Mood Instability Bothering Since AS Diagnosis two weeks ago

Post Reply New Topic

A doctor suggested I had AS in 1997 but because I didn't like him I didn't believe him although I knew I was weird, never fit in and stuck out like a sore thumb.

I was socially detached and uncomfortable in the company of people except professors when I was briefing them about my research. I had several special interests which consumed much of my time but no friends and certainly no girlfriends as I became paralyzed with fear in the company of women my own age even though I was sometimes attracted to them. Yet I could no see the diagnosis of AS as fitting me.

As I got older I began to wonder why I was such a freak of nature: never married, still a virgin, had no money or house, and could never seek to keep a steady job despite my Ivy league college education.

My goal was total commitment to research although I couldn't get qet along with my professors in graduate school and so I had to go it feebly on my own with no monetary support or academic credentials. That galled me. Nonetheless my only joy in life has been totally immersing myself in my research interests to the exclusion of everything else such that I could work in the library or computer center and have no that time had passed. I could this without ever having the urge to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom.

But I made such a total mess of my life being anxious and depressed almost all the time that I am on the verge of homelessness with no prospect of getting disability insurance.

Recently I saw Temple Grandin on TV and when she talked about it I knew I had it.

I took all of the tests Scientist posted and scored poorly and in the direction of having AS and OCD.

As money is tight I could not afford to pay for a private clinician to assess me for AS so I my psychiatrist to prescribe diagnostic assessment to AS and I took it to Florida Vocational Rehabilitation which opened a case and ordered a diagnostic assessment with a psychologist said to be knowledgeable about AS.

I totally focused my mind on the assessment and read everything I could find about it. I scoured through various groups on Wrong Planet and began to believe that I belonged in this fellowship of outcasts. Then I began to obsess on the implications of it so much that I couldn't think of anything else and I became increasingly afraid of belonging to a group which might reject to turn on me. I was so afraid that my psychiatrist increased my antianxiety and antidepressant medicines to the maximum to see me through this crisis.

Finally I got a letter in the mail that my assessment would take place in a week and be done by a clinical psychologist.

After running various tests MMPI and IQ included he interviewed me and asked very pointed questions about my background and present circumstances and within a few minutes he said I have Asperger Syndrome.

At first I was happy that I knew what I had and I even PMd Scientist telling her that my diagnosis was confirmed and I considered it official. But then the glow diminished when I realized I was still lock in a self defeating point of view and that I didn't know what to do to save myself like get work I could keep and maybe make an aspie friend I have something in common with.

I started to obsess again uncontrollably until I couldn't take it anymore and then my head started to fill with uncontrollable music I couldn't get out of it and I felt overcome by an empty feeling like I was going to die at any moment. I had a quarrel with my roommate friend who I've known for more than twenty years and got so upset about what she said that I planned and was about to carry out my suicide the night after the fight. How I wanted to be alone in a safe place with friends and a job. But that was not my reality which seemed for several days like a dream. Then my friend came out of her room and forgave me and I settled into a quiet anxious gloom still no knowing what to do and where I fit in.

Please can anybody related to what I'm saying and does anybody have a clue what I should do.

I don't want to be totally alone. And I don't want to get sick or die alone.

Rich

I can relate, kind of. I haven't had any severe depression or anything, but I've been obsessing about my diagnosis since I got it last summer. It's making me anxious and tedious to be around. I also can't get this doubt out of my head, I'm so frightened of losing this brilliant explanation for all the weird things in my life, I have this feeling it's too good to be true there's actually a name for it and knowledge about it and a community of people who can give me perspective.

I think my obsessing so much about it confirms that it's in fact true. So how do I stop then? If I stop, then maybe it's not true, then I'll start obsessing by default, which again makes it true so I can stop. And start again. Damn, life is a vicious cycle of suffering!

I can relate to what you write. I was diagnosed last year. I had a lot of very unpleasant treatment for depression and anxiety until one psychologist suggested Asperger's syndrome and everyone else agreed. I have not come to terms with the diagnosis, but it does explain a lot of the difficulties I have had with people and social situations. The diagnosis also has helped me deal with the difficult situations better because I can understand what goes wrong now.

