What is it like to have Asperger syndrome

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Can anyone tell me what in there eyes is it like to have AS?

For me having AS is a lot to do with worrying:

Worrying about trivial little details, about conversations you have had with people.

Worrying about how to present yourself and whether people like you.

That's social phobia, rather.

That's part of it. It also has to do with getting hung up on details that often seem irrelevant to others. This also makes it hard for people to relate to you.

As one gets older (I'm 56), your peers become more likely to find it charming than annoying.

The most important thing to me is that I am so able to identify with the feelings of my autistic sons.

"Seeing too much, and seeing too little."

It's seeing much of the world that is hard to understand, but being able to understand easily things that baffle others.

It's having a set of priorities that seem sensible to me, but often jar with those commonly encountered. Marching to the beat of a different drum, if you like.

It's having a level of perception that spots details overlooked by others,
but a level of perception that is disturbed by noises, lights and other distractions that others do not even notice, so are hardly troubled by.

It's not getting why emotions are more valued than careful logical consideration,
where the dominant emotion is the frustration that builds from repeatedly thinking of folk:
"Why don't you actually try THINKING for a change!?"

It's only liking unwritten rules when they're written down.

It's being sufficiently away from the norm that the "wrong planet" hypothesis is more than just a joke, given the flexibility in meaning of the word "alien".

HI, Katie, Welcome to the site, it is a wondeful place ! ! All of the replies pretty much apply to how I see things in general..Socializing has always been uncomfortable for me, and it goes way deeper than just shyness..To be in a roomful with other people and feel so left out on an emotional level, NOT getting why they love to gossip, shop, read harlequin novels, spend, spend , spend,brag , and diss others...The part of wanting solitude is a blessing, really.. I was told what I have is part of a heightend sensitivity awareness, and I constantly see moving pictures in my head, I am very visual. For someone to tell me something just goes past my ears, but if it is written down, I remember every detail.. It is a gift, it is the way that I see it, finally. My mom has it, I have it, my daughter has autism,( as well as MH.)..Someone on the site had mentioned that as an aspie, she is completely normal...how very true that is!!:) Peace.....

Last edited by rushfanatic on 17 Feb 2006, 2:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Its like normal life. I don't know anything else.

Good description, emmetman. That's how it is for me too.

God I hate questions that are this utterly vague. ((No offense, it's a peeve of mine is all.))

I'll just mention here that I'm actually an extroverted Aspie, but was not always. As a kid the "aspieness" was a lot worse. Certain tactile sensations were so horrible I was enslaved to avoiding them- antyhing that felt "greasy" for example (lotion, chaptsick, etc. even eating buttered popcorn. I am now a lotion and chapstick junkie but still never wear makesup and despise suntan lotion; I barely tolerate ltion on my face.) I moved so much as a child (on avergae once per school grade) that I was always the "new kid" and I never really made any lasting friendships- plus, each year, it got harder to make new friends becasue the cliques were more and more established. I developed social phobia and started skipping off from school because of that and persistant insomnia (which ended when I was put on Zyprexa at 13, not for AS but for what is now known to my pscyhiatrist as a "mood disorder, not bipolar.") I probably actually attended about 9 years worth of school K-12. ((I am by the way now in college and have near-perfect attendance and kickbutt grades for perspective on that- I'm now MOTIVATED.)) Anyway, when it was in "full force," I just remember being so stuck in my internal world. It was safer there. Away from the kids who I didn't understand, away from all these uncontrollable things. Even now I react horribly to change though I can excell once I have established something as somethign I am capable of. I'm very routine-oriented but this is an advantage in college and also in dieting (the zyprexa makes my metabolism disappear). I'm also pretty hygenic, and lack spontanety. The worst thing now is that I'm 20 and I still have horrible "meltdowns" in whcih emotion overcomes me- rage or anxiety- and I can't deescalate myself. It's painful to be a slave to this.

Having AS is like not being able to see the forest for the trees or the trees for the bark or the bark for the little tiny insects crawling on it.

