Straight Talk for Women on the Spectrum

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Hi Seaside ~

I watched your video during my break at work and couldn't stop laughing, and I mean COULDN'T. STOP. Your video is the cutest and funniest and charmingest (wow, spellchecker likes that word) thing I've seen in a long, long, long time. It's soooooooo adorable and fun, and it's also wonderfully insightful and inspiring. I love your intelligent humor and self-awareness and ... the reindeer and the ginger bread man and the records on the back wall and EVERYTHING!! !. The voices are also hilarious and perfect. How on earth did you create that? And why do you only have just over 400 views? This is really different and accessible and highly instructive.

Accckkkk ... my cat's trying to pull the magnetic power supply off of my Mac. She's going to win, I can already tell. I'm heading over to your video one more time and hopefully will be able to watch it all the way through before she yanks the plug on me.

Thanks so much for posting a link to your awesomely fantastic video!! !

Carla

Edited to add: Your antlers rock!! Love them antlers!! ! This video is the absolute highlight of my rather stressful week!! !! !! !!

Wow! Wow. Gee. Hunh! I'm glad.


On the process: the animation software is from xtranormal.com. You can choose the voices and gestures and camera angles. So, I did not design the characters-- but I suppose I could draw a cartoon version .

I'm so glad you 'get' it! Yay! I made someone laugh.


Thanks!

seaside

This Psychology Today article has been kicking around for several years, but it's a good read.

"An Aspie in the City"

This morning at work I was so hyper-focused on one thing that I neglected to do something I'm always required to do. So once again my supervisor had to remind me of this. My good work that I was very proud of was overshadowed by something I forgot to do. Frustrating.

Tomboy, thanks for posting back here. This website feels like one of the the only places I have to go. Example: There all these people and loud noises and varying lighting that's circling around me right now. Although I can't often listen to music for very long, I have headphones on and the volume cranked to help me cope during my work break while I'm browsing the internet. I know I blend in and seem like everyone else around me, but as something else at work today reminded me, there's always that gaping ravine between myself and others. But somewhere in this crazy mess of people is probably somebody else on the spectrum, who, like me, as learned how to blend and decently cope. Hmm, interesting thought. I haven't thunked that thought before.

(Oh, stop spellchecker.)

Carla

Hi, I had to reply because this thread speaks to me. I am a 39 year old woman and it is good to hear from women around my age. I am hitting some personal issues that I don't think younger people could totally relate to.
I am self identified but was amazed when I read about aspergers and how closely it fit me in every way. I have had severe difficulties relating socially my whole life. Before I had even heard of aspergers I started to try to teach myself social skills ( though it is embarrassing how old I was before some basic ones sunk in). For several years, I felt good about my trajectory. I could smile, make a little eye contact, control my meltdowns, make some small talk, dressed more attractively in an appropriate way. I was making an effort to be more social and get out and meet people.
Then I gradually started realizing there is still something missing and I am really starting to loose hope. I am often desperately lonely but have lost that youthful optimism that kept me trying. I fight the urge to stay alone in my apartment when I am not at work.
Have any of you come to the point of seeing what you cannot change in yourself and figured out where to go from there.

Great question! That's going to be a great one on the list I'm creating for this thread. I'm not sure how to answer it just yet, but I do know that I'm learning all the time and am feeling hopeful now that I have an Aspergers wrapper to help ground me and give me focus.

Carla

in the words of winston churchill addressing orphan boys, "never give up. never give up. never give up." I went from no skill at the art of small talk to being average at it at age 52. should i have given up after 40 years of trying wtih no success? wouldn't have sounded unreasonable except for the importance of what i was giving up. also married for the first time at age 52. it's great and going on three years. i don't think i'll ever be barbara walters, but being capable of decent relationships is something worth not giving up on. in the meantime, get yourself a pet to satisfy your need for affection until you develop a good human relationship or so.

