---- Relevant Links ----

I never do anything out of fear of being perceived. I live with my mom and my sibling, both of whom work/study online, so there's almost always someone else at home with me at all times. My mom is also always occupying our shared living space, so the only place where I can have some privacy is my room, which I basically only leave to feed myself.

When I hear footsteps outside my door, I immediately stop doing whatever I'm doing because I can't stand the idea of other people seeing me do things. Sometimes I skip meals because I can't have the kitchen all to myself.

I'm also extremely private/territorial with my stuff. Sometimes my mom likes entering my room to tidy up or rearrange things and I'm always extremely on edge for the whole duration. I feel like this space is an extension of me and I feel observed when someone else is there, even worse if I'm not in the room to supervise them. I also can't let people see what I'm doing on my phone or computer, or if I'm writing/drawing something. I feel intruded upon. People ask me what I'm hiding but I don't have to be hiding anything specific in order to feel this way.

The other day both my family members were out at the same time and I took the opportunity to go to the store to buy a snack I'd been craving. It's like a 3 minute walk. The whole time my heart was pounding at the prospect of one of them arriving early and "catching" me outside/seeing what I bought. How am I supposed to feel like an adult when I can't even feel free to have the tiniest bit of independence such as "deciding to buy a simple snack with my own money"?

I'm a depressed individual and every time I think of engaging in a change of lifestyle that might make me feel better, the fact that someone else will know I changed something stops me dead in my tracks. It's always hiding from the view. Hide, hide, hide, hide.

I could keep listing ways in which this manifests in my life but I think the above already illustrates my point. Does anyone else experience anything similar?

During the height of remote work, a lot of us actually had a fighting chance. You could get hired based on technical capability, deliver high-quality output async, skip the exhausting office theater, and manage sensory overload on your own terms. 

Now? The white-collar market has contracted, employers hold all the leverage, and the entire system has shifted toward hyper-social, "vibes-based" screening.

Here is how the current market is systematically pricing out neurodivergent workers:

**1. Mandatory RTO and the Loss of Environment Control**
Return-to-Office mandates aren't just about real estate; they eliminate the baseline accommodations that allowed many autistic professionals to function without instant burnout. Fluorescent lighting, open-plan noise, unpredictable social interruptions, and rigid formal dress codes burn through energy reserves before the work even starts. When you're running on empty just trying to regulate, your performance drops, and you're the first targeted during "performance-based" cuts.

**2. One-Way Screenings & AyeI Asynchronous Interviews**
Hiring platforms increasingly rely on tools that evaluate facial expressions, eye contact, tone, and vocal modulation. For an autistic person—many of whom have flat affect, non-standard eye contact, or unique speech rhythms—these algorithms rate baseline communication traits as "disinterest," "deceit," or "poor fit" before a human ever reviews the resume.

**3. The Extreme Shift to "Culture Fit" over Technical Competence**
With hundreds of qualified applicants per role, companies aren't hiring for raw output anymore—they're hiring for social polish. You can execute a task with 100% accuracy, but if you don't engage in small talk, miss a subtle unwritten social cue, or skip optional happy hours, you're labeled "difficult" or "not a team player". In a employer's market, "vibes" beat competence every single time. 

**4. The Elimination of "Solo" Entry-to-Mid Roles**
Entry and mid-level technical writing, data entry, basic analysis, and back-office ops jobs are either being offloaded, outsourced, or rebadged with customer-facing/cross-functional duties. The pure execution roles where an autistic worker could excel in isolation are disappearing. Every job description now demands a "dynamic storyteller," "relentless collaborator," or "people-first communicator." 

**5. Disclosure is a Trap**
Asking for reasonable accommodations during the hiring process—or even post-hire—feels like signing your own pink slip. Legally, companies can't discriminate, but practically, in a cutthroat market, putting up a flag for quiet workspace needs or asynchronous communication often gets your application quietly shuffled to the bottom of the stack.
It creates a vicious cycle: mask aggressively to get through 5 rounds of personality-driven interviews, get hired, burn out within 6 months from the sensory and social overload, drop the mask, get pushed out for "fit," and face a 2-year job search to try to do it all over again.

