*ANOTHER* Scot!

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There seem to be a few of us joining "The Scottish Pride". A good name, methinks. It's time to take the plunge.

I think I have a fairly typical late diagnosis profile:

Odd as a child

Stroppy as an adolescent - sent to a school for "Maladjusted children of above average intelligence"

Started University ... crashed out.

Lots of unemployment and very much solitary.

Tried College ... crashed out.

Frustrated musician.

"Learned" to hide my traits by being "the quiet one".

Finally stumbled on a job that suited me - working with machines. My talent was spotted ... promoted ... more responsibility, less opportunity to hide ... started to crash.

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TV and the Internet pointed me toward AS ... that or schizophrenia. I thought I'd better speak to a doctor.

An understanding boss has helped me enormously. With out his understanding I *would* have crashed out again.

Currently a bit shaky at work and still solitary ... but things make a wee bit more sense now.

R.

welcome here!!

It's nice to meet you, Ruaridh. Welcome aboard the Wrong Planet.

Yay Scots!

I hope self-knowledge will give you what you need.

Hi Ruaridh and Welcome to WP

Hope you find it enjoyable and useful

Hey Ruaridh!

I'm in Glasgow.

Welcome to wp, Im from East Kilbride outside of glasgow

Thank you, one and all

I'm starting to feel as though I'm amongst friends. ... well, like minded people .

R.

Hi Ruaridh, welcome to Wrong Planet. You might be interested in coming along to a Stirling meet-up – which may be close to your area. The meet-up will involve about 12 aspies mostly from Glasgow and Edinburgh – though we should have a few from Stirling – meeting on Saturday 10 October at the Train Station Bar from 10 to 10.15 am then spending the best part of the day at the castle. Some of us are on Wrong Planet and many have a late diagnosis. All are welcome to come along. If your interested PM me, otherwise I hope you have an interesting time on Wrong Planet.

Welcome to the forum, I'm new here too (as you probably know, you replied to my first post).

I'm very interested in what you say about how 'crashing out' (I assume you mean 'dropping out') of school fits the diagnoses of asperger's. I've often had this problem myself. I tend to start doing things with great enthusiasm and success, but have a very hard time keeping the momentum going. I wonder what that is all about?

Yes, dropping out ... but at the dramatic, stressed-out and abrupt end of the scale. I quite often crash out of shopping expeditions too [I mentioned this in an other thread, but I'm not systematising enough to remember which one!] [edit] Yup it was your thread [/edit]

I'm more than happy to discuss! It's fine [perfectly in order] to broach the subject here but maybe it would be better to start a new thread somewhere - forum etiquette and all that.

For me, one of the revelations of this site is how often I read a thread and stumble across a comment that "rings a bell" [stands out from the rest of the text and has a resonance for me personally]. Sometimes using almost the same words I had previously thought.

Your story rings many bells for me, though I was treated better as a child.

I'll not post a new thread just now, because if I spend any more time typing I'll not eat any breakfast ... and that could throw my whole day into disarray. [I have to read and re-read before I can finally click on "Submit".] [I also have to go back and put a lot of stuff in brackets ]

R.

Ok, sorry for "hijacking" your thread! I'd be more than happy to discuss it elsewhere. I've had a lot of revelations too, and I guess I'm just eager to share experiences with people I can relate to. I'll make sure to watch for your thread.

No need to apologize, I suspect that I'm just showing my social clumsiness. Anyway, we are discussing our nature, finding points of similarity ... I'd say we were "Getting to know each other" ... so we're allowed to discuss it here!

I'm actually having a huge problem creating a new thread. I've tried several times but find my self trying to do too much ... worrying about whether I'll be understood .... worrying if we have a common understanding of to "crash out" ... I get a bit stressed ... and, well, I sort of ... crash out.

That is what much of my life is like.

Last night I drove to my local supermarket, saw how busy the car park was ... came straight home.

This morning I tried to go to my local music shop. Driving through my own town I noticed that there was quite a lot of traffic. When I got to the junction that leads to my intended destination there was a queue of twenty or so cars - it's a small town. That was enough to convince me that my destination would be too busy for me to be comfortable ... so I turned around and came home.

Yet sometimes I manage to cope just fine, well, I cope well enough to "pass" as "normal"... if slightly odd.

My current theory is that I have an "alloted interaction tolerance". I have a reserve of recourses that allow me to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous neuro typicals. The more I interact, the more my resources are drained. When they are gone ... they're gone. I can't cope with people. [I don't have the recourses or inclination to keep making the effort required to cope with people.]

Over the past few days I've had to work with the same two people during 8 hour shifts, that has taxed my tolerance to a point that I have little or none left to allow me to interact with people during my time off. I'll "re-charge my batteries" over the week end which will, once again, allow me to have a "veneer" of normality so I can go back to work on Monday.

And so the cycle repeats.

That's probably a slightly blacker portrayal than it needs to be ... but hey: to go any further would require more effort ... and I don't have the resources.

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It's taken about an hour to type this up. So, does that make any sense?

Happy to discuss, well, within my alloted tolerance

R.