Social Anxiety, ASD or traumatic History?

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This is going to be a long post as it will cover a lot of history. I am trying to work out if I am on the Autistic spectrum or if my issues are caused by other things so I will start with my childhood and work my way through to the present. I know I should probably be discussing this with my therapist but they often don't give you enough time to go into any real detail and I have trouble talking to them anyway.

I was prone to difficulties as a child and I was slightly quirky. I had no language problems but did have some strange habits lol. I would often enjoy playing by myself for long periods of time, whilst other little girls were playing mummies and daddies with their dolls I was collecting bank forms from the local Banks or playing traffic jams by lining up my much older half brother's toy cars all over the front room floor. I also seemed to like my routines back then as well as I would have to do things like watch my scooby doo cartoon at the same time each day or I would have a massive tantrum. When it came to mixing with the other children I did mix sometimes but it often would not go all that well. I had trouble taking turns when playing games, would through a tantrum if they kept changing the game or if they did not play it right and I had a twitch in my nose that I could not control so other children would run away from me saying I was pulling faces at them. I could, however, socialise with adults and had no difficulty wandering off to do so. My mum would often find me later nattering away to some stranger (with an ice-cream in hand which they must have bought me) and on apologising would often get the reply "Don't worry about it we have been having the most fascinating conversation" lol.

However, I can't say as I had a good home life by any means and I'm not sure how much of that might have contributed to my quirks. My father, who was a rather strange soul himself, was prone to violent outbursts and rages. Now he only ever hit me once (apparently I was screaming too loudly at the tv and woke him up out of his usual afternoon nap so he sat there thumping me on the back and my mum and nan had to pull him off of me) but he would hit out at other people more often although not all of the time...he was more likely to smash things instead. When I was very young I remember going down stairs during an argument my parents were having to see what was going on. What I saw was my dad sitting on top of my half brother repeatedly hitting my brothers head on the kitchen floor whilst my mother screamed at him to stop. No one saw me so I quietly went back upstairs again and never even went back down there during an argument again until I was about 7 or 8 years old (more on that later). Sometime after I am told that my father was put into a psychiatric prison because he went out in his car and ran a man over and then reversed back over him again. I do not have any memory of this and I was not present with him in the car at the time...I only know what I was told in regards to that.

My mum was not violent but was prone to anxiety and depression and spent her time and in and out of psychiatric wards whilst I was placed in foster homes as my dad was incapable of looking after me on his own (he had other problems asides from his aggressive outbursts...he was not really capable of showing emotion, had no friends, had an unusual gait (walked funny), was prone to being socially inappropriate, had memory problems and had to rely on using lists and was not good with anything practical in regards to everyday stuff. He suffered brain damage as a result of a horse riding accident when he was in his twenties..although my aunt Rachel always insisted he was the same as that before the accident so I who knows what was responsible for what). However my mum could be emotionally and psychologically abusive at times when she was unwell and she had a drinking problems that made matters worse.

Fast forward to 7 or 8 years old and I could hear them screaming at each other again. This time my dad yelling and smashing things rather than hitting people and I was sat on the top stair listening to them, which is what I would often do during one of their arguments or my dads rages. This time however, for some reason, I decided to go down stairs into the kitchen, take an orange handled bread knife out of the kitchen drawer, stood there holding it and screamed "shut up shut up shut up shut up". I had no intentions of using the knife, I had it more for shock value than anything else so when my mum came up to me to take the knife out of my hands I gave it to her without a fight. I just wanted to stop them from arguing and whilst I can remember that part of the event as clear as day (plays like a video tape in my head) I have no memory at all of what happened after I gave the knife to my mother. I was told that the social services were called in and that they wanted me to see a child psychologist but my mum would not take me. They were also talking about taking me into care but my mother divorced my father and moved to a new city with me and my nan in tow.

After that I ended up in another foster home whilst my mum had another nervous breakdown. By this time I was also having more and more problems socialising and was being bullied at school by the other children. I was a highly gullible child who took people at their word and so I had a lot of nasty tricks played on me over the years. At first I did not realise they were bullying me as I thought they were playing some kind of game and tried to make friends with them. Eventually however the bullying became more vicious and I was told rather impolitely to please go away....

At senior school the bullying got worse, my mother got worse, and I moved from school to school trying to get away from it. It did not work, the bullying followed me, and so did my mother...usually around the house with a barrage of insults (ie you are stupid, useless, i should have had you aborted when I had the chance, having you ruined my life, its your fault I had to divorce your father...). If I tried to go out she would lock me so there was no way to get away from it at times. The thing about my mother though is that when she was well she could be lovely...

