James's Notebook

Some challenges I face with autism is socializing with other people. One of the biggest challenges I have faced with being social is my fear that what I have to say is not viewed as important. Another fear that I have around socialization is that i will not have something to speak about that is relevant to the topic in the social situation. One of the methods that I use to overcome these fears is to come up with multiple topics to discuss when i have a social event to attend. Another is to listen to other people's interests when they are speaking. Then I can come up with open ended questions about the topics that interest them. One thing I try to remember is that other people's perceptions and experiences are different than mine. By asking open ended questions, I could find commonalities between their life experiences and mine and we may find things in common, which will make socializing less of a challenge for me, and less scary.

An issue that I have dealt with constantly in my life is keeping focus. The reason why this is very challenging for me is because I have a hard time recognizing what could be a distraction. A way that I have overcome this issue is to first maintain my body's focus by taking slow deep breaths and by asking myself what is disrupting my focus. Then once I find out what that is I will minimize my mental input on what could be a distraction, good examples for this would be fluorescent lighting, screened electronics or background music. After that I would minimize my physical input to the distraction. If this does not help I would check my body's signals to make sure that I'm not hungry or need water and I would ask myself this because I noticed that I get more distracted when I am hungry or dehydrated.

      Hello everyone my name is James Elmore the purpose of my blog is to help educate and provide people a better understanding of autism. I also created this to help with clarifying and debunking the many myths about it. The resources that I will be using to help clarify these myths is my own personal experiences in life due to the fact that I am also autistic. If you have any questions about what it is like living with autism feel free to ask me.