Step 9 asks us to "consider both generally and in our own lives the idea of connection between oneself, other individuals, and communities". I have been able to start considering relationships between myself and other individuals, but am getting stuck at the "community" part for one very basic reason: I don't have community, and I'm having trouble finding any.

It wasn't always this way. When I was a child, school and after school groups provided built-in community, as did my extended family to a certain extent. As an adult, built-in community has become less prevalent in my life. Community opportunities are low in my line of work. Meetups and clubs are hard for me to engage in due to overstimulation and unpredictability.

I have had success in the past in meeting romantic partners who have a larger friend group I can then be part of, but that community tends to go away if we break up. Plus, since I learned about autism, I've learned about the idea of the social crutch, using a friend or partner as an intermediary between oneself and society. I've done that a lot and would like to somehow find my own community where I can be myself without an intermediary.

Reading back what I've written, it seems like my relationship with communities so far has been most successful when they are built-in or through an intermediary. What's keeping me from finding my own community is wariness of overstimulation and unpredictability, to which I would add wariness of people in general, both individuals and groups. I have to admit I've been blaming myself for failing to "overcome" those, which hurts my self-esteem on two levels: the failure (real or imagined) and the self-blame. Shouldn't I be "better than this" by now?

A very real obstacle between me and community is simply that interactions with both individuals and communities are still incredibly complicated for my self-esteem and self-image. On some level I think I fear the commitment to investigating. Do I have the spoons for that process of trial and error at this stage in my life?

One community environment that does work for me is AWG, with its format that mitigates unpredictability and sensory and social burdens. I'd like to find more communities like that. Maybe then I'd have more information to work with as I engage with Step 9.

What about you? Do you have community right now, and how did you get it?

Share questions:

• Would you say that you have community at the moment? What is it like, and how did you find it?
• If you feel you don't have community, or don't have as much as you'd like, what is that experience like, and what challenges do you encounter with finding community?
• Do you think being in community would be easier for you if the community had certain characteristics? What would those be? 
• Where do you look for community (or for members with low spoons, where would you look if you had the spoons?) 
• What are your motivations for looking for community? Is community the only thing that could answer those motivations? 
• Any tools, strategies, or resources to share? 
• Anything else to add?