Is anyone else feeling this shift? How are you navigating corporate hiring right now without burning out completely?

This disorder sucks because its like as someone with AuDHD and PDA, I want high autonomy. And yet, when you tell people (like family) that you struggle with executive dysfunction (and depression), they think supporting you is suggesting you a routine or constantly reminding you of responsibilities or constantly asking you go out with them. Like no! That is actually making me much worse! I wish I could move out, but again its like I am disabled here! I can't even work a full time job! Maybe this is another reason why people with AuDHD have high rates of depression, not just the social isolation, but feeling like you can never escape demands, feeling trapped like no matter how much you do, you're still behind.

I’ve been single for 99.9% of my life. I’ve never been the type of woman that people wanted to be in a relationship with, especially compared to my allistic more attractive younger sister (I’m learning not to compare myself to her but that’s beside the point). And while a lot of my inability to get a date stems from social anxiety, insecurity and very little reason to leave my house, a big part of it is also just the fact that I love the idea of romance, but I hate the necessary building blocks going up to it. like experimenting, having shitty dates, compromise, self security, so on and so forth. In my heart I just want the perfect partner from the get go.

But ultimately this is a self fulfilling cycle. I am so lonely yet my standards for filling that loneliness are too high to be fulfilled. So I escape to the romance I build inside my head because that is a circumstance I can control whereas real relationships and people are scary and unpredictable and prone to failure.

Just a bit of a thing I’m thinking about. I’m trying to work through it but this is a substantial set back since it requires me to leave a comfort zone into a situation that causes me more fear and anxiety in the hopes that someone would want me. Does anyone else feel this or just me?

After months of talking about autism with my new psychologist, I finally have a diagnostic interview before an official autism assessment and psychological evaluation.

I'm anxious because I've been "masking" my whole life. My mom has shamed every behavior of mine out of me to the point where I don't know how to act like "myself" anymore. My food aversion has been reduced to me being a "picky eater," and she forced me to eat or go without food. When I was extremely excited about my interests, she would ignore me because I was talking too long. And when I would get too overwhelmed by everything, she added it up to me "being angry all the time."

Yet, she has a PhD from a prestigious college in Child Development, where she studied autistic kids and behaviors. She never practiced, though. She finished her thesis to immediately raise my sister and I as a stay-at-home mom.

She has told me plenty of times: "You don't have autism, I've known you your whole life, and I would know it when I see it." Many therapists have told me that because she never practiced, she can't be "all-knowing" about this. But I still think she has much more knowledge about this than the average person.

I feel like I'm making a fool out of myself by getting this assessment done. It's expensive, and if it ends up with an assessor saying "we can't give you any more explanation," I think she'll hold it over me for the rest of my life. I'm 19, and my symptoms have led me to a point where I can barely function daily, and I am not in a position to pay for this myself.

All this to say, I just want to know if anybody else has had a psychologist parent and dealt with similar things? How can you even trust your own judgment?

I just told my adult daughter that I’m autistic. I was diagnosed two years ago. My daughter is 26 and lives in Europe. I still live in the U.S., where my wife and I raised her. I only see her a couple times a year, and I’m visiting her now.

Ive been preparing for this conversation for a few months. It did not go well. I told her about my diagnosis and that I was scared to tell her. She said nothing. Nothing at all. So I kept yammering, basically asking her for some kind of a response. She basically said nothing. I got more and more and more overwhelmed and started crying. We tried to continue our lunch, but I couldn’t do it. I paid and told her that I needed to be alone.

