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Hus
Emu Egg
Emu Egg

Joined: 20 Oct 2022
Age: 35
Gender: Female
Posts: 7

02 Dec 2022, 10:56 am

Hello,

This will probably a long post. I don't know how to summarize it. I am 34 , I don't have a job for a long time. It's ok financially now because my husband earns enough for both of us and he knows about my struggles and accepts them. So it should be fine. I do voluntary work as much as I can (few hours a week), because getting social is a huge thing for me. I am a feminist since my childhood. I was grown up in a very traditional environment that didn't really respect women. Somehow I realized it was wrong. So since my childhood I educated myself about equality, women's rights etc... Equality or justice is my main obsession I guess... But in the end, I graduated from food engineering but I am unemployed for years... I was not a successful student at university, it was not a right choice to study Food Engineering because I couldn't understand biology and chemistry. I was good at high school math and geometry and studying according to a structure, getting ready for a multiple choice exam was not so difficult for me, so I could get into a better university in Istanbul. My only dream was living in a big city, away from my family. I mean that it was not a really a conscious choice. But engineering education was something different, I needed another brain. After failing my last lesson 3 times, seeing how hard I was studying but still failing, my professor asked me what was my problem. Of course I didn't know. I said I wanted to do masters degree in social sciences (it was true at that time), I needed this diploma, I promised him I would never practice engineering and he believed me , let me pass and get my diploma. That's how I got a diploma.

I don't want to give every boring detail on my study /worklife. The point is I couldn't use my education for building a career, then I moved to abroad and language barrier was added to social anxiety.

I am seeing a therapist for (I guess) 2 years now. (I keep forgetting the years, the happenings, memories, it frightens me). First I got 31 at AQ test. She said I am ''at the edge of the ASD'' which meant I had some autistic traits in high portions (depression, anxiety, ocd, paranoia, evasiveness etc). I am not gifted in any way. I am not good at remembering things (actually I feel like it's getting worse everyday). Not good at seeing details. My only two talents are: 1) I love doing one colored puzzles, deciding based on the shapes of puzzle pieces. For example NTs generally hate doing the sky part of a view because it's all blue but I love it. 2) I love separating things and organizing them, something like Konmari. Other than these two, I am not good at spotting details, I don't have obsessively huge amount of information about the topics I love (I can not comprehend information with numbers, I can not remember any kind of information). I have interests but getting information about them seems overwhelming. Where do I find the RIGHT source for this information? How can I be sure about it?

I do a lot of masking. Going into a social interaction -even if they are my few best friends who know what ASD is- is something I really need to get ready. And after the event I get overwhelmed anyways. My family doesn't listen/understand what my problem is. I get overwhelmed with noise, lights. I can not understand when people interrup each other or talk at the same time. I can't be comfortable when I am away from my home so holiday means stress to me and spontaneity is not an option.

In last few weeks my therapist did another AQ test. I don't remember the number this time. Because the focus was something else. There was a new method of reading the results. It was basically comparing my results with the average of other women on ASD and average of other NT women. I got higher numbers in social interaction, difficulty with changes, communication and fantasy/imagination comparing with/without ASD women which meant I was struggling in these areas for sure. But in being detail oriented I got lower numbers than NTwomen.

It was a shock to hear that from someone else. My therapist was also surprised. I was clearly having all the problems when it came to social interactions and changes but being detail oriented was not my helpful autistic trait. I guess she had some hope for us to use that autistic wonder to help me find a job.

Hearing this was kind of approval to my theory since I began the therapy. Ok getting diagnosed as being a part of ASD gave me relief but I wasn't really a part of it. I didn't have any obsessions that I could use as a tool to build a carreer. I feel worthless. I do house chores but it doesn't give me satisfaction. I care about what other people think a lot. I try not to but can't stop it. I am 34 and I don't have a child (and I don't want to have) so not working is not something I am supposed to do in my environment. I don't know how to respond when people ask me shat do I do for a living. I say I don't work but then they just keep staring. I don't know if they want more explanation or if they are judging. It gives me headaches.

I feel so alone. I wished I could be a part of ASD group but I don't feel like I really am. I feel like I am just stupid plus have social anxiety.

I should say this too: It's not like this everyday. But whenever I feel good or ready to accept myself as I am, I know that the same dark feeling will be back in a few days so I won't be able to go out or do dishes again. Thankfully I don't want to die, I know that when the bad days are gone, there will be some good ones too enjoy but still , most of the time I don't want to live actively. I just want to sleep.

I don't know why I wrote this here.



techstepgenr8tion
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Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,150
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02 Dec 2022, 11:17 am

A few thoughts on what you wrote:

1) It sounds like higher education is largely the same in most places and what you said about getting degrees but not being able to apply them to finding meaningful work - that's a common problem in the US as well, add people taking out huge student loans over here with government backing and it's gotten to where we're debating whether to have a massive government student loan forgiveness program. The other problem - employers all want experience but none want to give it, meaning 'entry level' jobs even aren't entry-level. None of this seems like it should be normal but, sadly it kind of is.

2) In your 30's it's typical to feel a lot of the ambitions of your 20's chaffing on you if you haven't launched as expected. For me, at least financially and vocationally, my 30's were a bit of a lost decade in the sense that I had a six year job right out of college that was wasting my time, not paying more or able to take me to new skill sets, I had to leave to temp because I didn't have 'exact-match experience' for anything (which was a bit ridiculous - I was looking for basic accounting positions and I'd already been auditing accounts payable, purchasing, receiving, etc.). For the next eight or nine years I ended up in temp-to-hire positions that always had excuses at the end why my work was great and they wanted to keep me on but either the company had been downsized by half after my contract started, HR was stone-walling them or had put in a de facto hiring freeze, all that fun stuff. I've sort of come to take my progress from my 30's into my 40's as 'life adjusting me'.


From your own description it sounds like you need relatively solitary detail-oriented work. That might actually throw you into coding as it did me.

For how life feels in this sense though and needing to cut as many special caveats around social activity to accommodate the ASD traits, it sort of gets a bit easier with time but then your expectations of life and people also tend to make up the other half. The NT world tends to be hypercompetitive, for reasons I understand, and we're not exactly able to play by the same rules or tend to have to take positions for much less pay because even when the position is in an area that we're good at the cutthroat competition and office politics puts us over a barrel.

Best of luck on the therapy and self-discovery.


_________________
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin