Last thing you learned or realised about your AS/ASD

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Given as AS/ASD can effect us all differently, and with such variation throughout our lives...not to mention many of us may still be undiagnosed or unsure about whether we are AS/ASD so discover new things that show how AS/ASD fits or how it effects our personality and how we deal with things...

What was the last thing you realised or learned about your AS/ASD?

For me I'm starting to learn what anxiety is - never really knew how to recognise it before. I learned today that my boyfriend using a drill makes me really anxious - loud noise combined with worry that he was going to drill into a pipe, into an electric wire, into his skull, into his leg, the the drill would slip, that the cats would get out and knock him, that the wall would collapse, etc.

I think I've always had this sort of anxiety, like as a child I'd never climb trees or fences for fear of falling, go on fair ground rides for fear of falling, getting caught on something, the restrains coming loose, losing a shoe, getting vomited on, etc. a million potential worries for such little things. I don't think I'm as bad as I once was, but it's still there and quite strange...not sure why I am so anxious, or if it is an AS-specific personality trait...but I've noticed that it does seem to irritate the same part of me that triggers off meltdowns.

I realised learning how to drive is going to be a very hard experience.

I realised that a diagnosis of major depressive disoder is made harder when you have autism.

I realised dentist checkups go a lot smoother when you say "I'm autistic", which they take as code for "don't do anything stupid".

I realized that one reason I kept losing friends, especially when I was younger, was that I would never remember to contact them. I'd think about them and assume that was all I had to do. I remember going away for summer break one time in 7th grade and couldn't figure out why my supposedly best friend had found someone else to hang out with in the meantime. I was upset and couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong. When I finally realized that other classmates actually talked to each other outside of school hours, that too was a revelation. I always operated very strongly on an out of sight, out of mind philosophy... and I would also assume that just because I was content with only speaking to someone once every few weeks didn't necessarily mean that they felt the same way. xD

My best friend and I have managed to stay friends because we don't need to speak every day, or even every week. We can go months without speaking to each other, but when we finally see each other, we're able to pick up right back where we left off. It's a good friendship, in my opinion, and I don't think I could deal with anything more than that right now.

In my case I think it's not exactly a friendship, I don't know what it is, I have two acquaintances from high-school and probably one from the Uni years with whom I have a similar relationship. Two of them would explicitly state the same "we're able to pick up right back where we left off" every time I happen to meet them...

my mom said last week that I started stimming after a severe seizure I had when I was 9. I never knew this. I stim constantly now as I have for years.

If I don't have to fight against my true personality, I feel better. I mean, I allow more time for just being myself. Now I can smile or laugh at it with ease, I appreciate it very much. The way I'm talking, the subjects I'm talking about, my eccentric customs I pursue, things that upset me and my odd reactions, constant anxiety about everything, etc.

One concrete thing. I'm much more accepting the way I'm with wearing clothes, or rather, being undressed when I'm at home and feel the need. I don't think it's a sexual aberration as I used to. It's natural.

I think I have prosopagnosia and I never noticed until I started to really pay attention. That is, I noticed that I had recognition issues, but I didn't assign these issues any importance because I had no idea other people didn't have this same thing. Admittedly, I had hints over the years when I'd mention how two actors resembled each other and people would respond as if I were delusional.

I feel like, although I don't feel negatively about this, a lot of assumptions I've had about myself over the years were nothing more than a thin veneer of attempted normalcy without any awareness that it was a veneer or that it was exceedingly thin. That I've simply employed a number of coping mechanisms over the years to at least function around other people - looking for cues for recognition (like hair, clothes, voice, build, context, etc), scripting social interactions so I know how to respond to more casual conversation, learning that it is socially inappropriate to subject people to my monologues.

This actually ties into the other thing I've learned - which is that my social perception/imagination is practically nonexistent. It's not that I can't imagine social situations (say writing a scene in a story) but that I have a lot of trouble perceiving state of mind, motivations, thoughts, in things that NTs can. I mean it doesn't really matter to me that I watch a video filled with geometric shapes and I don't see any real signs of a social situation. What's interesting and fascinating to me about this is neurotypicals can look at this same video and tell a complete story about it. The idea that people can do this is amazing to me. I'm not really sure what it means about me, however.

That I probably do have issues with boundaries but I think everyone does. I was at my autism group and I realized I have them too just by hearing what everyone else was saying about their boundary issues. I can think back to my childhood, wanting to please people, my friend threatening me to rip the heads off my Barbie dolls if I don't give her three of my Barbie outfits, having to give my belongings away to kids so they can stay my friend. I also don't know if being taken advantage of counts because I once ditched one of my friends and didn't even know what was going on and did it because my other friends did it. I didn't even know what ditching was. I just thought they wanted to toss her in the ditch and there were no ditches around so how could they? Then they told her to turn her back and count and they all started running and I did too and she went "I hate you guys" and we kept running. I then thought we must be playing tag. Just me being naive there as a child. Then by the time I figured it out, it was too late because it already happened but I couldn't understand why we did it. I then learned ditching meant to run away from someone and leave them far behind. But I still didn't know why we did it. I realize now she may have been bossy or something and the kids were getting tired of it so they decided to ditch her. It was mean but we were children then and kids do inappropriate things and don't even know it. Heck even telling her to go home and that we don't want her around would still be mean so what else can you do? You can't win.


