Newb from Cleveland

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Hi. My name is Matt, I'm 25, and I'm here from Cleveland OH (got dx'd at the Clinic back in 1991). I'm not all that new to the online chat communities, I've been on Aspie Hangout and Aspergian Island for a while now, but I've been joining a lot of new sites I guess in attempt to make new friends, meet new people, maybe even run into some people from out where I'm at.

As for my whole story I'm more shadow AS than anything but my ways of thinking still lend me to having "too unique" of a personality to really fit in with most people (even though my social skills over all have gotten pretty good through the years). On the bright side I do have my close friends but finding people I can click with other than just the superficial diplomacy is rare.

I guess what I've been struggling with the most recently is the fact that I have a very internal locus of control, feel like I should be able to have anything I put my mind toward achieving, but at the same time with AS there are a lot of things about my life (more or less where the ball is left in someone elses court) that I can't do much about really. IRL I try to keep my witt about me, act like everythings cool, and as I understand it that's about the only way you can gravitate the things you want in an NT world - pretend you don't need em or already have em.

As it is right now I'm working 20 - 25 hours a week in the restaurant industry, I'm in college full time majoring in accounting, and I find keeping myself busy with stuff like that helps keep my mind off the fact that my life's on an autopilot trip to a place I never had the desire to admit it was going. Maybe in a few years that'll just change on it's own but from what I've noticed from talking to a lot of other people, it tends not to work like that all that often.

PS. Sorry if the intro is a little whiney, just that his is a side of me you probably won't see that often. I may not be on here much more than once a week since I'm digging my way through one of my hardest school semester's yet but I'll do my best.

Nice to meet you all, I'm sure I'll see plenty of familiar faces arround here as well.

Cool. Welcome to the site. How is Ohio treating you?

Lol, it really hasn't treated me any which way. Things are kind of bland out here in general.

Funny you should say that. Earlier today, my friends and i were talking about how boring ohio was.

Yep. If your in Columbus or Cinci it's alright but outside of that - pretty boring.

Hi, Welcome to the site. What does "Shaddow AS" mean?

As far as I know its when you have a lot of 'symptoms' of AS, but they don't cause enough of a problem for you in everyday life to officially be classed as a 'disorder'. In other words sub-clinical AS.

Oh and Welcome to wrong planet Matt

I think shadow AS is also a term they throw out for people who've learned to cover it almost completely IRL over the years. Then again there was some kind of detailed AQ test that was going arround at Aspergian Island a while back - it still rated my autistic IQ as 121 right now against 142 when I was a kid. I had and still have that approach where instead of really trying to beat out my AS ways of thinking, I've done more to translate my self-expression into the NT-appropriate equivalent. If anything, there are some ways of thinking I like too much or feel are too perceptive to wanna let go of. Trying meet that blend ofAS and NT style where one actually plays off of and enhances the other is a bit tricky but from the looks of things - so far so good.

Yep I agree- especially with adults its hard to tell just how much of our behaviour is due to the coping mechanisms we've developed over the years.

The reason I put 'officially' in my explanation was that I personally think that as adults we get so used to coping and covering up our 'weirdness' that people seem to think we have a lot less problems coping than we do.

Indeed - in my case, my 'coping' and 'disguise' mechanisms are so well polished and perfected that one bloke I told about my AS simply refuses to believe I have it as I "don't have any problems relating to people or making eye contact"!

Even though acting normal tends to lessen a lot of real obvious dangers, there are definitely some trade offs. In my case I've have mad respect from the guys but I probably couldn't get a girlfriend to save my life. Not that there aren't enough who flirt with me or try, just that I don't come off the right angles that they take as signs of interest being reflected back. Another problem - women seem to want real quick confirmation or rejection based on looks quite often, with me I can't do that - personality means way more. ALmost every time I size up a girls's psychology I realize that most of the time they could only handle either the surface layer of my personality, if she's enough of a close-but-not-quite it'll be maybe half-way to the center, but I always find that the more I look at em, the more aparent that finding out who I am under all this would smack em, leave em stunned for a few minutes, and have em ease out the back door like they just realised they weren't dating another human. It's not even that I do or say anything wonr, just that the organization of my thought processes, motivations, and whole personal trajectoy is that intolerably far from the norm. Even when I do meet some who I feel could handle that - it turns out that almost any other guy out there ther than me would make em much happier much more naturally and hold em back so much less in life.

That's just one thing I love about it though, it's like the more a guy with AS gets himself to be a man by NT standards, the more you seal your fate in that the only one redeeming trait you have on that market (being innocent and goofy enough to spark a woman's maternal side) gets traded away. For the longest time I really thought that working on a lot of things would help but, if anything I've realized it's more of a mutually exclusive zone where you have AS, then again your too crisped up to have the aspie appeal, therefor you really aren't right for anyone and you end up stuck out in this mutually exclusive zone rather than extending yout possibilities to new groups(if you wonder why I'd care to, it's something about my personality that's sharply crisscrossed with my AS exterior).

Lol, didn't mean to unload on you, just that it's one of those things on the topic of "acting normal" where I realise I may be jading myself to a point.

Welcome Techstep!! I live in Columbus. Right now it's pretty boring because the weather is really wierd right now. In the 50's here today, but; snow is coming for the weekend!

Yeah, it's been pretty erratic here too.

So familiar...

That sounds so much like me.

Over the years I've learnt to cope in an NT world, had to learn how they think and what they do.

I still have some symptoms that don't go away, but other than that alot of people would be shocked to think that I had AS.

Obviously we don't change much at the core - otherwise we probably wouldn't feel the need to be here so often.