Life has been challenging lately!

I am a person on the autism spectrum and I am very grateful for these forums. One of the main ways that my autism affects me is that it causes me to experience significant difficulties in verbally expressing my distress. But when I have the space here that the online forums provide I can communicate non-verbally.

If those of you support a loved one who is also on the autism spectrum disorder, my advice to you would be to work out how best your loved one communicates; for me the best way to communicate when I have high levels of distress is to use my iPad, my phone, or my notebook to do non-verbal language. I cannot speak for all individuals on the autism spectrum and of course if you have met one person on the autism spectrum, you have met one person on the autism spectrum - those were the exact words of one of my psychology lectures back in my university days.

Yesterday I returned to work and worked eight and a half hours, I had taken the previous week off due to high levels of psychological distress - I explained this to my boss and they were very understanding and gave me the week off. My first shift back yesterday went really well indeed. And because of all the stress I was experiencing because of the NDIS I did find that work was a good distraction.Also, due to my psychological distress of late me and my support coordinator decided to make some changes to my work roster. So for the next while, my support coordinator and I agreed that I would work 3 8 hour days a week. I now only work Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

This week I see my psychologist on Thursday and I am really looking forward to seeing her; because man oh man, life has been hard!

Looking forward to hearing from you all!

❤️