Every time I mention I like Undertale and get “Did YoU bEat Sans?”

No, because I’m not a genocidal monster and I never will be. I did the pacifist route. Game over, nothing else to see here.

Getting a diagnosis can be extremely difficult for people. In my area you either need to pay about $5k or go through a 2+ year ordeal.

Even with all that, diagnostic methods are murky at best. There is no binary you have it or you don’t kind of thing, no physical test that can conclusively say you are autistic.

All that to say as someone who went through the process to get diagnosed. I think self diagnosis is perfectly valid with autism.

I am also envious. That’s a super power I’d take over the ability to fly.

This is the most academic answer I have seen so far. Any source on those stats? My doctors may listen if I can give them something.

Oh that’s actually a huge help. I already use a mouthguard for grinding. Last time I got the CPAP the doctors kept insisting I ask my dentist for something to keep my mouth closed. But they would never tell me what it was, and my dentist had no idea. Perhaps it was this?

I wish the working world would let us all live to our sleep styles. Some days I am at work from home office staring at my bed.

I wish you the best with getting your diagnosis. I absolutely dreaded the sleep studies. They were always scheduled on work nights, and I’d get almost no sleep. Then they’d kick me out at 6 a.m., and I’d end up stumbling back to my office since it was closer than going home.

Thankfully, my next one is on a weekend, so at least I can go straight home afterward.

When I get those strong, sudden urges to sleep and can’t actually fall asleep, I feel awful. Even worse, I can get irritable with the people around me. So, at least in my experience, the sleep issues came first. And the more I’ve done to address them, the better I’ve felt overall.

Good to know. My friends mention the same things though I don’t have that problem as often these days but I wonder if this is the common thing that nerodivergent people face and the cause of sleep issues.

Fyi routine and meditation helped with me, the Finch app is great for keeping me on track.

Interesting, I know that can have an effect on migraines as well. I should ask my doctors about that.

May I ask what kind of sleep issues? Have your doctor said anything like apnea, or narcolepsy, or did they just say it’s a mental health thing?

Not sure if this will help but here’s my take.

I’m 38 and ace, and I was in a very similar place. Over time, my close friends found their partners, and I ended up feeling even more alone.

I believed I had to earn a healthy relationship. I thought I needed to get physically fit, pay off my debt, and become “worthy” enough. Thankfully, I found a good therapist who helped me step away from that mindset. Personal goals are valuable, but the truth was that I would probably never feel good enough if I kept tying my worth to achievements.

At the same time, I was in an aro-ace relationship with someone who was financially abusing me. That situation was a major factor holding me back.

In the end, the root of many of my struggles was self-hate. It took about a year of therapy to start correcting that. I’m still working on self-compassion, as well as my financial and physical well-being. But I’m now dating someone in a similar situation, and I’m genuinely happy.

So if you’re open to advice, here’s mine: focus on building self-compassion. You deserve happiness. You deserve to be loved.

How people think I use AI “Please write my essay and cite your sources.”

How I use it
“please make my autistic word slop that I wrote already into something readable for the nerotypical folk, use simple words, make it tonally neutral. stop using emdashes, headers, and list and don’t mess with the quotes”