precalculus & translating algebraic concepts to the visu

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I have a very hard time with some of the trig aspects in precalc. I'm good with anything that just involves numbers, logarithms and trig identities, until I bring the unit circle into the picture. I just can't grasp it. I think it has to do with the visual representation of the numbers, the visual and the numeric are very separate concepts to me. Has anybody else had this problem? I thought aspies were supposed to be good in math.

Could somebody explain this to me? I don't connect with my classmates well enough to ask them and going into my prof's office hours stresses me out because I know I act weird when I interact with strangers one-on-one.

There is a series of study guides called "...The Easy Way" - the one on calculus is excellent. It relates all the concepts through a fantasy story about a mythical kingdom. Very visual. As I remember, it starts out reasonably slow & covers some trig & algebra concepts. (They also have a similar book on Trigonometry, which might fill in the gaps.)

I actually have that book for Intermediate Algebra. I used it to skip College Algebra and get into precalculus via placement test. I'll get it! I have precalculus for dummies and another book from Baron's educational series on precalculus but they're not as helpful.

Thanks :)

Drop out, get a job.

I did that for ten years already. With my skills not getting me anywhere but the service industry and customer service, both of which I abhor, I am getting my bachelor's.

And I have a job.