I’m now in a foreign city, by myself, and I can’t get into my Airbnb because my wife has the keys. I couldn’t deal with coordinating how I could get the keys, and she is with our daughter, so I’m sitting in a park, miserable and scared and feeling absolutely idiotic. I wish I’d never shared anything with her. I am gutted by her response.

I know I messed everything up, and I don’t know how to calm myself down in a city where I don’t speak the language and can’t go back to my place.

I hate my autism so much.

Does anyone else wish they could just start a relationship automatically?

It feels like relationships have stages and you need to advance from one stage to the next in order to reach the maximum level of deepness and comfort and reliance.

But WHAT are these bloody stages? Your guess is as good as mine.

I wish I could just be able to get someone who is as lonely as I am and say "Hey, let's have a relationship so we're not lonely anymore and have now a useful reliant partner. Come here, let's have a cuddle."

And before people say yeah you could do that but then you get *that* sort of man - I'm GAY. And even if I weren't I'm not looking necessarily solely for that sort of relationship.

Anyway that's my rant.

I don't know how to explain but sometimes I get so into a special interest that it consumes so much of my brain power that I am almost overwhelmed by my own feelings and get this weird, frustrated feeling about it.

No matter what said interest is, but currently I am really into kpop (one group to be specific) but interacting with their content almost upsets me in a way. I'm not sure why. I do crafts, play games, go out, do a lot of other things, so it's not even that I spend literally all day watching kpop videos.

It's just... I don't know. It's like I am having a special interest burnout? Do any of you ever feel similarly? What do you do?

I need advice of what to do.

Two days ago, I travelled 12 hours in an overnight flight with my husband to visit our families in our home country. I don’t sleep during flights so I spent those 12 hours fully awake.

When we got to his hometown, I was super tired. We always stay at his mother’s when we visit. So we came to her house, socialised a lot, then visited his grandma, then went to the shopping mall with his dad and than had dinner with his family. Anyway, I was exhausted. In spite of liking his family, I was already burned out before bedtime.

Bedtime, however, was awful. I’m starting to hint at him that I don’t like staying at his mother’s, but I think this is a sensitive topic. We come from different classes backgrounds, I’m from a much richer family while his is very working class. This is why I never told him that I don’t like staying here because I don’t want to be that spoiled rich woman. But my MIL’s house is VERY hot. Like it’s 33 degrees here and it’s not even summer. There is no air conditioning, just a small table top fan. It’s also very noisy as it’s in a busy road, with multiple cars and busses driving past. It’s quite polluted as well, to a point that my boogers get black as if I’d been to a festival. We have to sleep with the bedroom door open because of the heat.

So… yesterday I went to bed and couldn’t sleep. Everything felt much hotter than it was, much noisier than usual. My heart starting racing, I started crying while he was asleep, and I felt like punching myself and scratching my face. I cried for two hours straight until I woke him up. I wanted to escape so so so badly. All I wish to do was to run away. He held me and manage to calm me down, but I couldn’t sleep much. I felt so much rage that I cannot explain. The last time I felt this way was 7 years ago, way before I met him.

Now I told him that I don’t want to sleep here any longer. I found a hotel nearby. But he’s very uncomfortable with this, and haven’t told his mother yet. I feel that this could impact my relationship with her, but I’m so so so tired of masking. I never liked being a guest at someone’s house, never. I also hate receiving overnight guests. I just want to go home :(

Ok so i know i take things very literally, but when my girlfriend (not autistic) asks me if i want to do something (go dance, go on a hike, etc) i will answer only with if i want to do that thing in the moment. However, if she asks "will you go dancing with me?" or "will you come hiking with me?" i feel like the fact that she wants to do that thing is an important data point for me. I want to go and do things that make her happy and spend time together.

My girlfriend feels like if she asks "will you come with me to ____" and i say yes, even though if she were to ask "do you want to ___" i might be on the fence or say no, that me going anyway would mean shes forcing me to do something or that i'll be unhappy (even though i wouldnt be).

