146 Results in strategies

Maintaining your Happy Balance

Someone once taught me a very important life lesson. They said, "always ensure you are doing more of what you like and less of what you don't like." I think I'll call this the Happy Balance.  When we are doing more of what we like and less of what we don't like, we are likely to feel happy. It might be helpful to regularly reflect on your life and assess 1) the quantity and 2) the weighting of the activities you are doing. You can consider small parts of your life (such as your job or how you spend your weekends) or you can reflect on your life in general.

How do we react to people who are on their own?

I've been watching some of my animations and something that stands out at me in pretty much every film is: how other people respond to The Girl With The Curly Hair when she is on her own. Even though I wrote the scripts, I don't fully appreciate every single learning point captured in a film. In fact, each time I watch one of the animations, I see a different angle or a new perspective. Today I've been noticing the reoccurring theme that The Girl With The Curly Hair is so often on her own - or so often wanting to be on her own - and the different reactions people have to her. Let's have a look at some specific examples:

2 rarely emphasised ways of coping with change

Many people struggle with change and it is well known that autistic people struggle with change even more so. There are primarily two types of change: 1) chosen change and 2) imposed change. The pandemic is an example of an imposed change. If you are interested in learning more about how people react to change, I recommend reading about the Kubler-Ross change curve. The Kubler-Ross model suggests that, after a change, people go through 5 different stages and feel 5 different emotions, and they eventually come to accept the change. The change becomes the new normal and the person gets on with their life. I think that it is quite interesting to note that the way people react to chosen and imposed changes is remarkably similar. Even chosen changes can cause feelings of anger and grief, for example. Although it is helpful to learn how to deal with the emotions associated with change, there are at least two other, lesser talked about, factors that people might benefit from learning to manage. These two things have actually benefited me far more than learning to cope with the 5 feelings in the Change Curve. So I want everybody to know about them! So, here are two rarely emphasised things that happen to us when we go through change and ways to successfully combat them:

How to have an efficient workflow

I recently embarked on a very very big project that took a few months. The project was big already, but what made it bigger was that I did not have an efficient, planned out workflow. I learned a lesson about workflow that could be applied to many other activities. This lesson may be helpful to others who have difficulty seeing a project through to an end because they feel frustrated or confused. A workflow is defined as the sequence of processes through which a piece of work passes from start to finish. When you do something for the first time, you probably do not have an efficient workflow yet. This is because you don't really know what the project involves, how long things will take, what order to do things in, or even what the final work is going to look like. There is a lot of 'trial and error', figuring things out as you go along, and going back to change things along the way. You might also be asking other people lots of questions. All of this adds a lot of time to the project. You might feel exhausted and stressed by the amount of work you are doing. You might wonder how on earth other people do this seemingly so smoothly. I too have been there! The positive of all your stress and additional time is that, by the time you get to the end of your project, you will undoubtedly have learned an enormous amount. In fact, the best thing that can come out of these time-consuming and stressful projects is that you have discovered an efficient workflow. 

How to find your strengths and achieve your potential

Like many autistic individuals, I was a completely terrified adolescent with zero self-esteem. This meant that any abilities I had or potential skills I could have learned were restricted by the discomfort I felt in being myself. I was so preoccupied with wondering why I was different, why I didn't fit in, and trying to make myself "normal", that I was not able to appreciate my strengths (I didn't even know I had any!). Combine this with my experience of school where I was known as The Person Who Did Not Speak and who no one (apart from the bullies) paid any attention to, my strengths were not visible to anyone else either. Consequently, I never really recognised my strengths and certainly never utilised them. It was not until much later in my life that I started to realise that being different was not all negative. When I was young, I saw being different as being purely negative and I was extremely uncomfortable with who I was. It was only once I became comfortable with myself - many years later - that I was able to recognise that there were many good qualities in my character. This leads me to the point that: in order for a person to best utilise their potential, they have to first recognise what it is. They have to recognise what they are good at. If a person is very unhappy with themselves, then they will probably not be able to think about any of that. Their headspace is consumed with comparing themselves to other people and feeling inferior. So how can an autistic person best achieve their potential?

How to manage separation anxiety problems

In the previous article I provided insight into why autistic people might experience separation anxiety. Now I will look at what we can do to overcome or reduce this particular type of anxiety...

Why autistic people need others to be reliable

One of the traits I most admire and need is reliability. If I am to have any sort of meaningful relationship with someone then they must be reliable. The fundamental reason is that when a person is reliable, their actions are predictable. If their actions are predictable then my relationship with them is also going to be predictable. That means a larger proportion of my life will be predictable. When my life is predictable I feel much less anxious. My mental health is improved. What do I mean when I talk about 'reliability'? A reliable person is someone who: Communicates clearly their plans Does what they say they are going to do Doesn't tend to forget about what they said Is organised in their mind Is responsive Is punctual Doesn't often change or cancel plans These are all characteristics that many neurotypical people also appreciate and admire. However, I think a lot of autistic people will have a much, much greater "need" for this characteristic in others.

10 tips for learning online

The internet has given us amazing opportunities to learn anything we want without leaving home. However, learning from the internet is a bit different from learning in a classroom. Here are 10 things that help me learn information when I am using the internet: 1. A clear objective I find it difficult to learn unless there is a clear objective, goal or learning outcome. That's why I like tutorials that have clear titles, descriptions or opening paragraphs that tell me exactly what I am going to learn.

Developing a tolerance level

Tolerance can be defined as the capacity to endure something that we find uncomfortable. For the purpose of this article, I will say that we can be tolerant of two areas: 1) Situations 2) Error I think that being tolerant to an extent is a good thing, but I think it's sensible to decipher your own tolerance levels.

How can I adjust to this new way of living?

We are currently living in challenging times, in which there is a lot of change and restrictions. Currently for most people this means only being allowed out of the house once per day for exercise. I receive messages from my friends. There is a trend in what they say. They say something like, "I am well, I'm just trying to adjust to this new way of living."  That sentence is very interesting. In my immediate world, not much has changed. My normal life is a life of semi-quarantine anyway! I am sure that many other autistic people also live similar, isolated lives. The greatest change for me has been observing changes in the outside world. Now, when I walk through my high street, it is deserted. All the shops and cafes I would usually go to are abandoned. All the car parking spaces at the sides of the roads, which would normally contain parked cars, are empty. It looks like a ghost town. I remember the last cup of tea I had from the cafe before it closed. I live in London. I have seen all the photos of central London in its abandonment. I know what central London is normally like. Now it is eerie. Another change for me is noticing the change in other people's behaviour. People who live 'normal' lives are no longer going out. People who usually see their family a lot, but are in circumstances where their family don't live with them, are in contact only by phone and internet. Or sometimes through a safe distance of the window as one person stands in the front garden and the other waves from inside the house! It is bizarre. If I do see anyone outside or in the supermarket, I see a lot of people wearing masks. This is now normal. People are looking different. When I go to the supermarket, many of the shelves are empty. I am no longer able to purchase my normal food. Like many autistic people, I tend to eat the same things, the same brands, and I have always tended to buy my food in bulk because I know I will eat it over a long period of time. I'm no longer able to buy large quantities of the food I like. Even on the rare occasions in the supermarket where there are multiple quantities of an item of food I like, I only buy one or two. My diet is going to have to change for the time-being.