The emotional experience of women with AS

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There is a profound difference between the AS in men and women.

I know a close friend with AS off-line, who, unusual for most with AS I have met, is very emotionally descriptive of her experiences growing up with undiagnosed AS in Ireland. I discussed her experiences with her at length over the last couple of months. It was a real revelation for me. I now understand that there is a profound difference between AS in men and women - AS affects women more emotionally, more profoundly and complexly, then it affects men. My experience as a man with AS was fairly good self-esteem and a relativity happy though isolated life occupied by my hobbies. Except for a couple of years feeling very depressed and lonely, which led to my diagnosis, I did not feel the complex breath of emotions and pressures that women with AS feel.

I have learnt that women with AS feel huge pressures to conform imposed on them from the outside world - from society, family and friends. They are pressured to appear "normal", to say & do right things, not appear weird, not look like a freak etc. I have not really felt any outside pressures to be anything - no pressure to copy, mimic, be anything but me. That is so different.

There is also a tendency to compare with a more successful brother / sister / parents, provoking feelings of failure and worthlessness. I never compared myself with anyone really. There are also intense feelings of social rejection, unpopularity and loneliness, thus the smallest incident can set off powerful negative emotions e.g. not being allowed into a nightclub can reignite painful emotions of past childhood rejection. For women, there are far more emotional triggers lurking in the environment.

In women with AS, it seems self-esteem hinges on being what society / family demands and expects. Whereas men with AS can be happy aspiring to be a train spotter, film fan, scientist, engineer, AS women are assigned the more difficult to attain empathic roles of - mother, girlfriend, counsellor, listener, helper, consoler etc. AS is kinda like being a man but for woman with AS, she can feel that she has failed at being a woman & daughter. She can feel broken from the very core to the surface.

To compound things, some women with AS may feel all these emotions but are trapped from describing their experience by a reduced emotional vocabulary or pressure to not make a fuss or trouble - they can't explain their inner suffering to their boyfriend, parents or friends. I think this means that women with AS are more liable to develop different set of mental heath problems than men, that their invisible emotional turmoil is rendered physical as e.g eating disorders, self-harm, psychosomatic illnesses, negative body image etc.

Am I right? What's your opinion? If your a woman with AS, have I described your experience of AS accurately?

Last edited by Diamonddavej on 23 Mar 2010, 9:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

*Uh jaw drops* *speechless* OMG WOW! You described me and how I feel alot of the time OMG WOW! I try to change behavior for family and try to change for them so yes there's pressure there!! ! I have no friends/social life etc! The College issue (which someone might dismiss it as an analyzer (an AS trait it seems from WP people) I look at past school experiences ask myself where I went wrong in life/college etc. I'm just so shocked right now you described me and how I feel. THANK YOU VERY VERY VERY MUCH OMG THANKS!! !! !! !! (BTW wanted to add I compare myself to my older sister (husband successful job,child (can bare children I can't) Thanks for describing who I am.

I cared about normal when I was ten and tried to fit in and please people to get friends and be liked. I was very emotional and got hurt real easily. I also would try and be polite and nice. I wanted to please everyone. I also used to put on an act to try and be normal.

I don't think the article described me because I just don't care anymore and I am laid back now. I don't even try and fit in or have friends.

Thank you, I am glad I helped. I think males with AS should read this thread, they would learn allot about the invisible emotional life AS females, something that was a utter mystery to me only a few months ago.

My friend compares herself to her more successful brother and to compound things, he does not want anything to do with his sister. This makes her feel failure and ashamed. My bother is making great money in his job, every week I hear he has sold more industrial weighing machines for £xx,xxxx giving him £x,xxxx commission. To me its like hearing foreign stock market figures, it has no impact on me at all. But if I were a woman with AS, I now know, I would feel terrible about myself.

Very accurate overall. Some details aren't exactly descriptive, but the pressure to mimic and fake "normal" is definitely there.

~Kate

I relate to not all, but a lot of the OP's statements.
thanks for posting it up.

Hmm, not really. I mean as a kid I was fine playing in my own little world. I wore what I wanted and acted how I wanted, because I was too in my world to know what was the right way to do things.
I don't try to mimic behaviour but pick up behaviour, because I don't like to appear rude.
I can't express my emotions so I guess I can kind of relate to that part.
I do sometimes dress up, but that's more to do with picking up then anything.
I did try to conform but that lasted barely a year, now I'm back being me again...in my own little world.

This seems pretty old fashioned. I grew up in a less than formal household. The only time my mum seemed old fashioned is when she told me that girls drink wine not beer. I was old enough to just roll my eyes at that.
I guess it was because I was a tomboy. My mum wanted me to wear dresses but that was really teasing.

Your post sounds a lot like a conversation I have with my boyfriend fairly often.
I think we both have AS, but I'm more frustrated than he is about it...
I feel that need to fit in, to have friends and family that accept me. Not having that has made me depressed and anxious even though I can logically think out the reasons... I just can't shake that feeling of needing to fit in.
My boyfriend is perfectly fine without friends or family that accept him.