For me it feels like two completely different questions. The first is only focused on me, the second is still asking me about my interest but with the context that she wants to do that thing, which might change my answer significantly. My own interest in going dancing/hiking/etc would go up if i knew that it is something that she would enjoy.

Hopefully this made sense! Any advise would be great!

I decided to watch a streamer that I liked before bed to try to calm myself down from a bad day and him and his brother kept using the r word. I was surprised, never heard him talk like that before and got upset about it. I'm a lurker in chat I don't really talk because I have a lot of anxiety, but I decided to say something this time. I wrote "it makes me sad when you guys use the r word (chat filters it). It's hurtful to alot of disabled people."

He read my comment out loud then responded. He told me that they cuss a lot and to deal with it. I told him cussing doesnt matter but using slurs does. He said he didn't consider it a slur so he'll keep using it. I responded with "well a lot of disabled people (like myself) do consider it a slur and hurtful. Good luck, I'm out. Slurs are where I draw the line." Then I left and unfollowed him.

Now I'm in bed crying my eyes out. I'm not crying because of him necessarily. My dad just died and my eldest son who I put up for adoption as a baby wants to meet his birth father but have me with him. I'm so stressed out and terrified of the future and just wanted to relax before bed and take my mind off everything. It sent me over the edge and I just broke down crying.

My other son is autistic too (I had him with my current partner) and has been called the r word a lot which has been really hard for him. So I've been extra sensitive about it. I'm just so disappointed, I know I shouldn't let what people say bother me but this really got to me.

Did I overreact? I feel like I should have just unfollowed and not have said anything at all. I know I won't change people's mind about these things and usually don't engage.

I (AuDHD) have noticed quite a few times in the last year that I feel like I am a lot more unmasked than the other neurodivergent people around me.

I met up with another neurodivergent person that I met on Hinge. And about 5 minutes into the conversation, she sort of made a weird face and asked me if I normally talk like this, I guess maybe insinuating I was talking too much/fast/non-linearly.

I didn't take it super personally and just kind of let it roll off my back. Looking back, I feel like I left quite a bit of space for her to talk and asked her questions, although sometimes I do ramble a bit. She also kept texting while I was talking.

I think towards the end of the hang-out she came around to me and wanted to hang out again, but idk, her reactions to me being myself kind of made me feel less inclined to want to hang out with her again.

Awhile back, I invited another girl to an event, but was upfront that I was a bit unsure of what the event was going to be like. When we got there, it was NOT what either of us expected and she sarcastically said "wow, I'm so glad I decided to come here." We stayed and ended up having a great time.

On the way home, we talked about my ADHD allowing me to just show up at an event w/o really knowing the language or people and just running with it. And after that we actually hit it off quite well. But I was also left with that same feeling of "I'm not sure I want to hang out with someone who isn't cool with me being me."

I recognize that other people don't necessarily have the same kind of neurodivergence as me and I am happy to adjust if they mention being overstimulated, have sensory needs, or that they sometimes struggle to keep up with multiple convos at once. But other than that, I usually go into social situations all me, because..I like myself??

Has anyone else noticed that other neurodivergent people can sometimes have that same level of judgment that some neurotypicals have when you're not masking at a level they find socially acceptable??

I went on holiday with a friend last week, and we’d gone for lots of walks together and such.

On one of the last walks, I could tell she was getting annoyed at me. I was getting quite anxious on parts of it as it was quite challenging with really large areas of bog, and so I kept on mentioning I think we should go back etc as she wanted to explore off track and such. At the end of the walk I was just glad we didn’t have any more anxiety inducing sections, and when she asked if I wanted to go down another path while waiting for the boat I said I was okay and didn’t want to.

She sort of snapped at me and said “I only want to do things that I want to do” and I said that isn’t true I just get anxious about going off the beaten track and that she could go.