I used to be a research academic and was very, very satisfied with my employment - almost like being payed to play. I do some analytical work, some statistics and some web design, as and when it comes up.

I was also recently diagnosed. I can relate to what you are experiencing. I did a partial hospitalization program in a psychiatric facility. It was a great help. Check out what's in your area, just be careful of the format because these are group type this. The one I did was well structured and well led. I learned many new and healthy coping skills.

Best of luck to you.

Nelle and other colleagues in AS, there is no option for partial hospitalization in the place I am located now in Florida. Mental Health has always been given a low priority and the state and county mental health clinics are short handed due to lay offs and budget cuts. If you need psychiatric hospitalization you can usually expect merely three days for medical stabilization and then you out with a referral to the county medication clinic where you see a psychiatrist for five or ten minutes to discuss symptoms and side effects. There is no partial hospitalization left here to the best of my knowledge and when there is partial hospitalization available at other places in Florida I am told it runs only for three weeks. I am moving to Maryland soon where the mental health situation is worse as you have to pay a lot for any services and that is going to be nearly impossible as I am earning nothing right now. Maybe your suggestion could help other AS colleagues in the same situation in more thoughtful and well funded states like California, New York, or New Jersey. Thank you anyway.

I felt the same way, when my mum broke the news to me, that I'm HFA, at the age of 15. I felt that a part of myself had died, and there was no hope of me, having a future. That was back in 1990. It's 2010 now, I accept myself, and I don't wish to be cured.

Stuart, thanks for your kind reply. Just how are you specifically coming to terms with your diagnosis in relationship to your inner life, family, friends, spouse and employer? I can function in casual outside relations saying hi and goodbye at the appropriate times. I can carry on a focused conversation about topics I find interesting answering questions and making referrals. I just can't get personal with others or else the anxiety increases to intense levels and my whole body begins to shake. I can get only so close or so distant from others before the anxiety and depression become unbearable and that the way I've poorly coped for more than forty years. Any suggestions you have regarding your own successes will be most appreciated.

On a brighter note, I'd like to learn more about your employment as an academic and how you got out of it and what kind of research you do know and when. When I was college I did not pursue a standard academic major but rather worked with mentors and explored a subject area called the social scientific study of religion and produced graded research reports, seventeen in all which defined my learned expertise in the area. I did oral history, participant observation, sample surveys, secondary analysis of other's data, analysis of governmental documents, bibliographic research, thematic map making and other things to make my points. I employed uni, bi and multivariate statistics realizing my ends.

To me research is, was, and always will be the joy of my life, something I've always cherished, even when out of school I worked as a church planner, an abstractor and indexer on a legal project, a designer of textbooks and courses on chronic pain management and as a qualitative industrial market researcher. I'd give anything to regain the expertise in several subject areas throughout my life and I am thinking about developing an independent research project dealing with AS and chronic pain, or AS and chronic illness, death, dying, and grief. Would you be interested in discussing any of these ideas for research and possibly playing with at it?

To Lipstickkiller and other AS colleagues, your obsessing as well as mine is ruining the quality of our lives. I suffer with you terribly. I wonder how many of us there are and what they do to cope with it or treat it. I'm taking Zoloft/Sertraline, an antianxiety and antidepressant medication which I believe keeps me from going entirely mad, but which doesn't stop the obsessing. I also take Buspar/Buspirone for anxiety and still the relief is only to a point and often I spontaneously become nervous and my hands then my body begins uncontrollably shaking and I want to cry. I feel that I've totally ruined my life, never having done anything of social use which I hoped for after I graduated college. I just jumped from one low or medium level job to another never lasting very long at any of then. But you are a mom and maybe a wife as well and that is a great achievement made despite the adversity we aspies face. Do you find the music you like helps calm your mind? Sometimes my Rennaissance polyphony helps a little while at other times it makes me even edgier. I have heard some oral presentations on YouTube concerning AS and I've found that sometimes a specific presenter's voice seemed to calm me but then I start to obsess on the presenter and their voice and ever search the web for more recordings of their voice. I've read that a two pronged approach to therapy works: a regimen of anti-obsessive-compulsive medication and a brief fifteen week course of cognitive behavioral therapy, but I've not found any such therapy at public mental health clinics and her private therapy is very expensive. What do you think? And by the way what are you majoring in in school, and are you interested in doing research?