More than anything I wish I could shake this feeling of needing people to accept me.
Though I'm sure if I had a close family I wouldn't need outside friends.

Well... thanks for posting this I always feel happier to know there are others like me.... I feel less alone then

These have never been true for me. Your descriptions of yourself here:

is way closer to describing me.


The only place there was attempted pressure on me was in elementary school when my teachers were so worried because
1 I acted out due to bullying, and
2 I never sought out other kids and I never was with anyone in my sparetime.

They tried to get me to play with other girls and couldn't accept that I was content on my own. I was so much more interested in the cars I watched and in the thoughts I thought during one recess than I ever was in other kids through my entire childhood. I allowed them to force me to other girls when I was a first grader and was too timid to say no. After that I simply stayed where I was, said no and became good at going to places where the teachers (and kids) were less likely to spot me.

I knew I was different and I was completely content with that, and I have never understand why they couldn't just respect that. You can't form everyone in the same mold. I knew that, I understood that; they did not. To me they were a source of annoyance, I never once considered changing into something that wasn't right for me.

I've never mimicked anyone nor did that thought even strike me. I only learnt about that kind of behaviour when I read one of Tony Attwood's books.

Some women may feel like that, but I never have. (I'm 32 BTW.)

I have an aloof and introvert personality, I don't know if that makes it easier for me.

It sounds to me more like the difference between one man and one woman. I know many women who sound nothing like this and many men who sound a lot like this. So be careful ascribing all the differences between you to her femaleness. It reminds me a bit of when I read a woman with an autism dx writing at length about the differences between autism and AS, only to realize her only basis for comparison was one guy with AS she knew.

I only relate to a little of it, and that little is stuff I share in common with some guys I know as well as women. And I relate just as much to the guy side. Guys can be made to feel defective just as much as women can.

That said, I think there are real differences. Not absolute ones but general ones. When I talk about functioning by an elaborate set of skills always shifting around and never locked into one constant configuration, there are guys who identify but mostly it's women. Even though there are also women who get just as confused by it as lots of guys do.

Very well said Egrop. With the "try to fit in" issue with family sometimes after a big argument I will lay down and cry into a pillow for what seems like forever. Since I behaved X way which upset my family for the 1,000th time it's depressing sometimes.

That's one difference for me. I was innately passive as a child and would do whatever I thought was required of me regardless of my own thoughts. But once I got to understanding autism and knowing myself? I almost never feel bad about not fitting in. I am fine how I am. I am reasonably happy and stable. This despite (or possibly because?) I am generally way more visibly odd than the average autistic person.

If I self harm it isn't because of hidden unexpressed emotions but rather immediate reaction to overload or being unable to rapidly communicate (but by communicate I mean use words about anything, not emotions particularly). And it's generally the stereotypical thing with the head banging that both women and men do. I don't get psychosomatic illnesses, that's a stereotype of women but almost never actually true. I've been stereotyped that way because of being a visibly unusual woman but there always turns out to be a physical cause. I don't doubt though that many women are misdiagnosed that way and persuaded to believe it, I once met a very submissive woman who had been persuaded that her badly swollen eyeballs had an emotional cause!

In general I'm just not like this.

It seems that the need to fit in and the fear of failure ... thus rejection .. are a common worry / fear in many women with AS. And perhaps those who feel these emotions are more socially orientated, less detached / aloof, not happy on their own. My friend is very social, she is an extrovert, she gets very lonely easily.

My friends AS, was diagnosed after she developed stomach pains and stopped eating, she went to a Dr. for her stomach pain, he noticed she seemed to have AS, she was referred to another Dr. for a diagnosis.

Me too. So far the best coping mechanism I've found, is regression. Just giving up all the so-called "social skills" I forced myself to attain. I don't pass as normal anymore, if I ever did (which I doubt.) Trying to fit in just about killed me.

And now, I'm actually happy with myself and better able to deal with the world. I guess life gave me autistic tendencies because that's the best way for my autistic brain to deal with the NT world, and I've embraced that.

I wonder how true these differences are in general though? I often seem to fit these "female profiles" slightly better than the male ones (except for the parts that have heavy gender-related cultural components). I wonder how much just goes to personality, and how much is really about a gender difference.

I heard Attwood talking (on a radio interview) about emotional hypersensitivity (like, to the mood of a room of people -- he was calling it "6th sense"), and was making is sound like that is an exclusively a female phenomenon -- and it doesn't seem that way at all. Lots of people of both genders seem to have that. And the same for being quiet and shutting down under stress vs. melting down and throwing things, etc., and the mimicking and such. There could be a difference, but I don't know if it's black and white as it's made out to be.

Your description is not exactly me, but pretty damn close. Amazing insight. I also want to "Thank You" for posting this.