Question for the self-diagnosed.

Post Reply New Topic

I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression years back. For, me it wasn't really a big realization as much as acceptance of facts. Accepting that 99% of my "friends" were aquaintences and that I have always been essentially socially handicapped. Accepting the fact that having one actual relationship in 24 years and essentially no dates besides that is really not normal, and that most people are not okay with that. How do I know I have a spectrum issue? I just kind of know. It's hard to explain, but when you havent fit in all your life, and never felt like it when you did sparingly, you just recognize that you are on a completely different wavelength from everyone else. I have talked to my mother about it and she pretty much agrees.

I am never at a loss for a firm, often strident, opinion, on anything and everything, I absorb information and spew it out regardless of whether the world wants to hear it. I'm also very good at stunning non sequiturs which can literally leave even people who know me well speechless. I do it with a smile on my face and play the clown a bit so people don't take offense too often which seems to work quite well and covers my confusion.

Mono-focusing is an asset a lot of the time - I can totally shut the world out when I need to concentrate on something; I hear and see and even answer questions coherently (so I'm told, though often the result is something I really don't want like tickets to the opera) but I don't process them except to be aware they are there and how I manage to answer questions without knowing I'm speaking I have no idea! I love making things, I built a dragon's lair for my son's lizard out of a set of library shelves, all landscaped with a cave full of glass nuggets. I worked on it solidly for about 3 weeks, did nothing else but visit the hardware shop. It was fun, useful and kept me busy for a while and when I'm busy I don't worry.

Got another question if that's ok (got a lot of them)? Do you guys have sleeping problems? I do. Most of the time I fall asleep quickly but almost every night I wake up around 2-3am, fall asleep again and then I wake up around 7-7.30 in the morning (often still a bit tired). I don't know why I always wake up at night. I just do.

Sometimes (like today), it takes me quite a while to fall asleep because my head is filled with thoughts that won't shut up. I woke up again at 2.15am and now I'm having trouble going back to sleep. I'm aware it's not good sitting by the computer if I want to fall asleep but I just wanted to write this.

I'm also aware sleeping problems can be caused by anxiety (and maybe I'm actually feeling a bit anxious right now, I'm not sure), but can it be caused by AS?

have you tried mindfulness stress relief? it's all about stopping the whirling thoughts. You can get a book with a cd - maybe your library will have one

Mindfulness stress relief? Is that some sort of meditation? For some reason I'm a bit sceptical towards meditation. Perhaps it because I feel like I won't have enough patience for it, I don't know. But to answer your question; no I haven't tried it.

It is meditation intervention developed from a Buddhist tradition but it's more about experiencing the moment and feeling all your sensations rather than the more usual calming the mind, and research does say it works and helps the brain form more positive pathways - MRI scans have shown actual physical changes. It can be combined with cognitive behaviour therapy too. You can get into the spiritual side if you want to, a lot of the taught retreats or classes seem to be based based in Buddhist centres, but the basic program is nothing to do with religion. Some of it's quite active and fun - like eating things you like very, very slowly.

It's called either mindfulness based stress relief or mindfulness based cognitive therapy if you want to look it up

good night

So I keep writing in this thread since I don't want to start a new one. If I'd start a new one for each of my questions my threads would probably be the only ones you'd see when opening up General Autism Discussion. So here's another question: are you okay at socialising with someone for a while but then you feel like you get completely overloaded?

I'm at my cousin (he's got PDD-NOS by the way) and aunt's place at the moment. I'm supposed to stay here until tomorrow afternoon. I was perfectly fine hanging out with them and talking to them at first. I like them. But then, after two hours, I started to feel like my brain was getting tired and that I didn't want to be social any longer. Decided to ignore that feeling and now, a few hours later, I feel like my brain's going to turn off completely. I don't want to talk to anyone, I don't want to see anyone. I just want to be by myself. My social brain has reached its limit and I'm so tired I all I want to do is sleep. Can't really isolate myself right now though. My aunt wants to take me out for dinner tonight so I need to be social. I mean, it's really nice of her of course, I'm just really tired.

What would you do in this situation?

I have earplugs.

I also carry around with me things who help me to calm down like:
rubrics cube
stuffed animal (cat)
hooded sweater
sunglasses

I also cam down easily at night gowing out in the dark for a fiew minutes.

socialising is hard work if you're on the spectrum, you are doing everything through cognitive analysis while everyone else is running on instinct, keeping up is exhausting and you need time out.

