Anyone feel like their Autism is the least of their worries?

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am often worried about my financial solvency in the face of continuing health issues. am worried about the truly nasty people that live in my neighborhood. those two things suck almost all of the air out of the autism room for me.

Anxiety and major depression were on top if my list but now it's housing, jobs and getting around. In my 20s after going through so much frustration and obstacles, I felt optimistic after I was diagnosed with autism. I tried to improve myself and while some of that helped, it has been hard given the situation and place I was born into since I have other problems I'm unable to change. Missouri is not a great place in terms of accommodating people with mental health issues unless you have a supportive family and a means to afford and be able to travel quite a distance to get that help. As for trying to support myself, my working experiences have led to severe frustrations and more anxiety. Even though I have been hospitalized for suicide attempts, I was ok up until I tried working again after a long break only to find myself in a hospital not remembering all that happened. I live in an area where people heavily pride themselves for their jobs. I'm on SSI right now which is very little to live on and alone on. I have to really about food and so many little tiny things for basic needs. In my 20s at least people were less judgmental but since going into my 30s, I've become a complete recluse. I'm not married, I don't have children and although I don't consider myself poor given the worst conditions I've been in, it is hard to fit in or make friends because a grown woman with an invisible disorder should automatically grow out of it or stop complaining if she is even able to get a word out. Add that and then the social anxiety which makes communication much harder. I try to smile and do the best I can but when I see someone with autism espousing frustrations like trying to find the right car, the right house, the right college or worrying about how they look, I see them now as secondary problems or "first world problems", not that I don't care but it's been a wild ride growing up. Being an adult isn't easy but being an adult with many other problems has been in my experience much tougher especially given that mental health issues is still a stigma in the US and one that rarely gets talked about or helped with.

LMAO, yes.

Well, I don't FEEL that way. I think autism is the cause of all my other problems, and if something could fix the autism all the other problems would evaporate with time as I grew accustomed to being a normal, "real" human being.

Nobody believes me. Everybody says the autism isn't that bad, you can hardly tell, blah-blah-blah, and my REAL problems are self-hate, anxiety, and depression.

I want to believe them, and believe that I can stop hating myself, stop being scared and uber-careful all the time, and therefore get to stop being sad and the autism won't come roaring back full-bore.

Obviously I don't believe that at all. I believe that the self-hate is the consequence of being self-aware as an autistic woman, the anxiety is the price of being vigilant to compensate for it well, and the depression is the consequence of knowing exactly what is happening and that it's unchangeable (or anyway that the price for ceasing the constant vigilance would be living in complete isolation in a shack in the woods like Ted Kaczynski).

Which one is true?? God only knows.

I don't like to think about it like that. It's not like a checklist that I just check off when I'm done working through one thing. Autism is something I am going to have for the rest of my life. There are times I can cope with it better than others but to say I've moved on from it entirely would be very naive.

I do think I have worked on my autism for longer and therefore I have learned more coping strategies, but it is always going to be there because it's just how my brain works. That also means that when I am dealing with other mental conditions, I am simultaneously dealing with autism.

When I'm depressed, I'm still autistic. When I'm anxious, I'm still autistic. There is not a moment when I am not autistic. So even if I am not consciously making the effort to overcome my autism deficits they still play a huge role in overcoming my mental health problems.

Am I making sense?

definite yes: it's the least of my worries. it compounds other difficulties, and it also defines my personality to a significant extent, but if i have to pick one psychiatric category that best represents "me" and my daily issues, it's adhd, hands down. with asd, it takes time, but you can learn. with adhd, you have to deal with the same issues forever. it's like you just don't learn, even when you understand something perfectly well

i was "officially diagnosed" with asperger's a few years ago, but then again around the same time i was also "officially diagnosed" with a mutually exclusive disorder (schizotypal) by someone else. i don't think i truly have "several conditions". well, technically i do, but i think it makes more sense to look at it as one complex and constantly-evolving condition

if you draw a square with schizotypal pd, schizoid pd, adhd and asd on each corner, i'm somewhere inside that area. there was no point in my life when my issues and eccentricities fell clearly under one of those categories to the exclusion of the other ones, but there was never a point in my life when i was anywhere close to "normal" either. i'm an extreme analytical individualist with a chaotic mind and an erratic mood

contrary to popular (and clinical) belief, adhd doesn't actually soften with age. you get used to it, and you work your way around it -- all the time, or you fail, end of story. my brain is always conspiring to sabotage me, 24/7. every day, i need to figure out a new way to trick myself into going to sleep and getting out of bed and so on. and there's no way for me to explain to other people how even such trivial things that i've done thousands of times can be so frustratingly difficult, especially when they look at me and i seem perfectly normal and capable at first sight. it's very alienating. adhd is real, but it's not believable

socially speaking, my problem is more about not having enough patience with other people and their lack of understanding than the other way around. i just don't like people. i wish i did, but i just don't. but on the other hand i understand that nobody has the obligation to put up with all the things about me that confuse them (just as much as i treasure and enforce my right not to put up with anyone else unless i've promised to, implicitly or explicitly)

socialization is just too much effort for little to no reward. it's like climbing the everest. "hey, it would be cool to do it someday!". could i do it in my lifetime? yes, probably. am i going to? lol, no. i'm not delusional. it's too bad. but life goes on. there are other things for me to entertain myself with. if i get to connect with someone while at it, great. that actually would be awesome, and i try to stay open to the thought. but not everybody gets to climb the everest, and that's okay. that's how i look at it nowadays

i don't have everything i want, but i have everything i need, and i have enough control over my life to take it in another direction if i decide to. that's something i didn't use to have, and i'm proud i managed to achieve it (by my own very unconventional means). i'm far from satisfied, but as long as i manage to maintain my sanity, i'm content. maintaining my sanity is my main goal and priority every day. it was hard-earned, and i don't want to lose it

I have a rare anxiety disorder they call "the phobia of speaking". It's no exaggeration, let me tell you. I was diagnosed with it long before my Aspergers. And though I've gotten better, now able to speak in public and even in small groups of people I don't know, it still rules my life. My social circle is not so much a circle as a dot (and not even that actually). I can only speak to a handful of family members, and now I don't have a job anymore it's only too easy to fall back into my 3-year routine of not leaving the house. My aspergers barely even touches me compared to that anxiety. Some days I used to wonder if I even had aspergers at all...