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I am Socially ret*d!!

Last edited by Lancebergy on 13 Aug 2010, 2:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

^^ Greetings Lancebergy. A very warm welcome to WrongPlanet!

Welcome to WP Lance.

Feel free to PM me if you need to talk/rant. Both are perfectly acceptable/common on the forum too.

It may sound corny, but many/most/all of us will understand where you're coming from. That sound cool, eh?

Warm welcome!

PM whenever you feel like it.

Welcome to WrongPlanet, I'm free to talk if you want to talk with my IM accounts or alternatively PM me and I'll reply.

Greetings Lance! I get what you are going through. Feel free to rant at me, PM me as much as you need. I've got a provisional dx from my therapist but nothing "official" yet since she doesn't really Dx. But it's strange feeling like everything you thought was weird about you isn't that weird after all--missing puzzle pieces and all of that.

I hope your girlfriend and family come around...it's only been a few months, though, so don't lose hope!

Hey feel free to PM me. I am not on IM much anymore as I used to.

Hey Lance,
After reading your post I realized that you probably do NOT have Asperger's. Let me get this straight: you FELT disconnected from the world? And it seems like you really want other people to understand you because you feel lonely and seek to be with other people who can feel for you. You have lots of feelings and you are expressing them. Your entire post is an emotional cry for help. Also, you are a mellow person and you have a big heart? Do you really have cardiomegaly or did you say that intuitively meaning "I am a good person and I feel for others?"
Do yourself a favor and seek an alternative diagnosis, preferrably from someone actually familiar with the autistic spectrum, instead of someone who just wants to rubberstamp you. I am a doctor - believe me, doctors make mistakes. I was like you myself, good thing I was never officially diagnosed.

Or "unoficially". That's right, Spyral, you too. Your post is all feelings as well. Good thing your therapist does not diagnose.
Let me guess: they gave you some kind of questionnaire and you gave them all the "right" answers because you knew what they were.
The more I read these threads the more I realize that AS is grossly misdiagnosed.

What kind of doctor are you? Were you trained in diagnosis or undiagnosing people over the internet?

You know very little about these people. I FEEL like what you have done is unethical and irresponsible. Since I said "feel" there, are you questioning my diagnosis too?

Welcome to Wrong planet.


Feel free to pm if you need to talk.


ps: I don´t think theres anything wrong with saying the word feel since everyone has feelings, even though some of us have some trouble when expressing them.

Spiridon, I have to disagree with you. Asperger's is on the autistic spectrum, it is true, but to assume that somebody doesn't have Asperger's because they have "lots of feelings" and a "big heart" is erroneous. As everybody here can attest to, we all have a great deal of emotions. They may be misplaced, but I have yet to meet an Aspie who wasn't emotional (and I used to work in the field, I met A LOT of them). Many of us are "big-hearted" (not cardiomegaly) and like to help others, but find that we either overwhelm and do too much, or sit back confused and don't do anything, so it looks like we don't care.

Our problems come from picking up social cues via spoken as well as body language. Facial expressions are particularly hard to read. It takes us forever to "get" social mores, and we're always out of sync with our peers. It's not that we don't want friends, but making friends is really hard as an aspie because we're always screwing up on things like proper social boundaries, and how much is too much. Also, we tend to like a lot of alone time, which tends to mess up friendships, especially with kids / teenagers / young adults. The things that most young people like to do are noisy, crowded, and confusing to an aspie.

And yes, even those on the severe side of autism, who can never be toilet-trained or learn to talk, still have feelings, doctor. The limbic system remains intact for all of us. Since you weren't there and have no idea what diagnostic criteria was used, may I suggest that you simply accept the poster's story as fact and respect it as such. Denigrating his post was not only somewhat useless for him, but useless for you as well, unless you enjoy being mean. We come on this site for acceptance, and many of us have past experiences with doctors who couldn't diagnose a boil if it were on their own butt. Physician, heal thyself.

He has been diagnosed with AS, not as being a Vulcan. Like many of us he probably finds it much easier to express his emotional side via the anonymity of a screen name, and with the benefit of being able to edit before posting - especially as this is a forum frequented in the main by people who can theoretically relate.

I doubt that Lancebergy would be quite so open with how he feels were any of us to meet him face to face.

