Maybe you can start with some raw veggies as snacks. Baby carrots, celery, and cucumber are all good to eat raw and you can dip them in something like hummus or tzatziki. Fruit of course can be eaten plain, but I also love like things like apples / strawberries with Nutella.

When my diet was in the toilet I started recovering things by mixing up big salads a few times a week for dinner. Didn't worry about cooking anything, just lettuce, maybe another veggie, some cubes of cheese, some nuts, maybe fruit either dried or fresh, pour some dressing on top. Eat this a few times a week for dinner and I guarantee you'll start noticing a big difference as to how junk food really makes you feel.

Same with the "what's your favorite childhood memory" questions... I find it reallyyy hard to conjure even one that is pure, untainted joy. Most of the time it's like "well, it was a good vacation BUT there was that huge fight my parents had"... Even the good times were unstable feeling, perhaps more so than the bad times.

Agree with all this & wanted to add: started buying things that teen me wanted but never had... like cute sweatpants, plushies, manga to put out on my bookshelves.

I feel I have raised my "inner teenager" but now I am stuck on "inner college student"... wtf do I do with her 😂

I'm going to second this bc if there remains a persistent sense that "something is wrong" despite all the attention on the trauma, it could very well be sthg like autism just not being addressed

Money ofc, but also--I was doing decently money-wise and then they convinced me to follow a path where I would have less money and therefore needed to rely on them again. A mistake I won't make again, but it is taking so much longer than I wanted to fix it.

Yeah, my reflections started with "I think it was just emotional neglect, probably unintentional, all my other needs were provided for." But then it went to "wellll if we're being honest there was in fact emotional abuse as well, both between my parents and towards me" and then "well ok the financial abuse was bad too but at least it wasn't physical" but then it's like "oh yeah there was that time where I had strep throat for a week while we were on vacation and they refused to bring me to the doctor and instead just got mad at me when I said my heart was racing and was feverish walking around the theme park" ...... like the fact that my parents don't "really" care about my feelings did unfortunately did permeate all elements of my life. Kind of duh but also, hard to look back on and begin uncovering all of this.

True, even on my highest-energy days I usually need about 2 hours in the afternoon to curl up in bed and relax for a bit.

Bed time, for me, is often "decompression time." Like you said, going to a grocery store, or even just seeing the family for an hour or two... my brain just needs time to be alone for a bit before I can start to feel like myself again.

One reason being antisocial is so appealing, is it greatly cuts down on "bed time" and therefore enhances my productivity 😬

Whew yeah there definitely seems to be a correlation between AuDHD and difficulty with weight, whether it's weight loss ("eats too much" AuDHDers) or weight gain ("forgets to eat" AuDHDers).

CW for EDs but yeah I've run the gamut between attempting full-out anorexia ("sadly" couldn't focus on it for long enough... but that's really a blessing), struggling with binge eating for years, going very deep & intense into calorie counting, literally tracking every bite on My Fitness Pal, convinced I would eat that way for the rest of my life... and then swinging entirely the other direction into intuitive eating where I gained a lot of weight. In a super weird place now where I sort of like my body more than ever (at least I treat it better with food and dressing nicely) but there's still this impulse in my mind that's like "maybeee you should lose 100 pounds"?? I also know that cortisol has played a huge role in my weight gain / loss, like even moreso than calories or any other habits. As in, whenever I'm unemployed or working <40 hour weeks I pretty much naturally lose a bunch of weight, and once I'm employed full-time again I gain it. Andddd I am not entirely sure what to do with that, because like... I need to make money??

