 For a long time and I mean a long time I've had more and more people ask me to have more videos about dealing with your mental health when you are on the spectrum and that's why I brought over a very special guest. What is up everybody this is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel my channel is all about mental health typically what I do is pull them into topics from the youtube community to teach you about your mental health but I also like to increase awareness and provide you with tools resources and all of that stuff when it comes to mental health so if you're into that make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell so yeah I brought over a very special guest her name is Stephanie she has been a Rewired Soldier for quite some time and she has autism spectrum disorder she was diagnosed in her 20s but I'm gonna let her explain all of that but anyways I've had a lot of people ask me about dealing with mental illness or mental health issues while you're on the spectrum and some of this is from some of my subscribers who are on the spectrum and some of it is people who have friends or family members who are on the spectrum and you want a better understanding or you want to know how to help so like no matter what like this is a very important video and I'm gonna link all of Stephanie's channel and everything in this video in the info card of the end screen and in the description all that good stuff but please do me a favor and let like other people know about this video share it with them because like one of the things that I'm always trying to do is I'm trying to learn about more and more people and what they're going through so I can better help them and be there for them you know if they have you know different co-occurring disorders or whatever the case may be anyways I'm gonna shut up now and here is Stephanie hi Rewired Soldiers my name is Stephanie and I was diagnosed with high functioning autism at age 23 today I just wanted to share some tips with you for managing mental health on the spectrum just from my personal experience a huge thank you to Chris for letting me have this moment on his amazing channel so autism typically comes with co-morbid conditions so that's basically conditions that typically happen with having autism so a few examples are ADHD bipolar depression and anxiety well I can't personally speak on having bipolar or ADHD I do have experience with depression and anxiety so some of these might be coming from that kind of viewpoint those of us on the autism spectrum tend to have difficulty recognizing and identifying emotions until they're really extreme and on top of that we have trouble thinking of asking for help so for me going through depression and anxiety I'd be experiencing these things and the thoughts that come with depression and I experienced them almost every single day I didn't know that this was abnormal I thought that everyone dealt with this because I had become so used to it I think it's really important for us to know that it is okay to talk to somebody about a feeling or an emotion or a situation that is bothering us do not suffer in silence because you think that it's trivial or you can't quite place it or name it it's okay if you can't name what it is I didn't know that it had a name I didn't know depression was its name or anxiety was its name you don't always have to have the name for it just try to talk to somebody now another thing is communication when things are overwhelming this is one of those things that on the spectrum it's just so difficult because we have this tendency to have trouble really putting words together out loud when we're overwhelmed some people even have selective mutism so they can't even speak when they're being overwhelmed that they can't get any words out and if they can it's very short not very useful and for me when I'm starting to get overwhelmed I start to go in circles and say things that don't make any sense and repeat myself and later I realize that I made zero logical sense and other times I have things that are building up on the inside things that I've been thinking about things that have been bothering me and I just can't seem to like tell somebody it just seems really intimidating so for me what I've learned how to do is to try to write it out so for me I'm a lot better at writing things down or typing things up than I am with speaking it just lets me kind of put all of what's in here out onto a paper or a document or whatever and it lets me express it without having to I don't know something about it is just less intimidating so you might try that the next time that something's going on or you're feeling overwhelmed or you want to try to communicate but it's just really hard or you feel intimidated to try writing it down and see if that helps my third tip for you is to realize and remember that emotions and even relationships can come and go in waves we really like things to be constant consistent and in the place that they belong so a lot of times we put permanence on things because we want things to work like that but emotions just don't so for me it's something I like to remind myself you know when I feel down after feeling really happy for a long time that doesn't mean that I'm gonna be stuck being down forever because sometimes it seems like any change means this change one is you know out of control and it's just impossible to deal with and that change seems like forever now because everything should be forever but that's just not how it is it's okay to know that we're gonna have happiness and we're gonna have times where we're not happy we're gonna have times where we're frustrated we're gonna have times when we're down we're depressed maybe we're anxious but that those things don't have to stay that way this also extends to relationships so sometimes when someone is short with us or we get in an argument with them it can feel like the absolute end of the world it's like the end of the relationship they don't love you anymore all these feelings come because you think that that thing is permanent well it's not just like their good mood didn't last forever or agreement didn't last forever this disagreement and this bad mood or whatever it is don't last forever and a lot of times the next day the person is just fine even though it seemed like the end of the world yesterday it's also really important to accept the fact that we are different now I don't know if you're familiar with the neuro typical versus neuro atypical but people with autism are