22 May 2009, 5:35 pm
22 May 2009, 6:14 pm
22 May 2009, 6:39 pm
millie wrote:
my mother is very ASD-ish and in her late 70's readily admits this now. She will not say she has AS. She is very analytical in her thinking.
I thought i had a different presentation - but the more i look into it and the more i receive feedback from others, the more i am told I am very ASDish.
My special interest is arts related and not teckie-based or maths/science inclined.
I have poor eye contact and when i do look at facew which i can do when i know people, i look at their teeth. I monologue> i do not have a flat affect but have an almost rubber and over-expressive face with expressions that do not match my internal state of being or feeling or lack thereof.
I got social skills training in a rehab at age 36. I can fudge it. BUt it is exhausting and most people do not interest me.
In some ways as a child I was feral. I looked and acted like a boy and dressed like one. Most of teh cues for behaviour were taken from other children and i would try to mimic. I never felt connected at all, even with people who felt close or really emotionally linked with me. Out of sight and out of mind, for me, largely.
My ASD psych said he knew within half a session I was on the spectrum - that it was very obvious to him. But he is trained.
I have highly advanced verbal skills - true big word round about ways monologuing with fairly poor reciprocity.
as a child, the whole feeling of people talking to me sociall y was unbearable and still is. But back then it was like knives going through me - or like the Tin Drum Boy in the Gunther Grass novel ---- just wanting to SCREAM to make them stop engaging with me. My whole adolescence and twenties felt like that too. One big internal SCREAM of pain re engaging with other people.
I did however learn some social skills from coming from a big family wtih 8 kids - forced into it. hectic and hideous. I am told i was the invisible brainiac who was a tomboy who had hysterical outbursts and meltdowns.
THe fact it is a spectrum means some are more mild and some are more severe.
I need nearly every day alone to survive in the world. Others work in the world and engage albeit with difficulty.
I just know I have an ASD and have been dx'ed. that's good enough for me
I thought i had a different presentation - but the more i look into it and the more i receive feedback from others, the more i am told I am very ASDish.
My special interest is arts related and not teckie-based or maths/science inclined.
I have poor eye contact and when i do look at facew which i can do when i know people, i look at their teeth. I monologue> i do not have a flat affect but have an almost rubber and over-expressive face with expressions that do not match my internal state of being or feeling or lack thereof.
I got social skills training in a rehab at age 36. I can fudge it. BUt it is exhausting and most people do not interest me.
In some ways as a child I was feral. I looked and acted like a boy and dressed like one. Most of teh cues for behaviour were taken from other children and i would try to mimic. I never felt connected at all, even with people who felt close or really emotionally linked with me. Out of sight and out of mind, for me, largely.
My ASD psych said he knew within half a session I was on the spectrum - that it was very obvious to him. But he is trained.
I have highly advanced verbal skills - true big word round about ways monologuing with fairly poor reciprocity.
as a child, the whole feeling of people talking to me sociall y was unbearable and still is. But back then it was like knives going through me - or like the Tin Drum Boy in the Gunther Grass novel ---- just wanting to SCREAM to make them stop engaging with me. My whole adolescence and twenties felt like that too. One big internal SCREAM of pain re engaging with other people.
I did however learn some social skills from coming from a big family wtih 8 kids - forced into it. hectic and hideous. I am told i was the invisible brainiac who was a tomboy who had hysterical outbursts and meltdowns.
THe fact it is a spectrum means some are more mild and some are more severe.
I need nearly every day alone to survive in the world. Others work in the world and engage albeit with difficulty.
I just know I have an ASD and have been dx'ed. that's good enough for me
i really related to a lot of this post.
...i believe my father is on the spectrum, and my mother shows some traits although i don't think i would say she has an ASD. i wasn't really properly "trained" to be a girl, i think they gave up on the idea when i was pretty young
(i would throw horrible tantrums if forced to wear a dress for a special occasion). i've always been pretty tomboyish.
....also always been very verbal, always had a large vocabulary and pedantic style of speaking, but social talking has always been painfully awkward and unpleasant for me, as well. when i was little and we would have family over to the house i would either sit on the stairs so i could listen but didn't have to talk to everyone, or i would just play in my room.