I'm will endeavor to work through this very difficult time and come to terms with my diagnosis. But how specifically did you accomplish it and how long did it take? I'm even prepared to embrace it tightly as part of myself, but right now I am struggling to survive, wondering where I'm going to live in the future, with whom, how I'm going to pay for food and medicines. I've had trouble keeping jobs and am at my best when I work entirely alone unsupervised with only a list of goals which need to be accomplished at specific times. I love research of any kind except financial and I could easily lose myself it if only I could do a great interview which I haven't lately and get somebody to give me a chance despite my age. What do you think of what I've said?

You know, being diagnosed with AS is a huge change in your life. Most likely, your entire foundation for your self-concept is undergoing a redefinition. That is frightening, stressful, and can be outright devastating sometimes. It's not particularly that AS is a disability, so much that it affects so much of your life, so much of who you are. AS is part of your personality, and you never had a name for it before.

Change is frightening. You have to redefine your thoughts about who you are and what your past was like and how you see other people. That is no easy task, and I only had to do it at the age of twenty.

The best I can say, is: Remember you are still the same person now as before. You still have all the same personality traits. Some of them have different explanations now; some of the things you thought were moral failings may turn out to be simply cognitive problems. But you are still the same person, and your life can still be a good one.

There is no cure for this but time, and possibly a sympathetic listener. Maybe you can talk to a friend or a family member; maybe you'd rather hire a counselor for a more neutral perspective. If you're particularly introverted, maybe you'd prefer a journal. In the meantime, until the dust settles, just take good care of yourself and wait. If things get worse, you can always ask your family doctor for a referral to a psychologist; at the moment, though, it seems like pretty much what you would expect from a very stressed-out person whose world has just been turned upside-down.

re. Jobs: Are you in the USA? If so, your state probably has something like my state's vocational rehabilitation services. They specialize in finding jobs for people with disabilities of all sorts, including autism spectrum disorders.

I have always had difficulty with the casual activities like shopping, dealing with the parents of my childrens' friends and my wife's friends. I am learning more about social clues and filling in the silences - I always find conversations come to a dead halt and leave me feeling uncomfortable and rejected. Adding another sentence (even reframing something already said, or referring to a safe topic like the weather) helps move a conversation on to the point where I do not feel like an outcast.

I think I should write out a list of my younger daughter's friends and their parents names, jobs and interests.

In family and personal relationships I am very, very bad at maintaining contact. I would never telephone or write to anyone unless I had some information to send or a question to reply to, because it simply does not occur to me. Obviously this means I have a very small circle of relationships with people who can accept that I am still their friend even though I do not keep in regular contact. I am learning that it is important to make contact because it makes meeting those people in future easier. I sometimes send interesting news items to my daughter by email, for instance.

Knowing that "Asperger's people do X" is very helpful to understand why I might behave in a way that other people notice as unusual, and looking for ways to cope with it. To be honest, this is new to me (less than one year) and I am learning.

I do not tell people that I have Asperger's - my wife and my grown-up daughter know, and any medical professionals I deal with.



People keep telling me that practice or exposure help, but I don't think so. Pacing and moderation help. Medication can help in some circumstances - I am going to stay with my in-laws and will be taking anti-anxiety medication with me. Because there are so many in-laws and because they all know things that I have not told them myself, it tends to make me very nervous - even simple things like what my children are doing, which they obviously know through other relations, push a conspiracy button in my mind. And it is so claustrophobic - again I am going to try to pace and moderate, and to be sure that there is a safe bolt-hole to retire to, and that some time is spent travelling around rather than confined with family.



I used to do medical and sociomedical research, a bit of supervision and some lecturing, but mostly research and writing. I was very good at it until I moved to a very tough university environment where I was subjected to a lot of bullying. Trying harder made it worse. I had what is incorrectly but descriptively called a mental breakdown about ten years ago and spent a long time being treated for anxiety, depression and self-harm. Last year my current psychologist suggested I had Asperger's and it was like someone turned the lights on because so much of my life in childhood, during employment, the bullying and the depression made sense. If someone had diagnosed Asperger's at the beginning of my breakdown, then I think most of the treatment for depression, anxiety and psychosis would not have happened, and I would be at the stage I am at now ten years ago.