At this point I'm trying to think about it as an overall mindset shift... like what kind of lifestyle do I actually WANT to have? I listed out a bunch of options almost for different "characters" in my head if that makes sense haha... Like "super intense businesswoman" would eat mostly salads unless she has a work dinner and then maybe she has the steak but she is also fierce about exercise, like 5 AM runs or maybe spin class on the weekends. And then like "hot party girl" stays out really late drinking and then goes to brunch with friends the next day, but I feel like somehow she also moderates, like because she goes so hard she knows she should have a salad for dinner, and maybe she doesn't really eat a lot during the week? But then "hippie girl" is going to have a pretty varied vegan diet, eating like Thai and Indian food and lots of fruits and veggies, she'll do things like meditation and yoga and long walks to keep up her health.

When I thought about the lifestyle habits I WANT versus what I HAVE... I kind of realized the gap... I think my diet was closest to my "emo girl" character, who basically eats fast food and instant noodles and doesn't exercise 😂 but I WANT to be "California surfer girl," who is somewhat close to hippie in that I feel like she's getting a lot of health foods, is just a little more flexible in terms of having the occasional hamburger or taco, and she also exercises a lot. And I realized "exercise" for me, when it's most meaningful, should feel like play... going out on hikes to see a new place or swimming / surfing (LOVE but don't live near the ocean right now), or even like skateboarding on the boardwalk with friends (idk how yet but it's like oh maybe I should learn?).

Idk if that makes any sense, but I've kind of been realizing like, if that lifestyle is really what I WANT then why am I not taking action towards it...? Obviously change is hard for us so I've been trying to integrate things little by little. Trying to eat a salad at least once a week and make a smoothie for breakfast sometimes and cook more plant-based / healthy meals... Trying to spend my mornings relaxed and finding time for exercise, and trying to find joy in that movement rather than treating it as an obligation... Again idk if my odd methods will work for others haha but it really got me thinking about how much of a gap there is... and if I could just integrate a better lifestyle with who I actually am maybe my weight will be more stable, or at least I could finally get to looking more in-shape, like I want to.

even when I see other AuDHD people, they all seem to have their symptoms and lives(?) under control

I promise you, we do not 💜 I made it all the way through law school & the bar exam with undiagnosed AuDHD... and then I burned out, hard. Barely able to work for the last ~2 years, many days spent in bed doing nothing. No one had empathy because they "didn't understand" why I was suddenly "being so lazy." Turns out I had been running beyond my actual capacity for years and years, and it had just finally caught up with me.

Those that seem to "have it together" (in a way approaching neurotypical standards) are likely overextending themselves and it will catch up to them later. If you are AuDHD, you may always have to do things a bit differently than the neurotypical standard... I firmly believe that doesn't mean you will always have to struggle, though. Accepting I fit with the label and hearing advice from others has been a big help for me in designing systems that better manage my life. Oh, and learning to rest and treat yourself kindly will do wonders, especially after a lifetime of feeling like we are never doing enough. 💜

Wait it's so random but one of my "visions" when I try to visualize a joyful life for myself is sitting with friends around a bonfire... I think maybe bc it's something people used to do in high school but I was never invited, and then when I've done it with family / friends since it's always kind of awkward like "do I need to talk more? am I talking too much?" Like I just want to be around a fire and feeling at ease in myself idk.

I hope we can find the right group of people build a bonfire with 😂 People with whom I feel safe & at ease

Humor is a big one for me. I can usually jump into conversations with a one-liner at the right moment, but that's actually a mask for how I can't like... jump in and say something normal 😂

There were a lot of signs before then but the "ear thunder" thing has to be one of the weirdest confirmations imo

I don't want to just project here bc idk your exact situation, but I can talk about mine... When I moved to another country, like you I never really "wanted to" contact my parents. But they insisted on keeping in frequent touch, scheduling weekly phone calls, which I also disliked... I remember sometimes I would just get on with them and try and talk about myself and they'd tear me down until I was just sitting there crying and couldn't say anything... anyhow as it turns out I "didn't want to" contact my parents because my childhood had given me a whole lot of trauma and once I was away from it my body was trying to keep me away. It wasn't anxiety "about the phone calls" it was anxiety because they made me feel like shit. I hadn't known that "simply not talking to them" was even an option, and allowed them to influence me into coming back home again. Now I'm 30 and live with them 😒 I'm saving to move out. Far away again. This time I'm not sure I'll stay in touch.

