Autistic Women: A workshop for easeful living

Join Becky for a warm, neuro-affirming evening exploring how understanding your capacity can help you create a life that fits you — rather than constantly trying to fit yourself into what's expected of you.

For many autistic women, life can become a constant exercise in trying to keep up.

• Trying to manage the demands.
• Trying to be sociable enough.
• Trying to keep on top of work, family, relationships and everyday life.
• Trying to understand why something that seems completely manageable one day can feel impossible the next.

And perhaps most importantly, trying to work out what is wrong with you when you can't do what you think you should be able to do.

But what if the problem isn't that you're not trying hard enough?

What if you need to understand your own capacity differently?

What we'll explore

• Your capacity: How to start noticing what you genuinely have the energy for — rather than pushing yourself until you're depleted.
• Your nervous system: What stresses, soothes and stimulates you, and why there isn't a universal list of things that every autistic woman "should" do to regulate herself.
• Relationships: Who leaves you feeling safe and able to be yourself, and who leaves you feeling as though you need to perform or mask.
• Your social battery: Why you can genuinely enjoy someone's company and still not have the capacity to see them.
• Your sensory world: How your environment can change what you are able to manage.
• Your interests: Why the things that absorb and energise you aren't something you need to apologise for.
• Cognitive load: The invisible mental workload of constantly planning, remembering, switching and making decisions — and ways to take some of that load out of your brain.
• Hormones and capacity: If you menstruate or are in peri/menopause, how your capacity might shift across your cycle — and why your own pattern matters more than what you "should" experience.
• Your routines and structure: Creating supportive structure without turning your life into a set of rigid rules.
• Making decisions differently: What you can change when you don't have the capacity — saying no, making something smaller, postponing it, changing the environment, asking for support, or simply deciding "not today."

What will the evening actually be like?

This will be a relaxed, interactive online workshop with a mixture of:

A short presentation from Becky

I'll introduce some of the ideas around capacity and easeful living and share practical ways of thinking about your own life differently.

Small-group sharing

There will be an opportunity to go into a small group to share reflections and experiences with other autistic women who we have assessed and diagnosed, if you'd like.

But you don't have to speak. You can choose to listen, keep your camera off, or simply take the time for yourself, if you prefer not to join the group.

Space to reflect

You will receive a workbook before the workshop that can help you capture any thoughts and reflections, or ideas from others.

There are no right answers and no expectation that you complete anything. The whole point is for this to feel like something that gives to you, rather than another thing you have to achieve.

Questions

There will also be time for you to ask Becky questions and explore the things that are particularly relevant to you.

Who is this for?

This workshop is for autistic women who have been assessed and diagnosed through Autistic Women.

You will receive a detailed 'Living More Easefully' guide and a 'Capacity Map' workbook beforehand — but you don't have to do anything with them if that feels too much.

You can come knowing absolutely nothing about the topic.
You can come with lots of thoughts and questions.
You can come quietly, listen and take whatever is useful.

There is no right way to participate.