i have autism and severe social anxiety to the point i'm afraid to leave my own room, but i'm obsessed with travel. will actually travelling help me and how do i go about doing it?
i have autism and severe social anxiety to the point i'm afraid to leave my own room, but i'm obsessed with travel.
>but i'm obsessed with travel. will actually travelling help me and how do i go about doing it?
Probably. If you're obsessed with travel then you should give it a shot. Pick a your ideal destination and plan the hell out of it, and be prepared for problems if your plan doesn't work out. If your ideal destination is somewhere like Japan or Iceland, then it will probably go off without any real problems, and you'll feel much better about yourself after it's done.
Or don't travel and just sit in your room and read about foreign places without seeing them. That's what the majority of people do, and have always done ever since there was widespread literacy.
Just do what you need to do to be happy.
Bro, just being real with you... but if you don't push the envelope, you will NOT develop. No deposit no return.
If I had a dog and a pool at my house and the dog couldn't swim, what do you do? You would put a fence around the pool and pray that one day nothing happens where your dog ends up drowning. What you should do, is take the dog and teach it to swim. Confront it's fears... because fears aren't real. You're just afraid of what you don't know but you didn't stop for a second to think what you could know by doing it anyway. You're holding yourself back.
You should slowly start acclimating yourself to public areas. Most people are good hearted. Go on days where there might not be a lot of people around. Do it slowly if you have to. What's great is that you realized what you want to do, what your problem is... which is the hardest part (admitting it)... now you just gotta do it. Calm your mind. Relax.
Eat healthy, work out, all that shit too.
You can do it man!
It's time to let your balls hang a bit.
wtf actual good advice?
it's not good advice at all. traveling is a lot of money and won't solve OP's problems at all.
For SO long I thought if I went to enough bars and clubs I would eventually like going to bars and clubs. It never happened. I just made myself uncomfortable.
OP needs to address his problems before traveling
That's kind of what he was saying
Why isn't it good advice? Anon isn't telling him to jump out of a plane, just to maybe jump off the jungle gym or maybe down two or three stairsteps instead of just one.
Life is uncomfortable, but you're way more likely to die full of resentment and regret of a life wasted if you never leave your parent's basement.
>die full of resentment and regret of a life wasted
op here, except for being dead this describes me perfectly.
Alcohol and drugs are your best friends if you want to interact with the neurotypical world but be careful not to over do it
t. sperg
I'm a late adult diagnosed high functionaling individual. I think you have to put all of this into perspective. You are going to have to interact with the normies (hehe) eventually on your travels. You ought to visualize what you should say and get comfortable with going off the script. Just remember, Other people are just drones consumed with materialism, fads, and gimmicks. They respond compliantly with the right words just like an NPC. You just have to learn the game. Good luck and don't become a sociopath.
Work on your anxiety at home first. Go out and do things in your own town, go on a weekend trip to a nearby place. If you're afraid to leave your own room you'll struggle abroad.
Not discouraging you, just don't set yourself up to fail by jumping into the deep end.
I will say do actually jump in the deep end. Maybe you'll find the anonymity of being in another country liberating.
>i have autism and severe social anxiety to the point i'm afraid to leave my own room
if you are serious, traveling will be terrible for you.
seriously what's the point if you will be to afraid to leave the hotel
you should try getting into camping
Apparently a common symptom of autism is an inability to accept change or difference. If you're used to routines or generally keeping things the same, you are going to sperg out.
become a real girl
I think it will help you. I just got back from my first ever trip abroad after spending years as a borderline shut in who panics about everything. I was supposed to go in November but had a literal panic attack or whatever the fuck it was at the airport and bailed, maybe I just wasn't ready or didn't trust myself. Anyway, I spent the last 3 months building myself back up after that real low and I'm so happy I went through with it this time. Getting off the plane, I felt so liberated being in a new place alone, I haven't felt so calm in a long time and had the best two weeks in ages. I'm sad to be home but for the first time in years I feel excited about getting back out there. You can do it too.
OP, do you carry these autism cards and hand them out to people?
Do it. Having actual problems to solve, like getting on a train or finding your way around a megacity, is so challenging you'll have to get your shit together and you wont have time to be anxious. Also a lot of awkwardness get lost in translation, so people dont even notice it ime.
as someone who has this anxiety, although I suspect to a much lesser extent than you, one of the benefits of travelling is that unless you manage to get on the news, nobody knows who you are and you will likely never see them again in your life. This can bring some freedom and relief.
If you really want to ease yourself in go somewhere where people are already a bit autistic like Germany, Scandinavia, Japan or the UK, and probably avoid places particularly high in scammers like the Balkans.
You just have to do it to get over it.
Go somewhere easy and more on the boring safe side where everything works a lot of third world countries can be stressful to navigate. Japan, Singapore, Norway, Finland
if you travel to another country locals will literally assume that you come from some unknown culture rather than being autistic
>I am autistic
>Please be calm
I guess it's on-brand for an autist to be telling other people to calm down and not realize the glaring irony.
Travel somewhere and never leave your room. I’ve been doing it for 20 years and enjoy nothing more than arriving in a city, walking around the block for a minute, and then posting up in my hotel room for a few days and ordering food delivery.
Sometimes I get the urge to go out, and maybe get to the door and decide it’s best to stay inside.
In 2022 I did this in New York, Las Vegas, London, Cancun, Bangkok, and Cambodia. Go travel, friend.
Go to a place that you are familiar with and stay there alone for a weekend. If you fell confortable, do it again in longer periods and unknown places, little by little. If you feel unconfortable, it's just a weekend and you won't die because of that.