Once in a while, it does help me to calm down, but I don’t do it often enough to get the long-term benefits it’s supposed to give you.

Only started recently. Not for calming down, but for honing focus.

No, I prefer to draw or knit and just let my thoughts run free. Which might or might not be the same.

Likely NT here, but meditation is awesome. Sometimes when I am particularly stressed or overwhelmed it’s kinda hard to get in the right state of mind, it’s as if I forget how easy it is to meditate, but when it does click it makes everything that much more simple.

Highly recommended to anyone going through rough times or even people who are fine but would like to have their brain shut up for a little while.

Not regularly; but when I’m overwhelmed, I sit in that position and practice breathing until my breathing and heart rate regulates and my mind is cleared, and then I self-validate until I am in control enough to see the problem clearly and either work through it or continue on with my day. Mindfulness, baby! Works for anger, shame, sensory meltdowns, etc. 💙

Yep, I do it just as I wake up to avoid what the comic describes.

I’m afraid of my own thoughts.

I actually meditate basically all the time. At one point I thought, why not have the clear crystal ball all the time, instead of “just” when I make time to sit down and meditate?

Honestly it’s a necessity at times. Though I found certain activities elicit the same “thoughtlessness” that I get when I meditatw such as motorcycling. No time to think about anything else but the road and the bike, making it ironically one of the most relaxing activities I do.

Tried it once and it doesn’t work for me.

Maybe it’s because some of my hobbies can be meditative in its own way…

Every time I’ve tried meditation it has triggered a panic attack. Oh well

Have tried it several times, but like most things it works for a few days then just becomes an “upkeep cost” which doesn’t benefit me anymore, and I drop it.

Meditation wasn’t super helpful for me, guided meditation required too much sustained focus and was cognitively fatiguing to stay on track. I have dysphantasia so that doesn’t help when you’re told to picture things or imagine things as part of meditation, because imagining something requires me to talk to myself in my head, which doesn’t feel meditative, it feels too similar to ruminative thought patterns. Doing the “quite wandering mind” style of meditation was risky because I already experience maladaptive daydreaming.

But I discovered “somatic regulation”, which is something I kind of already did instinctively when I was getting really stressed or overwhelmed.

When stressed I’d tap my teeth together in a pattern, drum on my chest, hum, wiggle or do fidgety little things, often not even consciously.

Now that I understand what this does for my emotional regulation, I set time aside every day to consciously and mindfully do things that look and feel absolutely ridiculous. Like lying on my stomach and rhythmically slapping the tiled floor, focusing on the sensations rather than trying to clear my mind, or guide my mind.

I started mid last year, and it’s been the only form of mental health self care that I’ve been able to remain consistent in, and I’ve noticed a drastic decrease in how often I feel overwhelmed, stressed and anxious. I’m also able to identity when I’m starting to get stressed much earlier than I used to, and more quickly identify a way to reduce it. I’ve always struggled to identify emotions in the moment, but I feel like now my mind-body connection is stronger. It’s easier to tell when my headache is because I’m hungry/thirsty vs stressed or tense. Before I used to just guess, try everything and hope something worked, then look back with hindsight thinking “guess that was a hunger headache because relaxing didn’t help but carrot sticks did”. Now I’m more likely to know what I need.

Edit: just realised this post was in the Autism community, lol, I need to learn to read things more thoroughly, I was talking about stimming without saying the word “stimming” because I’m so used to getting flak for that in the NT subs I post in.

Gratitude is an awesome meditation, in addition to watching thoughts pass through. I use gratitude meditation when I’m feeling particularly nasty.

The last thing I need is to be left alone with just my thoughts.