as small as a world and as large as alone, Ah, the anon from just then, also! I also need to...

3:45am August 17, 2014

Anonymous asked: Ah, the anon from just then, also! I also need to stim with nice fabrics or playdoh, which also helps me feel better, so many anon could look into textures or things that are comforting, too! I also don't know if I have autism, but I've been stimming since I was a child, and I stim constantly now as an adult, so there's definitely at lease sensory issues there!

I know someone (the same one who lost 50 years of her life to pretending to be normal) who does a lot of work helping autistic people deal with overload.

And she said when you get into a really bad overload. Like the kind where it’s not just “this situation is overloading”, but more like “I’m headed for a really bad crash.”

The best things you can do are:

Get yourself somewhere dark
Get yourself somewhere quiet
Get yourself somewhere where you can handle the textures, maybe even tightly wrap a heavy blanket around yourself, or a sheet, whichever feels better.
Stim in whatever way is natural to you, whether or not you’ve ever done it before.

The stimming can be repetitive movements like rocking. But it can also be the kind of stimming that is more about sensory objects. Looking at something nice, playing with play-doh, whatever.

Just be sure you aren’t stimming on something that is causing more overload. For me, a lot of visual stims are way too much for me even at a good time, and engaging in them during overload is too much.

Also if you get so overloaded that your visual system scrambles or pixelates, or anything else that could make you experience nausea or motion sickness during overload, I would recommend having dramamine around. I used to throw up whenever I got sufficiently overloaded, and I realized it coincided with the age I became capable of motion sickness. So any time I went to a new place, I’d never seen it before, my eyes got overloaded, everything danced around me, which caused a visual element of motion sickness, and then I’d get sick as a dog. So sick that my best friend at one point commented “I didn’t know human beings made sounds like that” and ‘I’ve only ever seen drunk people this sick.“ So be aware that for some neurodivergent people, motion sickness can come into play during overload for a variety of reasons. Be prepared.