HOW SURVIVE THANKSGIVING when you're AUTISTIC
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
- Happy Thanksgiving my Dear Friends, I hope you enjoy the day. I know holidays can be hard when you are on the spectrum, so I thought I would share some thing I have found helpful.
Hi! I’m Claire, and this is my channel, Woodshed Theory. Here you will find the awkward ramblings of an adult autist. I love being creative and sharing my experiences with you. Subscribe to see more DIYs, Discussions, and Bunnies on your feed!
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I've been avoiding family gatherings for decades... paid the price of being seen as aloof but it saved my mental health
Yeah it's a tough call
I take a separate car from my husband so he and my son can stay later at Thanksgiving and my daughter and I can leave when we need to. We did this last year and it worked wonderfully. As my daughter said “ it made all the difference knowing I could leave when I needed to” Happy Thanksgiving Claire and everyone else!
I LOVE THIS IDEA. The two car solution.
Luckily my mom and her girlfriend are making the meal and bringing it to my house. I really appreciate how accommodating they're being for my family. Hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving Claire and friends! 💞
That so great!,you are lucky to have a great family that will do that😀
Ahh now that is true family love.
Shit hit the fan this year. My wife is hosting a dinner for her extended family with only two days notice. I really need to get a bunker in the woods somewhere in preparation for nuclear strikes or family gatherings.
6:33 OMG thank you so much for the reminder. You're a life saver. I'm thankful that youtube (you) can give me the answer to this obnoxious question.
8:30 "The good thing about the big big family gatherings is at least you can hide." That's something that always surprises people about my social anxiety: I'm ok at large events like concerts because I'm hiding in a crowd. Well, not OK, but not curled up the fetal position crying like one would expect.
Speaking of which, I'm go back to crying in the fetal position now. You know, in preparation while the turkey is thawing.
You know actually I lived in NYC for a few months and I loved how crowded it was and how everyone ignored each other unless they needed help. It's amazing.
Nope you feel better soon, Claire! We love Thanksgiving because we always do it with just the two of us, and I love to prepare our meal and we both love to eat it! Back when I used to spend holidays with family, I could never talk about special interests because I got very boring very quickly. So I spent a lot of time listening or escaping to the outside!
This year it was just the two of us dying together of the flu on the couch eating indian takeout lol
Stop apologizing for your videos! We’re here for the ride! Just keep being YOU!!!!
I shall try my best!
I took this as Porch Coffee round 2 😊🌿
Indeed - Porch Coffee 2: the reheat
@@WoodshedTheory ha!
Happy Thanksgiving, Claire! I hope you feel better soon! “Choose your hard”. This is a great reminder that sometimes the best choice still isn’t an easy choice.
yes indeed, it is hard to come to terms with "choose your hard" but life is like that sometimes.
I hope you feel better soon Claire! We started a tradition last year of watching the airplanes take off and land at the airport. I have always had an interest in planes, so it’s really fun for me (and for my kids!)
These reminders are awesome. This is my family gathering knowing I’m autistic so it will be interesting and I will keep these suggestions in mind ❤
What an interesting tradition - do you sit inside or watch from outside?
@@WoodshedTheory there’s actually an outdoor area near the runway where the public can sit and watch!
The last 3 years (and this year) I figured out how to make the typical traditional thanksgiving dishes and have been making my own T-giving dinner since 2019. Bonus is that I have tons of leftovers for the next few days
Leftovers are life.
