[theasisa]

I am AuDHD and this is 80% my experience. I saw this post in the morning pondering if I call in sick or work because of insomnia and being unable to have the energy.

I commute to work by train and even though I have great headphones and listen to music on Spotify some mornings it just crackles in my ears. The audio is fine, but I'm extra sensitive sometimes.

At the office people are sometimes very loud. They are excited and having fun but when it goes over my sensory limit (which varies a lot) I become unable to do anything. Ears crackling with headphones means I can't shut their noise out either. And we're supposed to be social at the office but they talk about stuff I don't know what to say about.

When I get home I am beyond exhausted. Can't sleep because of anxiety or adrenaline or something. I just zombie out streaming series or movies while reading Hacker News, Reddit or Bluesky. I promise myself I'll go to sleep early but if I do I can't fall asleep until 2-4am. If I stay up until 1am I have better chance of falling asleep faster.

Weekends are spent catching up with sleep, wanting to tidy up and do side projects as well as gaming but most times I spend half the day in bed and then stay up gaming or something because it is my time and I want to do the fun stuff. Rince and repeat unless I get lucky and catch 10 to 12 hours of sleep.

I'm a 47 year old female principal engineer. I feel like I'm just drifting through the days and months. But I do live my work, the people and challenges. I just wish I could deal with everything better.

Thanks for making this game.

[Balgair]

I know you're not asking for it, but as someone that has a really hard time with anxiety and sleep: quit caffeine and exercise more.

The quitting caffeine is tough. It's 3 days of really bad headaches that no pain killer will touch, because those painkillers act on a different biochemistry. But, after I did that, my anxiety went way down and I was able to sleep a lot better.

Exercise is a bit harder, as it's a schedule problem. Even just a little bit will help though and increase the sleep 'pressure' or so I have found with myself.

Again, not trying to be a jerk here, just trying to help out however I can. My bad if this is not the place.

Best of luck in the struggle!

[kevinmchugh]

I quit caffeine with no withdrawal symptoms by reducing my intake by 10% every day for 10 days. I weighed how much iced tea I drank on day 0, then had 90% of that on day 1. The last day was just a shot glass full.

I probably picked the idea up here, but don't know from whom so I thought I ought to continue sharing it

[archerx]

>3 days of really bad headaches

I never got this, my mom would complain about this when she was out of coffee when I was younger but I have never gotten caffeine withdrawals and I have had periods of time when I consumed a lot! My last two jobs offered free coffee so I drank a lot and when I stopped working I stopped drinking coffee cold turkey because I don't have a coffee maker at home nor want to go out just to get to a coffee and no headaches.

I also drink a lot of energy drinks when I'm working on personal projects, more than the recommended amount per day and I feel like those have less negative effects than coffee, coffee gives me cold sweats for some reason. The energy drinks give me insomnia but I think it has more to do with the other ingredients than the actual caffeine.

I have quit various forms of caffeinated drinks cold turkey many times and never got a headache, but it is a little harder to get the day started the first few days after stopping because I just feel a little sluggish.

[em-bee]

easiest way to exercise is to take a walk. add it to your commute. on the way home, make a detour.

[krageon]

> quit caffeine and exercise more

With respect, you weren't asked and it's shit advice besides. I'm happy you have something that works but you may rest absolutely assured anyone with these issues that is a day over 20 has heard this "advice" hundreds, if not thousands of times.

At this point the bad advice (yes it's bad, it doesn't work) is almost as alienating as the fact that nobody seems to understand.

[ddmf]

I'm Audhd, 50, and my experience mirrors yours, although I can fall asleep earlier, but it's a die throw whether I wake around 3am or sleep fully until 7am.

The worst aspect is that I seem to procrastinate fun things now - like gaming, or making music.

Hope you can find something to help you recharge :)

[austin-cheney]

Why spend the energy masking in the first place?

I have a child with AuDHD who has trouble masking consistently. That coupled with impulse control issues and an inability to regulate between the two just looks like chronic deception, lying for the sake of lying. It is exhausting for him and it never works in his favor. We spend a lot of effort coaching him to not mask and to not seek unearned attention, and its a huge challenge.

[jabroni_salad]

There is a death by a thousand papercuts situation with being disabled where you will have to explain yourself dozens of times a day and you get stuck with having only one conversation subject with any given stranger you meet.