....my special interests are, perhaps not so surprisingly, mostly related to people and understanding them better (sociology, psychology, history, philosophy, literature, the arts, music, etc)...basically the humanities.
.....i have always had very poor eye contact, and even when i manage it with people i know well (really the only time i can), i still feel like i'm doing it wrong somehow, and making the other person uncomfortable.
....i definitely monologue, and i've gotten lots of complaints about it over the years from people i've known. got a lot of "you nag too much" or "you're always off on a rant", or "you started talking about this half an hour ago and i wasn't interested in it then, nor am i now"
.....my facial expression doesn't seem to match what's going on in my head most of the time. had lots of people ask me why i look so mad when i feel happy, etc. i know i have a blank expression a lot too, like i space out. my voice is pretty variable and expressive, however.
.....i used to be able to fudge my way through things socially, but in the last few years i seem to have lost much of that ability. i don't seem to have the energy or motivation to try as hard, and it seems to get more tiring to try as i get older. i also don't seem to encounter many people that interest me enough (or that i trust enough) to bother.
...i need to be alone much more of the time now than i used to, and i don't feel like interacting with people on a daily basis is an option for me anymore. it is too painful and awkward, and for me too often dangerous (i can be extremely socially naive).
....i'm not big on maths, but i've always loved and had an aptitude for the sciences, ever since i was a little kid (especially biology and chemistry).
i'm not sure where this puts me, whether i present more typically like other AS females or like AS males. i know i've never felt particularly "girly" in my life.
22 May 2009, 7:06 pm
23 May 2009, 3:29 pm
serenity wrote:
I just looked at your profile, and noticed that you had spirituality listed as one of your interests. I believe that I read in one of Attwoods books that religion, and spiritual studies is another one of those intense interests that mostly females on the spectrum get.
I know that I did. I think my husband is probably relieved by the fact that my new special interest is ASD, so he can get a break on listening to me drone on about spirituality. When the pshychology books didn't fix me, and willpower didn't cut it, that's the next place I turned. I've such a collection of new agey books about positive thoughts, Spirit Guides, and angels. All that meditation, and positive thinking didn't quite fix me up, either. Thankfully, I found WP, and now I realize that I'm not broken!
Wow, this is so like me too! For awhile, I tried the Law of Attraction, and I thought maybe the reason why things weren´t going well for me was that I wasn´t "vibrating" right, that I had to be more positive, etc. I tried meditation and positive thinking, forgiving people from my past- (I wasn´t totally successful)- surrounding myself with white light, etc. Though I´m not totally disillusioned by all spirituality, I did get disillusioned by some aspects of it, most particularly these "fixer-upper" things which never really quite worked.
And like you, my special interest is now ASD too! I´m reading loads of books about it, ordering something from Amazon every week it seems, and hanging out on Wrong Planet. Boy, we seem to have a lot in common...
23 May 2009, 3:40 pm
Here is another thing I thought of today: when I was very young, probably starting around age 2, I used to walk on my tiptoes all the time- (I read this is also a possible sign of AS in some people, though this was not known about when I was young). Anyway, I did that for years, and I remember very clearly that everyone who saw me would say "oh, she´s going to be a ballet dancer when she grows up!" (Funny thing was, I took them quite literally and DID actually become a ballet dancer when I grew up. )
But seriously, the point I wanted to make is that if I had been a boy walking on my toes, I´m sure the reaction would have been much different. People would have probably been freaked out, or would have checked what was going on. I wonder how many girls slip through the cracks with something like this because people just think they´re pretending to be a ballet dancer. But I did this years before I even knew what ballet was; come to think of it, I learned what ballet was because of the fact that I was walking on my toes.
23 May 2009, 4:04 pm
starvingartist wrote:
....also always been very verbal, always had a large vocabulary and pedantic style of speaking, but social talking has always been painfully awkward and unpleasant for me, as well. when i was little and we would have family over to the house i would either sit on the stairs so i could listen but didn't have to talk to everyone, or i would just play in my room.
