During my own life, it has many times been difficult for me to deal with challenging thoughts that appear either right in front of me or in my head. There is a part of me that wants to keep fighting them, but I have had to learn that I needed to find healthier coping mechanisms to combat them better than the same old ways that I have done for many years in the past because those ways were no longer working for me.

It can be hard to find what is going to work when it comes to finding healthier coping strategies that work for you. There are several lists that you can find by doing a basic Internet search and my therapist has given me similar lists, but in the end, it is up to each person to determine what works for them by remedying the challenges that they are facing.

What I had to realize is that I had to find better ways to cope with my challenges than what I was doing with them beforehand. As they say, there is no such thing as “easy” autism and it has been a cross to bear for me for many years. The last few years have been particularly hard for me because of many factors that were out of my control that I wanted to control but had a hard time grasping what was. Eventually things got better for me in that regard because some situations had changed, but it still comes with its personal challenges from time to time.

That is where finding healthy coping strategies come into play. Because what I have been doing forever just was not working for me. I knew it and it was not only tearing me apart, but everyone around me was knowing how I was with them. There were things that I would not let go because there was no healthy way to put the thoughts at bay and finding something that was fulfilling or could get my mind off the thoughts and sometimes unhealthy scripts that I was living with in my head.

There is a reality that I live with challenges and that I must do things to cope with those challenges that seem abnormal to many. I need to have music or some sort of noise to drain  the thoughts that may appear. It is totally different than what some may consider as “hearing voices,” because it is not that. It is the fact that I constantly think about things and some of those things are unhealthy to think about. Some of them no longer have any value or merit to what they are. They may bring negative feelings to me that need to be dealt with in a healthy fashion that requires good coping skills. As many of them that have been told to me over the past decade or so, there was a part of me that was unwilling to listen.

Now is the time to listen and take part in finding the skills that I need to keep my mind more mentally well. It has been a long process and will continue to be as I move forward with my life, but what is ever more important is finding those healthy coping strategies to move forward.