Some observations from an Half Aspie

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I was reading all the posts on Gavin Bollard's Aspie blog this evening, and I remembered my realisation that I don't really fit in properly with either Aspies or NTs. I had five years of speech and behavioural therapy when I was younger, and although I'm told by NTs that they don't realise I'm an Aspie, I still feel different and it's often hard to accept that I'll never be like them. It's kind of like everyone else is a piece of a jigsaw. They all fit together well, but I'm from a different jigsaw. Although I can bend to fit in the hole, I'll still not fit perfectly, and often they'll be bits of me that suddenly spring out of the hole. As my brother put it, it's never long before I say something surprising. Conversely, when I try and fit myself into the Aspie jigsaw I still don't fit: I'm NT in too many ways. There's enough Aspie left in me to be considered one if you know the signs, but the therapy I had as a child has moved me into an awkward position where I've got one foot in each camp rather than both feet in one camp. It's a bizarre and inherently unsatisfactory feeling.

One of the most obvious problems of this Aspie/NT duality is handling relationships. I can make and maintain friends without too much difficulty. I'm told the quirkiness resulting from being an Aspie is actually endearing, but I've recently concluded that if and when I am lucky enough to get a girlfriend, there's going to come a point where I run out of techniques and I'm back to writing myself a mental instruction manual. Suddenly the relationship will become one-way, where she will have to tell me what to do because I simply won't know how. In an ideal world, of course, I'll have two lives instead of one. In the first, I'll spend the whole time learning all the rules. In the second, I'll have all the tools required to succeed in the NT world, and I won't have to waste time manually programming in other people's thought and behaviour patterns. Then I'll write a comprehensive book so other Aspies with only one life will know what to do. It will be hundreds of pages long.

There are, of course, good things about my situation. I like the illiteral nature of the NT world -- in some respects it is more interesting and entertaining because of the lack of logic. In most cases I am socially accepted by NTs since I'm practised enough to pass off as one of them, and for some reason the things I realise could be interpreted as outrageously offensive once I've said them are not taken that way at all. That said, I can still shock others without meaning to if I'm not careful. Having Asperger's means I can make some eye-wateringly severe observations or insinuations when the motive behind what I say is totally innocent. Luckily this tends to be futher down the line once I've got to know people a little better, so they tend to be more forgiving of my slip-ups. The most recent example happened with my work colleague eight months after starting my current job. The colleague in question is about to move house to a small rental, and she was talking about it. I said, "Is it closer to a cardboard box than what you already have?" All I was trying to do was to get a better picture of how big it was. Then she pointed out that I was saying her current house was tiny. Even worse, I'd visited her house just a few days before, and although it is small it is nowhere near as tiny as I unintentionally implied. It was simply bad luck on my part: I'd heard small flats/houses described as cardboard boxes as indicators of size, and in true aspie style I screwed up my sentence. It was awkward for me once she pointed out what I'd said, but I suspect it stung her a lot more than she let on.

So, those are my observations from stradelling the Aspie and NT worlds. My position is painful in some ways and wonderful in others, and although I'll never be entirely happy, life is certainly more fun because of it.

hey, I just wanted to pipe up here and tell you it probably isn't your therapy that makes you feel this way. I was only diagnosed recently, and my experience is similar. For those of us who are highly functioning, life is a parade of masks we wear in public, while in our brains we flip through all those manuals you talked about. It's very unsatisfactory sometimes. Now, I don't feel like "passing" anymore, and had exhausted myself trying to constantly work my way through the world as someone I wasn't. Not sure what that means, but I guess it might be reassuring to think that your therapy didn't "steal" your Aspie-ness from you, just taught you the masks you need to get by--if you so choose. It doesn't take away your Aspieness, and what you're experiencing is quite normal for many of us.

I agree with Pandorazmtbox. You're not alone in feeling the way you do.

Almost everything in life can be a disappointment if you think of things in terms of what they should be, or what you want them to be, or what they could be. Yet, at the same time, every experience and encounter in your life is an opportunity for you to learn / gain something new. You would be surprised at how many disappointing people have something to offer you if you take the time to figure out what it is.

If you really want to be way more mature than many people, then stop living in a world that doesn't exist (your expectations) and find a reason to make everything that happens to you a positive situation. Comparing people, and comparing life to what you think it should be is an endless battle, and its one that people rarely win. There are way more things that don't happen than things that do happen, and you can't base your life around them, its living in an imaginary world. Life / the world is take it or leave it.

Its a lot easier to come up with a reason not to do something than it is to actually change and build something good in your life, but I think its what separates happy people from unhappy people - the ability to accept everything that happens to you in life, and finding a reason to like it.

ZakFiend, I am generally happy in life and with myself. I take things in my stride and attempt to make the best of what I get, so I'm not living in my own little world as you seem to think. However, the feeling that I don't fully belong in either the Aspie or NT worlds is always under the surface. It's hard to look at the easy life NTs have and not notice the difference. Whichever way you look at it, I am different from them. That said, it's a lot easier than it was when I was much younger, or, in computer game lingo, it's less of a save/reload frenzy. However, you make some valid points. Thanks for that!

No problem, I just wanted to make sure you weren't trying to expect unrealistic things out of the world that the world can't give you, because many people do that kind of thing.