Wow, so you got away with that! I was forced to engage in social interaction, even when I didn´t want to. When I was very young, it was noticed by my teachers in school that I wanted to be alone all the time, and that I had trouble interacting with the children, so my parents made huge efforts to get me to interact with people. My mother used to tell me, every now and then, that I had to invite a kid over to play. She would make the phone call, and arrange for the kid to come over. If I didn´t know what to do, my Mom would bring out an activity for us to do and get us involved in it; (usually clay or something artistic, since that was my special interest). And if someone came over to the house, family or whatever, I was required to interact with them. I thought this was all because I was a girl, but maybe not. It´s interesting to hear all the different perspectives and backgrounds of everybody....
I was quite bad verbally when I was a child; though I could read and understand words, I was horrible at expressing myself, and my speaking was stilted. I think I sounded unintelligent, and that was one of the reasons, for years, that I thought I was stupid because my words didn´t flow easily like other people´s. When I didn´t know what to say my mother would prompt me. That was how I learned how to get by socially, by learning all the "texts", like a big play. When someone says "A", you answer with "B"...etc. Nowadays, my verbal abilities are WAY better than they used to be, so it paid off, very slowly...(when I was a teenager, I was constantly told that I was "stilted" and "formal"). Now in my relative "old age", I think in purely verbal interactions, and superficially, I probably come off as being quite "normal". My problems really come out in non-verbally laden situations, hidden meanings, unseen intrigue, etc. (I still never got the hang of dating or flirting, for instance...
)
23 May 2009, 4:33 pm
Morgana wrote:
Here is another thing I thought of today: when I was very young, probably starting around age 2, I used to walk on my tiptoes all the time- (I read this is also a possible sign of AS in some people, though this was not known about when I was young). Anyway, I did that for years, and I remember very clearly that everyone who saw me would say "oh, she´s going to be a ballet dancer when she grows up!" (Funny thing was, I took them quite literally and DID actually become a ballet dancer when I grew up. )
But seriously, the point I wanted to make is that if I had been a boy walking on my toes, I´m sure the reaction would have been much different. People would have probably been freaked out, or would have checked what was going on. I wonder how many girls slip through the cracks with something like this because people just think they´re pretending to be a ballet dancer. But I did this years before I even knew what ballet was; come to think of it, I learned what ballet was because of the fact that I was walking on my toes.
)But seriously, the point I wanted to make is that if I had been a boy walking on my toes, I´m sure the reaction would have been much different. People would have probably been freaked out, or would have checked what was going on. I wonder how many girls slip through the cracks with something like this because people just think they´re pretending to be a ballet dancer. But I did this years before I even knew what ballet was; come to think of it, I learned what ballet was because of the fact that I was walking on my toes.
I think you must be my long lost twin!
Everybody used to say the same thing about me when I was young, because of the toe walking, and because I liked to spin in circles a lot. I never became a ballet dancer, though.
My son walks on his tip toes, and walks with a skipping kind of gait. It does look really feminine. Still, people just thought he was quirky. It didn't get him a diagnosis any quicker, even though I started questioning what was going on with him at age 3. His pediatrician kept dismissing it as ADHD. He got diagnosed with PDD-NOS when he was almost 5, and that wouldn't have probably have happened if his younger brother wasn't so severely autistic that it was impossible to not notice. He actually got diagnosed first. That's when I learned about autism, and made an appointment for my first son to be seen by a specialist myself. Otherwise, he would've fallen through the cracks, too. That's what I was getting at in my first post on this thread. He does seem to mirror much of what I was like as a child. Yes, he is much more masculine, but much of his masking behaviors are similar. However, he's seen as 'hyper', and 'naughty' when I wasn't. Don't know why. Maybe it's because my verbal ability has always been above average, whereas his is below?
23 May 2009, 9:52 pm
23 May 2009, 10:00 pm
23 May 2009, 10:06 pm
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23 May 2009, 11:42 pm
hartzofspace
Supporting Member
Joined: 14 Apr 2005
Gender: Female
Posts: 7,138
Location: On the Road Less Traveled
24 May 2009, 11:36 am
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