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Has anyone had a problem with accepting AS? I feel myself trying to avoid who I am now. Its starting to bug me as 'I like me'. Now that I know I'm unique because I'm an Aspie, I feel ashamed. Its strange as I've no prior or current opinions on people with autism or any form of. Is this normal from having a low self esteem?

how long has it been since you've been diagnosed?

i also felt that way when i was diagnosed, and yet a few years later i've learned to step past all of that and defy the rules of AS. i'm just more comfortable with it. it takes time.

you don't need to be ashamed! i'm sure you're an amazing person with talents others could only dream of. pay attention to the positivies of being an aspie!

I also felt that way when I was first told about my diagnosis. I felt like I had no purpose. I felt like a freak. I wanted to get rid of my AS. Now I see it as a positive part of who I am, like Rudolph and his Red Nose. I see my Artistic Talents and my Personality as my Red Nose, which guides me through life.

I was told about my AS back when I was 11, back in 1991, when people were still real ignorant about it. I was pretty much told that I was pretty-much just a god-sized loser, that I'd never be able to trust my own perception of things, that I'd never get better, and that was it - my life was already pretty much over. Needless to say I spent a long time really seathing over that one, hating myself, laying on rock-bottom over the stuff I couldn't change, getting worse from antipschotics and SSRI's I didn't need made things worse, and I rally thought I'd be in assisted living my the time I was in my 20s.

It was nice to see that none of that was true and when I did pull myself off all that medication at 19 that the quality of my life as well as my determination to succeed took a huge u-turn. On the downside though, I really thought if I gave it my all to beat all my social problems and go at it as if everyone had been right, that I was just laying down and had no idea what real effort was, that my putting in 'real' effort would fix it.
Now and for the last few years I've been comming to terms with what I can't change and even now, trying to find the most energy cost-effective ways to mitigate it in ways I can maintain and really build into my personality. Lol I tried lots of things, including taking all kinds of Piracetam, Hydergeine, and other nootropic smart-drugs which I though would give me more of that mind-over-matter control over my chemistry and neurology, what I learned from that though is genetics really do own and there's nothing a hard days effort can build that a night of sleep can't take away .

Right now it's all about trying to readjust and just live the rest of my life. Luckily, like when I was 19 or 20, I have no shortage of friends at least. Trick is seeing the things in myself that other people see in me and not trashing myself for every little thing I do wrong. All that railing I took as a kid and as a teen has left me with this need for personal perfectionism, feeling like nothing I do can dig me out of negative genetic equity, and while part of that is reflections of society I still think things wouldn't have nearly been as twisted if my parents had never taken me to a shrink or gotten me on meds by the time I was 12. As for knowing about my AS though, that's a hard call - I really can't say what I'd be like today if I hadn't known about it but I also have my suspicions about what kinds of permanent damage the meds did to my presence and quick-processing of things.

I have this memory when I was 10 of being diagnosed with Asperger's. My parents though refused to accept it and just said I was lazy and worthless amongst other things, I'm sure most have experienced being told those things. I just am not sure if that memory is real or not, as why would my parents not accept it. Recently, 2 months ago, my counselor told me I am on the ASD. Thats where my problems are now though, he doesn't have much help or advice to give me. His only experiences with it are with kids and doesn't seem to want to make an effort in helping me as I'm "smart" enough to do it on my own. I wonder what the money I'm paying him is for...
Why did my counselor have to tell me that I am on the spectrum now when it seems to be trendy or at least being discussed in the media more? Everyone has always know I'm strange and so when I told them of AS they all disbelieved me. They seem to have to this "idea" of what it means to have Asperger's.
I'm trying to compile a list of positive aspects of ASD to remind me that it isn't all bad. Also as a way of refining myself. If anyone has a list or can point me in the right direction I'd very much appreciate it.

Even after my diagnoses last summer, sometimes I still feel as if "I don't have this".

I was in the dark on this for so long though. I think my perception is partially based on that fact. I wasn't so horribly disable by AS that I fell through the cracks when I was looked at by psychologists. But I was disabled enough that I couldn't manage in a school setting. I was labeled as being EBD by school psychologists in 1988 and was recomended for special education.

At times I felt more like a failure than anything else. People were ill prepared to deal with me. I remember telling my mom that I was a bad person who didn't deserve to live. My dad didn't want to deal with me anymore. A month after I turned 8 in December 1987, my father grew tired of my ways one afternoon and told me to get my socks and shoes on. When I did, he dragged me outside along with my winter coat and told me through the kitchen window to get lost. I wasn't welcome at home anymore.

I figured I'd go walking into town and live with one of my aunts and uncles. I didn't feel depressed about it. I was more frustrated at things. I had no idea what I was doing wrong to upset people, and I couldn't understand why people didn't get upset at the things that set me off.

I got about a mile down the road and my father came driving up to pick me up before a cop or someone else saw me.

So after my first evaluation by the school, a psychatrist diagnosed me with depression and anxiety disorder that same year. During my Diagnoses progress last summer, my mom commented that in 1988, she found the cormorbid diagnoses confusing as the two together didn't make sense.

