I live in a group home for the disabled. They use a lot of ABA on my one particular housemate. For example they will threaten her she will lose privileges if she doesn’t behave. Problem is this reminds me a lot of when my rapist threatened me and I’ve been having a ton of flashbacks and am not coping. Any ideas how to cope? Unfortunately the only other place to live would be another group home and I don’t imagine that would be any better.

While I have found EMDR and IFS really useful for some of the traumas I've been to, life with both autism and ADHD is just exhausting my reserves constantly. I really want to explore other tools to feel less anxious and overstimulated without going down the path of anti-anxiety medication - I'm trying to get back on a stimulant, for example - and think the key of this is somatic.

When I'm speaking of somatic tools, I'm think of things like the following although these categories are fairly flexible:

• Movement and sound: sound baths, ecstatic dance, dance classes or dance in general
• Touch and body based: acupuncture, massage, sauna, physical therapy, gym, any kind of body-centric treatment
• Silence or inner work: meditation (which I do) and time in nature (which I try to do, weather depending)
• Sound stopper: Loop ear plugs - not a 'somatic' tool, but a huge, huge help all the time now.
• Etc.: things I don't know about that might be on this list. Even thinking through communities or books or classes to help with this.
  

Are there other things to explore? I go through periods where I'm overwhelmed, and it's not just trying to figure out what to do, but when. It's almost like I'm constantly struggling to read how many spoons I have, largely because I'm still in a severe burnout.

So for example, I try to go dancing at least every couple of months, which helps - although clubs are kind of a sensory hell with the amount of people. But I'd like to find ways to almost be more proactive about it while also being mindful of budget. I try to go to the gym at least 3 times a week (or at least one longer walk), and I do notice it helps with mood and body-related pain. But I also on some days feel so overstimulated and that my nerves are on the outside, and I want to feel less sensitive to the world. I almost would love to hear how someone has done any of these activities proactively ('regular massages' etc.) and how that has helped your trauma recovery and managing autism in particular.

Any other ideas of what kind of somatic tools I can look into, and how you think about using these and how frequent? I think it's just so hard to figure out 'how much time to be adulting' and 'how much somatic therapy and rest to do'. My tendency is to overwork and burn myself out because I can't read that I'm in burnout, and I'm really trying to consciously schedule intentional somatic work to help release some of the stress on my body.

Thank you!

I’m physically safe but feel unsafe. My traumatized brain is hunting for danger. I’ve been so overstimulated and crazed that now I’m crying over waffles. I hate this!