hello!

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Joined: 27 Dec 2012
Gender: Female
Posts: 1

28 Dec 2012, 8:01 pm

Hello lovelies. i'm not 100% sure if I should be on here so I hope you don't mind i'm a girl, 20, i live in the UK. i was diagnosed with OCD last year, and I'm currently studying and getting my life together.

i haven't been diagnosed with asperger's/autism, but i think i might be on the spectrum. nobody in my family has been diagnosed and they're sensitive about discussing it. but i have researched the topic in detail and noticed that i and many members of my family (on one side) have what seem to be asperger's traits.
these family members are all very intelligent people, who aren't very good with people they don't know well. they love words. their approach to language and art is amazing because it's so playful, creative and different from how most people see the world. they have strict routines and definite special interests. we all have odd speech patterns, and a couple of my relatives have facial tics. they get so excited about their interests that they can talk about them for ages, if it's in a situation where they feel safe (i'm the same, and most normal people tell me off for talking at them.) one of my close relatives gets extremely upset when his routines for meals are disturbed, and he spends hours reading about, talking about and watching videos on his favourite topics. i don't know how much of this is undiagnosed OCD and how much of it might be asperger's but I read the two disorders can often overlap (i think our brains are just giant venn diagrams, really... )

i don't know really.

none of my relatives have been diagnosed with anything.

i don't know how to sit them down and talk about the possibility of being on the spectrum. and i wish there wasn't such a stigma around it, because i think it's not good or bad, it's not an illness, it just IS.
i think my family are amazing and I love them to bits, so i don't want to hurt their feelings.

for myself... I feel like a martian a lot of the time...
i'm very emotional (some say over-emotional), i love people and animals, and i love art. i also write. people often tell me i don't think properly, or tell me that i "filter reality" (what that means, i don't know) and an aspect of my experience is always feeling out of place in the world.

anyway, i don't get to talk about these issues (families, the spectrum, self diagnosis) with most people, and this looks like a safe space to discuss it. let's talk?

thanks for reading,

with love,

-m.m. xxx