Stopping hate

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You are right, and that really annoys me. People say "everybody has someone" but that is statistically not true. If you really have nobody then therapy and cuddles will not help.

Having said that, the world is a big place, and if you had the money to live absolutely anywhere then you could keep trying every dating website in the world, sift through millions of people, until you finally find someone. But without money you are stuck with whoever lives near your home, and then the odds are against you.

That is why my number one priority is to get an independent income. Then I will find someone like you, someone somewhere in the world who knows what it is like to be alone. Someone who values commitment and sincerity more than social skills or surface similarities.

Last edited by trappedinhell on 30 Dec 2011, 9:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Also therapists keep treating me for symptoms I do not have. For example I do not experience self loathing with my depression. I am very odd in that although I am not confident about my socialising skills due to past experiences and my inability to make friends I do not actually hate myself. I just get down because I wish I could find a solution and find someone who understands.

I also do not get the classic symptoms of anxiety in many ways. For example I describe the feelings I get as anxiety when I am in a crowd (I do not know how else to describe them really) but the symptoms I get don't seem to be the symptoms that the therapists expects me to get. IE I do not hyperventilate. Peopl;e will always say to breathe but I am breathing...I am breathing normally actually as I can feel my diaphragm going up and down. Nor am I worried about what people think of me at those times, in fact I am not even aware that they are thinking. When I get highly stressed out in a crowd I actually stop being aware of anything other than my feeling of needing flee. I am not aware of what people around me are doing, I am not aware of what they are thinking what they might be thinking and so on.

All I am aware of is that I cannot see properly...I cannot focus on anything and all I see are lots of things coming towards me, combined with a cacaphony of noise that is exploding in my head. I can hear every little sound at high volume and my brain is about to meltdown and explode if I don't get the hell out of there. In that state I really am not aware of people and their thoughts or actions and neither am I having trouble breathing etc or thinking anything other than I need to get out of here, i need to get out of here.

So people will tell you to just breathe. It DOES NOT WORK

The anxiety does not fade if I stay out in the noise either, I just get worse and storm off because I feel a tantrum coming on and then get a migraine then crash and get a complete wipe out. It will basically exhaust me to the point where I feel overwhelmingly sleepy and cannot physically stay awake. My therapist puts it down to depression or medication but it is not that I want to sleep a lot it is more that I cannot stay awake and it only lasts for a few hours. It is an absolutely horrendous feeling of drowsiness that makes me incapable of keeping my eyes open.


Both the exhaustion and meltdowns can be useful for me though. This is my sound strange but it is like they are a reset button. They happen when I am overwhelmed, all systems go haywire for a while and then afterwards they all come back on line as though nothing was wrong. This confuses people as they are still making a big deal over my melt down 3 weeks later and I am wondering what all the fuss is about because I feel fine now.

I wish that people could step into my world and experience it as then they may understand more.

Sorry about any typos, I cannot find my reading glasses lol

Last edited by bumble on 30 Dec 2011, 10:09 am, edited 2 times in total.

I get that too. A classic symptom of depression is feeling like a failure. But I do not feel like a failure. Yet I recognize that I have measurably failed at what others want (no money or romance SO FAR), and this knowledge cause me great stress (as it should: my present life is unsustainable!).

I think our real problem is being different. We do not fit with their expectations of being normal and we do not fit with their expectations of being abnormal. We are on our own.

It does feel that way and it is frustrating. I do not know if I have an ASD or not, I just know there is something about me that is not normal and I don't know what that something is. I have always been the way I am to a degree, I do not remember a time when I was not. Some of my depression is bourne of frustration and some of my pain comes from past trauma but a lot it has always been there and so it feels more like they are trying to change my personality than actually cure some illness.

The authorities wanted me to see a child psychologist when I was 7 years old but my mother would not take me. I did not see a psychologist until I was 13 and then I was just told that I was over senstive with an advanced intellect and moral development. They did a few IQ tests I think and that was it (they had me do some simple test with blocks and answer puzzle type questions). I told them I did not know how to mix but it was ignored. I told a therapist at 16 that I could not mix and it was ignored. I told multiple therapists and psychiatrists in my twenties and thirties that I could not mix and it has been ignored.

I had these problems at 7 years old for gods sake, I am now 36 and I still have them! Even at 4 years old I had problems socialising. My teachers used to complain that I was not mixing with other children because I would sit and play by myself most of the time. So they would force me to mix and it would go terribly wrong. The other children would often run away from me because I had a twitch in my nose and they thought I was pulling faces at them.

I could not play their games because they kept changing the rules. I would throw a tantrum and refuse to play with them because they kept changing the game.

Other little girls were playing mummies and daddies and I was collecting bank forms and lining my brothers toy cars up on the frontroom floor. Either that or I was playing with the little pacman game I always carried around with me or rubbing my tickle (which I have done since I was 2 or so). If I did play things like pretend tea parties with friends that my parents had thrown me together with or teachers had forced me to play with I had to have real tea in my tea set or I would not play.