At 13 I was still prone to having tantrums, was struggling badly socially, and took to trying to choke myself with my hands in my bedroom. I would also throw tantrums where I would punch myself, slap myself, pull my hair or punch and kick doors. I did not hit people. Someone walked in and caught me choking myself one day and I was sent to see a child psychologist who after a few sessions decided that I was just emotionally immature. I could not tell her about the stuff with my mum as my mum came to the appointments with me. Around this time my mother had a new boyfriend who was baby sitting me one night. He showed me around his house and took me up to his bedroom where he asked me for a cuddle and a kiss so I complied by giving him a hug and a kiss on the cheek as I thought he was just being friendly at this point. He then asked me to kiss him on the mouth using my tongue...I did not want to do this so declined and ran...fortunately he did not run after me but it made me feel very uncomfortable though.

The child psychologist did nothing to help and so I remained emotionally immature, the bullying at school continued and mum continued to be her usual jekyll and hyde self.

Fast forward and I have left school breathing a sigh of relief as I thought that would be the end of my 'being bullied days'. No such luck but more on later. Around this time I attempted suicide in a fit of upset whilst my mother was giving me one of her brainwashing locked in full of insult rants. I could not cope with her going on and on at me so went into the bathroom and swallowed a bottle of pills. It was impulsive and not premeditated. I ended up having my stomach pumped and was sent to see a psychiatrist. My mum came with me so again I was limited as to what I could say and so I was merely told that I was immature and over sensitive. Nothing was done to help.

A year later I went to the drs about depression and was given antidepressants and sent to a therapist. Again my mother was with me so I was limited as to what I could say about things in regards to my relationship with her but I did talk about my bullying at school and desperately tried to tell her that I could not mix with people. The latter part was ignored in favour of talking about my depression and my lack of confidence in my appearance because my peers had regularly called me ugly and fat. For years after (well into my 30s) I believed that that was why people rejected me...I thought that if I was prettier and thinner they would not bully me so much which started a life time of yo yo dieting (not bullemia or anorexia as I like to take the scientific approach so I learned about healthy eating etc...however I had an all or nothing mindset...if i was on a diet it had to be done perfectly and if i was not on a diet I would go the opposite way and eat nothing but junk food..its a mindset I still struggle with now).

Fast foward another year and I am now working only to find that I am being bullied once again. This time by a supervisor. I am also still unable to make friends as I really do not know how so again my anxiety and depression became worse and I ended up back at the drs office again for a referral to a psychiatrist. Again I tried to tell them I could not mix but they were insistent that curing my depression with medication would solve that problem. I then decided to return to college where I also struggled to find friends, initially anyway. I was however an A average academically and eventually people would approach me to ask me for help with their assignments. I did get talking to a few people that way but the friendships died out when the college course came to an end.

I also made friends with a man who I though was nothing more than a friendly study buddy. However one night I was studying around at his place when he offered me a drink. After drinking it I started to feel unwell and went to lie down at which point he raped me. I tried to push him off but could not move properly and so could not stop him.

Around this time family introduced me to a chap who I ended up entering into a relationship with. We ended up moving in together but it did not go well and took to drinking to drown my sorrows and to help me socialise with people. Even drunk I was unable to make friends though...in fact it seemed to make my social skills worse. At around age 16, before I took to the bottle I had asked my mum how one knows if a man is attracted to them. The conversation went like this:

"Mum how do you know if a man finds you attractive"
"You just know"
"Yes, but how do you know?"
"Well you just sense it"
"How do you sense it?"
"Well, I don't know...you....you read their body language"
"oh"

So I went out and bought a body language book. It did not help as it would say things like "if a man likes what he is seeing his pupils will s dilate". Sounds easy enough but even if I did stop to look at their pupils (I have never been big on eye contact), I could not tell if they were dilated because they like me or if it was just because of the lighting in the room.

Anyway, fast forward to my drinking days and I suddenly decide its a good idea to walk around a pub asking random men if they found me attractive so that I could analyse what they were doing at the time....until I found myself sitting shocked on the floor, with a sore face and some mad woman screaming at me at the top of her lungs about talking to her boyfriend. Apparently doing such things can get you thumped in the face! Another reason to be cautious around people. I also managed to get myself arrested for being drunk and disorderly on the same night. After she punched me I left and went to call a family member to give me a lift home. I was waiting for them to answer the phone when someone opened the phone box door, smacked me again, took my purse and ran off after which I sat outside the phone box hyperventilating. The police found me and seemed to think that I was faking an asthma attack and decided to cuff me, chuck me in the van and take me to the station. By this time I am getting more and more upset so when they locked me in a cell I flipped out. When they let me go in the morning the police woman that had been on duty said she had never seen a tantrum like it. I basically threw myself on the floor and kicked the door whilst screaming (not obscenities...just screams) repeatedly for over 2 hours. I also repeatedly hit my head against the Iron cell door...and did I have a headache from hell for the next few days from doing it! I basically went ballistic. I am prone to tantrums like that now and then anyway, but that was one of the worst.

