How do other Aspies find happiness?

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I'm 30 years old and was only diagnosed with Asperger's last summer. I've never been a happy person. Sure, there are moments in life that make me temporarily happy, like catching a big fish on a fishing trip, getting a new electronic gizmo, etc, but at heart, I've never been happy. My default response when someone asks me how I'm doing is simply, "Not bad."

Looking back on my life, knowing what I know about Asperger's and myself, it's impossible to see that changing. I don't have any real friends, and the older I get, the harder it gets to have friends as most guys get married and don't have time to "be friends" anymore. I've never had a girlfriend or been in any kind of relationship. I hate being alone, but at the same time, I hate the "normal" processes for meeting people more than being alone so there's almost no way to change that.

I still live with my mother because I couldn't afford anything but a meager living on my own and would be considerably bored all the time. Where many NT people in my position could have a cheap apartment and get by simply by inviting their groups of friends over all the time, I need to be able to buy new things to keep me entertained and alleviate boredom.

I don't see myself as ever having any kind of good career to help me out with money. I completed my Bachelor's degree at ITT Technical Institute (it sounded like a good idea at the time) in their Information Systems department. Now I have a huge debt and am absolutely no longer interested in IT. None of my "Aspie Interests" can lead to a good career, and it's almost impossible for me to motivate myself do do something I'm not interested in. It's almost physically painful. My life consists mainly of going to work and coming home. Go to work, come home. Once a month, the good acquaintances I do have get together and we play board games, but that's really the only fun/social thing I do.

I see some people on this bored and on others happy with their Asperger's and I just don't get it. Perhaps I'm on a completely different part of the spectrum. When I look at my life and what makes me unhappy, Asperger's is at the root cause of every category. If someone told me that a new miracle treatment was invented that could rewire my brain and make me a NT, but I would die 10 years to the day after taking it, I'd take it tomorrow.

Last edited by Bataar on 19 Apr 2009, 10:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've thought about this before. I look back and cant say that I've ever been happy. But I also cant say that I've ever been sad. There are fleeting moments of anger and sadness, and of happiness and elation. But never a particular time of my life where I could say was one thing or the other. Nothing that I could look back on and say 'wow, that was a really happy time of my life' or vis-versa.

Any time of good things happening have always been accompanied by bad (like right now, I have a great job but still live at home because the more severe aspects of my AS make living on my own complicated, i have a severe time dyslexia and past attempts result in just eviction and utilities getting cut off).

So I kinda just ignore the whole supposed chronology of life that goes college - job - girlfriend - apartment - condo - kids - home with picket fence.

I figure as long as I got 1 of those things arent that bad. It could be a lot worse.

I felt the same way but things are starting to look up for me, so idk, time will tell

Howdy,

Sounds like we are around the same age and stage in diagnosis.

If i am reading you right, it is not that you are unhappy but you are not happy. If that makes sense.

Ruts suck - but you will work your way into it. Unfortunatly work also sucks and always will. Very few people do what they what they enjoy for a living. I'm an IT guru as well and I hate computers, and people who use them, and companies that force you to use their unstable POS products. ... but I degress.

Anyway - the benifits with working a job is you have money to spend on "hobbies" and women.

Maybe you should get into robotics so you can combine the two

I find what makes me happy is achieving well academically; getting good grades, or achieving in my extra-curricular - like successfully auditioning for high level choir groups, or getting solos, or getting good reviews for poetry, or being selected to be in an Advertisement or a documentary or to go on a tour or whatnot. I focus strongly on academics and extra-curricular because these are the areas I know I can succeed in if I try hard enough. Even when I think I'm going really well, I always end up failing socially.

Happiness for me comes from focussing on the things with clear goals and steps by which you can get to those goals. I love grades and the grading system because it's straightforward; the harder you study and the more work you put into something, the higher grade you get, and the better you achieve. Then you can win medals/certificates, or get a good OP, or something, and feel good about yourself. The social world doesn't work like that, and I think any aspie who focuses solely on the social world as a source of success and happiness will be hard put to achieve lasting happiness.

You said you're sick of IT, why not try another academic area?

sunshower, you said it so perfectly! I wish I hadn't stopped my university career and gone out into the corporate world. That's the one thing I'd change if I could be 20 again.

I think it's highly admirable that you've actually managed to survive in the corporate world. I watched The Apprentice the other day, and looking at the make-up masks, perfectly dyed and styled hair, and murderous stiletto heels they had to wear just to be taken seriously was scary. I don't think I'd ever even be able to wear the shoes (high heels hurt my feet), let alone get the make-up and the hair right. I don't know how people achieve that "mask" look, it's like they're painting an artwork onto their face. The hair too, all the style stuff and straightening and whatnot. You'd have to get a university degree just to figure out how to look right!

