Example: I have an "autistic af" bumper sticker on my car so that the cops don't think I'm doing something shady because I don't want to make eye contact.
Got myself an sleep mask and weighted blanket for bed. Helps me sleep so much better.
But also, when I notice I'm building up to a meltdown, I tell my wife "I need to hide for a few minutes", go up to the bedroom, lights off, mask on, weighted blanket on, earbuds in, and just block all stimulation for about 5 minutes. Usually prevents any meltdowns.
Not while meeting new people, but after we are acquainted for a while - I am very honest about being overwhelmed by sensory input and that I don’t understand sarcasm. This second one really surprises people, and they inevitably test out sarcasm with me… but it never works. Life pro tip: be honest and tell people your challenges up front.
For some reason this comment posted like 6 times - I’m trying the “Memmy” app for iPhone out, and it seems like there are some problems
Being in a walkable neiborhood so I don't have to drive a car just to go to the grocery store lol.
Permanent work-from-home is my favorite. My weirdest was getting the fluorescent light above my cubicle turned off.
Fluorescent light specifically is painful to me. Like it actually causes my eyes to hurt. Just removing the lamps from the fixture above my desk was sufficient to keep the pain away, even though the rest of the lights on my floor are on.
Fortunately, the lights in our office don't make the humming noise that fluorescents are known for. Newer ballast design, I guess.
mental health days. they usually take half a week or so to prepare for, but the hard and fast rules of them is that i am not to change out of my pajamas or put any shoes more solid than fleece-lined moccasins (which were a $120 splurge on luxury for my last birthday) and the meals that i knock out are ones that i can put on to cook then go into the loungeroom and sprawl on the couch until the bell goes "ding!" so stuff like schnitzel or cold meat sammiches or something, and i don't do any fucking housework whatsoever unless i'm bored and end up doing it simply to have something to do while i sort my mind out. this is a practice that i'v had ever since i managed to earn enough money as a dancer to be able to only work intermittently and eventually self-employ and run an agency for stage performers. more often than not they're a monday thing.
thing is tho, there is a massive complication. see, i'm a parent of an 8yo child who's been diagnosed with the full rainbow - dual diagnosis ASD and ADHD - and i have to coach him thru his issues as well. this means that there are times when i'm not the one having the mental health day. if he's just been having a rough week i'll let him have a friday or a monday off about 3 or 4 times per year. he needs it, that's for sure. every single time it has happened it has had a massive and immediate positive effect on his schoolwork as well as his mood.
another thing i do for him is play really emotionally moving music (never sad unless it's in a movie, i always go with something uplifting) and talk to him about how the music makes my emotions work, and how the way that i respond to them gets to the point of physicality where i need to writhe or dance (you know, that tightness in your chest that comes with excitement, yeah? stuff like that) and although he doesn't have that need to flow like i do, he's still becoming aware of his emotions enough that he hasn't had any frustration wobblies since the few weeks before the pandemic. yeh, it was when we were stuck inside together for a couple months that we really got progress on this, and when we also became best friends, pretty much. we didn't particularly enjoy each other's company before that. i mean, we love each other fiercely, we were just interested in different stuff back in 2020. during the lockdowns tho, and we're from victoria australia so we had like the 3rd most amount of days stuck at home of anywhere in the world, during that time we turned the TV off a lot and just talked and hung out and joked and played and whatever.
i also used to do the dinosaur walk when i was his age and walk around on my toes heaps, and get told off for doing it, and eventually learned how to do it with my heels only a couple millimeters from the ground. ended up being a good thing for my career too, because dancers pretty much need to be able to kick a doorknob out of a door in order to keep strength and perfect control all the way thru a long set.
as far as how this relates to what you've said there about refusing to make eye contact with cops (it almost hurts if it's not someone that you know and care about the wellbeing of, huh?) well, i had to do quite a lot of acting training in order to appear confident enough on stage for it to be appropriate for my performances. one of the things i learned how to do is sweep my gaze across an entire cheering crowd without actually stopping for anyone in particular. it's pretty easy, it's just the plastic fake smiling face, after i'd had someone sit with me and teach me which muscles to move in order to be able to fucking smile in the first place (learned at age 17) and so i just do it to the cops, except with a scowl on my face instead of a smile. it's basically saying to them that they are beneath being worthy of my notice, and it pays off with about the same success rate as walking around anywhere with a clipboard while wearing a reflective vest and a white hard hat, or something between 80 and 100 percent of the time.
you'd be amazed how much you can get away with if you mask up the nerves with hand-made great looking clothes and instead display so much arrogance and entitlement that people think that you're rich ... although it does help if you can crack eggs with your butt too
oh yeah, and in my 20s the way that i dealt with the sleep issue was to change my sleeping pattern. did you know that 7x24 has the same answer as 6x28? lolyep, with a 28-ish hour sleep cycle i could be up and active during daylight in the middle of the week when i would be doing the dealing-with-normies stuff and actually getting paid and also awake and alert at the times that performances would happen (10pm to about 5am because we were dancers who used fire props and it kinda loses the effect during daylight) although adjusting back to a 24 hour clock when the kid was born was fucken rough
Holy fucking goddamn christ your description of how you parent your child is so incredibly heartwarming! God, if every parent could care like you the world would be a paradise within two generations!