I guess the TL;DR suggestion is maybe you're avoiding the calls for a reason... and you really don't have any obligation to be in touch with your parents now that you're an adult. You should contact them if and when you feel the need to. If they're constantly demanding on your time outside of that, that isn't really normal, they could be a bit too overly enmeshed with your life. If you don't feel the contact is really benefitting you, you are allowed to say NO.

I pretty much always assume that everyone has the best intentions and no, it is NOT a good way to go through life lol. I feel like it's some sort of platonic ideal for NTs to say ppl should go through life that way... but they haven't actually tried it. U get fucked sadly

I've never really had a reaction when I learn about other peoples' deaths. We had a cousin die in infancy and when my mom told us, she cried and my sister cried, and I remember just kinda... sitting there. Like of course it was sad, she was a baby, but it also wasn't someone I really knew, because she was only a few months old... if that makes sense.

I can also kinda "forget" people have died, idk if that sounds bad... Like one of my grandmothers passed and I really only remembered around the holidays, like oh yeah she isn't around anymore. Idk. I have never lost anyone very close to me though and imagine the grieving process would be quite different.

I find that people are super interested in getting to know me, only to realize they don't like me - for whatever reason, and I usually don't understand the reasons.

Yes. People seem to be fascinated by me, but do not actually like me. People take from me, my intelligence, my sense of humor, my kindness, but do not fill me back. People want access to me, stalking me on social media and questioning me when I don't share. But they don't want to be close to me, always keeping me at arms' length and not letting me get close. I'm invited to the party, but I'm not invited to the small group of girls that goes out for brunch the next day. I'm okay in the periphery, but am never welcomed into the center.

How do I change myself in order to fit in to society? Because I want to change, because I want friends. I don't want to be lonely and depressed. And being myself isn't working.

Wondering what your relationship is to masking? For myself I have always been high-masking, people-pleasing, convinced it was the only way I could get people to like me... Until it eventually hit me that even with the mask, I was always at arms' length from people. Sure, I didn't cause as much of a stir in polite company, but "having friends" was still elusive to me. I basically gave up on ... masking? people? a few years ago. After yet another group I really thought was my friends didn't invite me to their hangout even though we were all in the same class and they left immediately after. Now, I've vowed to be fully myself in any new interactions. I can feel people are more hesitant around me now. They don't know what to do with me. But fucking whatever because even if I did mask, they'd eventually hit a point where they felt the same.

Idk I have hope that eventually I will find the right group. I'm still working through my feelings on putting myself out into social settings again. What communities do I really want to be a part of? How do I put an energy out into the world that attracts the right people to me? What particular topics do I want to speak about so that I can find people that like them too?

So you're definitely not alone, with struggling to find community... I mean that is a pretty typical experience for us all. I've said it before on this sub but I really hope as more and more become aware of AuDHD that we can form our own communities and uplift each other. I would really like friends who get that my monotone isn't disinterest, my need to leave the hangout early isn't a personal insult, and my love of things childish and playful doesn't make me dumb or naive.

I understand the feeling, I also felt something like a "parallel universe" vibe for a bit after the lockdowns ended. Like everything I was had ended, but the new me hadn't "loaded" yet, I was waiting for it to buffer, so I was just nothing. Since then I've learned more about CPTSD, self-diagnosed as AuDHD, and thrown myself deeper into spiritual practices like astrology, tarot, and human design.

