Hi - I'm new wondering if I have Aspergers

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Hi
I'm here hoping to find out a bit about coping as an adult realising I might have Aspergers. I'm scared. Im 38 and t my mother who is a doctor has suggested I might have Aspergers after talking socially to some medical colleagues (I don't mind she did that at all she's helping me try to get help with social anxiety. I've had a look at the various profile for people with ASD. I saw the following on a website aspiewomen and it describes me well. "May be considered a “loner” OR may have many acquaintances, but no real friends". I can't make friends and never have even when I was very small. I can talk to people and make acquaintances, but not get further.

There are a few things that don't fit quite as well. The main one I saw is preference for solitude. I quite like being alone but I'd prefer to be with people socially a lot more than I am now. I'm lonely and I want to make friends. For example I would love to be at a point I could phone a friend to suggest going to see a movie. I can't manage that so I might stay home or go to the movie on my own, but feel these options are "second best". Other things are that I think i can recognise emotions quite well, I do not have any special interest and I understand abstract language, metaphors etc well (and have never found that a problem.)

Sorry if the next bit offends anyone as having read this forum and other places I know that a lot of people with Aspergers are content in their skin and regard themselves as different from neurotypical people. (Is that NT?) Maybe I feel like this due to being new to the thought of having Aspergers :

I'm finding the idea that I might have Aspergers very hard. I so want to have "normal" friendships do the idea that I may be able to learn techniques but will always be different is hard. I want to be NT, but with something potentially "curable" like social anxiety. At the moment it still feels Aspergers is a disability rather than a difference. Part of me doesn't want to research more because that might show I have Aspergers.

So by being on the site I'd like (eventually) to learn
Are any of you lonely rather than happier alone - that you want to make friends but can't?
Did anyone else who were diagnosed/self diagnosed as an adult feel like it was a disability/scary or maybe still feel like it?

Nothing you said points to Asperger's at all.

Hello Marie

Welcome to WP.

First of all, nobody here can make a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome. This is a job for a trained professional.

That said, many of us can tell you what is, is not or might be an Aspie trait.

This:

does not say AS to me but I also understand metaphor (partly through hard graft at school), and the recognition of emotion is often better learned by females than by males (women generally make better mimics!). I'd be looking more at social anxiety in your case, but that's educated guesswork, and if the Aspiewomen profile fits I'm not ruling anything out!

Most Aspies are not indifferent to the idea of making friends. I would like to have more social interaction than I do, but I'm not very good at it and I've had so much trouble with social interaction that I'm very hesitant about it (to the point where hesitant equates to outright fear).

Anxiety, especially but far from exclusively social anxiety, is at epidemic levels around here.

I was formally diagnosed as an adult (I'm a couple of years older than you, so I would have been diagnosed around the age you are now). The whole question of disability/illness/difference is still one I'm dealing with but:
1) I do not consider it an illness in the sense of something that is separate from me. I have been advised to not let it define me, but the point remains that it is part of who I am - and if the diagnosis is correct, this means at a neurological level. It will define me whether I like it or not, so I might as well accept that.
2) It does make life difficult in terms of dealing with allistic* society. Most allistics find it difficult to interact with Aspies due to the problems we have in meeting their expectations in conversation, for example. I don't regard it as a disability per se, but it is disabling within the context of allistic society.
3) I regard it as a difference for social and political reasons, largely having to do with wider society accepting difference and not pathologising it and marginalising me and millions like me.

I don't feel content, and I remain scared. The bottom line when I deconstruct it is that I am not scared of it, but I am scared of the social consequences of it, and this is greatly debilitating.


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*Some terms: Neurotypical, often abbreviated to NT, was originally taken to mean anyone who is not autistic. There were some perfectly reasonable objections from those with some mental illnesses, other developmental disorders etc that they might not be autistic, but certainly are not neurologically typical. I use the term allistic (from Greek allos - other; compare with Greek autos - self) to refer to those who are not autistic. All neurotypicals are allistic, but not all allistics are neurotypical. Some allistics have other neurological atypicalities, such as schizophrenia, for example, which is often disabling in most western societies, but Schizophrenics are not necessarily autistic. All aspies (short of a major rewrite to our scientific understanding of the subject) are autistic (sometimes abbreviated autie). In the US and a few other countries, they are classed together as Autism Spectrum Disorder but, in the majority of countries using the International Classification of Diseases, it is still is distinct syndrome. In British English it's written Asperger syndrome (no possessive, upper case for the guy it is named after, lower case syndrome: this varies in other forms of English, and is commonly abbreviated to Asperger's.). There is a hard 'g' as in "get".