I also befriended this one girl on the bus when I was eight and we used to talk. I enjoyed hearing her stories about her teacher and the troubles she get into and I talk about blowing noses and her doing it. Then one day she never wanted me to sit with her on the bus. I would always ask and she would shake her head no. I asked her everyday and it was always the same answer. It took me a while to figure out this was a new thing, not something temporarily. Same as when we sit together she go, "We are not going to talk" and I couldn't understand why this new behavior. It turns out it was because I had said something to her and she didn't like it. I finally asked her why she was doing it to me and she said why. But yet I kept thinking it was the same as before because I still had that memory before we were not mates anymore on the bus. Then she was in my class the following year but we still didn't sit next to each other on the bus or hang out at school but yet I invited her to my birthday party which was a disaster. It was like I couldn't fully grasp it. Maybe she didn't like me and I never picked up on it. Today I would have figured she didn't like me anymore and I did something wrong. Maybe after three times I would have asked "what's wrong?" and "did I do something wrong?"

So things I think about and remember from my childhood add up to my AS I was not aware before at that time. I was in my late teens when I realized this about that girl on the bus.

Some things I am not so sure about like the time I was seven, I was working on my school work and I was using my glue. Then all of a sudden the teacher said to me "Okay Beth that's enough, put the glue away" I was confused and I said why and she said I was pounding it. I said I was not and she said I was and don't lie. She gave me a glue stick to use and took my glue away and never gave it back. To this day I still don't know what happened. i had wondered if "pounding it" is a phrase and I took it literal. Mom suggested maybe someone else was pounding something and she thought it was me.

My mind also works this way of where my mind doesn't go back to previous events like I remember when I was seven I was sitting down on the floor with other kids waiting for our cupcakes to get served because it was someone's birthday and she brought cup cakes. My teacher told me I had to sit out for stepping on his hand and I don't get a cup cake. I said I did not step on his hand and my teacher called me a liar again. I was just sitting down minding my own business and my feet didn't even touch anyone's hand. When my other teacher got back, the special ed teacher of the classroom, I complained to her about the teacher which was the aid, and then she talked to her and then to me and told me in more detail about when we were in the other classroom watching a movie, we were leaving and I started to step on what our old student was working on and I stepped on his hand. I was like "oh" and then knew what my aid was talking about. I thought I was being punished for sitting down waiting for the cupcakes.

Another time I overheard my teacher say to these two boys in my class "Beth doesn't get toy time" and I was like "what?' because I didn't do anything and I didn't break any rules. She said I sat in the dress up box and i said I didn't. I had not sat in that box and I was being punished for not doing it. After toy time and when everyone was getting ready to go home, my teacher finally told me I sat in it yesterday when we were going home. I then knew why I got punished, it was for the crime I did after school got out the day before.

I think my teacher just knew how to talk to me and the aid didn't know how. Probably because she assumed I knew what she was talking about and thought I was playing dumb and I was not capable of asking questions about when and asking for more clarification because I thought she was just picking on me and falsely accusing me so what was there to ask? Maybe this was part of my AS or the teacher just didn't know how to talk to kids and this was special ed for christ sake's so I would assume a teacher would think the student probably doesn't have the cognitive ability to understand so it must be explained to them in more detail. But she was an aid so that is probably why she was that ignorant. She probably didn't have her special ed teaching degree.

Now today I ask "what do you mean" "what are you talking about?" to get more clarification what the person is saying so we are on the right page. I try and get more details so I know what the person is saying so I don't look like a liar. Of course if the person doesn't answer, I end up analyzing it and thinking of all the other past days and previous events and trying to see what could the person be talking about. I figure could the person be talking about months before or weeks or days? I assume people must not have this issue or people be going into detail like "Hey do you remember that last week while you were cleaning the day care..." before they confront you about what you did there. But they don't do that and they would just get to the point than adding detail. Instead they just go. "Hey you didn't change the paper towels in the daycare restroom, why didn't you?" or "Hey when you cleaned the daycare, you didn't change the paper towels" People must be that psychic. If my boss said that to me, I would have asked "When?" than going "I don't clean that daycare" thinking he means today. It saves me from the arguments and the false accusations I think I am getting and getting all upset thinking I am being blamed for something I didn't do.

a lot more reserch needs to be done before dx can be accurite(?)

League_Girl, your story reminds me of one that happened to me when I was doing an internship.
I was having trouble with executive dysfunction and time management. My supervisor was getting disgusted with me, and finally started saying that I would have to quit the semester and start over. I contacted my adviser at school and they arranged a meeting to go over exactly what I was doing wrong. At the meeting, we came up with a plan which was to be implemented the very next day, to try to prevent my failing the class. I was excited and motivated, because I felt that things were definitely going to get better with this new plan.

The next day, I waited at my desk for my supervisor, eager to begin. She was half an hour late. I was upset, because having taken things literally, I thought that she had ruined the plan. I thought that we had to start our plan on the dot of 8 a.m, or it wouldn't work. When she saw that I was upset, she in turn thought that I was "watching her time." I didn't even know what that meant. I was bewildered that she was yelling at me when I was upset with the collapse of the plan I thought we had. I ended up crying. Needless to say, I failed that internship and had to repeat the whole thing next year. I was even more bewildered when my supervisor got emotional and said that things would get better. I couldn't believe that she was upset nor could I understand why.

I realize now that (since I hadn't been diagnosed with AS yet) that this was a comedy of errors. Through testing, a learning disability was discovered, and then a better plan was made for my next internship. It took me 6 years to get through a 2 year college course.

There are many different forms of friendship, is all. She and I don't have a typical friendship, maybe, but it doesn't mean that we aren't friends. The reason we don't see each other very often is because we're often separated by long distances. For example, I was in New York for two years and she was in Las Vegas. We communicate online, mostly, because of the distance. Neither of us like the phone very much, so we rarely if ever call each other. But whenever I can, I will go visit her, or vice versa. It's been the same story since middle school. I'm just glad I found someone who understands. Just because I don't want to see someone everyday doesn't mean that I don't like them or want to be around them.

I think this again relates to my (possible) AS. I have a very low need for socialization that is satisfied in less-conventional ways.