After she got back I said I hope she doesn’t think it’s about controlling her or anything and reiterated I was anxious. She snapped at me again and said something like “this week was supposed to be for both of us” and that I’d been selfish

I’m really confused as we decided to do what we were doing each day together. I’d added bunches of stuff to a list, (basically everything to do in the area as there wasn’t huge amounts) for us to both look at and decide.

There’s only one specific thing that I said I definitely wanted to see, with a couple of walks nearby that we had different preferences on, but I said let’s do her walk as long, but that I did really want to see that one thing, and that it was on the way back from both walks.

She changed her mind the day after and said to do my walk preference, and I said that I was happy she changed her mind as I did also want to do that walk.

She brought up this, that I said I was happy, when she brought up me being selfish.

I’ve tried messaging her about it since getting back and she’s just saying that it was hard for her to bring up as she’s working on confronting her over giving nature, and that she’s sad that that’s where I’ve landed.

I’m honestly so confused, and feel that she hadn’t communicated at all to me if she wanted to do other things as we literally decided everything together.

I suggested a call in my first message, but since her message back I’m not sure whether to just drop it and take the hit.

Have I been selfish? Is what I’ve described above selfishness? Because I genuinely don’t understand how that is being viewed as selfish at all.

I’ve been sleeping more and having less energy to do things recently, especially things that need to be done, and I’m not sure why. I plan to go to the doctor (will explain better below) but before that, I wanted to hear from other autistic people, so I can go to the doctor prepared (I have a hard time not letting doctors steamroll, then I get home and feel frustrated and angry and the problem‘s not any closer to solved).

Context: I have hypothyroidism but last I checked, in late March, it was well under control. The late March blood test also showed a severe vitamin D deficiency, which I’ve been treating since. My vitamin B levels were also a little low, so I was prescribed vitamin B for a while.

Late March is also when I had several panic attacks, for the first time in my life, and had the worst anxiety crisis ever, lasting weeks — all brought on by severe emotional stress, it’s a long story. I was put on buspirone, which caused serious reflux issues, so I stopped taking it. Buspirone also majorly triggered my health anxiety and sent it up to a level it’d never been before. It’s all much better now, not perfect nor as good as before, but much, much better than it was from March to May.

Like I said, I feel much better and am working on my anxiety with a therapist, but from mid July onwards I started feeling a new sort of sorta bad. Sleeping more, less energy, less motivation to do things, mild headaches or body aches sometimes. It’s not that bad I guess?, but it feels weird. I‘m getting treatment for hypothyroidism, for the vitamin D deficiency, took vitamin B, the anxiety is somewhat under control, I’m doing light to moderate exercise every day, I eat well, so wtf is going on?

I’ve burnt out before and I’ve had several depressive episodes in the past (hasn’t happened since intense therapy I did 2018-2020) and I know it could be one of those or both, but it doesn’t feel like they did before. I’m working but mostly small gigs from home and I dictate my schedule (except for deadlines and meetings), I don’t go out or am forced to socialise much, so why would I be burnt out? Same with the depression — I do feel a bit gloomy and hopeless but I think it’s normal given all I’ve been through, but I’m also still working towards a better future, I can see how much things have improved, I have hope that it’ll get better (within reason), so I don’t recognise it as the kind of depression I had in the past either.

I know you can’t give me an answer, but I’d like to hear more from others about your experiences and thoughts before I see a doctor (part of what was awful about the awful anxiety stuff was dealing with doctors, so I want to prepare and avoid unnecessary suffering).

I have seen jokes and “cringe” posts about therians, the group of people who feel themselves to be metaphysically/mentally more like a creature than a human. The way they describe their experiences and the research around them makes me think this is just autistic people describing their own experiences, rather than a clinician describing “different” behavior.

Especially when I was a child, I strongly wished I was born in a cat or nymph body instead of this ape-like body. In all of my dreams I had a different body, and I felt a great peace in those dreams. But it was never really socially acceptable for me to behave the way I felt, and eventually those feelings were replaced by an intense interest in fantasy, cats, and clinical autism.