I am generally speaking happier alone, the majority of the time. I prefer solitude, because it allows me to focus more clearly, without the distraction of social pressure, which only exacerbates my natural hypersensitivity to the constant barrage of common sensory stimuli.

If you are Autistic (that's what Asperger Syndrome is - High Functioning Autism) - you may have been dealing with this hypersensitivity all your life and never recognized it for what it was. It tends to manifest as a pretty much constant low-grade anxiety. Solitude helps alleviate that to a significant degree.

However, a preference for being alone much of the time doesn't mean you're content to wrap yourself up in a cocoon and never come out again. We're still human, and as such, will always have an emotional and psychological need for human contact.



I wouldn't say we CAN'T - just that it's a more arduous process than for most people.



Scary? No, what i felt was a tremendous sense of RELIEF. I was quite excited to finally have a name for the handicaps that I had been struggling with my entire life. I already knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that my disabilities weren't curable - I figured that out as a teenager. Fixing my shortcomings wasn't even something I considered an option, but I was deliriously happy to finally discover that it wasn't my fault. I didn't just have a defective personality, it was actually a diagnosable medical condition in my brain and I wasn't the only person dealing with it. That was such a FREEING revelation!

That said, there was a period after diagnosis, when the realization set in that this was something hardwired into my brain and could never be changed, that I did experience a period of sort of melancholy resignation, as I assimilated it into my internal self-image and accepted it as a big part of who I am. But that never approached the level of fear, because, as I said before, I had known for years that nothing was ever going to change what I was. Being diagnosed did much more to help me understand and cope with my anxiety than it ever did to cause any.

Of course, it probably helped somewhat that I had had a suspicion years earlier that I had something in common with the severely autistic children I had seen on television, but had no way of knowing what the connection was - only that watching their behaviors resonated in me. I could see on their faces and in their behaviors that they were having the same "Intense World" experiences that I lived with every day. So when someone introduced me to the idea of Asperger Syndrome and I realized it was a form of autism, it was a Eureka! moment for me, when it all came together and suddenly my entire screwed up life made perfect sense.

Last edited by Willard on 08 Feb 2014, 2:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

As I am undiagnosed as well I can't contribute much.
Here's are some experiences, maybe it will help you a bit: I know that I drove one of my colleagues whom am good friends with angry at me cos she said I kept on giving her answers that weren't related to her questions. I didn't understand why she started treating me in a mean way so I confronted her with it and she told me that it's been going on like that for months with me. I didn't notice or know until she told me that.

My family members would say I'm being tactless and sarcastic.

Mostly I couldn't always laugh at jokes cos I'd miss the point but I just join in so as not to look obvious.

I joined an English book club and stopped joining the meetings (once a month) cos they always meet in a crowded restaurant and i was more fascinated watching them talking and understanding each other amidst all the buzzing sounds. All I heard was cacophony. Even when I tried hard to listen I couldn't. And when I did try I didn't know when to butt in so I'd mostly miss the chance. So I'd look at the ceiling or the wall and think of Doctor Who that I forget about them for a moment. I must have looked out of place.
One time I saw one of them whispering to one of the members and nodding to my direction. Then that one started talking to me. I drank a couple of glasses of wine and it did the trick cos I think I butted in conversations just like that. But drinking to be social isn't a solution so I decided to just stop going after the second meeting.
I don't know if these kind of things happened to you. I don't know if it's typical Aspie but those are a few of the many experiences. I wouldn't cope with all the socializing if I did have friends. And since I was small I'd been labeled strange or a freak, now it's geek.

All these accounts happened before I know about the word asperger.

I hope it helps you a bit, seeing the awkwardness of things.
Maybe such experiences happened to you too?

Welcome