As I continue to live an independent life as an autistic person, I am continuing to realize that there will always be a need to decompress and recharge, especially after going through a lot in a day. I must start to understand that it is not my fault, it is just a part of being autistic and it is perfectly normal in a person that is in my condition.

For the longest time in my life, I have been always trying to fit in a mold that is not me. I have started in recent months since getting back on track to understand that being authentic is the way to go. I cannot change any of my quirks or anything that is uniquely mine. I must understand that I am autistic and there is nothing that is going to change that or the way that I react or need to care for myself.

Part of that is understanding the need to decompress and recharge, especially after being out in a world that is not made easy for me. Granted, there are things that I can do well and environments that I can tolerate to a great degree of tolerance. However, there are overstimulating and cause a great deal of sensory overload for me. For the longest time of my life, there was no understanding of how deeply those things affected me. It was just the fact that you lived with what you had to go through, because the autistic world was not as up to speed with how to help people when they are overstimulated or in a great deal of sensory overload.

The central solution when I was growing up and well into my early adulthood was not being a part of something. That was the solution that many who were unwilling to accommodate my or any autistic person’s needs were told to do. If we were not excluded from something, we were just expected to conform into what society expected of us. Thus, this is what still today makes autistic people at times be overstimulated and experience sensory overload.

It is not our fault that our neurotype is the way that it is. For years we have been either dismissed and had to fall into what was expected of us or we had to be penalized for acting in a way that was not expected of us by reacting negatively when things became too much for us. It is no wonder that we have always needed to decompress and recharge after being out for some time. I just don’t believe that my family accepted that it was a part of the daily way of life because that was not made a necessity, partly because I was not diagnosed and even when I was diagnosed, there was no evidence yet of how much being overstimulated or being involved in sensory overload really effected the body and the need for decompression and recharging.

Now that there is great evidence in this regard and I am on my own now, it is something that I continue to see and accept more. I see that many of my autistic friends do the same thing because the world outside is too much for them and when they get home, they are too at their limit. I must be more willing to accept that there is a need to decompress and recharge especially after being out for long and challenging periods of time.