I'm going to be very honest here. Although I feel certain that I have Aspergers, there are some things that I've managed to mask well enough and to do through years of observing others that sometimes I wonder if I'm wrong about my self-diagnosis. I am making a concerted effort at not being excessively attached to this label/diagnosis. But even though I can manage small talk pretty well, I know where I've been and how hard I had to work (and still have to work) to make it sound natural and not forced. I keep reading about how people on the spectrum tend to have certain scripts memorized. I think many of us are just not aware that we're actually script reading, especially when you're older and have done it enough. But words tend to flow via a thick tongue. They often feel forced and clunky and I get really tangled up communicating with others. I see pictures that I'm trying to verbally and often don't know where to start. But at work the pressure is there to communicate clearly and without any hangups, so I push through. The result is often tangled and awkward. Again, as I keep mentioning, this may not be as obvious to others as I imagine it to be. Yesterday a manager was surprised when I told him that I am really struggling with one of my responsibilities. He had no idea and said I was doing a great job. So the masking and different things I have to do to make things come together is exhausting at times and something I'm highly attuned to, but others don't always/often know that I'm struggling and dealing with all of this.

Carla

i so totally understand where you are coming from carla. i have a mother who taught social niceties ad naseum to all of her 11 children. i beleive 2 of us have aspergers but she never realized we were so different and really needed her training whereas the others probably just picked it up through osmosis.

when i informed my then husband ( 7 or 8 years ago) that i thought i might have aspergers and shared some links with him his only reply was that expalined a lot. it didn;t keep him from abandoning his wife and children ( first to drink then in reality)

i have communication problems with my current fiance ( i think he has some aspie traits) for instance i can put myself in anothers shoes and work so hard not to hurt others feeling because of all my early training. he can't and ends up hurting my feelings all the time. i sometimes wonder if the realationship is worth fighting for anymore.

these traits also caused me so much stress at work tho i doubt anyone was aware of the full depth of it. i'd turn myself on to go to work and act the way i was supposed to then come home mentally and physically exhausted and need alone time to recover enough to deal with my children.

now i am unemployed and wondering what if anything i can do to support my family. its kinda hard when you have no real experience and you are middle aged with a family to support.

at least i feel less alone here.......

susan

Ha, good thinks. I like that one.

Also, when I became a teacher a few years and had my own classroom, I bought a large magnet with that same Winston Churchill quote. Well, guess what. I gave up and now it sits on my refrigerator.

I have a question - anyway a possible question: Did anyone else go through a phase where they were much more social than usual? For example when I was a young teenager I actually had several friends. Before and after that time, no friends, just acquaintances, (some of whom thought they were friends but were unaware I kept them at a certain distance) or romantic relationships boyfriends, husbands. Just wondering if this is common in us female AS.

Friendships have always been difficult for me. But that doesn't mean that I'm representative of the norm. Years ago I worked with a young man who was blind and had moderate-functioning autism, and he had tons of acquaintances and was very social. He was noticeably awkward but remembered everything about everyone he met, and loved chatting with people. There seem to many women on the spectrum that are comfortable socially, but who need a healthy amount of solitude to keep things in check.

Although relationships of any kind are generally challenging for people on the spectrum, how we were raised and accepted at school could strongly influence our ability to maintain friendships and partners. For me any increase in social activity usually has had something to do with my job or when I'm attending church on a regular basis. But my natural inclination has always been solitude. I'm at peace when I'm alone, although I do crave friendships.

My current job is highly social. Everyday I'm forced to interact with gobs of people. This is very difficult for me, but my need to eat and pay rent superceded any stress this has caused me, and now some months later I've established my routines and systems for making this decently tolerable for me.

Carla

i, too, had a period when i was more social. when i practiced medicine, i made lots of friends. i guess they were able to overlook my awkwardness because of my social status. when the medicine career evaporated, the friends remained, which speaks well of them. i have moved away but we keep in contact via email and infrequent visits. i don't take friends for granted because they are difficult for me to make. i treat them well and they tend to reciprocate.