Would like to hear from Asperger adults 40+ Special Insights

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Welcome Carter: There is much in your post that is familiar and I want to comment, but I'm watching Denver vs. KC right now and I'm too distracted.

I'm so pleased that this is turning out to be a terrific thread!

Hello Gonewild, I so get the being distracted part. Which is why I don't often listen to music while I'm focused on the computer. Which is why when I try to, I often have to shut the music off and have the silence or risk having my head short out and burn down on me. So no worries, I so get it.

I'm glad you're pleased, and I'm glad you started it. Now I should go back and start at the beginning to catch up I think. An interesting side note, August 12th is when first started looking into this and took the Aspie Test at RDOS the first time.

Oh my, I so get this, especially the lack of boundaries between arts and sciences. Which is in part why one of my nicknames as I said is Carter, another is Sunshine. I've studied both arts and sciences, and spent years working as a consultant instead of as and employee. I could get in, get the job done, and get out. I survived school by being invisible, having grown and learned more skills for dealing with all sorts of things in life, I'm way less invisible, but like - need - must have - the ability to disappear into the wild, or a closet full of books.

I'm really digging this thread too.

I also think I should mention that part of why Adult Aspies are invisible is because when we were children, they didn't even have a diagnosis for us yet. So that means we're all trying to figure this all out, and by this point in life, we've all found our way here. Both to diagnosis of one sort or another, and a body of skills and adaptations that have allowed us to survive and thrive in our own way this long.

I'm 49 and just joined a waiting list to be diagnosed with Asperger's. We have to take into account that when we were young the syndrome wasn't known, although some of our generation who are affected were diagnosed with "borderline autism", such as Daryl Hannah.

In my case, all major signs for autism (apart from the lingual development) were there in my childhood, and I really should have got a diagnosis. However, in hindsight I doubt that with a diagnosis I would have put that much effort into fitting in and developing coping mechanisms as I have, so there are two sides to it.

I basically spent 25 years of my life desperately trying to fit into society and another 25 accepting that I was different. I work in childcare because I relate to children a lot better than to adults, and I also help an autistic child with his homework. For many years I've said that I have autistic traits myself, but recently I realised that it's more than just that - and I have to say that this realisation came as a great relief since all my problems (well, most of them) now have an explanation.

I was first diagnosed as bipolar 27 years ago after searching for a diagnosis for 15 years! No doctor, or psych thought there was anything wrong with me despite epic manic-depressive episodes every 6 months. I was too high-functioning to be "ill." Instead I was treated like I had been as a child and was told to shape up! Other people are really suffering... Wow. That was hard. Once diagnosed, that was it - any problem I had was attributed to bipolar. Lithium worked (still does) for me, and brought the bipolar symptoms under control, but there was all this other stuff leftover, which various psychs. and therapists still attributed to BP.

One day, I began describing my father to my therapist, whom I suspected was Aspergers, not even thinking that it applied to me, but alarm bells began going off. My T. revealed that he had often thought that bipolar was inadequate to explain my severe social anxiety, total confusion about social behavior, etc. He had not suggested it earlier, he said, because he had accepted the old idea that female Aspergers are extremely rare, plus, wouldn't someone have diagnosed Aspergers when I was a child? Well, no - I'm an older adult and that just didn't happen back then.

I began looking into it and found research that focused on female Aspies, who it turns out, have different behavior than males. There I was! We are continuing to learn about Aspergers together: not many therapists would be that open. He encourages my ideas and study of Aspergers because he's seen the results. I'm so much more confident in my intuitive, pre-social skin!

Hello Frank! I'm glad I wasn't diagnosed as a child; I think the stigma back then would have been overwhelming, and likewise, I would have resisted all attempts at being reprogrammed - it's impossible anyway. I feel badly for Aspie kids today - a diagnosis does not mean appropriate treatment, since Aspergers (or the disorder formerly known as Aspergers) is seen as something to treat as a defect rather than as human potential to be cultivated.

Do you have any links you could post here? I know there's a difference between myself and the men Aspies who make up the majority of the group I'm in; there's only one other woman who comes regularly out of the eight that make up the group. But there's not much written down that I can find. And it seems to mostly focus on teens and under. Older women Aspies have differences from younger women Aspies because we had to find ways to cope without knowing what we were coping with.

I was going to post a link to a site I had found, aspergerwomenunited.org. But whoever had it let the domain lapse. There's just a placeholder there now.

There is this: List of Female Asperger's Traits

Hello OnPorpoise: I have a scan of a chart, but the image upload only takes a URL. This is a jpeg on my computer... anyone know how to upload a jpeg here?

It came from www.help4aspergers.com

I totally agree. I see it as a state, such as being left-handed or double-jointed. Treating it as a disability certainly is no help!

This is going to take me a while, as I am entering the text using an iPhone, and my sausage fingers are too wide for the onscreen keyboard. Ergo, I'm typing one letter at a time with a stylus. The exercise is particularly frustrating because I'm a very fast typist on an ordinary keyboard, but may not use the desktop PC right in front of me. You see, I'm losing my job of 8 years, and have been expressly informed that -- as my remaining duties consist of nothing but filing -- I should not really be using the computer at all.

