Alien_Papa wrote:
Halligeninseln wrote:
When I was 25 my therapist wrote in my records that I had a history of isolation. After a break of 33 years I am starting therapy again next week. I knew more people those days (maybe about two, for a time) than I do now (only one). So I suppose I still have a history of isolation. I was isolated in the intervening years, too. It's not that I am completely isolated like Robinson Crusoe but I have always been alone nearly all the time. It is difficult to explain to anybody why I am always isolated. Being with people wears me out and draws me into situations I don't want to be in, so I end up staying alone most of the time. Probably a therapist will find it difficult to accept and will urge me to be more outgoing. When I think of how I am it feels kind of eerie that I'm always so isolated.
Why are you seeing the therapist?
Do you see isolation as a problem?
My limited experience with therapists is that they can be helpful when you want to change something in your life. But if you don't want to change then what's the point?
In the meantime the therapist has said she doesn't know what to do with me, so we will probably not be continuing therapy. The way it came about that I went for therapy was because I wanted a proper expert opinion as to whether the various behaviours I had as a child indicated that I was on the autism spectrum rather than me just having a schizoid personality or something else. I had already spoken for one hour with a special needs teacher at an autism centre to get an opinion. He said it was "obvious" that the behaviours were autistic but I wanted confirmation from a properly qualified doctor. So I had an appointment with a psychiatrist, who said at once that she had no idea how to do such an evaluation but that she could send me for therapy. So I saw the therapist who said that if I had all the symptoms of AS then I had AS and proceeded to do an evaluation using the ICD 10 criteria and the DSM. She said I should accept I had aspergers and move on. However I don't really accept her evaluation either. But I think the kind of certainty I am looking for probably doesn't exist.
To turn to your second question, I don't see isolation as a problem any more because I am 58. When I was younger it hurt to be so isolated. However I would like to have a better understanding of whether my isolation as an adult is related to my autistic behaviours as a child in some way, because it seems to me likely that there is a connection. As a child I had difficulty being social and had very standard autistic stereotypies, which I still have as an adult, though to a lesser extent. And the rest. I suppose I'm just collecting second opinions from all these experts who aren't really experts, in the hope that I can eliminate the risk of misdiagnosing myself. I just want to know the truth.
19 May 2012, 11:43 pm
