When the Wired Geek issue came out, some of my rugby team-mates (yes, I play rugby and would love to talk about how strange and wonderful it is for an aspie) and I took the AQ test and we talked about who was the biggest geek. I scored 42 of 50. Eventually, I followed up a bit and found the Aspie Quiz, and scored 132AS/64NT of 200 now, and 183AS/17NT including my past history. I've gotten a lot better about manifesting and managing unproductive aspie characteristics over the years.
Growing up, I was a geek, but that's a good thing, right? I knew I was different and didn't fit in socially, but I thought it was because I was gay. I gradually became better socialized, have a solo consulting engineering practice out of my home office (lots of solitude), and have been in a great relationship with my partner (husband, actually) for 9 years.
When I found WrongPlanet and some other resources, I had an OMG moment where everything snapped into focus, and I realized how most of my peculiarities are aspie traits. Now I'm interested in exploring some re-claiming of things that I've subdued and repressed.
But I have some questions about some acute neurological responses that may or may not be related:
1. Bright lights (or sudden changes in light levels) have always hurt my eyes. Really hurt. I always thought it was the sensitivity that blue-eyed people sometimes have, but I've never known anyone with as sever a reaction as I have. I have photo-grey glasses, so I'm fine after a couple of minutes.
2. Strobe lights hurt and causes spams in my face, especially on the left side. This may just be the photo-sensitivity with blink & squint muscles reacting. It doesn't seem to be the epileptic strobe thing at all, but it's pretty dramatic and uncomfortable.
3. Over-blown tweeters cause me intense pain washing from my head down my shoulders and arms all the way to my fingers. This doesn't happen with good sound systems, even when loud, and doesn't happen with with feedback, or with acoustic off-key singing. Those other things are annoying, but don't cause the exploding head problem. It might be related to the distortion of over-powered speakers, but I don't see how that would produce such a specific response.
I would appreciate any insight, and look forward to being part of this community.
-duke
10 Aug 2009, 8:11 pm
You might start a rugby thread in the halth/fitness forum? Maybe there are more who play thsi out here (not me, bu tmaybe some others).