I was informed by my psychiatrist just this summer (at age 42) that I was a strong candidate for AS. Clearly, from some of the posts I've read here today, there are certain quantitative assessments of the condition to which I have not been formally been subjected. Additionally, when mentioning my doctor's opinion on a different anonymous board, I was strongly advised to take the news with a heaping helping of salt. The modest amount of research I've done on AS, however, as well as a second concurring diagnosis from a local specialist, have persuaded me that I am, as the local parlance goes, on the Wrong Planet.

I strongly suspect that my disclosure of this condition to my employer is the principal reason that I am still sitting at my workstation at this moment instead of applying for unemployment. I think they're a) hoping that I'm job searching so that I might possibly make further action on their part unnecessary; and b) gathering as much proof as they can that my presence here has been redundant -- which would, I'm sure, serve as part of their defensive legal strategy should I try to lodge any complaint citing the Americans With Disabilities Act -- a step I have no plans to take. The pay scale is pathetic, I've zero chances for advancement, and I'm fed up with the way the way I've been treated here. Even if they changed their minds right now and asked me to carry on as before, I'd still be determined to leave.

But I'm really, REALLY scared.

The job search process is incredibly intimidating for me. I have a BA in history from a prestigious university, am highly computer literate, and have a history of career longevity. But certain symptoms that have only reared their ugly heads in the past few years (crippling lethargy and panic attacks) make the prospect of finding a suitable job seem insurmountable.

I've been aware of this site for some time now but haven't given it much of my time. In fact, this is the first thread I've read all the way through and my first post. I've taken a great deal of comfort from what some of you have had to say, and will be paying close attention to the site's resources and advice for job hunting.

My very best to each of you, and I'll be seeing you around.

I uploaded the URL and it puts the image up here. This is better than just linking to it.

[img][800:656]http://www.help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58d4f6a/images/img244154ad237783e339.JPG[/img]

Yes, much better. It's amazing that this is the only (?) chart I've seen that characterizes females. I find it a good match to my habits and behavior, except stimming. I've never been a stimmerer.

Hello. I mean to introduce myself formally later. But I'm 44, and unofficially diagnosed. My son (7) was at the Neurologist, and.she was getting a social history
From observing me and reading the letter I wrote, she has little doubt that I have it

Official diagnosis is optional, but she reccomends it for purposes of job accommodation.

Of course it "didn't exist" when I was growing up. It was all about "He's a bright kid, but he just isn't trying!" Followed by long, humiliating interrogations at home.

My dad also has it to the nth degree. After a prolonged visit, my first wife asked for a divorce. She had visions of.becoming my mom: caregiver, organizer and manager.

Very understandable in retrospect.

Can we see a pattern in most of our stories? Kids who are different - just don't see the world as a social pyramid, maybe just want to explore, experience, exist; don't pay attention to school or parental demands; sensitive to sounds, smells, tastes and touch and fascinated by how the world works. Very alive inside, but seen as too dumb or too smart, disobedient, not interested in what NTs see as the very definition of being human - being social - sacrificing one's individuality to rules that simply give power to a few and engender competing for attention, status and the approval of authority figures. Being defined by trivial tests of popularity had no MEANING for me. I felt confined in a net of negative reactions and was taught to fear the anger of adults rather than to respect their skills and knowledge. A child in these circumstances is unable to grow. The developmental deficits that are judged to be inherent in the child may actually be the product of a hostile environment.

I always hated going to the zoo. Watching big cats meant to roam free but pacing, pacing in concrete jails. Chimps banging their heads against bars, rocking to soothe their pain; animals harming themselves, becoming violent and acting out against their "keeper" and then punished for it. All because "caring and empathetic" social humans had no ability to see the suffering their cruelty had caused.

It may seem a harsh comparison, but caged wild animals behave like that - just like abused human children.

I've never stimmed either. Unless I do but don't realize it's stimming? I have most of the rest of the traits also.

There needs to be more studies of Autism (Asperger's) and females. We differ from males in several important ways. I think we have increased anxiety because, even though we do better -- at least for short periods -- with socialization and small talk, society has much higher expectations for women than for men.

My mother told me over and over again, " I know you're smart, you know you're smart, but whatever you do, don't let the boys know. No man wants to marry a girl who's smarter than he is." I thought she was an idiot, but for the most part, all those dont's turned out to be true.

I think that as long as we "looked nice" or took some interest in our appearance, and did well in school - well that was it; we were okay. No one worried about our frustration or boredom or inner turmoil. We were going to get married and have kids, period. I remember one teacher telling me after I said something about a career, that the purpose of educating girls was so that they could help their own children with homework. It's a wonder we didn't act out as much as boys. There were plenty of times I wanted to throw a chair across the room and run out screaming.

The strategy of hiding in a group of girls and learning to mimic social behavior really describes me in high school.
I got along much better with men in work situations; they focused on the work itself rather than the endless tedious gossip, backstabbing and narcissism of the women.