Sometime after that, I gave up on the drinking and sobered up, not just for my sake but for the sake of my child (I had a son by this point with my ex partner...he was an accidental pregnancy as I did not want children originally but he was a little angel of a gift once he arrived...) I did not drink during pregnancy but did afterwards as I had awful post natal depression. So fast forward to age 24...

I still have no friends, my relationship with my ex had failed, I had learned not to ask random men in pubs if they found me attractive in case I got punched in the face, I have sobered up but am living in temporary accommodation.

Anyway my problems continued on after this and there is more to tell but I need a break from writing so will come back to it later...

Hmm... here's an idea. Why don't you print out this entire post and show it to your therapist?

As for your question in the topic, once again, I don't know if we are able to diagnose you or do much more than offer advice. It does sound like you are probably on the spectrum, though, at least from what you've wrote. As with most people, you were probably one of those cases that got overlooked due to a tumultuous home life. It's hard to separate where abuse and trauma end and where an actual neurological condition begins. But I certainly wouldn't rule out ASD simply because of your history.

As for social anxiety, I think it's a little deeper than that. What you've described are all very legitimate reasons for being anxious around people, and I think the reasons why are more related to your limited knowledge of the social world. To me, approaching men in a bar asking if you are attractive or not is not something that a typical "socially anxious" person would do. It sounds very Aspie-ish, actually.

My experiences were not as bad as yours (I grew up in a household where my mom and dad were constantly arguing... bipolar mom, adhd dad), but because my parents were too busy dealing with their own issues, mine got overlooked. And since my grades weren't bad, everyone assumed that everything was OK. My parents are still convinced that the reason that I do so many strange things is because of their behavior. Finding out about ADHD has helped, but I don't think it is the full picture yet... learning about ASD really hit home for me.

Are there any autism spectrum specialists that you can talk to in your area?

Last edited by syrella on 28 Apr 2011, 8:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

After sobering up and finding a permanent place to live I attempted a university course where I got good grades but was unable to complete due to financial problems, family problems and social problems (could not mix or work in groups). Firstly my son was getting upset because I was didn't have time to play with him much so I thought that raising him was more important and that I could finish my degree later and secondly my mum had started to deteriorate and was starting to become delusional. She would turn up at my place ranting about people trying to kill her so I was trying to cope with that as well.

The rest of my family left my me to care for my mother who by this time was in her late 60s (she was in her mid 40's when she had me) and so I was not only spending a lot of time dealing with her delusions but also doing things like shopping etc for her. This carried on for many years until her delusions became so severe (she would either refuse to leave the house or when she did leave would set up booby traps everywhere in case anyone got in there) that I had to call in the emergency psychiatric team. After which she would not speak to me as I was now the enemy. They put her on antipsychotics but unfortunately at the age of 73 she passed away before the drugs had a chance to work from pnuemonia. My father was also deceased by this time, he passed away when I was 17 at the age of 55 from cancer which completely ate him away.

During those years between university and my mothers death I had mostly taken to only socialising on the internet, but even that became a disaster when once again I attracted a group of bullies who stalked me around various boards, posted threads mocking me, posted lies about me and incited others to hate me with those lies, and on one occasion went so far as to post in a thread that I should commit suicide and started listing the best way for me to do. I failed to make friends even online, although I did meet several men for short term relationships on various dating sites. The first was nice but I did not fall in love with him, the second I did fall in love with on meeting but decided he did not feel the same and emailed me with a barrage of insults on the first anniversary of my mothers death to say he could never love someone like me. The third I fell in love with again but....

Shortly after meeting number 3 on the internet a family member died (my sons nan on his dads side...I considered her family because after my mother passed away she helped me a lot with various things) and I became very suicidally depressed over things. Number 3 offered to help and said I should go and stay with him for a while so I left my son to stay with his dad and went to visit him. However whilst I was away my sons dad (who had stopped paying the CSA months before which had caused me much financial difficulty that contributed to my depression at the time) filed for emergency custody of my son by telling the court that I had abandoned him. I had not done so I had merely gone to stay with a friend for a while...but as i did not know about the case (the first I heard about it was after they sent me a text saying they had already got custody) I did not turn up and this must have reinforced their claims.