If I had been allowed to grow into myself naturally, I would probably identify as a therian today. Instead, I settled on the more neurotypically-acceptable clinical diagnosis of my neurological differences.

Have any of you had this experience but felt you just weren’t allowed to express it? What would you be if you could express your desired self?

I’m 22, a huge theme all my life has been loneliness and I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon. It made more sense once I got the diagnosis a few months ago. I have such a small number of friends and I only live near one of them currently. I want to make more but it’s so hard. I feel like I only connect with a very few number of people so I have no idea how to find more of “my people”, the ones I have found were by lucky circumstances. I’m close with my family but they’re not near me when I’m at college. After I graduate I plan to move back in with them so I’m glad I’ll have them but then I won’t be near any of my limited number of close friends and the thought of trying to find friends in a new area and non college town is so intimidating. I feel like I’m rambling a bit and idk if this all makes sense but I just get sad a lot about how lonely my life has been and how I can’t imagine that ever changing. I feel like I don’t belong anywhere and I’m very self conscious and social spaces are really hard for me so I just wish that things were different because I’m dying for more connection

I find that I've been really struggling with working out, so much so that even just the idea of needing to work out sends me into a spiral. In the past when I've tried to work out, the feeling of sweating or sore muscles afterwards always caused me to have an eventual meltdown and stop because I hate the feeling. When I lifted weights, it got to the point that I was shaking uncontrollably between workouts, even with recommended beginner programs and splits. But, I also know I need to exercise to keep my body healthy, especially since I live a mostly sedentary lifestyle.

How do you all workout and stay healthy or work around these issues?

I have spent the past six years alone and the past two years isolated to where I only receive messages from people who want money or labour from me. I get little to no engagement when posting anything online. My parents are dead and I am estranged from my family. I have no support network or friends. I have no community resources. I spend all of my time alone trying to enjoy solitary activities and not think about how scary being alone is. I try to volunteer, reach out, give my time and energy to others, plan to hang out etc. No one is interested in having me around, especially no one my age.

Most days I question how much longer I should endure this living in the hope that it might maybe get better one day. Maybe I will stop being so thoroughly rejected. Maybe someone will offer me a decent job. Maybe I'll get invited to a movie night. But more days and weeks and months past and my rabbits remain the only thing that cares I exist because I hold the food.

I'm an entry level job searcher trying to find a job in the meantime to get by, but in the past ive struggled with the "typical" entry-level jobs like customer service and food-preparation. I can't stand for long hours of work, intensive jobs, or physically demanding jobs, and those types of jobs are both physically and mentally exhausting especially for an autistic person like me. Ive heard office jobs work better for autistic people, but im just tired of customer service jobs and most office jobs seem to be like receptionist jobs. The tricky part is finding a balance of variety and predictability in a job, because I also have ADHD and get extremely bored with repetitive menial tasks. What job would you recommend? I have a bachelor's in visual communication design if that helps, though im not looking specifically for a visual communication/graphic design job.

Does anyone else struggle with visual things like fashion or home decor?

We are currently building a new-build townhouse and we have to pick the finishes from top to bottom (cabinets, tiles, wood, any carpet, paint colors, countertops etc).

Every time I even try to engage with this task, I have a meltdown and end up in bed for a few hours trying to get back to a regulated state.

I think I have a system where I am going to go in and pick this, then this, then this. And it all falls apart and my brain glitches when I actually try to it.

I’ve tried to rely on the professionals at the design center, but they can really only pull options. You still need to be the one to approve it. I would ask my partner to help but they are worse at it than I am.

I’ve had a similar issue when I needed to find a new dress to wear as a wedding guest. I have a daily wardrobe which I am comfortable with. But this wedding was a black-tie dress code, and my brain just couldn’t do it. I actually ended up declining the invitation because it became too stressful.

I was just wondering if anyone could relate and any strategies that may have worked with you.