Hello from London England :]

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Hi everyone,

I'm Jack and I'm from the county of Middlesex in England, which is just outside of London. I am 21 and was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome just before I went off to uni when I was 18. I studied the Russian, Slovene and German languages, so languages are my strong point and one of the aspects of my life that I'm truly confident in. I'm going to use my introduction thread to say a bit about myself and to let off some steam as to be honest, I am very bad at dealing with aspects of my personality which I've been told for eons are part of my Aspergers, and get quite upset about it sometimes.

I don't really know a whole lot about Asperger's because I suppose I've been avoiding it for as long as I could get away with, it worries me and makes me feel different in a negative way. So I guess that's why I'm here - to chat and offer my own opinions and learn that actually, there are people like me. I suppose realising and accepting that you're not alone is part of the battle of dealing with it. I see everything in black and white - if something's not good, it's bad. If it's not fun, it's boring. If it's not light, it's dark. There's no grey, no middle ground - or, there is, I just can't see it, and that used to get me into a lot of trouble in school, made my university studies more difficult and is making my relationships with people suffer all over the place. So that's a bit about me, and hopefully wandering around here and chatting with some of you will open my eyes a bit :]

Thanks for reading,
Jack :]

Hi Jack,

Welcome to WrongPlanet ! !

This is the place where you finally feel that you are not alone. I hope you find the answers you're looking for, and make many good friends in the process .

Hi LanguageSponge. Welcome to WP.

Wow, you can speak Slovenian, Russian and German?! Wow - you'd sound like a fantastic person to go on holiday with!

See you around.

My name is Siobhan and I have the same condition as you and I can only speak 1 language. I'm also the same age as you! Its my first time on the site.

Welcome language Sponge ...

Welcome! Thank you for your post. I have an 11 year old son with Aspergers and he also seems have this way of thinking, but I've never heard it described this way. He often will blurt out "I'm bored!" but I never realized it was because of his black-or-white thinking.

Thanks for the insight!

hi Jack
Welcome to Wrong Planet.
my 16 year old son has Aspergers.

To WrongPlanet!! !

Hi everyone, thank you very much for the warm welcomes :]

Hello Siobhan, welcome to the forum :] It's nice to know of someone with the same condition as me who is also the same age. Where do you live? Do you happen to be in the same country as me too? :] See you around :]




I can speak a number of others, too. Yes, going on holiday is quite a lot of fun. I'm off to Austria for a few weeks this coming Tuesday, so I'll be able to speak lots of German there :] Saying that, it takes me a little while to get over the nerves and therefore to get the words out. I'm perfectly capable of speaking the languages but my Asperger's sometimes holds me back a bit due to insecurities and stuff. Oh well, I'm sure I'll overcome them with time.




You're welcome :] This message really made me smile. I'm not particularly confident outside of my little language bubble so it's nice to know I gave someone some insight in my very first post. I also used to blurt quite extreme things like that as well. "I'm bored" or "Mum, I'm starving" or "I hate X, Y, Z" - "hate" is now such a strong word to me that I won't let anyone else say it. It goes through me, like someone scraping their nails against a blackboard. Yuck.

I can only speak from my own experience as I don't know anyone else in the "real world" who has Asperger's, but he is probably not feeling those emotions *exactly* - he's likely just stuck for something to do, or feeling uncomfortable about something. I used to do that quite a lot, and then shout and sometimes cry - I wasn't in any pain, physically anyway, I just felt frustrated and sometimes didn't have a clue how to express it in words!

I hope I don't offend anyone with what I'm about to say: I can also say from experience that those relatively extreme tendencies may not be things he'll grow out of as he gets older - any "different" tendencies he displays probably need to be "worked on" to make them become less extreme. Whenever I went through one of those patches of "boredom", for example, my mother always used to direct me to my writing table, my pens and my paper and she'd ask me to write her a story. Now there are loads of little "books" of stapled together paper in my mum's treasure box of all my little stories, and as well as the fact that they encouraged my languages, they're lovely memories for me to see now. Aspies seem to have pretty intense interests in something, whether they come early or later I cannot really say - when I was younger, mine was story writing. That developed later on into an obsession with languages, and having been obsessed with some languages for more than ten years now, I can speak French, German and Russian pretty well. I'm really glad my mum picked up on my love for writing, or else I might not have got into languages the way I have, and it's turned out to be a godsend. I'd not have been able to meet or even talk to my girlfriend's family had I not learnt French, as she was born and raised in Brussels :]

I hope some of that was helpful, and thanks for all your messages once again :]

Jack

Last edited by LanguageSponge on 04 Nov 2011, 2:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i am also from middlesex.

its not really 'outside' london, rather it overlaps with london. places like tottenham and willesden are in middlesex and they are generally considered to be part of london.

i feel better for having stated that.

Fair enough. I wasn't really sure how to explain it :] To be fair, I forgot about the Tottenham and Willesden situation, so that would have helped

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Welkome to WP!

Mick

Just a thought, LanguageSponge, but do you not have trouble speaking the languages once you're in the country? Proper, formal Queen's English is an awful lot different from how it is spoken in Sheffield or Glasgow for instance.

My name is Leilani-Reba and i have the same condition as you and i am bilingual. I'm almost 21, and i live in Nottingham. It's my first time on the site, but welcome

Welcome to WP!