I'm unique in that I've lived in the US so I have actually celebrated thanksgiving with my wives family over there. I've had a few times where I hit meltdown or almost meltdown. My favourite thing was always my wives Grandma and Grandpa, grandpa was a war vet and I love listening to stories. Her grandma was funny and I love a laugh. My in-laws are animals and eat the green beans with tomato in them. Who does that so weird. So we brought green beans made by me so I ate those. My wife makes a mean cobbler with apple in the winter and fresh peaches from a peach tree my daughter planted when she was little in the summer. The cobbler is always a good thing. That was I don't have to have some weird pie. I always tried to socialise and at least get through dinner, the house is pretty big with enough rooms to go to if I want to be alone for a bit, or listen to some music.
lots of wonderful things about thanksgiving
If I could talk about my special interests at a family dinner, I'd end up delivering a lecture on Lithuanian noun declension or the difference between the simple past tense and the present perfect (in English. I am such a grammar nerd). I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who would have a good time. 🤣 Happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating it tomorrow! In Canada, we had Thanksgiving back in October but somehow we still have Black Friday. Funny how that works...
omg sueanne i would love to have thanksgiving with you if that is the topics you are hitting on. as you know I did my graduate studies in ancient languages.
Happy Thanksgiving Claire. Hope you feel better soon.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I’m sorry you’re still not feeling well! Yes, definitely treat yourself and order food from a restaurant. You might want to check ahead of time to see what will be open tomorrow. I’m sure you’ve already thought of that. 😎. My MIL is hosting tomorrow, and thankfully they only live thirty minutes away. 🙌🏼. My job is always the green bean casserole. 😆
we ended up getting indian food for thanksgiving dinner. I LOVE GB CASSEROLE
Thank you so much for this Claire! I have been having so much anxiety and your reminders were really helpful 🫶
We watch the parade too! And there is always football on a tv somewhere. On the other side of the family we usually play some kind of card game together. My granny is the biggest cheater though! 😂 No one suspects the little old lady lol.
Since getting my diagnosis, I feel like I have gotten a lot better at communicating some of my needs in a calm way, and not feeling as guilty about it. Like needing a break from people, or bringing a comfort item, or being able to drive separately so I can leave if I need to.
I hope you feel better soon!
THere is nothing I enjoy more than a cheating granny lol
You have some great tips. My Thanksgiving is going to be weird this year. My husband (and one cat) has COVID and has been quarantined in the home office all week. My eldest son ran away to Quebec 2 weeks ago and I don’t know that he is actually going to come home. My elderly Mother and I are still cooking some things and trying to make due but things have been a lot. I am not feeling particularly thankful right now.
I know you are going through a hard time, you are being strong!
@@WoodshedTheory Thank you!
❤
Thanks my friend
Tradition wise we have changed our family traditions since having kids. Our girls have Christmas Eve boxes with a book, PJs, hot chocolate, marshmallows and popcorn and we watch a Christmas movie. And of course leaving a cookie for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph. Last year my cat started licking the carrot for no reason so there was no way Rudolf was going to eat that. 😅😂
Some things that I remember my dad doing was making mince pies (I’m not that keen on them though so I’m ok for that tradition to disappear). Lighting a Christmas pudding after pouring alcohol on it (I’m not keen on Xmas pudding so I’m not sure if I’ll still do that but seeing the flames is so pretty and Christmasy and reminds me of my dad). We always had lots of clementines and nuts that you have to crack open with a nutcracker.
The Christmas before my dad died he bought me a Christmas recipe book with things like gingerbread houses and ginger cake in it. He also bought me some Xmas stamps which can be used on biscuits or sugarpaste icing. So the last couple of years me and my girls make something out of the book he bought.
All of these things tell me that you grew up in the UK. I got to spend a christmas with my friends family in the UK one year and it was lovely.
@@WoodshedTheory That’s so interesting. Yes I’m from the UK, but now I want to know which traditions are UK specific? I remember spending a Christmas at my ex boyfriend’s house and his mom was German, but they lived in the Netherlands. I’m not sure which of their traditions were German and which may have been Dutch, but it was such an odd experience. I remember feeling a bit homesick. I really like all the things the Dutch do for New Year’s Eve though.
