What you are not

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if you don't mind me asking, how long did you stay in teaching? sometimes i find the most uncomfortable things are the best things to do because it makes you try harder than other people.

Sorry - posted in the wrong thread

I don't mind at all. I agree with you that in certain situations, facing challenges can be a very constructive method of overcoming personal obstacles.

I was a full-time classroom teacher for two years. I was nearly fired several times because of my difficulties, but instead was allowed to continue teaching through the end of my second year before being let go.

I currently substitute-teach, which is a way to help pay the bills while working in an environment which is relatively harmless. This is because of the absence of social commitment and chaotic, persistent responsibility. These were aspects of being a full-time teacher which caused me a great many problems.

When I sub, I am a good enough actor that I can fake my way through a day, and actually come off like a really professional teacher. Then the next day, I am at a different school, and I can repeat my performance in a new theater with a new audience.

considering that it was a nighmare for you, you certainly did well to perservere for two years. by the looks of things, the time spent teaching has not been wasted and might put any future stresses into perspective

Thank you.
And you are correct. It was one of the best learning experiences of my life thus-far.
It helped me to understand a great deal about who I am and who I am not.

Yes, they have.
Here's my story:

Parents, of course. I was to be an academic scholar to a prestigious university. If not that, then a multifaceted professional athlete. Neither of those seemed to be working, so then they wanted to me just be normal and settle down with a nice Catholic girl. That didn't happen. Then they simply wanted me to get some kind of a higher education and land a job doing anything so that I could live on my own. Even that wasn't panning out. At that point I think they stopped trying.

Women I've been with. Every single one tried to make me be who they wanted, and not who I was. Once they got to know me, they were either scared away, or thought they could mold me into a different person. Emotional pain suffered by all involved parties. Eventually they stopped trying too.

ME. I've tried to turn me into many things I am not.
I thought that I would go to college to be a teacher.
"I am interested in lots of academic subjects. I should teach."
Made sense to me at the time.
Once I had invested years worth of my time and other people's money, and I actually got into classrooms and tried to teach, I began to realize with profound horror that I couldn't do it... I had panic attacks, I froze like a deer in headlights. I tried everything I could think of to cope. But I just screwed it all up.

It took me until about last year to realize what exactly it is that I can and should be.
I desperately want to make it happen. I just still have a lot of garbage to process from the previously mentioned attempts to make me something I'm not.[/quote[/quote

well except for the teaching bit you just recounted parts of my life story. and it was men trying to change me into a nicey nicey bland type..you know, smile and supress the grey matter - the mulitple brain syndrome that i have - and then get happy being what i am not.

parents - yes. "be an academic millie> " "dont' be an artist millie," etc etc etc.

then of course i spent manyyears tyring to change myself and my AS traits by self-medicating to a rather excessive degree to say the least.

and i think with all that i am going through of late - with regards to acceptin my AS and separating from my partner -- i am maybe, just maybe a little freer to be all that i am.

thanks acacia for telling your tale. i always relate

Many in the caring profession, such as counselors and doctors, have tried to get me to take medication. I considered and researched it, coming to the conclusion it was not right for me. I refuse to take SSRIs and other stuff they wish to prescribe and they cannot understand why I prefer to manage any anxiety or panic attacks without them, often trying to change my mind without providing logical arguments.

Some try to push unproven alternative treatments onto me. They are mostly harmless, but I do not wish to spend lots of money of unproven/disproven treatments. As a result, they act like I am being deliberately difficult and try to get me to think less rationally.

Many people have thought of me as timid and announced that it's their mission to corrupt me. I am often more courageous than them; it just doesn't show on the surface.

My mother went through a period of wanting me to be into fashion, partying, dating, and driving. I could not do those things and did not want to.

Many people have wanted me to become less introverted. They don't understand introversion.

