Status Updates From All Tangled Up in Autism an...

"…and voicing and asserting my boundaries both to others and myself. / From many, many experiences, I have learnt that relentlessly pushing on my better days to make up for the worse ones will, without question, lead to another PEM crash, and many more worse days. It is much more sustainable—no, is ONLY sustainable to pace myself." — Dan

"…activity I can do doesn't remain consistent every day. There's always so much that needs doing, and my urge to Do Things when I have energy and am in less pain gets amplified by my guilt about being unable to do much most of the time, whether to contribute to the household or socialise with others. I still have a lot to work on in terms of learning to pace myself better, especially regarding listening to my body…"

"I experience post-exertional malaise, known as PEM. If don't pace myself, my body WILL protest by crashing hard, so I suppose you could say pacing is effective—in the sense that if I don't do it, I can't continue and am forced to press pause for several days! I've found it inevitable that my physical and cognitive condition will crash and burn when I overdo it. It's hard not to overdo it because the amount of…"

"…with four meetings in it, I'll have a very slow morning. Or if I have a doctor's appointment in the morning, and teaching in the evening, then I'll plan to just read my book in between." — Emily

"I don't consciously use pacing, or call it that, but I have a dry erase board in my house that has all the things for the day on it, so I can see ahead of time what kind of day I'm about to have, and I'll make sure I take breaks accordingly. Like—if it's a day…"

"Sometimes I feel like I am my own caretaker. Like — my body has all these needs and my brain is the one making sure it's safe and healthy and happy. I'm really good at designing systems and optimising things, and I put that talent towards taking care of my body. It helps me to think this way because I can be gentler with myself." — Emily

"My walking stick, as well as providing me with more stability when walking, also helps with my proprioception; having something outside of my body that I can hold, marking where I am in an environment is really useful." — Amber