My husband’s family are from the UK the same City as I grew up in but I was from the south of Birmingham and he grew up in North Birmingham. Me and my husband live in Dudley now. My husband’s family’s traditions are different from what mine and my dad’s were. My husband’s family have champagne flutes with some kind of liquor in it I want to say it’s Tim Collins (but I might have made that name up). They put a sugar cube in it and top it with champagne. They also play lots of board games, particularly word related ones (which I don’t particularly enjoy haha). I dunno if it’s the names of the games that puts me off like (Yahtzee or Pass the Pigs) or if it’s just that the board games they have weren’t ones that I was aware of when I was growing up, not that I played many because I am an only child. I don’t think either of those games even have a board, I can’t remember. All I know is that I don’t want to play them. 😅😂
very useful sweetie. and feel better
thanks for the well wishes
Claire, I hope you feel better soon and have a happy Thanksgiving at home! Thanks for sharing your strategies! I modify how I discuss my special interest of autism at big family dinners. I will bring up my autism-related advocacy work a little bit. Mostly, I will focus on a few of my other passionate interests like movies.
Sounds like you have a good strategy
Hope you had a good Thanksgiving
Lol we were so sick we ordered takeout
Thank you Claire. Hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving. I just wanted to say that I don’t know if it is a coincidence, but I feel like your videos have really been helping me feel less depressed and accepting of myself.
We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving over here in the UK, but your advice is really timely for me as there is a family dinner I don’t want to attend due to anxiety.
Also your advice about politics is very wise. I was super interested in politics for a short while, but I have given up thinking about it to reduce anxiety and potential disagreements with family or friends. I’ve also stopped believing that it makes a difference anyway so I rather not talk about it. I guess it was a brief hyper focus for me, but I didn’t really know enough about it or understand it anyway and it wasn’t an interest that was serving my mental health in a good way either.
i usually go through phases with being into politics as well. it's like on and off for me.
@@WoodshedTheory Yeah it’s probably like that for me, but I just try to remind myself that none of the parties keep their promises so what’s the point? Also none of the parties do enough, might just mean that my priorities as a neurodivergent person are totally different and I will just never understand politics nor would the things I think are most important would be the most important things to the majority of people. Possibly the whole only 1% of people are INFJs if that is even a real classification (as some of the questions in the quiz I was torn between). I’ve got an essay coming up where we need to self-evaluate ourselves and our future music career options and I don’t want to get too deep into the advantages and disadvantages of personality tests (I think they fall under the term psychometric testing but I’m not sure). I also don’t want it to turn into an essay about the history of it and whether it’s accurate. 😅 Sorry, apologies for the essays. I dunno how I went from politics to personality tests. 😆
+WoodshedTheory *Sorry that ye're still down - illness complicates plans.*
gosh it sure does!
Thankfully we don't have thanksgiving here (see what I did?)
Kasame? & ? casserole? 1st I don't know, 2nd audio processing glitch. Hubby can't go shopping on his own?
What video did you have planned ? I'll be shining a spot light in you're eyes next. You vil answer zee questions!
Hope you feel better soon. 🤒💜
Green Bean Casserole. It's greenbeans, cream of mushroom soup, and fried onions lol
I struggle with feelings of meaninglessness. Jumping from persona to persona, imitating and all that - that comes very naturally now after so many years of training. But which requires a lot of energy.
What is really the outermost goal in general for an autistic person - stripped of all that masking?
If neurotypical works toward for example building a career, togetherness, a family, dog and a house etc. What is the autistic equivalent of this?
Or do we all strive, in general, to fill our life’s with the same types of things and that the same notions give life meaning? Neurotypicals as well as a neurodivergent.
These are great questions but I am also trying to figure out the answers
Hi Claire. Thanksgiving doesn't exist in Europe. By the way, I've never celebrated any festivity at all, not even when I was a kid. I think I'm lucky because, despite I have never attended a party or a family reunion, they look like a sensorial nightmare.
Happy Thanksgiving Claire, and to all Americans on here.
Hello Pass, I find your comment interesting. Is there a reason you have never celebrated a holiday? for example in the US, there are some religions that don't celebrate any holidays.
@@WoodshedTheory Actually there is no reason. I just don't see the point of celebrations.
what if they make you watch Newsmax and spout fascist propaganda constantly? omg, bad times
Hahahahah yeah I get you! Just smile and excuse yourself to the bathroom? Lol