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Hello everyone. I'm a 23 year old male. Guess I should explain how I wound up on Wrong Planet. Excuse the length of this post; there's a lot I need to get off my chest . . .

While I haven't been officially diagnosed with Asperger's (though I did take one of those online tests and scored pretty high), I've always felt disconnected from everyone in my life. Smiles were often faked, and many social situations were avoided in fear of "failure". Simple tasks like making a phone call requires several minutes of me "scripting" the conversation mentally before dialing. NTs make it look so easy haha.

Anyway, my parents and others always told me that I was shy / quiet. But I knew there was more to it than that: I thought differently than others. Attempting to fit in is a never ending challenge.

My first special interest was studying the cosmos. From a young age (6?) I had already understood that there was more to the universe than just us. I've always been an inquisitive person because of this background. Is there a god? What's the purpose of life? What's my role in all this? I desperately wanted answers. I wanted the "truth" no matter where it would led me.

As I got older (late teens and beyond) I began to study spirituality in general, and thought I was getting closer to finding these answers. That's when it hit me: despite how far I've come, I still didn't know very much about myself at all. I've heard the saying "You can't understand others without understand yourself first" before, but never really took it to heart.

After stumbling around in the dark for a bit so to speak, I came across Autism: a subject I had little knowledge on. Unfortunately, like most young adults, everything I knew about Autism at the time came from the media. People with Autism were either depicted as angry kids who go on to shoot up schools, or adults who struggle to form coherent sentences. Sure, I could identify with the fact that they were outcasts, but at the same time I'm not interested in causing bloodshed, nor am I completely dysfunctional.

Eventually I got around to conducting my own research on Autism, and I was shocked by my findings to say the least. Not only was there an entire spectrum of Autism disorders, I found myself identifying very strongly with the most common Asperger's traits; in fact, I possessed every trait that was listed. Incredible, I thought.

Next came more questions: why didn't my parents ever tell me? I once overheard my mother mention to my father that he "Knows I have problems", so surely they knew something was off about me from the get-go. My father (who I'm not particularly close to) has many Asperger's traits as well, and I'm more like him than my mother. In his culture I don't believe that Asperger's is taken very seriously, so I can see why I was never tested as I child. After all, my father probably wasn't either.

Strangely enough, knowing now that I have a "disorder" has only helped to alleviate my recent bout of depression. Browsing through Wrong Planet has showed me that I'm not completely alone in this crazy world, and that's a wonderful feeling.

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I hope to continue learning more about myself and others, and I have a feeling many of the folks on here can help me accomplish this. Thank you for reading this unnecessarily long intro, and good luck in your own endeavors.

Hello Sovereign, welcome to the forum.

As a parent of two teenage boys both diagnosed with aspergers I can assure you that from a parents point of view it is incredibly difficult to tell their son that he has aspergers. And as you have not been diagnosed then its even more difficult for your parents to introduce the subject. If your dad has asperger traits then its likely the task of saying or doing anything would be left up to your mum and as I know its just so hard. And maybe they do really believe that your problems are caused by being quiet and shy.

We told our oldest son recently that he has aspergers and he calmly said "hmmm, I suppose I am that sort of person." And I'd been so worried about telling him!

I'm glad your depression has improved.

A sweet welkome to WPea.



Mick and Peahawk

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Thank you!



I imagine informing your child that he has AS out of the blue would be a very painful experience, for the both of you. Not knowing what to expect is always scary. For that reason, I don't feel too resentful towards them. Still, I can't help but wonder how my life would've been if I knew all of this wasn't just in my head.

And you're so right about my mom! Because of my dad's situation, she basically raised me by herself. Talking about girls, teaching me how to drive . . . all tasks usually reserved for the father, yet the burden always fell on my mother. I'm really grateful to her.

And don't get me wrong, my father tries to help me in his own way as well. He's just less . . . hands on than my mother.



Haha. He may have already suspected that something was different about him.

But I'm glad that you had the courage to tell him, and I hope he's doing well. No one with AS should have to go it alone in life; it's nice to have someone understanding to talk with.



Thanks. My depression sort of comes and goes depending on the day, so it's not something I worry about too much. I've just learned to live with it.

Thank you and You're right, my son had talked with me before his diagnosis saying that he knew he was different and had asked me if it could be social anxiety, so he wasn't really too surprised to find out he had aspergers, it was hard to tell him though. I bought a couple of books on aspergers for him to read, which has helped him too.

Your mum sounds like a wonderful supportive mother, and glad to hear you're dad does his best. My husbands father was very remote with his children, they hardly knew him at all. I'd guess he had it too.

Glad to hear your depression isn't too bad. My husband suffers from depression and its hard going for him sometimes.

Yeah, it's sort of difficult to explain. Undiagnosed aspies like myself just have an innate feeling that something's "off" about us compared to other people, but we have no idea exactly what it is that's "off". So finding out that we have social anxiety, or even Asperger's later on in life doesn't come as a surprise. And I can't speak for everyone, but personally, I'd rather hear this information from a parent as oppose to figuring it out on my own.

Giving him those books was definitely a smart move. That way he'll be able to discover more about himself at a pace he's comfortable with. I'm sure he'd prefer to go through that part of the process by himself as much as possible.



She is, thanks. And while my dad isn't really there for me emotionally like my mom is, he's always pushed me to learn practical skills so that I can be independent. Now that I know why my dad distances himself from me (and that this reason runs deeper than shyness), I can already tell our relationship will improve here on out.

You're probably right about your husband's father. If I remember correctly, this sort of thing is more common in us males. And we already tend to be a lot worse at expressing our emotions compared to females; Asperger's just compounds the problem even further.

Something that should come natural like expressing affection for your loved ones can be surprisingly difficult at times. Both my father and I struggle with this.



Thanks again, I appreciate your concern. Sorry to hear about your husband's depression. It can be really tough to manage day to day; even getting out of bed can be a chore sometimes. You just completely shut down physically / emotionally. But the worst part for me is when I lash out at the people trying to help me feel better.

If your husband gets like I do, just try to be patient with him. He'll really appreciate it when the depression wears off, even if he doesn't say anything.

Thank you Sovereign, my husband scores quite highly in the asperger test so he's borderline. I think we're all on the spectrum somewhere, it just depends how far along we are. He does find it hard to get out of bed some days. Thankfully at the moment he's in better spirits.

Both my sons have lashed out at me when I'm trying to help them. Its upsetting but I do understand where they are coming from.

I hope your relationship with your dad will be better now.

It's really great that you're supportive and understanding. Looks they're in good hands.



It will require a bit of effort from the both of us, but I'm willing to try.

Anyway, it was nice chatting with you Verinda. Hope everything works out.

Thank you Sovereign and the same wishes to you too.