I think for a lot of reasons, Covid being part of it, but also my Saturn return and being in autistic burnout, I was basically being asked to do a 180 on my life. It was like the path before me, metaphorically, did not exist anymore. I could not go on the way I was. So I had to switch directions and get on a whole new path. The "new life" still has not fully materialized before me but I'm beginning to have a better understanding of how it will look. I got there by doing a lot of self-work: journaling, meditation, gratitude, like I said throwing myself into learning any spiritual types of knowledge that helped for me, participating in online communities where people felt similar to me, etc. Mostly, it was just reconnecting with my intuition and allowing myself to be anything that felt right, no matter how far it was from who I had once been. I got back into my creative hobbies like writing and have been learning new ones like podcasting. I'm now working on figuring out how to go about sharing those things with the world in a way that will attract the right people to me... Like I now feel as though I need to speak to a particular subset of people, I don't care as much about peoples' opinions outside of that. But social media and stuff opens you up to ALL people. I am learning how to protect my energy so I can stand more firmly in myself. I think this will be really important to building my new life and feeling safe interacting with the larger world. It's all been a bit of a battle on how to move forward. But we're getting there.

In short you might be shedding your old skin and are ready to evolve into something new, if you keep your eyes & ears open and move towards what attracts you I believe you will get there!

I love spending Saturday mornings eating a big bowl of sugary cereal and watching cartoons

I sleep with plushies and most of the time wear comfy clothes. Business casual can go to mfing hell

I buy Gushers and chicken tendies and sometimes bags of candy as a snack

The other day the sun was out so I went to the driveway and colored with chalk

I'm trying to recover other modes of play that I used to enjoy before I cut everything out trying to be an aDuLt and burned out immediately cuz I lost all my dopamine

My biggest TV one is Jimmy Neutron... quite literally a special interest of mine even though there's only like 50 episodes

For movies, Anastasia and for some reason Clueless (one of those "perfect movies" where no line is wasted I guess)

I'm 30f and never had a relationship either. I identify as demi & pan. I have been in love twice, but did either of them acknowledge my feeling back (or even know I had them)...? Not sure. I have a lot of trauma from my parents' shitty marriage too. Not sure I ever really understood the "point" of romantic relationships (cut to me googling "why do people get married" years before I realized the autism thing)... I don't know, the cards ain't looking good for me 😂 Quite literally because every time I ask my tarot about romance it's like oh the hermit one again huh 😂😂

I saw an interview with Law Roach the other day (Zendaya's stylist), he was asked about romance and basically said he doesn't feel he was put on this Earth to find romantic love. Made it clear he had a lot of love in other contexts like friends & public admiration for his styling. I really identify with that answer, like... idk I just don't think finding a partner is really a crucial step on my life path. It'd still be nice tho but... some people really seem to be in mental anguish about being alone when they haven't found their person, and I have never ever felt that way, not even as a teen. I don't need someone to complete me, I have more than enough going on on my own ✨

I completely agree--I'm also a frequenter of /r/cptsd so I've processed the ways they've harmed me and accepted the fact that once I move out I'm either going very low contact or no contact with them. They've had enough chances to change / help themselves, I know not all the same resources were out there when they were growing up but they're out there NOW. I've been honest with them that I think I'm "ADHD and maybe autistic" (before I had decided 100% that I am both), they essentially dismissed it and said "it doesn't matter even if you are" "it's not an excuse" and bullshit like that. While not being able to look in the mirror and see how fucking difficult their lives have been because they refused to acknowledge any of the ways they were struggling. So yeah, I feel you, and I don't feel responsible for forgiving them or anything like that, because neither has made enough effort to actually change. It can be harder to think about my dad because I think there is some hope for him learning to be a better parent (though he hasn't made the effort yet) whereas for my mom... I'm afraid she is too narcissistic to recognize the ways she mistreated us.

