Hello. I'm John A. Coleman. That's not my real name. I made it up. It's safer that way.
I'm soon 30 years old, have been married for many years and have a kid. I've been on sick leave because of depression for four years and this April I was diagnosed with Aspergers, though apparently the diagnosis no longer exists.
I'm not from an English-speaking country. In my country a stereotypical male would quite automatically fill many symptoms of Aspergers. Instead of having Aspergers I might just as well say I'm a serious case of my own people. When we say hello, we say hello, and shake your hand. We don't ask how you are doing, not unless we already know you and just want to start an actual conversation. To meet a foreigner who says "Hello, how are you" right at the get-go makes me feel like I was swallowing a fish bone. In some respects, I'm in AS heaven. In others, it's very difficult to make others see where the difficulties are actually extraordinary, because in many ways there's not much difference on the outside.
Currently I'm trying to figure out just how I'm actually functioning. I grew up in a religious family with sound principles that were actually upheld, so there was a certain kind of structure in that. And my father surely has Aspergers too, so I have learned very, very functioning mechanisms to cover my deficiencies by mirroring my father's actions through my mother's reactions, and in cases of difficulties, figured out just how the thing should have been done better. I read books on conversation, etiquette, body language and so on. What I learned actually made me a person whom everyone saw as very empathetic and truly social. I even worked in customer service and was the best guy in the shop, service-wise. But it really ate me and spent my reserves, even if I didn't consciously notice it (Why would social interaction be hard? It must be the difficult working hours...) and when I was put on sick leave the depression was of a burnout kind, even though, objectively thinking, my job didn't "justify" a burnout.
Now it makes more sense.
I have never developed a habit of browsing forums. But I think it would be beneficial. My own method of sorting out my thoughts is writing, and I have started two blogs and a novel. I'm good at talking, but talking for me is like surfing: You just have to stay on top of the wave. I do it very well, but what I say might not actually be what I think. And people tend to believe what I say. There is a danger in that.
My Special Interests have changed repeatedly over the years, and actually knowing they are part of the Syndrome actually does explain a lot about them. They've been very intense. My Special Interests have included the classics: Dinosaurs (pre and post Jurassic Park), Titanic, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and so on, with a sprinkle of Warhammer, Babylon 5 (but never Star Trek, for some unknown reason) and another go of Star Wars after the new episodes came out. There have also been bottle caps, absinthe and whisky (especially absinthe), Third Reich, Turkish Cumbus -style banjo-mandolin construction (with studies on different sorts of woods and materials, even made a mandolin neck out of graphite), zombies and prepping (during the low point of depression), and then a milder form of the same: camping and outdoors. The last major one was the world financial system. You can imagine my wife had an "aha" moment when she found out about Special Interests being part of Aspergers. She was actually the one who proposed the diagnosis, not my psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses or psychologists.
I think that was more info than you asked for, but such was my very uncharacteristic-for-my-native-land entrance.
Glad to be onboard.
04 Aug 2014, 10:10 am
