Did you hypothesize about your social problems before AS?

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Well, pedantic language usage is one of the criteria (or at least a symptom) of Asperger's.

For me, I use my verbosity to be more accurate. I don't get a lot of the subtleties of body language and therefore don't use them myself, instead relying on my words to convey my full meaning.

Also, some words are just fun to use. Try saying "efflorescence" aloud. Just do it. Doesn't that feel nice?

I created elaborate theories as to why people did certain things, which clouded my ability to understand that I really had no idea what I was talking about.

I adore that word. We can be pedantic-diction buddies.


When I was 18, a guy who was teaching me mathematics (graph theory <3) asked if I'd "ever been diagnosed with anything" on the way home, and then explained to me that he had Asperger's.

That was what set it all off, because I'd never paid attention to this whole social thing before that--I just said "okay, I don't have friends" and went along with that. It was pretty scary.

hi

I found out with 27, i always thought that i am much more sensitive, intelligent and moral thinking than others.
now that i know of it, i understand many connections much better, but still wonder if autism is mainly just what i originally that that my main difference is: a much more sensitive nervous system compared to others.

thanks,
anton

This is a tangent BUT...

Hmmmm... I'm noticing a near universal lack of intuitive insight into the socialization process among "real aspergers", and my "emotional intelligence" scores were above average, so I'm heavily leaning towards the memory problems hypothesis. Time will tell!

Sadly, it's 4am and I have no idea what your comment means. Perhaps it will make more sense when I'm not about to fall asleep. On the other hand, I did find this:
http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles ... words.html

Sadly, it was almost 4a.m. when I wrote my comment, so I'm not entirely sure it means anything! lol.

Neat words. It's pretty interesting they're all "soft words" in that they don't contain 'hard vowels'(or most don't, anyways.).

Last edited by swbluto on 20 Apr 2011, 6:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

I was mostly oblivious and naive before the diagnosis, I had no explanation as to why I got into trouble at school all the time or why people did this or that. I was quite care-free and just went about my unconventional life.
It wasn't until some time after my diagnosis that I actually started thinking deeply about this sort of thing and started learning about the in and outs of social crap. The 18 year old me and the 11 year old me are totally different people, I actually have quite a bit of knowledge under my belt. You could even say I'm decent at knowing what all the cues and expressions mean, I've read up about it for years now.

Wait... you never felt a distinctive sense of "I don't fit in" or "I feel excluded" or "I feel like I'm on the wrong planet"? That must be pretty interesting to experience -- I mean, if you're not going to have friends, I suppose 'tis better to not feel feelings of alienation about it.

And, you like graph theory? Heh, that's pretty cool. I recently was thinking about solving the shortest path problem on an arbitrary 3-dimensional surface, and I came to the inference it wasn't formulaically solvable and it could be practically solved by converting the 3-dimensional surface into a 2-dimensional graph with each edge having a value equal to the distance between each point on the surface, and then that could be solved by conventional 'shortest path' algorithms (Like A* or Dijkstra.).

Yes, like my alleged mind was out to get me, eh?!

No, never. When I read books with protagonists who thought in words, rather than pictures, I just taught myself to think in words; when there were notes about body language, I built theories and moved on. When I was excluded, I just said "Okay, I am being excluded" and tried to understand why. There was no "wrong planet" feeling because I guess I didn't feel I was supposed to be somewhere where I fit in... I didn't have any entitlement to being one of the crowd. People even asked me what country I was from all the time, but to me that just seemed like they were being mean about my name and clothing.

See... no matter how much people tried to treat me like I was something different, I guess I sort of didn't let them. What I didn't understand was why people were being so mean to me, when I was obviously just like them in all the important ways. I just didn't get it. No one ever told me "well, NORMAL people should be able to understand this," with me thinking "Oh, I am normal, and there is no way I can understand this, so I must not be normal." I just said "Okay, I am expected to get this thing understood, and I will get workin' on it."

Or, wherever I could see that I was different, I always thought it was just personal choice. There was nothing weird about me never, ever lying because that was what I chose for myself. Nor being a girl wearing anachronistic clothing--why couldn't I have my own personal culture? Everyone else seemed to have one! And if my ears occasionally stopped processing English, and if I couldn't stand having tags in my clothing, and if I never seemed to know what to do socially, and if I had no friends, or if I rocked while I was doing math homework, or if I had somewhat deeper passions than most... well, why was that so odd? Should I throw myself out of society because of a couple of superficial characteristics and hobbies? Did those things make me any less human?

Surely not.


(Hoho, I actually don't know enough about graph theory to address what you wrote there. It was three years ago and we didn't get very far, because it was my first "real" experience with mathematics and he was a very bad teacher)

Thankfully, I have a parental figure who most likely has AS, so I didn't feel as lonely and excluded as I could have when I was younger, and I didn't really notice how bad my social communication actually was until my pre-teens, which I tried to ignore/hide, and then had a re-revelation when I found AS present-day.

I just used the magic phrase, "I'm just introverted" to explain why I couldn't say anything right to a lot of people, get close to certain members of my family despite the fact that I love them dearly, and why I only had two really close friends during school (at least one of whom used me plainly- the other I'm pretty sure can't stand me after we switched to different schools).

A lot of other excuses like giftedness, and being an artsy person for my flat-out strange behavior when I was younger got reinforced in my head, and kind of became my excuse towards my behavior until I discovered AS.

I wrote a speech when I was 13 (at our elementary school, each student was required to write a speech every year about a topic of their choice) about my personal differences. I knew then that I was obviously different from the other students, but didn't even think about supposing that I had anything to explain these difficulties: I would say I was 'shy' or 'hated socializing'. This speech goes on about my imaginary worlds and my difficulties with making friends...I still have it somewhere. This was a year before I learned about my diagnosis.

I tried to observe and make adjustments, and when I realized people still didn't want to be my friends , i decided I must be very ugly.

When I was a child, I was familiar with the Charlie Brown comics, and I just knew that Charlie Brown kid was just like me....that seemed to explain it all......

As a teenager, I thought my parents were sheltering me, or not explaining things to me properly, and that was why I wasn´t socially savvy like the other kids.

As an adult, I had loads of bizarre theories, at different times, as to why I was the way I was:

1) I had the soul of a Sioux Indian, and I just didn´t feel comfortable being reincarnated into this life. (Special Interest was Sioux Indians at the time)
2) I was a strong and direct woman, but look physically like a thin and frail woman, so I was offensive to people because they didn´t know what to make of me- (this idea came to me when I was reading a lot of feminist literature)
3) I was the reincarnation of Vincent van Gogh (I read a lot about him for a time. He had many Aspie traits, so it seemed to explain "me" Plus we have the same birthday. )
4) I was not really human, but instead was evolved from the long lost race of Atlantis.
5) I was "too negative", and that was why my life wasn´t working for me. I needed to learn how to access the Law of Attraction.

All of these theories were pretty much "half baked", but at the time, I just couldn´t explain the seemingly unexplainable.

A lot of people seem to claim I'm "very negative", so that might also be a possible explanation. But, then again, there seems to be a ton of negative people out there without "connecting to other people" problems? So, then I move onto the theory it's the combination of too_much_negativity+not_enough_humor... hmmm...

Does that explain it?