Autism makes travel a challenge. Here’s how I learned to cope
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
As an example, she absolutely hates airports but doesn't mind flying. The noises, announcements, people moving around, never knowing if your gate will change, all of it is awful to her. I don't mind the airport but once the plane is in the air watching the time tick down is torture to me. Everybody's a little different.
The "spoon theory" [1] can help things make sense, and it's a great start, but it's a bit more nuanced than that. It's more about controlling exposure to "unexpected" stimulus.
Maybe I'm also neurospicy, but I fully don't understand people who go on vacation to get up at 7am, and pack their day full of activities.
When I travel, with my wife or solo, we each pick one thing per day, and the rest we leave open to serendipity - or honestly, just sitting in the hotel room and reading a book. Otherwise, it gets wildly overwhelming.
When we were first married, I didn't even realize there was a way to travel where you didn't have an itinerary jam-packed from 7am-7pm.
We found a nice middle ground, and I think I understand both perspectives now.
On the one hand (my hand), travel and vacations are expensive and getting more and more out of reach. There's definitely a need to plan in advance to make the most of your time, especially if this may be your one chance to travel to X or Y destination.
On the other hand, travel and vacations are often a much-needed respite from an increasingly mentally taxing work life. If you also mentally tax yourself planning out your vacation and continue to worry about making it to every stop on your itinerary, you will only see your stress levels rise, and the relaxation aspect of vacation and travel can be totally missed.
1) Realizing that I was autistic
2) Developing better awareness for when I was in a taxing environment and better verbalizing my needs. People are usually happy to accommodate if you can communicate before you get irritable from putting up with that noisy restaurant.
3) Active noise-cancelling headphones (Bose QuietComfort)
ADHD can make it hard to manage emotions, stay focused, or follow through on intent. I certainly feel like a child at my worst. I've finally started trying a new med recently.
checklists and lots of planning doesn't ever make it that much better.
My 1 kind of dream is that I get pilots license and fly myself wherever I want to go.
Technically I'm not a pilot so I don't really know tbh. Xplane is relaxing at least? Hence the dream factor.
But I imagine, I'm in control and it lets me get around faster then anything on the ground.
Sorry to say, and this is not a diagnosis, but that's more common for anxiety and depression than autism.
The reason for why you assume this makes a big difference.
Unfortunately anxiety and depression are also very common comorbidities in autism, so there's that overlap too.
No single question, or even single form, would be enough to tell whether someone is autistic or not.
You know, detail-oriented thinking as in autism can make it a lot easier to fixate on specific negatives or anxieties compared to neurotypicals.
Of course, going to a professional for a real assessment is the only thing I can really recommend. This would certainly be strong supporting evidence though, and meets my standard for self-diagnosis.
It was a joke, but there's something to it. People's autism can manifest in many different ways, but from what I have observed:
- Language seems full of ambiguity. ('How often is "often"?', or 'Concentrate on the full picture? It depends on the picture!')
- Reading too much into a question, so everything sounds impossible. ("How can I really know if someone is actually bored or pretending to be bored?")
- Questions from a neurotypical perspective seem absurd, since your experiences are so different. (Adaptive behaviors like assuming people are bored could make this seemingly simple yes/no question irrelevant.)
There's probably more.
Anyway, the tests on that site usually have some commentary (before the test itself) that helps explain some situations where you may get hung up on which answer is "correct".
It's worth noting that the "allistics" who cooperated with me on this had no difficulties whatsoever with any of the answers and found the questions more or less absurd and completely unrelatable.
Rather dramatically different experiences of the world, apparently.
When I was tested for autism, my interviewer requested my wife be there specifically to help answer some things which I did not understand fully and didn't have good context for. It was helpful both for the diagnosis and to open the door for my wife and I to have better conversations about my needs.
... The irony of autistic folk having needs but having considerably more trouble communicating those needs, especially while burnt-out and needing more, is it's own, considerably large, domain.
In the end, provided you've been functional in society so far in your adult life, a diagnosis won't change _you_.
What a diagnosis can do is lead to an in-road for specific types of therapy designed to help you cope with specific symptoms and/or navigate through social life.
But that kind of therapy is not free in the US.
I recognize myself in lots of things that are described by some people having autism and out of curiosity I ran an online test once that basically said that I might but it was also clearly not definitive. But more often than not I didn't really know where to put the cursor between totally agree and totally disagree so I answered some of them very randomly.
From what I understand if you are not neurotypical there is very little that can be done and I don't think it should be considered a disease to be slightly different. I honestly prefer not to know as I don't think it would help me in my struggles regardless of the result and if I was I am not sure I would want to be labelled as such. YMMV of course.
It great really annoying when they tell me what my problems are, because I’m clearly a less reliable source than some article on a website.
Map/Territory, Time/Place, Context, pick your explanation for why you should stop picking every conceivable nit.
Autism is a complicated topic, as it has various forms and severity (the whole spectrum thing), some people can live with it better than others, so as a reader of this article, I assume that the statement doesn't cover every. single. person. on Earth with autism. Yeah, I got that, you don't need to put that in the title, it's self evident if you take 2 seconds to think about it.
"autism CAN make travel a challenge"? Can? Everything can make travel a challenge, so it's now kind of a pointless title, the important part if it does make it challenge? What kind of travel, all kinds, or only longer ones? Or is it about going abroad? Is it about food? Then why not put all that in the title, too?
Is there a better description out there that manages to be true to reality?
I have parts of it, and that's part of why I did not even think to get diagnosed until I was in my thirties. It wasn't until I said something to my doctor casually that the conversation came up.
I think these general terms can discourage people from getting help because their experience doesn't line up with headlines like that that imply if you don't have this experience you don't have it.
Personally I have traits commonly linked to both ADHD and autism. I'm often afraid of change and desire structure, yet somehow I love traveling. I guess that my extreme boredom with repetitive daily life just overcomes the fear, plus some of my deep interests require travel.
A book of outrage would probably phrase it similarly if it wanted to target you instead.
It’s such a ubiquitous, pervasive tactic, it’s easy to overlook it when it’s happening.
I could go on... But none of those concerns pop up if I'm traveling with someone else.
"Autism is <blank>" is always going to be incorrect. Everyone is different. I always appreciate those that recognize the differences and everyone's unique experiences [with Autism].