I think you're dead on with this being how a lot of men end up (not to totally exclude women, but I def see it a lot in men)... There's been a lot of talk about "weaponized incompetence" aka men who can fully hold down a corporate job but can't like, do a load of laundry. I see this in my own father and think it's more linked to him being undiagnosed autistic and not having the right supports to be encouraged to learn to do things independently. He and my mother married quite young, I think 23 or 24, so he basically never knew how to cook, clean, do anything around the house. Now my mom gets extremely frustrated and angry that he doesn't know anything, but she is also extremely particular about how everything gets done. So he'll try to wash the dishes or something but then she gets pissed because he won't wash them well enough or puts them in the wrong places. Is it "weaponized incompetence" or is it "he was parented by, and then married to, an emotionally neglectful person who was never patient with him learning to do shit" and honestly some days I don't know!! How can he be so smart but so dumb?! Gah it frustrates me too... Like I wish he would just step up and change but I also think as you age it becomes more and more difficult to do so and maybe he is trying... But it really feels as if he has absolutely no autonomy over the space he lives in... He like will work off of a folding table rather than buying a proper desk even though he has the money. It's insane to me that you can be an adult and still feel SO hesitant and freaked out about making any marginal improvement to your living space. But it's clear that he's also in kind of a perpetual trauma state about it due to how my mom is.

TLDR I'm sympathetic but also so frustrated lol

I’ve been unemployed job searching for 9 months and I’m on the precipice of a job offer and it actually made me depressed because I feel like my brain won’t actually be able to handle it (but I need the money)

Ooh, I've been there too. Being unemployed for like, >1 year was part of my long burnout stage, and I was very much in a mindset of "I never want to work a 9 to 5 again!!" Unfortunately the reality of making that work can be difficult, I ended up eventually caving and applying to places again, and accepted an offer for a pretty corporate-type job. However--it's remote 4 of 5 days a week and that's a HUGE help. Going into the office definitely involves the normal masking and pretending you care about ~business~ but then I can mostly be at home in yoga pants just getting my tasks done and taking breaks when I need. So I guess that's just to say, our brains can def be really "black and white" about thinking certain situations will never work out, when there's nuance to everything... I don't LOVE the job but it's very much tolerable, and the amount of money it pays me is awesome and will help me move away from my parents, who I've had to stay with while recovering from my burnout. I'm not giving up on my creativity, but it may take time to support myself on that and in the meantime it's ok to have something that's not totally aligned but is satisfying my salary needs. That felt really gross to me in the earlier burnout stages but as I recovered it began to feel more tolerable... but I'm trying to force myself not to forget that initial feeling because I think my life would be best if I could support myself more independently.

Good luck figuring it all out <3

Ok we're sort of twins, down to the having 1 close friend from high school and also being on my period right now 😂 And mostly because I also entered hermit mode some time ago, mostly due to burnout, and now have mostly come out of it EXCEPT for relationships / connecting to others irl in general, which is still eluding me.

As someone who is also big on writing lists in my journal and then analyzing them, I feel like there might be a few different categories going on with your thoughts... Like some of these things I feel like are ok, healthy even, to give up on or reevaluate, others make me wonder if you are potentially dealing with some burnout or overwhelm.

Things that are good to question: I see a few surface-level masking-related things on this list, like "Dressing cute," decorating your home a certain way, even working out could potentially be related if you are doing it to physically look a certain way rather than from enjoyment. As someone who's been gradually unmasking, I am a BIG advocate for questioning all these things! I went from "dressing cute" to mostly wearing things like oversized T-shirts and cargo pants, and I am SO MUCH comfier. Every once in awhile now I go for a cute day haha, but only when I really feel like it. I am a fan of home decorating but my house is going to look unconventional, I don't even want a couch in my next apartment, just a bunch of cushions and bean bags spread across the floor. Making these changes unfortunately does mean you could lose people in your life / not connect to them the same way, even though a lot of these changes are superficial NTs tend to flock to others that look & act like them so if you stop that... they might go away