I have always lived in a small community that is very athletic oriented. So, as I grew up I felt the pressures to try sports. I joined the youth baseball league (minor league/little league). Do you think I could ever hit the ball? This had to be embarassing for my father who had played professional baseball when he was young. I couldn't hit the ball to save my life. I found it too awkward to tell my parents I didn't want to play anymore. I suffered it out for three miserable years. Mom tells how I used to be in the outfield not paying attention and instead watching airplanes take off on the airport runway behind the baseball fields. While all the other boys were turned toward the batter, I would usually have my back to home plate---not good. Once, I made a valiant attempt to catch a high fly ball and ended up with a busted lip because I ran into another player. That was one of my last games. I then took up bowling and did very well maintaining my league's high average, high series , and high game in the youth league that served our county. I also took up golf in high school---but because of coordination issues I was lucky to play bogey golf. Whereas I loved bowling, I hated being on the school's golf team. But I stayed with it because my Dad was the golf coach. It is interesting to note how so many of us on the spectrum hate sports that involve contact, but instead gravitate toward ones like bowling that is more individualized.

Yeah. Especially in school that happened all the bloody time.

People tend to treat me like a sweet, naïve, passive person and try to force me to behave that way.

Since that doesn't work and usually soon I behave in a way that surprises them, they freak out in anger and accuse me of 'trying to be what I am not' when I am true to myself.

Start to shout, be nasty, threaten me, belittle me, insult me... what's up with that? Mere students, peers but also teachers, authority... they all do it.

And they won't stop believing themselves too! Even when I behave the total opposite to how they perceive me, they just continue to accuse me of lying about myself!

I found that developing a body language helped a little already. But this is so annoying.

Yes, that is interesting. I can relate to much of your story, glider18.
The sports I played while growing up were (sequentially) soccer and tennis.
As I got older and started to shy away from soccer, I picked up tennis and loved it.

I wasn't the fastest or most agile, but I was OK. I am tall and I have a good reach.
Tennis was perfect for me, as it is an utterly solitary game.
Just me, and my opponent. Totally isolated on the court. No teammates to distract me. It is a one-on-one exchange that requires intense concentration. The game became an all-enveloping mindset when I played it. The court was a separate world where I could be by myself, and sort out how I operated physically. Every measured swing of the racket. Every stance and position on the court. I was practising coordinated human movement in a forum where that was acceptable.

As I went through high school, I gradually gave up tennis, and became more absorbed in my mental and spiritual universe. All the same, I have fond memories of the sport.
There are small niches in the sporting world for people with Asperger's.

Acacia, being a sub teacher is a hard job, well done for getting through it. I know about how hard it must be because of how the NTs in my class love to mock and torture sub teachers. There was one who was training to be a teacher, and our class actually put him off teaching for life. THAT's how bad we were!

no, i was born who i am not.

Yes. I have had some controlling relationships and I have been too scared to act certain ways that I am.

Don't be embarrased we all make mistakes.

Thank you. As I said, I'm a decent actor. And I'm also a tall, rather physically-imposing man. To a class who has never met me, I can appear as the sternest, strictest, meanest teacher ever. Some younger kids look as if they fear I might step on them if they talk.

Now, I have to be careful, because times when I've let this act slip, the kids pick up on it right away. If I were ever to walk into a classroom acting casual, let alone the least bit timid (or horribly anxious, which I usually am!)... they would immediately act out and attempt to gain control and/or mock and torture me.

That's the nature of substitute-teaching and I understand that. Staying mindful of this whole game has helped me not only get through it, but enjoy it. I look forward to work now, instead of dreading it like the plague, which I did when I was a regular classroom teacher.

The difference is this: sub-teaching is fleeting, almost ghost-like. I am somewhere else every day. There is no real social commitment or long duration of time where my personal weaknesses or AS issues can come to light. When I taught full-time, I was never able to keep up the act. My true anxious, paranoid, executively-dysfunctioned self eventually came through, and I lost control. So sub-teaching has given me a way to still teach (which I do enjoy), yet be protected from all the potential pitfalls that I could fall into.