Asperger's Syndrome and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

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Exactly why I really have to push myself to go out and socialize with people... Every few times, it can be a major "shock".. I WANT to have more friends and get out there and meet people, but so many times it results in trauma... Casual observers say I should stop being a "shut in" and get out there and meet people! "get out of your shell!"... I don't think they know the pain that can sometimes be involved with that... when you have difficulties understanding human nonverbal communication and social subtleties... They really just don't understand....

I KNOW I have a certain amount of post traumatic stress... and most every one with Asperger's or NLD or another autistic spectrum disorder I am sure has experienced depression and probably has a certain amount of PTSD also..

I think that Aspies would possibly get bullied/taken advantage of more than NTs because of a certain vounrability we display. Although IMO, I don't think Aspies are any more prone to getting PTSD than NTs, unless their brain is wired a certain way which makes them prone to it after experiencing something traumatic.

My trauma and aftermath was nothing to do with AS, I was verbally, psychologically and physically abused by my own dad, who I love for 3 months during his psychotic manic episode. If me or my mom called the police or mental health team, he would just threaten to slit her throat in front of me with a carving knife. I was stuck in that house, no way out, it drove me insane. I guess but probably his manic-depression triggered it off in me, as after that trauma I started to experience my own severe mood problems and so forth. This s**t has been going on ever since I was a small kid.

This was no workplace or school bullying or break-up, this was f******g terrifying. I can still remember him bursting through my door searching for my mom in the middle of the night, while she’s screaming, I don't need to watch slasher movies - I've had my own share.

Thanks, that's interesting. I'm willing to try such therapies.

I did find the name of the therapist - he is Bessel van der Kolk. Another therapy he uses is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). I have done it with my therapist and it does work. For some reason trauma that I had that was blocked became unblocked after a session or two. Here is a link to an article on Van der Kolk and EMDR.

www.bu.edu/bridge/archive/2001/01-12/emdr.html

Z

My counselor has van der Kolk's book on ptsd & she let me borrow it. I read it & xeroxed many sections, there was some great material in it-just a lot to digest/absorb all at once (dense & long book).
http://www.traumacenter.org/products/pd ... worker.pdf
(11 page article)
http://www.traumacenter.org/products/tr ... stress.php
(table of contents for the book)
Personally I don't buy into EMDR, but it's not for me to dismiss what works for someone else.

I don't know that it would work for everyone, but this was my experience. My ordained-minister father died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1994. We didn't know that he was sick, and didn't find out what he died of until a couple of weeks after we buried him. He probably contracted it through sexual contact. At the time I didn't know much about HIV and after I found out (my mom called me at work) I immediately went and had an embarrassing blood test - I had to ask for an AIDS test, and the clinician gave me the impression that she thought I was making the story up. I was fine, but I wasn't fine. I couldn't socialize with people I didn't know for eight years. I went to work and then went home and isolated myself as much as I could. My feelings shut down and I often felt disconnected from people and myself.

I was angry at my dad and had no good memories of him. He died twice - physically and then in my mind.

I didn't go to a psychotherapist until 2004, and then not because of the Dad-trauma-thing. But I tried EMDR with my therapist because I had such anger and flashbacks, and I knew that it wasn't healthy. I think I had two sessions and it really helped. At first, instead of having anger, I just felt neutral about my dad. Eventually I had good memories of him, and I now have some empathy for him and his struggles.

The therapy consists of either continuous back and forth eye movement (you follow the therapists hand), or alternating tapping on your knees (I was too uncomfortable to do the eye thing, my therapist did the tapping thing). Mentally you focus on the event and on associations that come to mind. You keep monitoring how you are feeling during the process. I might not be explaining this very well, but it did help me when I really needed help.

Z

Yes but it is under-appraised.

PTSD come in different level mild, moderate, and severe. You may get a mild to moderate PTSD feeling in certain place.

People with severe are the one that get prick mentally the most by any related things that point back to the root trigger.

Here is my related fear or some kind of PTSD related stuff

When being in public restroom, you are afraid of someone making fun or going to do something to you while urinating.

Kids with a big stick or bigger object running past you and it take you by surprise.

Someone's hand move toward you or *appear to be heading your way and you right away block it. Some people's hand are block when some tried to pat on my stomach. It really intimidating when someone trying to pat you on the stomach. It even more worse for the sake of sensory for someone to poke you in a stomach.

Exactly, I came to a huge realisation last night while washing up (!) and a few hours after listening to Temple Grandin's "Thinking in Pictures": I am an audio-visual thinker, which on the plus side means I have hundreds of thousands of visual frames and audio clips stored in my brain, but it also means I have stored every single frame and event that is "troubling". I've replayed these several times over for the last 30+ years, which in itself resembles trauma. I remember that a documentary on "hyper" memory had a female contributor stating it was fairly traumatic to remember every single day of her life replayed in her brain.