r/AutismTraumaSurvivors

I've been writing since I was a small child. On and off. There's been periods where I'd have slumps but it's something I've always done.

I don't journal. The type of autism I have makes me more likely to fixate on things so when I was just journaling, writing my feelings down etc I'd end up feeling worse about my issues rather than it being a release.

Throughout my teens and early twenties I used to co-write with other people on RPG forums. But after I came out as trans I well, stopped. People started to really hate me.

I actually remember doing one RPG where a character was trans and I got a lot of praise for how I wrote her. Only for people to turn hostile when finding out I was trans myself.

Was the last time I did one of those RPGs. But I kept writing solo.

Whenever I'd hit a slump, I tended to find creative writing groups or co-writing and that would pull me out. Unfortunately I've been in a slump for months and no such groups exist.

Even tried setting up my own. Didn’t work. I've tried to set up my own group many times over the years but RSD makes it hard to commit when people RSVP yes every week only no just never show for months on end.

Despite trying everything, the slump is here to stay. I'm now at the point where I look at my past work and hate it.

I haven't found a suitable replacement for a creative oulet. Between my dyspraxia, a need to actually feel pride in what I do, the cost of some hobbies as well as some requiring a community element..

Yeah. No joy.

There's no hobby to replace writing with because it was a massive part of my life.

Times are scary. People have tried (and succeeded) in hurting me because of what I am. I found comfort in the creative. Helped me deal with that better.

It was kinda like, my writing made me feel like a mattered in a way. Because if something were to happen to me, at least it'd be there for people to see.

I never wrote about my own trauma. Even when writing trans characters in early transition I'd make them different enough from me so that I wasn't veering into self-insert territory.

In recent years I have explored narratives where powerless people overcome stuff, become powerful etc and I know damn well that's come about as a result of trauma.

So with it gone for good. I don't know what to do with myself.

I don't have access to good therapy and never did. Got trauma surrounding that with abuse (including attempted conversion therapy).

But I always just wrote stories. With that outlet gone, what I experience and what I have experienced feels louder and heavier than it ever has before.

I live in a group home for the disabled. They use a lot of ABA on my one particular housemate. For example they will threaten her she will lose privileges if she doesn’t behave. Problem is this reminds me a lot of when my rapist threatened me and I’ve been having a ton of flashbacks and am not coping. Any ideas how to cope? Unfortunately the only other place to live would be another group home and I don’t imagine that would be any better.

While I have found EMDR and IFS really useful for some of the traumas I've been to, life with both autism and ADHD is just exhausting my reserves constantly. I really want to explore other tools to feel less anxious and overstimulated without going down the path of anti-anxiety medication - I'm trying to get back on a stimulant, for example - and think the key of this is somatic.

When I'm speaking of somatic tools, I'm think of things like the following although these categories are fairly flexible:

• Movement and sound: sound baths, ecstatic dance, dance classes or dance in general
• Touch and body based: acupuncture, massage, sauna, physical therapy, gym, any kind of body-centric treatment
• Silence or inner work: meditation (which I do) and time in nature (which I try to do, weather depending)
• Sound stopper: Loop ear plugs - not a 'somatic' tool, but a huge, huge help all the time now.
• Etc.: things I don't know about that might be on this list. Even thinking through communities or books or classes to help with this.

Are there other things to explore? I go through periods where I'm overwhelmed, and it's not just trying to figure out what to do, but when. It's almost like I'm constantly struggling to read how many spoons I have, largely because I'm still in a severe burnout.

So for example, I try to go dancing at least every couple of months, which helps - although clubs are kind of a sensory hell with the amount of people. But I'd like to find ways to almost be more proactive about it while also being mindful of budget. I try to go to the gym at least 3 times a week (or at least one longer walk), and I do notice it helps with mood and body-related pain. But I also on some days feel so overstimulated and that my nerves are on the outside, and I want to feel less sensitive to the world. I almost would love to hear how someone has done any of these activities proactively ('regular massages' etc.) and how that has helped your trauma recovery and managing autism in particular.

Any other ideas of what kind of somatic tools I can look into, and how you think about using these and how frequent? I think it's just so hard to figure out 'how much time to be adulting' and 'how much somatic therapy and rest to do'. My tendency is to overwork and burn myself out because I can't read that I'm in burnout, and I'm really trying to consciously schedule intentional somatic work to help release some of the stress on my body.

Thank you!