considered neuro atypical basically your brain works differently than maybe the typical person so there are times and there things that we are going to do differently we're going to handle situations differently and we have needs that are different now I wasn't diagnosed until I was 23 so for the longest time I thought that one day I would wake up and I would be just like everyone else one day I would reach this moment and I would understand socializing and I would understand all the things that everyone else understood I thought somehow when I became an adult it would all just click and it didn't and I wasn't normal like everyone else and sometimes we can hold ourselves to the standard of a normal person or a neurotypical person the fact of the matter is we are not neurotypical and that is okay we have different weaknesses and different strengths it's okay to accept that it's okay to accept that and start to learn how to deal with that it's just really important to understand that you're never going to be so-and-so but you are going to be you and that's okay that you have different needs and that you think differently learn how to embrace those things and make those things your strengths instead of perceived weakness because it's different and my final tip to you is to try to become more conscious of the things that fuel you and exhaust you now as someone on the spectrum I'm aware that it is not always easy to understand what's going on with your body or to pay attention to what's going on with your body or your mind or anything like that because you know you don't understand why you're having a meltdown but maybe it's because you didn't eat in 12 hours just things like this we tend to overlook and not really understand why we're being overwhelmed all of a sudden so take a time to start to notice like oh after this thing I feel really exhausted or oh after this thing I feel really excited and bright and happy and ready to take on the world so when you start taking note of those things and you see like your daily schedule or what you have to do in the future you can start to prepare yourself for the things that exhaust you by being able to maybe set a little bit of time away to take some sort of break or those things that excite you maybe you can kind of mix them in with the things that exhaust you knowing what's going to maybe even over stimulate you for you to be able to take a moment and prepare maybe you have something with you like I personally have a weighted blanket I take that to my church on the Sundays because my Sundays are very long and very exhausting and I know that I get overwhelmed by the things that happen and they're also happening really close together so as a functioning human being in society I still have to do those things but I can take some time with a little bit of preparation to maybe lay down for a few minutes with my weighted blanket because I know that's going to help me calm down and reset and be able to take on those other things that usually exhaust me over overwhelm me so I think it's really important to be able to take note of those things so that you can thrive in this place that seems to be made for neurotypicals instead of just surviving it again thank you so much to Chris for letting me have this moment to talk to you all and now I'll give it back to him all right thank you so much Stephanie for taking some time out of your day to make this guest video for my channel and like I learned a lot I am constantly learning like like for people who wonder why I read so many books and things like that is like I love learning like my my main goal in life is to help as many people as possible but if I don't understand what specific people are going through like I don't know how to help them or be there for them in the best way possible so even just watching Stephanie's video like I learned a lot more about what somebody on the spectrum might be dealing with you know what I mean and I think what happens is especially if you have a loved one friend family member coworker whoever it is who is you know diagnosed with like autism spectrum disorder like for me it makes more sense you know when they get you know angry frustrated depressed anxious whatever the case is and I absolutely love what Stephanie did in this video like if you want to talk about a rewired soldier I loved how Stephanie provided different tips and tools for how to manage these things when you're dealing with you know various issues right like I absolutely love how she talked about like you know writing things down can help you identify what's going on and all of these other things but I think the biggest takeaway from this is guess what mindfulness all right a lot of what Stephanie was talking about is mindfulness so mindfulness is being present in the moment and understanding what's happening right now so like Stephanie was talking about sometimes it's hard to identify with you know different emotions or she even mentioned sometimes it's you know something that is because you know she she was hungry and they hadn't eaten all day I like how she talked about when you know how she prepares like going to church can be very overwhelming because it's a very long day so she plans ahead this is something like whether you're on the spectrum or not this is something that we can all benefit from it's something that I do like I know that I get anxious like going into very crowded places like going to the mall or you know even grocery shopping like when the store is packed something that I have to manage so like I prepare in my own ways I'm like okay you're gonna have to like do this be prepared to do this mindfulness technique while you're in the store or in this crowded place or whatever it is so I'm very very appreciative like how Stephanie had these tips and various solutions talked a little bit of mindfulness too all right but anyways again please share this video with other people so more people understand what people with autism spectrum disorder might be dealing with all right and make sure you go check out Stephanie's channel she has a lot a lot of videos about how to deal with symptoms of autism as well as Asperger's okay but anyways that's all I got with this video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos and a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon and make sure you go check out Stephanie's channel and go subscribe by clicking or tapping right there all right so thanks again Stephanie for being a guest on my channel and I'll see y'all next time