Apparently it is common for ASD to be misdiagnosed like this, but especially so when someone with ASD is genuinely suffering from a depressive or anxiety disorder and fails to respond to treatment - they keep adding more drugs to the cocktail for as long as you aren't normal, which is horrible if you are never going to reach what they expect of normal. Lack of affect, fixed beliefs, obsessive-compulsive behaviours etc are all signs that the drugs aren't working yet.

I currently do not have a job. I do some analytical work when it finds me (like statistical modelling of customer demand, a few bits of medical statistics, some writing) and some programming and web design work. Sometimes I get a few days worth, sometimes a few months. I have had a severe relapse of the depression / suicidal thoughts every time I have tried to re-enter regular employment, so I like the safety of consultancy relationship. Money is not a problem because my wife works and she is very supportive. I design and build furniture, and am renovating an old house, so I keep busy. I also play with statistical patterns - word frequencies, modelling, internet usage prediction and stocktrading. I think that if I was an academic in an office, then I would be actively publishing and people would pay me to play (like they used to), but I do not know how to get from where I am now back to where I was then.



I think it would be great to collect all the questions an adult with an ASD might have, along with useful responses. I did something like this a couple of times, but I am in serious self-doubt mode at the moment, although I would share all my thoughts on it with you.

Last edited by StuartN on 18 Mar 2010, 6:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

To Callista and other AS colleagues, I appreciate your kind and gentle words. Just hearing them is reassuring and calming. Although a young person you seem wise beyond your years and certainly wiser that me.

If AS is not a disability and I can live a happy remainder of my life with it what can I do to make having AS an asset in securing work and some friends I can frankly talk to about problems and opportunities which may come up.

I admire you for coming to terms with your AS diagnose at age twenty. At twenty I was stumbling through life not knowing who or what I was and where or if I fit in or should fit in.

I have no one so far to talk frankly and intimately about my life and issues. May I message you from time to time to ask for your sage advice on some thing I going through as I attempt to adjust to the change induced by the AS diagnosis,

I appreciate your reminding me that I am the same person now as before., and that the things I've thought were moral failings may turn out to be merely cognitive problems..

I have contacted Florida vocational rehabilitation and in fact their referral to a psychologist for evaluation led to the confirmation that I indeed had AS recently.

Any information about asexuality and perhaps the purity and beauty of platonic relationships would be most appreciated if indeed you would share it with me

Wouds you tell me about your studies and about what kind of engineer you hope to me, and what tradition of Christianity do you belong and how do you practice it?

I hope I have not intruded in your life but your words and my words in response to them has calmed me. Thank you so much for that.

Forgot what I was attempting to say. Sorry.

Stuart, thankj you for your response. I too have always had difficult with shopping either shopping compulsively for clothes or records when I was young or shopping for appliances or other things I was unfamiliar which could leave me standing in one place for a long time trying to decide what to do and often buying the wrong think My conversational style like yours is not good as I often speak in bursts even to total strangers expressing whatever thoughts and feelings I need to get out and often I anger and alienate the very people I was trying to be friendly with. At other times I am told I ask so many questions of the person I am supposed to be conversing with that the person becomes offended at what they perceive as an interrogation or an intrusion into their private life. I haven't mastered staying within socially acceptable boundaries.

I thought I was having an easy time communicating with my roommates friends until on a few occasions I had a hysterical meltdown in response to the unremitting noise of their play. I am told I scare everybody parents and children and nobody but my roommates 13 year old daughter will have anything to do with me.

I have never kept up closely with family relationships or friends. I almost never send cards and usually forget birthdays entirely. I didn't talk with my half sister for a year because she never ever contacted me about anything. Finally I called her to complain and she told me she really had nothing to say to me.

I called my adoptive father a week before my father died at 90 years old. We had a very reconciling and happy conversation in which he said for the first time that he loved me and was proud of me. But nobody called me to tell me he was in the hospital dying and nobody expected me to fly up to attend the funeral.

I'm going to start calling my old research and writing friends to talk shop as at least that's satisfying for all concerned.