Before I made peace with my odd self, it was feeling like an alien as I experienced and perceived so many things in other ways than most people did. After that, I still felt like a stranger though now with more knowledge of my personal strengths and weaknesses. It was easier to get by.

But the issues remain.

Katie,

You ask what it's like to have AS. I'll tell you from a few examples of my own experiences I could rattle off the cuff:

• Your clothes are soiled with that broken egg or rotten tomato but you wonder how it's tosser could so magically melt into the crowd. Strangely, everybody wears a halo.

• Your parents told you that teasing is all part of life and you grew up thinking that's just the way people are but you wonder why is it that you live life as a walking target.

• You are so mindful of your record and your performance at work but your employer sees you as an exploitable resourse. Meanwhile, it is everybody else who performs so mediocrely that get the promotions. Oh, and you also put up with a lot of bullsh** because your colleagues don't like the way you comb your hair.

• In elementary and junior high school getting home unscathed was a science as well as a challenge. In high school you got slammed into lockers every day while the teachers on guard duty turned a blind eye. You dared to counterattack but that got you hauled into the principal's office before the next heartbeat. During those years you got a lot of prank phone calls from schoolmates.

• In college there was that group of 5 boys that followed you closely in the hallways, clipping your heels as you walked, taunted you with their catcalls and snatched coins from you as you tried to flip them into a vending machine.

• You tried to "fit in" with everybody else but instead, you got treated like a pariah.

• The movies Forrest Gump, Eddie Scissorhands, and Never Been Kissed brought up feelings that were all too familiar.

• You see red but you're told: "no. it's blue", you see the truth but told, "no, it's a lie", and you are powerless to convince otherwise because you are outnumbered and outgunned.

• You were always like a walking encyclopedia with your knowledge and you could look and sound like a university professor when talking about what you knew, but it made you more enemies than friends.

• Your dating game never got past the fantacy stage while all of your accolades breezed through life seemingly happily matched.

• The kinder of people you met told you: "you're weird" and those rare gems of friends you had saw you as an original.

• As you progress through like and get further past the school / college age, the jeers, taunts, and catcalls never end. They just take on other insidious forms.

• By the time you're in your 30's, you become uneasily aware there is something different about you that just doesn't fizz with the majority in society. You are a square peg trying to fit in all the round holes.

• When you heard Sting's Englishman In New York, you did get a sense that you're not unique.

• By the time you turn 40, you come to and realize your life has been tantamount to the tail that wags the dog whereas everybody else seems to have had it normal like the dog that wags its tail.

• Depression and Anxiety have been you two most loyal partners because of the way you've tried to but had to life your life all this time.

• To kill the pain you accumulated a history of self-medicating with alcohol and other substances and you've disgraced yourself terribly with the same.

That cycle was broken the day the results of my formal Dx were released. That being said, WP is the right planet for me as well as all of those "legal aliens" who post here

Would anybody like to add to this list? Go right ahead!

That's interesting. As a man, the other stuff doesn't come up as an issue, but I hate suntan lotion. I never use it myself although I spend a lot of time out in the summer (in the yard, a little golf, with my kids in the pool, on a fishing boat with some well-chosen colleagues). I'm just grateful for my Italian skin that rarely burns. At least one dermatologist warns me that I'm living in a fool's paradise that will fall apart one day.

I don't even like putting it on my kids or rubbing it on my wife's back because I don't like the feel of it on my hand.

On the other hand, as a regular movie goer, I would prbably be a lot healthier if I shared your problem with buttered popcorn.

Cheese on toast

Actually I'm over the popcorn thing too and at one point got tha vast majority of my daily food from popcorn (this was for months straight). I just eschew movie theater popcorn for the sheer calories, choosing instead to smuggle in a candy bar or something portion-controlled (yes, a candy bar or even two IS better than movie theater popcorn!)

Though for the record you can wear chapstick and still be totally macho. Not the stuff I use, of course- I currently use mint-chocolate flavored stuff as well as regualr (I keep about three around the house as well as one on me at all times), but yeah, you can use regualr chapstick and not lose any masculinity.

Being Aspie is having another thing you have to explain to people.