I had to do things like watch scooby doo at the same time each day or I would have a tantrum from hell (my mothers words). I was only about 3 or so and this stuff was always there. It was always there. I was born this way. Maybe its because I was premature and born to an older mother, I do wonder. I was born at 30 weeks to a 44 year old diabetic mother and had very bad seizures for a while after birth...maybe it affected me. I don't know. But I was always this way and trying to be the way others expect is exhausting. It is really hard.

It didn't all just appear when I got depressed one day. It didn;t just manifest when I got bullied or stressed one day. Unless I was born depressed and stressed in which case unfortunately it seems to be wired into my biology.

I feel so very alone when it comes to trying to get therapists to understand that they are trying to change a massive part of who I have always been.

Growing up other children labelled me as weird and ostracised me, other adults labelled me as a problem child because of my tantrums and oddities, therapists, psychiatrists and psychologists labelled me as over sensitive and emotionally immature and now other adults label me as self absorbed, selfish, arrogant and mentally ill.

As a child, because I was intellectually bright, any problems I had were put down to my just being difficult on purpose. My tantrums were seen as my being difficult when I was just trying to express that I was genuinely upset. My poor handwriting at school was put down to laziness because I was very bright academically, my difficulty in understanding socialising is just put down to my being intentionally annoying. I don't do this stuff on bloody purpose.

I can't help the way I am in some ways as I was born like it. Whatever it is, I was born like it and my problems are not going to vanish over night with a few sessions of CBT.

Tell me about it! I am due to see a specialist some time around February, and part of me is scared that they will say "you don't have ASD." All I know is that I do not fit with others and this forum is the first place I have found where I feel like I belong. There must be something wrong because things that other people find difficult, I find easy (anything creative or intellectual), and things that others find easy and enjoyable I find difficult and scary (anything sociable or any "normal" reaction). Maybe in a hundred years they will say "we have just discovered XYZ syndrome" but right now ASD is my only hope of being even half understood.


Yes! This! It does more harm than good. And makes the mental state worse - what could be worse than believing that your mind and soul are Wrong?

The world is crazy. The system and values of the world cause endless misery. Why should we change to be like them? We sometimes need help socially, but that is a different matter. My hero is Grigori Perelman, the math genius who turned down a million dollar prize. People think he is weird. He doesn't give many interviews, he lives with his mother, doesn't dress well and probably doesn't wash as often as he might. Yet he is not harming anyone and is unravelling the secrets of the universe! he is not normal, yes he is better than normal. History is full of people who's lives were ruined because people tried to make them normal. Homosexuals are probably the best example - "normal" people destroyed Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing by trying to change their personalities. But these were some of the greatest personalities ever, it was the "normals" who needed to change.


This is what stands out to me. These are good things! So you have trouble with social situations? The majority have trouble with sensitivity, intelligence and morality. I think the rest of society has the bigger problem.


Quite right too.



I really feel for you. There is nothing wrong with wanting an ordered routine. The only problem is socialising, and that can be solved in any of three simple ways: either (1) people should not expect so much, or (2) they should be clearer, or (3) we need more opportunities to find people similar to ourselves. Compared with the lack of sensitivity, morality and intelligence this social problem is relatively easy to fix. But instead they want to change what you are, which cannot be done. It is such a waste. Sensitivity, morality and intelligence are what this world needs. The doctors should be asking you for advice, not treating you like a problem.



I have been so lucky never to have it that bad. But there always comes a time when people just do not connect with me. I am not withdrawn - I talk a lot, I ask questions, I try to fit in. but I just get blankness and the other person feels no connection. It didn't bother me as a child - I assumed that everything would fall into place once I became an adult. but it didn't.

It's most obvious in relationships. I was married for 19 years (due to my old "every man must marry, no exceptions" church) and after that ended I dated several people, but there was never any connection after the first month. In each case I wanted to talk and they didn't. I don't talk all the time, but it's the only way I can understand someone or work through a problem. I can't do the mind reading thing, nor do I see the world as they do. They always expected me to just share their values or magically react as they did. And when I did not they felt there was no connection. Any warmth died. Luckily I have a loving family, but the barrier between other people and me is wide and real.


Reminds me of my last days at work. The (highly sociable) boss would prowl around, convinced that I was lazy or plotting against her or something. Finally I couldn't take it any more.



The frustrating thing to me about your story is that you don't have a problem! or rather, you have fewer problems than the people trying to "cure" you, and your only problem is that you don't fit in with them! Not fitting in is a terrible thing - it drives people to misery and harms their functioning in every area. But it would be exactly the same if an NT was alone in a society of high functioning aspies. We would consider them morally and intellectually deficient, and find their their need to touch creepy, and their ability to know our business would make them dangerous. They would probably be constantly depressed and maybe locked up, on suicide watch. Hey, that would make a good story.

It reminds me of a pamphlet I once had from the 1940s, called "the negro problem." It was written by a very well meaning man who sincerely wanted to help. But negroes were never the problem. A society that cannot cope with difference is the problem.