After that I started to deteriorate even more, my family disowned me for something I had not done, and I fled from my old town, abandoned my house and everything in it except for a few personal belongings and my various collections relating to my hobbies such as three years worth of cross stitching magazines, and moved in with number 3. That was ok for a while until that began to deteriorate as well and to cut a long story short I ended up in a women's refuge...homeless, bankrupt, unable to work and feeling just about as depressed as human being can feel. I was eventually helped by a charity who work with mentally ill people and was given housing and help with applying for benefits etc.

I have not seem my son in over 2 years (he would be about 13 now) but I was told that he was told that I did not want him and that I had abandoned him by his dad...so I guess he does not want to speak to me. I have no contact with any of my living family. I have no relationship, I have no friends, I internally freeze when I am around other human beings, I still do not know how to socialise or how to make friends, I cannot read peoples intentions well enough to be able to protect myself, I have trouble with crowds because of the noise and hustle and bustle (and light sensitivity on bright sunny days etc), my need for routines drives potential partners away and I have pretty much isolated myself in the house as a result of all of this.

So much has happened in my life that I do not know whether I would have been this way if things had been different. People are hopeful that CBT will magically make me miss social and cure and I personally think its going to take a lot more than a bit of positive thinking to undo all the damage that has been done. I need some social skills training for a start off...perhaps help with learning how to handle or cope with bullying in case it happens again (thinking that it wont happen again did not stop it from happening a 2nd or even 3rd time) and so on.

I have not covered all of this with my therapist yet, I may copy and print this post and take it to her maybe (once ive corrected the typos lol), but I really don't think that simple social anxiety is the problem...it may be a bit more complex than that!

Edit to add, I have more recently met another on line contact who seems be interested in pursuing a possible relationship but I have not met him yet and due to past experience I am dubious...

Also edited to add: please excuse any typos.

I agree. I also think that having an ASD can sometimes make a person more vulnerable to mistreatment/abuse/exploitation throughout life because of difficulties with reading people....this was definitely the case for me.



If your therapist dismisses your concerns about ASD symptoms, I also think it's a very good idea to talk to a specialist who knows about ASDs and has experience with assessing adults because they are the most likely to recognize what you're talking about take you seriously.

I wish you luck in figuring it all out and in finding healthy relationships!

I have similar questions of myself, bumble. I was physically abused throughout my entire childhood by my mother, and sexually abused for a few years by a babysitter. It makes me wonder, did the abuse cause my inability to mix with people? Did it make me fearful around other people, is that why I have trouble making eye contact with people and dislike being touched?

I've also been diagnosed with social anxiety. I do get anxious in social situations, but I could see myself doing as you described, asking random people if they found me attractive.

The symptoms I can't explain away with other diagnoses make me wonder, like how I walked late as a baby and walked on my toes and was extremely clumsy. And how even as a toddler I wouldn't engage when other children came up to me and wanted to play, I'd just seem to ignore them.

I don't know what you should do, except to maybe find an expert to talk to. My therapist dismissed my idea that I could have an ASD, but I've yet to find a specialist to test me.

I do that and I also ask people what my personality is like or what they think of me because I don't have a very good idea of what people think of me. I'm also scared of people but I had a pretty good childhood, except a bit of bullying in public school although I don't remember very well. I was diagnosed with SAD (performance anxiety) originally but my most recent psychiatrist doesn't think I have SAD. He diagnosed me with GAD and suspects I have mild AS. I kinda have a few characteritics of all of them. I'm also very introverted and don't enjoy the company of people. Anxiety and sensory issues are my two biggest problems, though. Personally, I think a diagnosis is useless, especially if you have to fork out $1000 to get one. If you have sensory issues and narrow, disruptive obsessions/interests and are very introverted you're life is going to be screwed regardless if you have AS and you will find that you will be able to relate to many posts on ASD forums. I go back and forth between Aspie and SAD forums. I find useful information in both and there are many Aspies in the SAD forums also.

Makes sense to me. When you say SAD you're referring to Social Anxiety, right? I usually see that acronym related to Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Yes, Social Anxiety Disorder. I had a panic attack when I had to read an essay in front of the class in grade 7 and after that I avoided all presentations and chose careers based on avoiding oral presentations. I never forgot that panic attack. School was torture, until I got to University where I could "cherry-pick" courses that had no presentations/participation.

How is a dx useless? I can't survive without services (unless my mom quit her job and stayed with me all the time and then neither of us would have any money), and I need my dx to get services.

Sorry, I didn't know you can get services. I stand corrected. That's a really good reason. I guess for mild AS, assistance isn't given. My psychiatrist didn't mention anything.