Anyone Else?

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Does anyone else feel like they were more confident before they figured out that their perceptions of the world were different? It seems like I was far more comfortable with myself and more confident in daily life. I think I've cried more in the last couple of years than in all the previous forty put together.

Like I told my boss a couple of weeks ago -- before, I could just steam through life and not notice the havok and misunderstandings in my wake, believing my own behavior to be perfectly sensible and reasonable, and other people's behavior to be unreasonable and therefore possible to simply ignore. I knew I was considered more than a little odd and I did my best to see others' points of view, too, but I admit this was my basic attitude. Since realizing that so much of my problems with other people come right down to me, I notice the things I'm doing that put people off, but seem powerless to do anything about it in the moment it's happening.

I'm about ready to just go back to doing things my own way and everyone who doesn't like it -- or me -- can just go to Hallifax, as one of the authors I've been reading for anthropology put it.

Yes, I'm more aware of my social deficits or rather I was always aware I just never considered before that my lifetime of problems could because of the way I was born and not only because of my experiences. But my mother told me I started having trouble at two so that kind of discounts the life experiences story. I know what you mean pschristmas, I'm more afraid of making a mistake when I'm aware I may be programmed to do so.

I thank my lucky stars that I didn't understand my "disorder" while I was plowing through my successful career. Not that I didn't know that I had deficits, but it never occurred to me that something was WRONG with me, and I had no shortage of confidence. I did try my best to make adjustments and not offend, but if my best wasn't good enough I wasn't bothered.

I seriously doubt that I would have had the confidence to accomplish what I did had I been aware of what I am now.

Yep, me too. I've definitely been a 'bang on through' sort of person, whether I was brimming with self-confidence or just faking it like I figure everyone does. Doing my best to get along, and this last spring finding out... BAM!

Now I'm really aware that no one's got my back, I'm a walking target for other's insecurities and subsequent hatred and it IS my wiring... my mere existence seems disturbing to those who need the constant reassurance of body language and social pablum.

I just found out last week someone I thought was a friend... my only friend outside my partner... isn't. The old "I like you but I don't want to hang out with you" line. Sound familiar?

She might have been an imaginary friend, but dammit she was still a friend.

So yeah.... lots of tears this last year.

I gave up on trying to fit in when I was 17, and having just discovered my AS at 59 is proving to be a bittersweet kind of experience. I now understand why I never "fit in" ... but now I do not know where to go from there. Overall, I definitely do *not* want to be like most alleged "normies" I see, yet I want my family and others closest to me to no longer be disturbed by me. For myself, then, or at least until someone might show me something better, my best shot at the remainder of my life is to just be the best I can be of whatever I am while hope others can become as comfortable with themselves around me as I am with myself around them.

When I knew what was Asperger. I thought some one was spying me. When I found out the asperger forums: also found that there was people who knew their problems since a lot of time ago. They said that they were different from others since for ever. I just never thought that others was of a kind and I of another kind. I allways knew that everyone is different, just thought it was at the same proportion.

2 years ago, I know how different I am, and begin to understand how the other people maybe see me.

I never was a super confident guy, but my worst moments came now when I tried to fit and be more 'normal'

Yes, I think that I tried my best cause I didn't know I was a disabled.

Thanks to everyone who's answered. I'm sorry I've been so slow to respond.

DonkeyBuster:

Yes, I'm getting that, too. The therapist says that people like me who don't offer a lot of feedback to others are on the receiving end of a lot of projections. We become like mirrors to them, reflecting back what they least like about themselves.

wildgrape: [/quote]I thank my lucky stars that I didn't understand my "disorder" while I was plowing through my successful career.[/quote]

To a certain extent, I kind of wish I'd never heard of AS, but I do think everything happens at the time we need it or are most ready to assimilate it. It may be that I really need to know this about myself in order to succeed from here, but it's a painful process.

Aimless:

uisart:

Yes, exactly, in answer to you both. I think maybe since I'm more aware of the mistakes, I may be trying too hard to avoid them and coming off as more odd than usual.

i went through an extremely confident phase when I was in my teens...I had no idea how totally off I was..till it eventually was hammered into me in a variety of ways....I got the affliction of confidence taken care of years before I ever knew what AS was.

pschristmas wrote:

For me it's more likely that people want to use me as a sounding board for all their self delusions and rationalizations. Since I don't like confrontation and they get no cues from me they feel free to do so.

One of the first things my therapist said--upon discovering the AS--was, "You know about coyotes and dogs?" And I said, "Yeah, a coyote would rather kill a dog than f*** it, so all these people who think they have coy-dogs are just fantasizing." And she said, "Yeah, it's like that for AS... you're either gonna get attacked or screwed by the NTs."

And she's NT, but her brother is AS and she's seen what happens to Aspies out there in the real world.

I've just gotten screwed again...

i dont know if i have it yet...but when i started realizing something in my head wasnt the same as everyone else, it started getting worse...