Are you very high-functioning?
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never got married before. never even gone on a date. everyone that romantically expressed a desire to be with, had something extreme going on with them, such that it had to be a dealbreaker.
only worked at minimum wage jobs. got fired.
that, despite a BA in cognitive science and AA in Accounting.
volunteered at a couple jobs. numerous times, ret*ds had the nerve to tell me off.
no precious lil "friends". they dumped me.
with the exception of livejournal, no e-friends either.
and this is "As Good As it Gets."
numerous things could make my "life" worse. sooner or later $$ will run out. financial poverty.
rape, physical assault
disease/disability
social rejection
those things are bound to happen sooner or later
and besides i am 34. mentally getting slower and slower. more clinically depressed. physically weaker. emotionally more fragile.
in every way i am gradually getting worse.
unless something really wierd happens my "life" cannot and will not get better.
sometimes i just wanna lie on the ground all day long.
almost every time i try to do something i fail
and the punishment for failure is sometimes beyond imagination.
while successes. rewards. small rewards. or no rewards.
risk not worth the reward
self preservation
cost benefit analysis
feel so exhausted
like anemic or something
usually don't wanna talk to nobody for days on end
Evil_Chuck
Velociraptor
Joined: 24 Aug 2014
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Posts: 494
Location: Lost in my thoughts.
It's hard to say how high-functioning I am. I can't get inside another Aspie's head and accurately judge their abilities and thought processes. I only know myself.
Generally, a lot of people seem to sense something "off" about me whether I'm trying to hide it or not. When I'm not trying to mask my social difficulties, people get nervous or ask me what's wrong. When I am trying to compensate (fake smiles, forced small talk, etc.) it isn't much better.
I think I've been lucky. I have family members who don't understand but have been willing to help me out. I've been able to get jobs here and there, although none of them has turned out particularly well. I've never been married; I don't desire marriage, romantic companionship, or children. I've had only one sexual partner, and she had issues of her own. Twice I've tried to live independently and failed.
I'm 32 and I feel about forty years older. Worn out, discouraged, afraid of people and the future. A better question is, do I function at all? And I'd have to say, "barely." It's become noticeably worse in the last five years or so.
_________________
RAADS-R SCORE: 163.0
FUNNY DEATH METAL LYRICS OF THE WEEK: 'DEMON'S WIND' BY VADER
Clammy frog descends
Demon's wind, the stars answer your desire
Join the undead, that's the place you'll never leave
You wanna die... but death cannot do us apart...
Generally, a lot of people seem to sense something "off" about me whether I'm trying to hide it or not. When I'm not trying to mask my social difficulties, people get nervous or ask me what's wrong. When I am trying to compensate (fake smiles, forced small talk, etc.) it isn't much better.
I think I've been lucky. I have family members who don't understand but have been willing to help me out. I've been able to get jobs here and there, although none of them has turned out particularly well. I've never been married; I don't desire marriage, romantic companionship, or children. I've had only one sexual partner, and she had issues of her own. Twice I've tried to live independently and failed.
I'm 32 and I feel about forty years older. Worn out, discouraged, afraid of people and the future. A better question is, do I function at all? And I'd have to say, "barely." It's become noticeably worse in the last five years or so.
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Axis 5: Global Area Functioning. psychologists use it as a scale of 0 to 100 (100 the highest), to rate how well someone is functioning. yes, it is vague and subjective. but at least it is some sort of scale. however inaccurate.
when i was 21, the psychologist that diagnosed me gave me 65. not too low. but since then, my GAF has drastically declined.
quite frankly i do not even know how to "compensate", the way that you do.
relationships are completely out of the question. can barely do social interactions. if i could do them, i would.
yeah i feel discouraged and worn out too. and afraid of precious lil "people". in that way i feel older than my 34 years. and i feel like i have exhausted all the options. lost cause. beyond repair. too far gone "a day late, a dollar short"
in some ways i feel younger than 34. strangers sometimes tell me i am a teen. and i have never dated anyone. never worked a job that was not minimum wage. never married or had children. do not know how to cook, parallel park, or fix the car. do not know how to do household repair. do not know emotional regulation. do not know how to maintain friendships. do not know how to invest in the stock market.
Eclipse247
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: 15 Aug 2016
Age: 63
Gender: Male
Posts: 52
Location: Near Bath UK.
My unhappiness comes from groups of people.
I keep my interactions brief, and with individuals. So they can't gang up on me and do the whole clique/gossip/"he's not one of us" thing.
I also keep people separated from each other, my 'friend' won't know about another friend.
If I have a funeral they can all meet and gossip about me then.
I make sure they only know one topic about me - the interest that we share, hobby.
Most people will judge you very quickly if you say something that is not politically correct, even if it is the truth, even if they secretly believe it themselves!
They won't mind too much if you are indifferent about things or fail to have an opinion - being fickle is the Neurotypical way, you'll appear as 'Normal'
I also now try to do this. It's amazing how the NT's follow their tribe mentality to gang up on another whilst the concept of right and wrong is an insignificant matter! '1984' seems to also explore this, however the NT's seem to be using it as an instruction manual.
The key is to stop worrying what others think or how they will react.
Because they will always make wrong/false assuptions.
You will always make some mistakes, and piss people off, even when you try not to.
No matter what you do.
I'm not saying to not try, but, just do your best and learn from misktakes as best you can without unbalancing the scale with worry.
With this answer, bear in mind that I'm probably not autistic. I have dyspraxia with a lot of autistic traits (obsessions, social problems, repetitive/stimming behaviour, and mild sensory issues).
I'm high-functioning enough that I can hold down a job and a relationship for years on end. My condition means that I still can't drive, though - or even do anything that requires certain motor skills (like climb ladders). I often feel burned out from trying to be normal all day. I get lost easily, and I struggle with time management. I can be too open and childlike at times. I also have a lot of social anxiety because of my way of saying the wrong thing and alienating people. My dyspraxia gives me this problem of having too much empathy, and I sometimes feel physically sick from worrying about people.
That said, my level of independence is something a lot people (even those like me who have autistic spectrum conditions but not autism proper) don't have.
This seems to be one common theme of our lives. Is the concept of autistic burnout known much at all to therapists? It seems what they call skill learning, we call masking, which leads to burnout. Too, too common, from what I've read here.
Indeed, my wife is a Teaching Assistant for a little boy who has is clearly very intelligent (he finds maths he is interested in easy and every other subject, for that matter), but cannot function on his own.
I'm realizing that no, I'm not. Although, trying to get an accurate understanding of that is difficult, and has been an ongoing thing for me for a while now. I just didn't know about the asd aspects of it before.
In some ways I am, I suppose. I've managed to survive a long time on my own. But never managed to do much more than survive. No friends, really. Barely any connections, even with my family. Never married. One relationship that lasted more than a year (and was kind of a disaster). A few that made it about six months.
Never held a job for more than three months. Never rented a place in my own name. Honestly I've never lived on my own, I've always had housemates, and often been the guy on the couch.
I don't even think I've managed to blend in on anything other than the most superficial level. I regularly go long periods of time during which my only social interaction consists of paying for groceries.
There are some good things. In the areas that I excel, I'm usually so far above and beyond that it's just ridiculous. But even then, there's always a central aspect in which I really don't function. I'm a talented musician, but I've only actually played with one other person, for example. I don't even know any other musicians at this point. I don't even know where to find them.
And it's kind of like that with everything else.
Most of the time I'm ok with that. And I can make do, and even be satisfied with it.
And that's all an effort to spare the details.
It's weird. It's sort of like how I'm pretty intelligent, but I can't do math. It's like I've got a loaded deck in some ways, but the ways my deck is loaded are almost completely irrelevant when it comes to functioning in society.
I've been described as dickensian by more than one person. It's a long story. It's hard to tell whether it's a comedy or a tragedy. Too early to tell, I suppose.
I imagine this post is kind of scattered.
It's been on my mind quite a bit lately and I felt like writing something.
Well, I don't like functioning labels. But I suppose I would be considered such, in that I have high intelligence, am verbal, and can do well in school. On the other hand, when I was in school, I experienced a lot of stress and meltdowns, and now I don't really do any social activities. I don't know yet how I'll do with living independently, either.
I tell myself that I am, to a certain extent. If I believe that I'm not, I'll fall into a state of conditioned helplessness and won't do anything productive. If I believe that I'm really capable, I tend not to work as hard. My crippling fear of not being good enough for society drives me to put in substantial effort to improve as a person. The goal is to become superior to the average human. So I guess I'm functional enough to manipulate my own thoughts and beliefs, which I guess is pretty good. I can also think without an emotional bias because emotions mean nothing to me.
I'm probably a reasonably high functioning Aspie.
I have 4 sons, one from a previous marriage and 3 with my current partner.
I've been with my current partner for 13 years. We get on well because, even though she's an NT, she's quite like me, and we have similar interests.
I struggle with work, and only ever last about 6 months till I quit, so we swapped work roles about 4 years ago. So now she works full time and I look after the house & kids. It works quite well.
I can manage social situations quite well if they're short. Maybe a couple of hours. I struggle if it's longer than that, or if it's more than a couple of times a week. I don't meltdown or anything, but I just become grumpy and antisocial.
I don't have what I would call close friends, just a few friendly acquaintances.
The thing that bothers me is, as I get older, I'm finding the social stuff more difficult. I feel guilty that the kids are missing out on things because I don't want to do stuff. The missis is good at dragging me out on the weekends, which is great, otherwise I'd never do anything. But I can't help feeling bad when I'm scolding them for running around and being too loud, when "normal" families are loud and crazy!
I try to let them get on with it these days, while I hide in the kitchen, so I don't get too stressed lol
_________________
AQ: 42
EQ-60: 3
Aspie: 147
NT: 54
RAADS-R: 186
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