One of the very few positives of smoking is that you always have and excuse to get out for a break - you can go with one person or on your own and nobody minds (in fact they're usually grateful you're not smoking in the house). Not that I recommend taking up smoking but it does have that advantage. I have also been known to shut myself in a toilet for a while and my partner has this great trick of wandering upstairs at a party, crawling into a bed (usually the one with all the coats on it) and falling asleep - most of our friends think it's cute!

you could ask if she minds if you have a short nap - some excuse about not having slept well and wanting to be fresh for your meal in the evening, even if you don't sleep it will give you the space to relax

I did. Or well, I didn't take a nap. Instead I put on music in my noise cancelling earphones and sat in the sofa for a while.

You know what annoys me? I actually told her about me suspecting I've got AS and her response was "I don't think so, we're all just different." I sort of thought she'd understand since she's got a son with epilepsy, PDD-NOS (he would've been diagnosed with classic Autism but since the epilepsy caused his Autism and he wasn't born with it he got a PDD-NOS diagnosis instead) and ADHD. I thought she'd understand but she thinks I'm social so she doesn't think I've got AS. I'm not saying I've got it (I don't know if I do, which we've already established in this thread) but she really doesn't realise that it takes a great amount of energy for me to socialise. I have to think about everything I want to say before I say it and I have to force myself to talk about things etc. It just really annoys me that people around me don't believe me (and not just about AS, but about anxiety and things in general). It makes me angry.

Rant over.

classic autism doesn't look anything like AS on the outside so she won't recognise autism in you and she probably doesn't know enough about AS to see it, especially as she's known you and all your quirks since infancy and you haven't changed (if you are on the spectrum you have been on it from birth so you wouldn't have!). The same with anxiety and depression - if someone has suffered long term from those things people just get used to them being like that and don't see it as a problem. Family are often the last people to recognise a person has AS but when they do they will be the first to defend you - don't expect them to treat you any differently though, they may well accept it sooner or later but that won't make you any different in their eyes (nor should it, you aren't any different from the way you've always been). It takes actually living day to day with a person on the spectrum for close people to see the need to change.

I know. She also said something like "I've got a friend who's son has Asperger's, and you're nothing like him." I wish people would understand anxiety is very serious as well. It has pretty much ruined big parts of my life. It just annoys me when people don't understand.



True. Not even my parents know what it's like. My boyfriend's pretty much the only one who's seen me on good and bad days and sure enough; he believes me.

Well that annoys me too, but I have with myself the same problem in a totally different area.

I sometimes have very bad depressions.
I had the last two years nearly constantly depressions.
But right now I'm doing better, did a whole bunch of stuff today and I could have done more, but it's not that bad for the beginning.
Just one or two weeks ago I couln't have done the same amount in one week, I've done today, and it wasn't even that much.

I don't get this.
What did I do with all that time?

So and now think NTs who never had a mental illness, how should they possible understand, if I don't understand it with myself?

I think, even for NTs it is very difficult to put themself in someone elses shoes.

I said this before: the diagnostic criteria say ASC people have impaired social imagination but I think the other half of the problem is there is a lack of autistic imagination in the general population. Even those who have suffered from anxiety and depression probably can't really understand the nature of ASC anxiety and, like pain, the memory of what it is like when it is over fades very quickly.

Men and women have significant sensory differences and process things in very different ways - generations have found it impossible to understand the others gender, and we are still not much better after all the years of research and debate. We don't even recognise the brain differences, never mind use them to help us understand each other more effectively - how can we hope that people will understand a neurological difference which changes the way people perceive and process the world so thoroughly but is so well hidden in most people who have it. People are learning, more people at least try to understand, but it's unlikely they will ever really know what it is like

I self-diagnosed eight years ago, but in the last year or two have had increasing doubts about it. I confused being very introverted with being on the autism spectrum. I think I might be Broader Autism Phenotype [BAP].

I personally think it's not that important how far you are on the autism spectrum, when you have recogniced that you are on a spectrum.
I see autism more or less as a construct out of a whole range of developmental disorders and developmental difficulties.

I'm dx with HFA and my difficulties are strong enough for a diagnoses, but my mainproblems are my routines, my sensory difficulties and my language difficulties.
I have problems understanding double meaning and difficult sentences. I have a bit mutism when I have stress and I had dyslexia as a child etc.
But I have just a view social understanding difficulties, when as situation is getting too complex or is not a "normal" situation.

Eventhough my problems aren't allways maybe that typicall, I know that they are developmental issues and knowing that helped me a lot and it's way less important in what autistic range psychiatrists may put me so far I know what they are and where they are comming from.