I'm sorry I came across as being mean. I was just trying to be helpful. I just feel for Lancebergy because I was just like him. There was one day, long ago, when I thought I definitely had Asperger's. A doctor who has a daughter with Asperger's agreed with it, because she thought I was behaving just like her daughter. That's why i know about this forum. I don't just randomly go to forums trying to diagnose or undiagnose people. And I definitely didn't diagnose or undiagnose, I just told what my opinion was and told him to seek a second opinion from a professional ("alternative diagnosis" was a bad choice of words, I admit).
I tried to explain it to my parents, but they didn't listen and maintained that there was nothing wrong with me. Turns out that there is, and it's not AS. It's something else. Something that can be treated, even cured. That's why I tried to help, to make sure he is not missing a treatment that may help him. What I have is also a reason why I am no longer involved in the practice of medicine, although there are other reasons.
I made a big mistake when I said I was a doctor. I was just trying to make a point that doctors make mistakes sometimes. No, I wasn't diagnosing Asperger's - I was diagnosing cancer ( I was a resident, so I didn't make final diagnoses, someone else did). And doctors make mistakes in diagnosing something as "obvious" as cancer. Sometimes they say there is cancer when there is not, sometimes they say there isn't when there is. It truly drove me nuts, that's also why I quit. Which is why I think that goes double for such a poorly understood diagnosis as AS.
I hope the OP doesn't take it the wrong way. Maybe he does have Asperger's. I used the words "probably" and "let me guess" because I didn't know how it happened. I know that I don't know his or Spyral's circumstances. And when I talked about feelings and big heart, I should have emphasized more the key word I used, which is "intuitively."
Please don't take my first post the wrong way. I was just trying to help.

Nicely said, Spiridon.

As is TYPICAL of Asperger's, sometimes we can come off as mean, cold "know-it-alls". But when that happens, and people react negatively towards anything we said / did / wrote, the best thing to do is to apologize and move forward. Perhaps you don't have AS, but you could've fooled me by your last post!!

This is the one place on the internet I've gone to, where I can be an aspie and not be labled a "weirdo" or a "social ret*d". I love that aspect of this place and will zealously guard against what I perceive to be meanness or a dismissive attitude from an "outsider".

To Lance, welcome! This is a place where you can rant, rave, or ask questions, and you are welcome with virtual open arms. Most people in the outside world have never even heard of Asperger's ("Ass Burgers? What's that??"), and when you say it's a form of autism, they think silly things like "Rain Man" and ask if you can multiply large numbers in your head without thinking. I just tell them that I'm socially ret*d with a straight look on my face and await their confused responses. Not everybody will understand, especially within your family unit. I tried for a few years to tell my mother-in-law that her son is an aspie, and she just stared off into space and ignored me. Well, she used to, until his grandson was just diagnosed with it. Now she realizes it's not a bad thing and it actually explains much of what she noticed about her son all the while he was growing up.

My own mother understood immediately because I am just like my father, who is now passed on but was a very loud, in-your-face aspie. Very smart, but no social skills, and would bore anybody within earshot about stuff only he was interested in. If you took him in public, it was almost a guarantee that he would do or say something embarrassing, and be completely clueless about it.

We are wired a little differently, and the trick is to accept your differences as a part of who you are. You may have to learn all about it on your own without sharing what you've learned with your family and/or girlfriend. I have to say, though, if your girlfriend acts weird about it and doesn't want to talk about it, that does not portend well for the relationship. I hope it all works out for you.

Wow didnt mean to start world war 3, just trying to make some new friends, and I have had 3 professional dianose me with Asperger's Syndrome. I am overwhelmed by the feed back I got and wont be posting any more.

Spyral wishes (wait, that's a "feeling" word) that Spiridon was a little less quick to judge people that he has never met face-to-face. FYI: Spyral's therapist (who is an LPC which is why she doesn't have an official dx) did not do anything but ask questions about what Spyral was like as a child, what Spyral found difficult about social situations and why Spyral had trouble relating to people. FYI: Spyral sought out therapy because she is a sexual assault survivor and has had trouble trusting and relating to people since. Spyral's therapist figured out that Spyral's problems have been going on since LONG before the assault, since childhood in fact. Spyral is not a robot...she does have feelings but has a very difficult time in identifying them and recognizing them in others. She can use feeling words in conversation the same way that doctors can use medical terms. She has learned them and knows systematically that if person A is feeling alone then person A will be less sad if person B says "I understand" because she has seen this scenario play out around her hundreds of times. She is not stupid--social stuff can be learned like a foreign language if one is inclined to try.