Two years later I saw a psychologist who said I had ADHD. My parents were like Ah Ha! the silver bullet.

I didn't like the label though. By Junior high it didn't make sense to me much anymore.

I found out about apsergers by sheer accident. My life before that had been a confusing mess to me. I could never make out exactly where I had gone wrong. I just knew I was different.

And after I found out about aspergers, the confusion remains to a certain extend. Since AS cannot be defined in a strictly black and white sense, the best any of us can do is assume and guess.

I didn't know about AS until I was 30 and beforehand, thought I just couldn't "get it". I thought if only I could find out what "it" was, my life would get better.

To start, I had to have physical therapy to learn how to walk when I was a baby since I couldn't learn on my own and had motor skills delay. Before I began kindergarten, it was recommended by my pre-school teacher that I be tested to see if I could be placed in a school for special needs. I was very withdrawn and didn't communicate in the way that was appropriate for my age. They thought I might be "slow" or have a learning disability. Although the doctor who tested me said I could go to regular school and watch my progress, the other kids just "knew" I was different and made sure to remind me, too.

After a few years of speech therapy and an outside resource class, I was deemed to be a few years ahead of my age group and didn't need any more outside intervention. But as I got into 6th grade, that's when other students started being extremely hateful toward me, saying that I was a geek, stupid, didn't wear the right things, do, say, walk, play sports, whatever it was, correctly. None of the teachers intervened, although they saw all this going on right in front of them. So I thought there truly must be something bad about me I didn't know about.

After experiencing years of rejection by other kids and developing social anxiety and depression, I just thought I was just plain "wrong" and tried hard to be the perfect person everyone else wanted me to be. My parents didn't make it any easier due to my mother being emotionally abusive and my father being absent in my life yet having another family of his own that he took care of just fine. In spite of my efforts, the way I was would set off people and cause them to hurt me even more. I internalized all this and believed it was all my fault and something I was supposed to fix.

Then last year, I guess, came the proverbial last straw when I had a breakdown after having failed to obtain the career and lifestyle success I was supposed to at my age. Although I was a college grad, I was still financially strapped, working low-wage, stressful jobs and could never afford a car (didn't have a license, anyway), even though relatives, years younger and with less education, were excelling financially and socially. I even tried relocating to another city yet was told by interviewers that I was too "shy" or needed to change my personality to a more out-going one. I came back home broke and despondant and the only job I could get was a stressful one that barely payed above minimum wage and eventually drove me into a nervous breakdown.

I just couldn't take all the stress of failing to be the person I thought I was supposed to be and attempted suicide because I didn't feel I belonged in this world. Thank goodness that was another thing I couldn't do right and I, instead, ended up in a psych hospital for two weeks. After getting on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds, I started therapy and began a serious assessment of who I was as a person. I realized that society's definition of success was highly based on obtaining material things and it wasn't an accurate messure of who I truly was as a person.

Then after I found out about AS, the enormity was akin to finding out I was adopted and explained so much about why I was so introverted, sensitive and why it was harder for me to function than others. Although I never got an official diagnosis from a doctor, finding out helped me accept myself and stop trying to play by everyone else's expectations. Instead of using other people as a yardstick, I gauge myself by looking at what I've accomplished on my own terms. And if others don't like me because I'm not like them, then it's their loss and has more to do with their behavior than mine.

Yes. I find it easier to think of myself as an individual with many behaviours and experiences that are consistent with what people with an ASD appear to experience. This is, of course, completely different to actually having an ASD

Despite this, learning about AS has been immensely helpful to me, and I understand more about why I sometimes face difficult problems, and also how to deal with them.

I went from denial, to hope, to resentment, and now to 0 self esteem. But while I don't place any value on life or the world anymore, I'm perfectly content with it.

I was reading a magazine when I was 10 (1990 or thereabouts) and it mentioned autism, which I seemed to have. I was undergoing treatment because I was bullied at school and the headmaster thought I ought to get some kind of child psychologist to look over me and those at home. They didn't think I was autistic, but it came as no surprise to find out (fifteen years later) that I have AS. Sometimes in fact I think it veers into actual autism, but I'm really not sure so I will stay away from that one for the time being. (On the morning of July 7 I had a row with my mother about it and stormed out without saying goodbye, on my way into London to go and stay with friends - worst that happened to me was that I had to walk rather than take the Underground but...that shocked me into better behaviour!)

AS does give me an "excuse" but over the last two years I have learned far too much in general about myself. Coming out as a Conservative was worse...but then again it coincided with the publication and popularity of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time", so now if you mention AS people always go "yeah, I read that book", although reading it myself it's not quite the best description for me - although I guess I have been on a "murder" hunt this year...I thought I'd found the smoking gun, so to speak, but...