My circle of friends and acquaintances is so small that you can count them on a few fingers of one hand.

I am striving to learn and appreciate like you how AS influences my behavior so that I can accept or modify it.

My roommate best friend and her brother know I have AS and no one else except the psychologist who evaluated me and my voc rehab counsellor. I wonder if I think I told my psychiatrist to, but not my regular doctor. I am concerned about telling someone I have something they will perceive as a deficit and attack or reject me for it. I am thinking about how to reframe my AS in totally positive terms so that people will see it as a good thing and useful for employment.

I've tried pacing my self but I either operate at lightening speed when I have a research idea or sluggishly and almost totally shut down when I muddle through every day life. As my antianxiety/antidepressant medications only partially help me I am going to try an antipsychotic though I am not psychotic as research suggests it may help better control my ocd. I feel utterly overwhelmed when I'm not medicated and utterly without imagination and effort when I'm on it. What a conundrum. I don't know what to do.

Like you I don't have a job as I don't work well with other people unless we're all grimly focused on a task together. I never was a professor and don't have a master's degree. But my Bachelor degree gave me I am told the research and analytical skills of any PhD. I've done consulting work in the past for lawyers as proofreader, indexer and abstractor, and for nonprofit organizations as an aid to helping them to computerize their records or automate their research efforts online. And I worked as a church planner and thematic cartographer several times. I love research more than life itself.

I can understand your loss of confidence and anxiety and depression when becoming employed as it afflicts me as well. That's why in 1988 I started compiling a reference book on massage and bathing therapies. I started a tiny company me only and published it and other works including books on headache, neuralgias, and fibromyalgia syndrome all of which I have, Then in 1991 I developed a course in which I actually gave oral presentations to mixed professional and lay groups almost from memory and I was terrified only three times when I lost control of the group and I was attacked and bullied by its members for not saying what they wanted to hear.

I love furniture and the smell of cut wood but am incapable of using my hands to carve, lathe or otherwise fabricate anything.

Looking for statistical patterns in things could be interesting especially if it was focused on some aspect of AS like education, its difficulties and successes, and why; or aspie attitudes to aging, death, dying, and grief. I am also interested in aspies experiences with and attitudes toward chronic pain.

If you were interested we could do this research on our own with the assistance of some of my old professors and colleagues in research.

I have also thought of designing a study to be conducted by people diagnosed with AS examining the aspie and neurotypical world as participant or nonparticipant observers writing down those observations and sharing them with others so that a fuller picture of aspie perception and experience could emerge which could help all aspies as well as scholars examining these writings for further useful patterns which they would write about and post to this database so that it would become a living body of useful knowledge accessible to everyone.

I am especially interested in your book idea and the question and answer Socratic Method for presenting it. I did the same on fibromyalgia syndrome when I wrote and published a book comprised of questions and answers one following logically from the other. It was very well received by professionals and laymen, and earned me quite a bit of money for more than ten years. What can you share with me about your research and would you like me to critique it or read it and just give a general impression?

I'm confused. I posted replies to everyone who posted in response to my plea about my mood instability following diagnosis with AS and I think may I did wrong and should have posted replies in private messages and they moved off topic quickly. I'm sorry if I offended anyone. I get over enthusiastic about things some times and blurt out spoken or written words in a rush ahead of my mind and often I foul up so bad people won't have anything to do with me anymore. Please forgive me for anyone who posted her. I really don't know what I'm doing.

My mood is still unstable and my anxiety level high but it is moderating thanks to medicine and the kind advice of others, and the distraction of talking about something different from me and my uncertainty.

I am sure that you did not offend anyone. I often feel that I have offended people too, and I am working out that sometimes it is an Asperger's feeling. Your thread contains so much and the forum moves on very quickly - I actually had trouble finding this thread because I could not remember the title.

I think when a thread has moved on, then it is worth selecting the strand that is most important to you and posting it as a new topic.



Maybe it is worth sharing some of this information with your room-mate and other people who you are close to, to help them understand that you are having a difficult time, without telling anything you want to keep private. A friend of mine got a doctor's certificate once saying "Ms. X has a condition" and just the fact of a doctor saying it was enough for her employer and colleagues to take it seriously.