High Maintenance Girl
When most people think of a high maintenance girl, they think of someone who spends a lot of time and money on their looks, style and fashion. They have a reputation that some people think is attractive, but others try to avoid.
Aspie girls are high maintenance, but not in the way that most people define a high maintenance girl. We usually don't spend a lot of time and money on fashion, and we don't try to keep up with everyone else on trendy things. I am probably the most frugal of all of my siblings. I learned a lot of my frugality from my mom.
Instead of spending our time and money and energy on our appearance, we spend a ton of time and energy on our brain. There are things that we need to do every day to protect our brains because we are more sensitive to sensory things than normal people. If you were to have a scale of anxiety levels from 1 to 10 and rate different situations on this scale for each person, things that rate at a certain level for one person might be at a completely different level for someone else, especially if they are autistic and even more so if they have PTSD. Being in a crowd of people, like a church building between services, probably ranks fairly low on the anxiety scale, maybe a 2. It has always rated a bit higher than normal for me, maybe a 4 or 5. When I was going thru my psychological trauma, my levels for this were way higher than normal, around 8 or 9. My levels have gone down a bit since then, but they are still higher than they used to be for me and that is even higher than it is for most normal people, around 6 or 7.
Because of how my brain is wired, I am constantly having to assess my brain's current status and protect it from over stimulation and sensory overload. When I am not alone, things around me are in constant flux and I don't have control of the things around me, so I have to control what I take in and what my brain gets bombarded with at every turn. Sometimes this means removing myself from the situation or avoiding the situation altogether, and sometimes it means using things like earplugs or fidget toys to help lower the input into my brain. Since things in public are in constant flux, the things that my brain is taking in is constantly changing, so I may be holding things together at a manageable level one minute and the next minute be on the verge of wanting to run away from the situation and break down in tears.
In my friendships, these needs can make it hard on the people around me because they become aware of things that bother me that have no negative impact on them if I am not there. Sometimes they have to change things in order for me to be involved, because of my sensory sensitivities. I also struggle with social cues and social situations, so I depend on my friends for help whenever possible to better navigate public life and society. This makes it hard for me to have close friendships because even though I want and need friends, I feel like often my needs can be a drag on those close to me and their desire to spend time with me. They may not say this to me, but this is how I feel and sometimes I avoid reaching out and asking for help and /or companionship because I don't want to be a burden to them. This self-isolation may seem selfish, but from my perspective, I am trying to not drag others into having to live in my world because I struggle so much to live in theirs. I don't know how to bridge the gap in a successful way for the long-term.
I never thought of myself as a high maintenance girl until I realized that the needs of my brain can be hard on those around me. Because this is how God made my brain to function, I struggle to fit in with the rest of society and sometimes self-isolation is a way to protect my brain from sensory overload and other times it is a way to not bother society with my needs, since most people don't have those same needs. I need help, but I don't know how to reach out and find it because I don't know who will want to help me and who wants to deal with my struggles alongside me.