For some people, masking is just an easier, freer form of existence. It's like asking for a dressed up coke at a happy hour so your coworkers wont grill you about abstaining from alcohol. Or how people who work in callcenters seem to converge on a way of speaking that makes the interactions a little easier.

It's just that for autistic individuals, they are highly analytical about how everyday social interactions work and doing this costs them more cognitive load than you would expect.

[intenex]

Masking is a learned behavior - learned specifically because the person in question had sufficiently unpleasant experiences being unmasked that they decided they needed to try hard to mask in order to avoid said unpleasant experience.

No one masks at birth. If you want your child to stop masking, perhaps it’s helpful to investigate what caused them to learn the behavior in the first place and what could be done to make the experience of being unmasked more pleasant and less aversive for him.

Just as you say, masking takes an incredible amount of energy and is exhausting and often backfires. Why would anyone expend such exhausting amounts of energy without some extremely strong motivating factor? The alternative to not masking must be perceived as exquisitely undesirable.

[pavel_lishin]

> Why spend the energy masking in the first place?

Because of things like this:

Coworker: "How are you doing?"

Me: "Bad."

The conversation, and the rest of my day, does not significantly improve from there.

[joshcsimmons]

Thank you so much for writing this. I have a feeling there's way more of us that we realize.

I have lived very similar to what you're describing during a few periods in my career.

> it goes over my sensory limit (which varies a lot)

This line hit home. Some days I feel randomly very "thin" for no apparent reason.

> When I get home I am beyond exhausted. Can't sleep because of anxiety or adrenaline or something.

This is the worst and it doesn't make any sense so nobody understands when you explain it to them. With anything else autism related ymmv but CBT-I is the best tool I found for this. It didn't totally unfuck my sleep but it at least made it a tenable balance.

I didn't really have a point in writing this I just found your story touching and my heart goes out to you.

I'd love to interview you (anonymously or by name) for my blog if you'd be open to that. You can contact me at d+rjoshcs+immons@+gm+ail+.com (remove the + signs, my crappy attempt at bot-defeat)

[ljm]

On overstimulation: there is something about office conversations that I find overwhelming now, and it's that, since COVID, people seem to have lost their inside voices and are talking at volumes that seem quite a bit louder than usual.

Because of this the 'pub conversation' effect comes into play, where multiple conversations take place in the same room and the different groups compete on volume in order to remain heard.

I pretty much shut down at that point, especially if someone is also trying to talk to me at the same time. I can't stand it just the same as I can't stand it in a loud pub.

Never use to happen before 2020. Or it did and I wasn't nearly as sensitive to it as I am now.

In fact, it happens when people are on their phones in otherwise silent places too. If I can hear you with almost perfect clarity when you should otherwise be out of earshot, then it is too loud.

[broguinn]

I don't know if this is useful for you, but getting my MTHFR and COMT genes sequenced has been incredibly helpful for managing my own mental health. Since getting these results, I've been able to understand my own neurology better.

I'm sorry to hear about your issues with sleep - and can relate to them. In particular, my slow COMT means that my baseline cortisol is higher than most. Taking phosphatidyl serine before bed helps me a lot, and lets me sleep through the night.

Best of luck.

[fragmede]

Get heavy duty ear protection from home Depot like they wear on construction sites to protect workers from the noise of heavy machinery, and wear airpods/in-ear wireless headphones under them. ymmv, but they saved me.

[aleph_minus_one]

Or get some good noise-cancelling headphones.

[SwtCyber]

The part about the headphones crackling even when the sound is technically fine really resonated; it's such a vivid way to describe sensory overwhelm that most people might never even think about

[stronglikedan]

Everything after (and including) "When I get home I am beyond exhausted" is me. Although, I don't think I'm on a spectrum. Could that just be the insomnia, independently?

[freehorse]

Insomnia def makes it worse, but I still have it in periods I sleep pretty well. I did not have it in the past, at least to that extent. Not sure if it is an aging thing, a medical condition, or just having to do too much work and deal with too many people there, together with difficulties to put boundaries.

[pixl97]

Anti-anxiety medication can help, there are plenty of people online that will tell you it's terrible or does nothing, but think about talking to your doctor about it.

[klohto]

based on my experience im going to assume you don’t keep the strict 8 hours maximum and also work at home. you need more boundaries, that helped me a bit

[theoreticalmal]

Where are they commuting to by train and how did her loud colleagues get into her home?

[instakill]

are you me? are we definitely autistic together? should I go see a shrink?

[freehorse]

Nice to meet you me and me