Hey all :) My name is Arthur and i have AS

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Hey all
As you read in the topic title i have AS.
I've had problems my whole life connecting with other ppl and eventually after lots ofencouragement of my family i decided to seek some professional help.
When i first asked for help i didn't know any better so the only thing i thought was different with me is that i had a low self esteem and i thought it might had to do with the fact that i have red hair and was bullied a lot about that and with the fact that both my parents were and still are really bad with social situations.
So the sessions started with some general stuff about anxiety disorder.
And that's were it stayed.
My shrink would give me assignments like write down all the situations were you feel anxiety and how much.
So i did that at best as i could, and number 1 on the least appeared to be phoning ppl i don't know.
So he showed me a graph about anxiety to explain to me how running away from a frightening situation increases the fear etc etc and told me to practise callen weird ppl up.
next session same thing "still having fears for calling weird ppl?" and i explained him i've been calling weird ppl all my life, for my work, for getting work etc, i never run away for stuff but it still stresses me up..
So he goes again with the same graph on the whiteboard explaining the same thing again....
It went on like that for about 1,5 years and we got nowhere, i had the feeling although he probably did his best, he didn't have a clue (neither did i)
So i finally mustered the strenth to ask my mom if she would be so kind to cal them and ask for some kind of research to find out what i rlly have (i kinda felt like i wasn't trying hard enough on the stuff he made me practice and rlly couldn't get it over my hart to call him myself to say the sessions were going nowhere, and he was a nice guy...)
Years ago for an internship i worked at company that rents out computers and stuff, and for that job they tricked me one time into operating the laptop that contained all the powerpoint presentations of all the scientists at a convention in the middle of a huuuuuuuuge hall...
By the time i knew what they wanted me to do, i was allready in the middle of it and i could do nothing about it except quit the job... so i went ahead with it..
But guess what .. the convention was about autism.
I recognized myself in a lot of the things i heard there but because in my eyes i could function pretty normally in the NT world except for some educational problems (wich i believed were caused by lazyness) and social problems (wich i believed were caused by me being bullied and my parents setting a bad example, they rarely had ppl coming over).
But i always thought i was overreacting, like a lot of ppl do when they hear of see of some weird illness, they'll go like "omg i have that too!" so i dismissed it without further thinking about it.
Then when i finally got the research i remembered thay and asked them to look for autism, and that's what they found.
So here i am, my name is Arthur, i have Asperger Syndrome and i am damn proud about it.

Edit: btw i'm 24.

moo

Good for you Arthur - being proud I mean. I see it as a positive thing myself too, mainly thanks to finding this place and the good peeps here. I have the odd bad day (understanding the strange NT world can be very tiring) but generally, yes, pretty positive.

Welcome to WP, and I hope you find it helpful and also fun.