Thank you Neobluex
The reason I'm curious, is that in every possible area where my autism effects me, I have over the years become obsessive compulsive and in some cases developed crippling OCD, in my desperate attempts to over compensate for my areas of weakness.
My adapted skills were born out of severe trauma and of being mocked and humiliated for my unusual aspie quirks and eccentricities. Consequently, I became chronically depressed, so much so that I had to be hospitalized as a teenager.
Nothing was understood about HFA when I was growing up, and even if there was the understanding that we have today about the spectrum, my complex and extreme ways of concealing and adapting would have camouflaged my neurological difference.
Im going a long way around saying that because I have a brain that seems not to filter anything out, this results in me being bombarded with stimulus that often leaves me overwhelmed. Consequently, I superimpose extreme over compensating strategies that have in themselves become problematic.
It's like there is the natural autistic (everything is coming at me at once brain) living alongside the Perfectionist Policeman.
This dichotomy, this internal civil war has gone on all my life. And only since after my dx with HFA six years ago was I able to start the process of befriending and living less at war with myself.
These days I am happier. Allowing messiness has been part of my therapy at the maudsley hospital.
The enormous irony of many in the spectrum, has been the 'success' of their highly adaptive skills. This 'success' has, like myself come at a cost.
I have a much more balanced and kindly approach to life these days. Mindfulness practice is central to my life these days.
I have never seen my diagnosis with HFA as a label, but instead a moment of enlightenment, whereby I can learn to live life more creatively and compassionately within my limitations......For me, allowing myself to be messy is heading in the right direction.