What did you think was wrong before you heard about AS?

Post Reply New Topic

Wow, you people are great at sticking to the subject :p 13 pages, and nobody goes off in any other direction... Is this what is meant by literal thinking?

Not sure if I have aspergers (although I strongly suspect that I do), but I think I'm weird enough to post here anyway :p Like a lot of people and misfits here, I thought I was just shy and too intelligent to get along with normal people, and that my social problems were caused by depression and social anxiety.

I moved every 6 months or so for the first 16 years of my life. So I thought my social problems were related to that. And my behavioral problems... well, my folks told me I was just a nutjob and a bad kid, that I was too smart (and smart-ass) for my own good. My dad would get madder and madder at me, threatening me with all sorts of things. I think my step-mom told him to knock it off (finally) when he insisted he was going to send me for electroshock therapy, and I agreed with him.
When I finally got a chance to settle down in one spot and have people who knew me for more than a little bit, I didn't fit in, and I again, I thought it was due to not getting the right social experience, and just being a geek.
But as time went on, I began to realize I wasn't quite right in the head. I felt like a gear missing a tooth. I had all the pieces, I was just skipping an important part every time I got to a certain point. I couldn't get where I knew I should be. I just couldn't relate the way I knew I was supposed to. I kept getting into long-term relationships, but they just didn't feel right. I was doing it for the comfort of things not changing.
Anyways, after a long period of not really being happy and only having a few friends (none exceptionally close, of course), I finally stumbled across Aspergers somewhere. I think I was randomly surfing Wikipedia [a great way to learn obscure knowledge, by the way. I love it ] Anyways, as I read through it, it seemed to make more and more sense. I read up on all the other alternative possibilities, found out as much about everything as I could... I didn't want to be one of those almost-hypochondriac people who read something and go "that's me! it must be!", but I read as much as I could, took all the tests I could find, and they all say the same thing... yes I'm fuct up, but now I have a reason for it
I'm still coming to terms with it... there's times when I notice a (nother) failing of mine, and I want to jump on it and try and correct it... but then I think "No, wait, that's a physical problem, no amount of banging your head on the wall is going to 'fix' it. Work around it." So I'm hoping to get much less frustrated than all the times previous, when I work like crazy to fix something only to have it all fall apart again.

Anyways, that's my long ramble.

I thought there was something wrong with me, and that I was slowly going insane. And I was deeply depressed.

Actually, Autistic people are apparantly geared towards tangential thinking/talk, and would swerve away from just straight answers, but this is a straight question, and everyone is probably curious.

HECK, I think I've ALREADY been guilty to switching 3 threads. We DID get them back on track though.

The idea of literal thinking I guess has to do with basically dweling on the imediate meaning of something spoken, and not really looking for other meanings. Also, some terms are viewed as being more absolute than many consider. I think everyone here DOES realize that, and at least TRY to get other meanings.

Last edited by 2ukenkerl on 12 Aug 2007, 5:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Up until 10th grade, I didn't think anything was wrong with me. In fact, I thought i WAS the superior one, and that anyone who gave me trouble was the one with the problem.

I STILL usually think that. The ways in which I am inferior are ones I don't care about and, frankly, NOBODY is perfect.

Last edited by 2ukenkerl on 12 Aug 2007, 5:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I wish I could have been like that I think I was past 30 before it occurred to me that being bored talking to people could be caused by me finding the other people boring. Until then I always thought it was because I did something wrong.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention. All my life, I have always been hungry for attention. When ever I became the center of attention, I made d**n sure that it stayed that way, and when the attention shifted to someone else, I would panic. In other words, until I found out about my AS, I kind of acted like a spoiled celebrity at times.

i thought i had schizophrenia and anxiety

You were right.

Only problem is, we're in the minority.

And you KNOW what tends to happen to minorities.

My boyfriend often blames my troubles on my family, some of them are, some aren't and I can see that. My dad being an alcoholic contributed to some of my emotional issues but I know some of my difficulties were at least attempted to be resolved in childhood and never were.

When I was 18 my old therapist said I had severe BPD and would be psychotic somday because I was so out of touch with my surroundings and so quiet (the negative symptoms of schizophrenia).

I began to be very aware that there was something different, if not wrong, about me after I graduated from high school. I did not so much notice before that, because I was an only child and felt that I primarily felt isolated because of that. By my teens, I thought that many of my problems stemmed just from the growing process and that everyone MUST be going through the same thing, which was blatant denial, because I knew I was not the same as my peers in any way.

So, after school, I really had no excuse anymore and I made an appointment with a therapist and I have been seeing therapists on and off since then. First, at nineteen I was diagnosed as depressed, but was not sent to a psychiatrist; nothing more came of this and I stopped going to the therapist. At 30, I was diagnosed as bipolar II and put on lithium, which made no difference in how I felt at all. Next, at 32, I cracked the books open myself and self-diagnosed as ADHD; I was thrilled to have found the right disorder, but after I presented my diagnosis to my doctor, none of the standard medications for this made me feel any better and I just dropped it all again. At 40, I began to have serious problems with anxiety and returned to therapy. This time we revisited the bipolar II and I was put on different medications which, again did nothing to fix what I was feeling, which was completely disconnected from people.

Anyway, at 46, this is where I am: Happily and correctly autistic. Loving myself for the first time for being just who I am. (Kind of sappy, but honest)

Last edited by dyingofpoetry on 24 May 2010, 6:20 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I thought I'd had a really messed up childhood that caused me to be the way I am now. That was half the story.

Holy Thread Resurrection! (13 pages worth of posts from 2007!)

I always thought I was odd, something was wrong with me obviously. I attributed it to being the only child of a single mom, and that I was deaf in a family full of hearing folks. It started to not make any sense when I went to a different school in Maryland as I got older, in my adolescent and teenage years. The school shrink suspected that I had ODD and ADHD, but it still didn't fit right. For a long time I had assumed that it was jut ADHD and that I was a rebellious kid. When I got married in 2005, I started to dig my past, figure out what the hell was wrong with me. Took me four years of slow digging to finally come to the answer that it was Asperger's. I had gone to several psychologists/counselors that said I only had depression and ADHD - I was put on meds but it didn't work. From 2007-2009, I had toyed around with the idea that I could have BPD or Bipolar because the symptoms (and the diagnosis criteria) almost fit.

Then just one night, on August 19, 2009 - at 3 AM, a thought came into my head - the word of "Asperger Syndrome" repeated again and again while I was laying down in bed. I went to the laptop and googled "Asperger" and it answered for all of the problems that I have growing up and still have now. Anyway, about 5 days later I got separated from my wife. I have been divorced for almost two months now.

That's exactly what I thought... until I had a child and gave him as stable and loving and "normal" an environment as I could manage and he turned out almost exactly like me.