What is your biggest struggle with Aspergers or Autism?

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Short term memory/working memory, along with language input/output. It's what frustrates me the most. It's more or less the root of several problems I have to deal with.


My priority lies with improving functioning. Anything else could follow up, or not A nor THE problem.

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A lot of autistics say they have a great imagination but it is not the case for me. I was never able to participate in pretend play or make up stories and scenarios in school.

I go to college and am studying IT and part of the curriculum is about work, health and safety. We were supposed to make up a story about having a safety committee meeting. I had to ask my teacher about how to complete each separate part and I got the feeling that he tired of all my questions. But I got it done in the end.

Even when people say things like, "Pick a number between 1 and 10." It takes me a while to pick a number and I look like an idiot!

Yeah, so it's imagination with me.

Concrete thinking and lacking "common" sense bothers me the most right now. It tends to feel cognitively challenging and definitely affects learning for me.

I am going to answer your question by not answering your question.



My biggest struggle is the pervasiveness of autism. There is not one area of my life that is not negatively affected by autism. And there are so many layers of problems that affect each area that trying to remove one problem causes the rest to collapse and become even more difficult to manage.

So, my answer is: there is not just one struggle; the biggest struggle is that there are too many struggles.

_________________
31st of July, 2013
Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Auditory-Verbal Processing Speed Disorder, and Visual-Motor Processing Speed Disorder.

Weak Emerging Social Communicator (The Social Thinking-­Social Communication Profile by Michelle Garcia Winner, Pamela Crooke and Stephanie Madrigal)

"I am silently correcting your grammar."

Dealing with the reality that we are all expected to live and behave based on the preferences of the non-autistic majority rather than the actual needs of ourselves. It's hard enough being me without having to conform (which I fail at anyway, so why bother). It would require less effort for the non-autistic people to have an open mind than it would require us to try to conform, yet we are the ones expected to change. And when we fail, we are the ones considered wrong. Accepting this prejudice is difficult. I just can't make myself understand.

To narrow it down to what is the biggest is kind of hard, I do believe I would be a lot happier and motivated if things were better for me socially.

As mention my a few other already, anxiety and my inability to maintain employment, which I consider a symptom of the angst. When I get anxious I tend to shut down socially which leaves to isolation and eventual termination.

Apathy and that i don't think like "normal" people.

while underage: junior high school bullying

while overage: plenty of morons had the nerve to fire my worthless corpse. they told me "it's not a good fit." what's not a good fit, that i was not cisgender or neurotypical?

both: can't unwind/relax, extremely uptight, edgy, not having precious little "friends".

- Poor reading comprehension
- A lack of imagination
- Profoundly uncreative
- Woeful executive functioning
- Forgetting what someone has said immediately after hearing it. I never remember verbal instructions, and cannot playback conversations I have had with others. I also cannot recall lines from films or lyrics to songs like seemingly everyone else can.
- Unable to relate well to others
- Lack of coherent thought processes

With the above in mind, I cannot honestly believe I attended a well-respected grammar school for five years. I feel like a complete fraud of a human being.

• i cant really deal with any changes, like at all. Theyre very upsetting.
• my special interest is very focoused and it can annoy people and since its not necessarily age appropriate, its weird too.
• i cant read any facial expressions that arent obvious (exagerated smiles and frowns)
• i get too preoccupied with my special interest and neglect things like going to the bathroom or hygien
• i have a hard time figuring out how to cook certain meals and often mess up sequences with meals ive cooked a million times.
• ive been told i go on and on about something people have already stopped talking about
• my reading comprehension is extremely poor. Never read a chapter book by myself and was able to understand.
•my meltdowns are dangerous and destructive
• i cannot make eye contact. Not a problem for me but ive been told it makes others uncomfortable
• i cant control the volume of my voice. Im often too loud at the wrong time
• i cant stay out in crowded and overstimulating enviroments or i will shutdown and loose much my ability to understand spoken language
• my stims are harmful to myself and others
• im tense 24/7 and only ever relax when im high
• i have a poor sense of my own body and strength and often break or hurt people when i dont mean to.
• i dont know how, but people tell me im " hard to be around"
• i cant remember verbal instructions very well, and this frustrates people around me
• self harm
• im pretty lonley but get no joy from making new friends that dont share the same sonic interest


The list goes on

In a nutshell:
Humans.

Having MAJOR problems with stress, meltdowns and anxiety, finding it difficult to cope with changes, being antisocial sometimes, experiencing issues with certain events and loads more. These are the main factors and I have struggled greatly because of them, even today I am still dealing with terrible stress and anxiety problems

I would pretty much tag my entire adulthood under this for all its been worth up to this point ...

I don't like having to do all the Theory of Mind stuff consciously. It can take up more than all my available time and still not reach safety, let alone utility.