Things that are harder to question, but still good: It is also a good thing to question friendships and your impulse towards "being the perfect X." Like I said, I've been going through this a lot lately too. It started with a lot more questioning of my childhood, eventually realizing how much CPTSD I was carrying from my parents' emotional abuse / neglect that left me with very little knowledge of who I actually was. Now that I am unmasking and finding myself more, I'm like wait... DO I connect to any of these "friends"? Some of them have been in my life for 10 years or so now yet I still feel like they don't know me at all, and maybe I don't know them. I feel bored & anxious around some of them, like I don't actually know how to connect. It's been making me realize friendships, for me, were always "whoever is cool with hanging out with me," because so many people did not want to hang out with me. I never, never stopped to question myself and ask "Do I actually like hanging out with THEM?" And if I had, I unfortunately think that most of my "friends" wouldn't be my friends now. Even my 1 best friend from high school, it's complicated now, as my life has gone on I've grown and changed so much as I've learned about myself, and I feel like she's stayed stagnant, living a life she doesn't really like. And I had empathy at first, but after like 10 years of it... it's just hard, idk. It's hard to give someone support and patience and time but then they never actually grow or change, like, kind of heartbreaking. I sometimes feel like I just need a hard reset and to move far away so I can try actually being myself while meeting new people for a bit and just see what happens. Like, I need practice, because I don't know how to be myself with people who knew me when I used to be different. I don't know how to evaluate, on my own merits, whether or not I want to be friends with someone, and I feel like I'm holding everyone hostage while I take forever to figure it out. Idk, it's hard, but a lot of people who make effort to heal go through this and you're definitely not alone.

Things that raise concern for me: There were a few items on your list that I would venture to say are not as good that you're losing interest in... namely your creative projects & comfort interests. The line between depression & regular burnout & autistic burnout is kind of weird, I definitely went through something major in the last few years and I lean towards calling it autistic burnout myself. But a hallmark of it for me was that I lost interest in almost everything, but NOT my special interests, in fact my special interests started feeling like the only important thing in my life. From your words I couldn't tell if it was "tired of others' reactions to my special interests" or "tired of the special interests altogether." Because if it's others' reactions, then I wonder if you would still love doing them if you do let yourself go full hermit mode... But if it is doing them in itself then you could be suffering from a more general burnout / depression. I know for me, part of my unmasking was returning to anime, something I used to love in middle / high school but basically distanced myself from in college to make friends... Even now it's taken a long while for that interest to "spark" again, like I have to keep reminding myself not to feel guilty for engaging with it and it's hard to get lost in it like I used to because I'm always cognizant of being perceived a certain way.

I know I didn't put "Jobs" anywhere but I feel like it could go in 2 or 3, like maybe the job opportunities aren't appealing because they're not best suited to who you really are, or the work environment is stressing you out more than you're admitting... or maybe you are dealing with burnout and will have to do less work for a bit if at all possible, or at least not take on a more intense role than you're currently in. Maybe your brain shuts down bc it's protecting you from burnout, or maybe it's a deeper-rooted shame / insecurity that you'll have to process. A bit hard to tell from the info I have.

Anyways overall I would say, for the things that are good to question & relatively easy, like clothes, you should start exploring as much as you can. For the things that are harder to question, maybe start journaling your thoughts out on WHY you want to give up on friends, etc. For the things that could be concerning... idk I guess same with trying to evaluate what it behind your impulse there. Speak to a therapist about it if you have one, or read up on things like autistic burnout if you don't. You may also just be getting to a place in your life where you feel safe & good and actually WANT to unmask, which can be super confusing because just when things get stable life is like ~now change everything about yourself~... But yeah basically that is what I went through in the early 2020s lol, and then burned out, all kind of awful, but now look at me, 2024 and basically a whole new person ✨ with a few lingering issues that I'm working on lol. But like it's going to be okay, you just need to let yourself start exploring.

Yes--it's something I'm working on. For me it ties into toxic shame. I wasn't allowed to be happy / excited about / proud of things as a kid... I'd be told my excitement was annoying or I was being too arrogant or whatever. So when I start to feel excited, my brain jumps straight into "anxiety" or "guilt" or "shame" because I'm "not allowed" to feel that thing. Horrible, horrible thing that I'm realizing has ruined so much of my life... and steered me the wrong way so many times.