Suddenly that music video makes sense

Alas, "[t]his content is not available in [my] country/region", any chance of a mirror/archive link?

This is why I concluded that I can't live in shared housing. Thankfully my social phobia isn't triggered by living with a partner or I'd be fucked as far as affording housing.

I don't have any useful advice or way to help, but you're not a burden and you're not the only one to feel this way. Sorry if that's not exactly comforting.

My instinctive response is that it's a terrible idea. While having no expectation to mask is great, it seems to me that gathering a group of people who generally struggle to take care of themselves and their environment and who have very low tolerance for certain environmental stimuli and a deep need for other environmental stimuli is a recipe for chaos.

I attend a local autistic adults zoom group every other week, and it's great for support and understanding, but if I had to be in the same room as one of the other members their stims would give me a meltdown. I over-empathise emotionally, an autistic friend has almost no emotional empathy, as a result some of our interactions do not go as intended. Multiply these kinds of issues with having to effectively live with eachother and I just don't see it going well.

That point about how sensory processing issues can affect your health is so on point, I had no idea how much of my general anxiety was caused just by the world being too loud and bright. Earplugs and sunglasses worked instantly where 5 different medications failed to do anything.

We broke the Anima system in half with overpowered characters. Not that it holds together very well normally. One mage character boosting the tank's strength high enough to lift a mountain and creating him a giant tungsten lump, another mage opening a portal directly above a bad guy's tower, apply tungsten to tower at great speed. No more tower. The GM was too amused to be mad that we wrecked his whole plan. We used the same trick to launch a necronomicon into the sun (or near enough). Also so many magically created artefacts, creation mages are just bullshit. But I got away with it because I made some for everyone.

Honestly I'd be very surprised to see an online autism community with a majority of people professionally diagnosed, even more surprised if the majority were diagnosed as children. Even setting aside how underdiagnosed large sections of the autistic population are, the people who need to seek support and validation that they belong to a community are much more likely to be those who didn't have the right language or support as a child.

Would definitely recommend, it's proper co-op (in the sense of both players having the same game experience, not the sense of needing to actually cooperate). I'm terrible at platformers so I find it challenging, an actually competent player would probably find it generally easy.

The only neurotypical person I know well is my sister. The only major differences we've actually established is that she has significantly more energy for activity-filled days than I do, and she doesn't understand the concept of being paralyzed by indecision.

I think getting rid of the Aspergers label was a big mistake on that part. Yeah he was a nazi eugenicist, blah blah blah, but having a label that both differentiates "people who seem like weird fuckups but are otherwise kind of normal?" from "people who have significant disabilities preventing a normal life" and is widely known was a useful shorthand to have.

Plus "aspie" is a much cuter term than "autist" that hasn't to my knowledge been used as a slur.

I can only speak to my own experience, but identifying the specific environmental issues has been far more important than knowing that my problem is autism. Two years of "yes I'm autistic but I get on fine, I don't need special adjustments" with medication and therapy for anxiety did nothing. Six weeks of wearing sunglasses indoors and outdoors, earplugs most of the time, letting my husband know exactly how many terrible puns I think of instead of quietly assuming they're too lame to share, and accepting that we need to hire a cleaner because I'm never going to manage the house and it's like the depressive shroud of my entire adult life has lifted.

I hope you get the answers you need from the assessment, and I encourage you to explore what you can change about your environment regardless of what those answers are. You will get through, and things will get better 💜

I know what you mean, I had the same contradictory feelings (diagnosed two years ago aged 29) but the assessment label doesn't actually change anything about you, or much about life. If you have autism you've always had it. If you don't, you can still use strategies that help with autistic sensitivities/limitations, a lot of the techniques for mental limitations will help pretty much anyone.