I seem to have a brilliant perception of the human mechanics that govern politics in this country but little ability to do anything about them, even after being shocked into realising that during the election things were going on that just weren't being reported, and what I saw in the press did not fit the way I saw things "on the ground". It's made me rather angry and bitter about it and I can see the same thing happening again, almost like in Groundhog Day. Government unpopularity, bright shiny new Leader of the Opposition, talk of the next prime minister...and then six months down the line it'll all start all over again. And I hoped I'd never get so cynical...Today I felt very euphoric about things until I read the newspaper and suddenly I was back to square one. I haven't read a paper in months (not since the July 7 bombings when I devoured them like crazy and felt like the government was going to fall overnight...but it didn't...and now someone tells me that a well placed letter or two back then might have changed history...for me and for the person I most admire and respect in this cold awful country)...probably won't bother ever again the way I feel right now.

I always felt a bit like Lucy in Lion/Witch/Wardrobe when she stumbled into Narnia but couldn't convince the others of what she saw. In fact what hurt me most was my ex-boyfriend acting like Edmund after he meets the White Witch but denies he's been in to Narnia, which is why he's my ex now. Actually if you have ever read "The Silver Chair" (one of the lesser-known Narnia books) I feel like Jill Pole in Harfang being taken to task by Aslan.

It is good to know I have AS, and that this gives me a peculiar insight and fascination that has lead me to being privately praised by perhaps the top conservative journalist in this country, but it is all to nothing if I have failed the one person I admired.

I've never had a problem with "coming to terms" with my AS simply because I sought out my own diagnosis, so I was ready to hear it. And even relieved. I'm the type to feel more comfortable with a name and a reason to something. It gives me greater security. But it was hell trying to convince my mom, because for a long time I had been searching for what was going on with me and so by then I'd sorta lost credibility. Finally, she came to a workshop on AS with me, and realized "OMG, you ARE Aspergers!" She also had the realization about my father as well.

"Aspergers" feels like a wholer description of me. And I am very grateful I have Aspergers, actually. Because I've always enjoyed being eccentric and I've been genetically and environmentally blessed an optimist. I love life and thoroughly revel in my creativity, logic, and individuality. I enjoy being quirky.

It also helps that Abnormal Psych is one of my main obsessions and so I love to study myself and others.

I wish there was a book that everyone knew about called, "Coming to peace with yourself, humanity, and life." Because i find so many people who aren't at peace, and they are all not at peace in different ways, for good reason no doubt, but it is all a very difficult and individualized mess trying to tell a person how to be at peace with themselves, and that the main ingrediant in doing so is time. So i'd like to just be able to direct them to that book, they can look up in the handy flow chart where they are at and slowly work out there problems with themselves and be happy. Now the most obvious problem is that if there was a single book which could categorize and deal with every problem of happiness in yourself it would either have already been written, or is too large and complex to cover everything.

And who is that?
earplugs

Are you British? If you are, please don't laugh...

He's in my sig.

I'm having a huge problem accepting it. I've only known about it for a few months, so maybe that's why. I keep going through these phases of different emotions. I'll be ashamed to be me, then I'll hate society for pathologizing who I am.

Of course, I never accepted the AS traits before the diagnosis, so I'm not going to magically think all that crap is so great now that there's a label to describe it. I've been organizing my old Livejournal entries, and I have come across so many entries where I was either being berated for being who I am, or hating myself for it.

Just another thing I thought I'd mention, I did something I hardly ever do anymore - bar-hop with friends and get hammered. A lot of times though, with intoxicants like that I have a lot of illusive realities hitting me that wouldn't have had I been sober and last night was full of subtle reality checks. A friend's friend who I've hung with twice or three times already and reminds me a lot of myself in terms of being that kinda quiet nice guy was talking to me on the way to the bar last night and we were having a conversation about women - when we got there another friend of a friend (female friend of a female friend actually) was introduced to us and he actually picked her up without doing anything hillareously comedic, didn't need to shmooze too hard on her, and it really left me wondering not only about my own take on other people and social rules but just how much of my AS and how it's effecting me are really self-imposed walls that I've put up by by being uptight and having these overinflated ideas of how much game a person needs to do well with people of either gender conversation/relationship/friendship wise.

I was also listening in to my friend's conversations when we went to a bar down the street and following the social dynamics there (probably about 7 of us by then) and I was seeing exactly what I usually miss in terms of the social subtleties and it's not even a lack of understanding of social stuff, not at all. The problem is that my conscious mind has a very strange and different skew on immediate reality itself, which seems like a very empowering and independent one when your by yourself or needing to get things done, but its horrible for social interaction and being in a bar and being able to see exactly how my consciousness was almost flowing against other peoples at times had me really doing what I could to counteract it as well as me pretty much promising that I'd beat my own a** if I didn't remember this today. It's my life, the quality of it really is in my hands, and at the same time if I really can controll it this much it just disgusts me that I'm finally finding this out or, more realistically, retaining it at the age of 26.......(shakes his head). Point is it really I have it in me to be fully fledged NT if I just applied my thinking and practiced that other state of conscience I was observing, just that whether or not I can pull that off has a lot to do with whether I can get arround my own BS. I do feel like I have neurobiological problems to a point but then again I almost wonder now how muh of that might be ware and tare that my mental processes and habits are putting on me.