engage my attention sufficiently. The original thread of activity is still running in the background and it rapidly pops up to the top. So even when I attempt to switch task, I often don't succeed. I just drift back to the thing I was originally doing.

One thing I've noticed is that if I need to switch tasks, I need to do something that STOPS the current task dead in its tracks, ESPECIALLY if it is related to a special interest. If I don't completely stop it and fully clear it out of my mind, it just bubbles back to life.

Unfortunately, the only thing I've found that allows such a complete cognitive reset is vigorous exercise and doing crunches on the floor in my office goes way beyond eccentric and into the realm of unacceptably weird.

I suspect something like head banging might work (no joke - it is thought by some head banging is an extreme reaction to cognitive overload). But that has negative side effects. But it points to an answer. We need to break the cycle of thoughts that hold us on a singular track. Something as to slap us silly, in some cognitive sense, so we can move to another track.

Maybe meditation would work. Need to switch task? Engage in purposeful breathing and meditation for 60 seconds to clear the mind. 60 seconds might not be enough. But something like this might be workable.

Totally. Also the control thing is so true.
I started feeling more in control after I started organizing the information in my computer. I even started writing my thoughts in a personal blog (not public). One could also do it in a diary.

Another thing that made me feel more in control, is when my parents started to understand and believe about my autism.
I guess when big issues start getting sorted out, you feel more in control.

Do you have procrastination problems? If yes, you should work on that as a seperate problem, giving special attention to that.


@wavefreak58 - "The road to my hell is paved with your good intentions." That one's a keeper.

Plan your time e.g. say you are going to spend 2 hours on this on Saturday at a specific time.
You could have an aim as to what you are doing e.g. to prepare for a job interview I am going to print out specific pieces of info such as a map, interviewers names, job spec, my application, work on specific types of questions, learn a summary of what the company does. If you go in thinking I have to prepare for a job interview it is daunting.

I kind of do that you have never known anyone look up so much on holidays when planning our honeymoon and which specific areas and hotels to go to. I ended up knowing more than some travel agents. I made myself really stressed panicking that it was not booked and trying to make it "perfect." I spend hours going round in circles and still feel like I know nothing at the end and have achieved nothing.

Oh goodness, I can REALLY relate to this. These past couple weeks has been Aspergers/autsim. There have been several nights where I've been up ALL night posting/reading on this site and then reading up on Aspergers and other things. I looked into the Aspergers Wiki and then saw something called the "Neanderthal Theory" and was like...What? So I went to that and spent several hours reading that! I"m pretty sure if I hadn't been so dead I would've gone into all that DNA and further researched even THAT!
If you get me on a topic that's interesting to me, and throw me on the internet, I lose track of time. What seems like an hour ends up being a lot more than I thought.
I never realized this before, but someone did post about getting your mind completely off it. There are times when I want to do something, but I know I need to do something else, but I don't want to. Instead I just want to go off onto my one subject, but if I make myself get up and get out of the house, even for 20 minutes, my brain 'forgets' it easier, and I can focus on the next thing. Sleep also does this for me, but then when I want to sleep, I don't want to wake up, so if I have to be somewhere, but if I stayed up all night doing something, I'll also just stay awake until that thing since I have such a hard time making myself wake up to do things if I don't have at least 9 hours. Why 9 hours? It takes me so long to fall asleep that if I sleep any less, I end up being so in my sleep that I don't want to take my mind off that and dreaming, and I don't feel rested!

I'm not quite that bad, but with model building, I used to try to do too much at one time and ruin the kit.

I learned that I had to force myself to do X today and STOP. I had to always remind myself that if I do too much at one time, I will mess up the project. Lots of things take time (glue drying, paint drying, etc.) and as you get tired, you make more mistakes.

And the mistakes ruin it. I always rush through mathmatical problems when I have to do them. It's why math frustrated me once it started getting into algebra. I knew how to do it, but I always 'rushed', and moved on too fast and if you make one little mistake, you completely ruin the answer and get it wrong.

Yes, definitely.

Over time, I have come to view life as more of a marathon than a sprint, and that has helped my psychological "pace" since my goal (or philosophy) now is to be able to actually finish at all rather than to keep trying to get there by tomorrow.

I currently have a very big project in the works, and at first I was completely overwhelmed by all the research I had to do in order to get started at all ... and then I realized the research is actually a very-real part of the overall project I *can* eventually complete if I just methodically do whatever happens to be in front of me right now and not try to complete everything in one sweeping move.

I'm having difficulty finding anything that will create a complete stop in my mind. I can acknowledge that it is time to stop, but can't seem to find the will power to stick to the plan. Just 5 more minutes, 5 more minutes, 5 more minutes....

If I do succeed in forcing myself to stop a task it creates a never ending cycle- I struggle enormously to begin the next task, then become hooked on the new task and eventually struggle to move myself off of that.

Is this exactly what autistic inertia is? Difficulty changing from action to inaction / inaction to action. Is this what is meant by the AS trait "difficulty switching tasks"? I've never really thought of myself as fitting this criteria because my excessive focus is not really directed at a special interest as such.