Basically, at this point, more schooling is out of the question for me. I have so much student loan debt already and to be perfectly honest, I can't think of a single thing that interests me enough to put that much time, money and effort in pursuing.

IT made me feel like that too. After a few years of that I switched to engineering and feel happier.

Dear Bataar.

I was touched when you said "but at heart, I've never been happy."

Many people in the spectrum suffer so much existential and emotional distress, because we are unable to own our gifts, and then find the skills to be able to engage with the world from out of that gift.

At times I feel, that for many of us in the spectrum, we are taken to a well that we can never truly drink from. Or a river that we can never truly swim in.

I know myself, that I would have been unable to sustain life if it was not for my belief, that I was born for a reason, however irrational that may appear at times for me.


As a pastoral counsellor, my vocation calls me to ask certain questions like, "Where do you feel you come truly alive"? or "What things do you feel not so much driven to, but drawn to"? etc, etc. In essence, my role is to help people help themselves, find THEIR way to THEIR truth.

Tell me Bataar, do you have any interest in philosophy, spirituality or the like?

Have you ever taken an interest in any from of religious or spiritual practice?

I find going to Quaker meetings the most congenial and affirming enviroment for an aspie like myself, who craves meaning yet equally desires silence and a sense of loving community where by difference is not only tolerated, but celebrated.

Wishing you well from London.

Chris

I fantasize about killing people.

It seems to work.

I fantasize about artworks and writing and books.

It also seems to work.

I think maybe finding out what your interest is would work.

^ i fantasize about killing people also, but am dissuaded from doing so by a perpetual and fanatical special interest which is also my career. All good painters are really unrealised murderers.

I remember that. It was astonishing, as if I was lifting a huge weight every step of whatever it was I had to do at work. Absolutely horrible.

How do I find happiness? It's like a question for the Politics, Philosophy and Religion forum on WP.

In my late teens and early to mid-twenties it was with social performance, ( which worked for the superficial ), alcohol, new clothes, films, smoking dope etc. Then I had a manic-depressive breakdown.

Since then I have tended to find what I thought was happiness by resenting things; first men, ( feminism ), then my parents, then food, ( especially gluten and sugar ), and for many years have buoyed myself up with various exclusion diets because jumping through complex "food-eating hoops" in the hope of obtaining my heart's desire was trained into me with the weaning process.

I also tried a Personal Development Course, which got me jumping through various mental-hoops in the hope of obtaining my heart's desire, and which did teach me some very interesting ideas and approaches, but was ultimately disappointing.

I have also moved houses, moved country, left jobs, etc, at several points, which would help, for a while until I caught up with myself that is.

A year and a half ago, ( after reading about the "god need"; theory which posits that many/most people, because of their compulsive/constant tendency to ascribe cause, attribute agency, create meaning out of chaos, and see patterns, "need" to believe in god in order not to sink beneath the load of finding meaning in life ), I "decided" to believe in god. And it works, when I remember that I need it, like remembering to eat fresh fruit and veg.

In general things that make me happy temporarily are good books, films, pms or phone calls with the very few friends I have, drawing or painting, ( sometimes ), travel/a long train journey, a good night's sleep, my son being funny, sitting in the sunshine at a café terrace with a coffee and a cigarette, walking by the ocean, trees in the sunshine, ( nature so long as it's not cold and wet, and I'm not too miserable ).

But when I'm "stuck", the only thing that seems to work, and which does not depend on some thing or someone else to provide something, is belief in god. Which is weird.

.

I use to drink now only music and drawing seem to be the 2 things that elevate me.

Have trouble experiencing happiness among people in company which is one reason I drank so I could experience those emotions most "normal" people show in how they express them in a given scenario.

I'm almost just like you are, and I'm 40.

For me, "happy" has always been an elusive thing. Then again, so has "love," "joy," "sympathy" or any of the other "noble emotions" (what I call them).

Knowing about AS has been a comfort because I now understand that I process emotion differently than other people. Maybe my lack of emotion is about as "happy" as I tend to be on an average day. I consider myself "happy" if I'm not upset at something.

I've focused more on being "at peace." Not upset, not angry, not irritated, etc. This is about the most I can hope for. It also helps to know that I likely have AS, and that this is just the way I am. If I was around other people who wonder why I'm not a happier person, I can always tell them about AS and explain that because I don't process emotion like others do, I don't feel things the way others typically do.

If it helps, most NT people are not happy, but they do a better job faking it.