I totally relate CrinkleyCrustacean though I'm perhaps a little less functional than you. I'm good at starting friendships but I am rarely able to maintain or progress it past week 1-3. It takes a mutual friend or a force denvironment like college/work for me to develop a friendship past the surface stage.

i was just like you until about a year ago when crippling depression set in and my ability to don these social masks has dissapeared. . Most of my life I've been able to put on masks and be social enough to just get by- perhaps only enough to be seen as awkward but reasonably intelligent and able o grasp the gist of social rules and tact. I'm able to understand them but go about doing it in awkward and predetermined ways like a chemist creating different concoctions based on formulas he'she has learned in his/her schooling. For me its a school of LIFE and my concoctions are social interactions...ive learned enough formulas to create appropriate responses for certain social situations but there are a lot of 'formulas' left to learn.

i'm stuck in a strange borderland between aspie and nt...not aspie enough to be clearly seen as an aspie but not normal enough to pass as normal. It hurts because I never fully fit in any group in my life and I don't fully fit in the Aspie group either

Thanks for posting that, tangomike, sometimes I get to feeling like the only one. My life was going along smoothly enough that I could deny there was a problem (it was there, but we all pretended it wasn't). The depression has forced my masks off and I'm really struggling to get through each day by being true to the person who has been underneath them all these years. I'm not sure who she is. Meanwhile, I'm working so hard to be friends with me, I don't really have time to gather any other friends.

You and I are in the same boat, i thought i was the only one going through this, what a relief! Well not really, but at least we know we arent alone. I had a bad mushroom trip w/pot at the same time 1.5 years ago in college and the mental barrier that I had put up for all my life (the one blocking out any thoughts of me being weird, strange/somethings wrong with me) came crashing down. I gained very depressive insights into my life and what i had been doing. i was a fake, i was acting for everybody and havnt been true to myself ever. i was so afraid of rejection that i just conformed to every person i met so that they would like me cuz i am deathly terrified of being alone....and I was pretty much alone except for my family. Until that point I was "friend gathering" like a facebook friend wh*re in real life, making hundreds of surface friends and exaggerating our levelr of friendships to make me feel like i had many friends. True, many of em do like me but its in the same way that you would see an acquaintance across the street and say, "oh i havnt seen him in a while, hes a really nice guy".

After the mushroom trip I realized I had almost no real friends- just three of four that i dont see that often. The psychological impact of going from thinking I had hundreds of friends to almost none crushed me and I got VERY depressed (the two years of pot use exasperated it greatly)... anther thing i previously blocked out and gained insight into was that not everyone liked me either, many people have left me after they spent time with me or they outright wanted nothing to do with me.....i also realized that i have Borderline personality Disorder from all the emotional trauma, low self esteem and rejection ive experienced, but like my AS I blocked it out. To make it simpler it was like I blocked out all of my thoughts on my AS and blocked out 50% of my Borderline Peronality Disorder symptms as well. Now the 'awakening' from the drugs destroyed that metaphorical dam and released the river of problems into my conciousness- hence the depression and more intense BPD.

im still depressed today and its been almost two years since that bad trip. Like you, I am working on myself now and have no desire to branch out and make new friends, im making some progress not a lot....the depression is a factor cuz im in the mind state of 'whats the use, other ppl are innately different from me and its just too hard to act to be their friend"...the one positive thing from all this is now the cats out of the bag (though I feel like I want to shove it back and tie it up forever!) and I am aware of what I was doing my whole life. I even noticed that I had written, "other people are innately different FROM ME" rather than "I'm innately different from other people so whats the use" meaning ive truely focused on myself now. ...and now that I have its like using a muscle or skill you havnt used in years...im so rusty at "being myself", its having to build my personality from ground up so im very awkward right now. The depression destroyed my will and energy to be able to put on those social masks and make facial expressions so its hard for me to function day to day socially....im actually a recluse right now becuase i took time off from college due to depression/suicidal thoughts and returned home. I'm just idlying sitting around my parents house watching TV, playin video games, reading, cleanin the house/yardwork and going to the gym occasionally until i can get medication for the depression and start Diabetical Behavioral Therapy for my Borderline PD.

Being at home all day makes me feel like a loser but I just realized that thats what it would be had I been NT. Being a loser means you choose not to try doing things you WANT to do...you lack the will to even try. I used to try and I did be social but I learned that was all just a show for others, not what I actually wanted.

I truly do not wish to be socializing like my friends and acquaintances on a daily basis and going out to do social things all day. I used to do that and it was exhausting- at the end of days when i was out doing social things all day - hanging out, goin to the beach, going to the mall and in public, dates, goin out at night to parties- I thought to myself "ok, I got through today and I kept up my appearances"- i didnt truely enjoy most of it, though I do like spending time with my friends.

How are you rebuilding yourself/ being the"real you"? im not really sure how to do it.

if you guys want, PM me or add me on facebook or something, i could sure use somebody to talk to whos going thru the same ordeal.

CrinklyCrustracean, I'm in exactly the same boat – some aspie characteristics, not all of them. I think people tend to forget that Aspergers is a spectrum that can affect people to different extents, and also that we're all individuals, not just case histories with boxes that need ticking off. Absolutely nobody fits in a box.

Instead of not belonging to either group, rather think of it as partially belonging to two groups – having x and y in common with NTs, and a and b in common with Aspies.

I've only recently been diagnosed at the end of a long process of depression, desperation and feelings of inadequacy, and if the effect of that absolutely liberating diagnosis has taught me anything, it's that it's perfectly valid to be yourself, need what you need, and rejoice in the things you can do. My diagnosis as an Aspie helps me understand myself, but if I start treating it as a checklist I know it'll be one more straightjacket of requirements in life that I have to scramble to fulfil, probably in vain.

And of course, so far I'm only liberated in my own head. Now I need to convince my mom my psychologist knows what she's talking about and I'm not "looking for an excuse not to socialise" and my dad that tactile defensiveness isn't something I can just "get over so I can get married"