Asperger's & a feeling of despair

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Hi,

I've been doing a lot of research into AS over the past few months since it became clear to me that there is really no other explanation for quite how much I have struggled in quite the way I have...

Like a lot of people on WP, I spent years just feeling like an inappropriate, anti-social fool, because this is the way I was viewed by the great many narrow-minded people we all come across on a daily basis.

Having found out that there is actually a genuine physical explanation for the things I have struggled with and that my behaviour has not been 'rude' or 'wrong' or 'inconsiderate', I imagined I would begin to feel better, like I could really progress and finally accept myself because I knew what all my problems centred around.

However, since finding out about my AS, I've found things have become worse in so many ways: I find myself looking back over every conversation I've ever had, obsessing over people's remarks and intentions and exhausting myself mentally by trying to get black and white answers to things which unfortunately are not in black and white.

Over the past couple of months I've been very angry and stressed, wanting to scream a lot of the time and feeling a tight knot in my stomach every time I thought of an occasion when someone may well have been trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

In many ways I think I have turned on myself upon finding out about AS - I feel as though I have been drifting along oblivious all this time and, while I understand this is the nature of the condition, I want to scream at myself for not having spotted what was right there in front of me.

I feel a strong sense of wanting to withdraw from all interaction with people as I feel I can now see so much that is negative in them that I couldn't see before, I do not know how I can go about relaxing and having fun with another person again.

I'm quite sure this all reads as very over-dramatic and extreme, but I am very much struggling with my current predicament, and wondering how I can survive in this world now I truly know who I am and how I fit into it.

Has anyone else felt like this? How did you overcome your feelings of helplessness and apathy?

Any advice you could give me would be much appreciated at this time

Aspies are by and large honest people. We can't hide much anyway

It's mostly about trusting people, the way I see your problems. You can't trust them anymore and so you decide that withdrawing from the world is better than interacting with the great majority of people who aren't honest, ignoring the few who are.

I can relate to what you're saying. Since I'm struggling with similar issues, I'm afraid I can't offer anything in terms of advice. I'm just so tired of unsuccessfully trying to fit in on the world's terms. My ability to make real connections with people, or express myself in any meaningful way are approximately nil. I guess what I'm saying is that you're not the only frustrated one out there.

@redrach-
In many respects, I'm at the same point as you - pursuing a professional diagnosis after living my entire life to this point not knowing why I seemed different from my peers. When I turned 50, I started thinking about why I had been alone all my life & what might be done about it - I worry that at some point, I will desperately need other people in my life & they won't be there.

For a number of years, I had pretty much given up on ever finding a place in society. Even though I have always found a way to succeed professionally, social success has seemed to recede into the distance.

While AS undoubtedly explains my social difficulties & occasional rude, wrong, or inconsiderate behavior - I don't for one second believe that it excuses that behavior. I have to live in the world, even though I don't feel "of" that world - which means that if I want to get along with other people, I have to abide by the social rules as they are - even if I don't understand the rules.

So it becomes a trade-off - I can choose to ignore the rules that I don't understand, but at the expense of being cut off from others who are bound by those rules. That often means that I am forced to stand on the sidelines while everyone else gets to play in the game.

Sometimes, my outsider status comes in handy - I get to play on the "special teams" - because others recognize that I have a fresh perspective. (I can't believe I'm using sports metaphors - I don't even like sports.)

What I hope to get from diagnosis & therapy is a disinterested third party who can help me to learn some of the rules that I am currently missing. I don't expect miracles, but I'm willing to put forth some effort to attempt to improve my life.

I don't believe that AS makes personal growth impossible - it's a developmental disorder, which implies that change is possible. My social development may have lagged behind that of my peers throughout my life - but even without the knowledge of AS, I eventually caught up.

Somewhere along the line, I fell behind again - but I think there must be a way to overcome that. It will probably involve exposing myself to more social failures. As IBM pioneer Thomas Watson said, "If you want to succeed, double your failure rate."

I've found that I don't cut myself much more slack now that I know there's a genetic reason for my social blunders. I still have a high level of demands from myself and still blame myself for not trying harder to act NT and to discover the subtext in interactions and people's desires and motives and intent. I have to keep reminding myself that this is the best I could do given my inborn limitations. It's not easy after 4 and a half decades of conditioning to blame myself for not trying harder. Being a lot on WP helps me reinforce the feeling that I'm not alone, not a lazy, selfish freak. At this stage I still need the daily reinforcement. Some day I'll internalize it.

Many here, including me, have gone through the painful looking back and analyzing past interactions in the light of the new knowledge.

I'm struggling with self-acceptance, as I mentioned above. And I'm struggling with having to live suddenly in a completely new world to me in my forties. A world where I know it won't get better re interactions / relationships. A world where now I know everyone is almost all pretense, where words don't mean what they say, where people can't be a source of solace, help and love for me but I've to seek all that in Nature, in myself, in my hobbies.

I don't know if this answers your question, but it's what came to mind reading your post.

yes- me too. sounds retty normal.
i've been in the mental health system since '95, adn even asked one psychologist if i had autism, as it was the only thing whcih seemed to explain the totality of my problems with the world,a nd with life. she said no.

id always hoped the correct diagnosis would lead me to a miracle cure,a dn id be normal, or at least better.

instead, after the initial relief,a nd a littel euphoria, i hvae become nicreasingly depressed about the prognosis. there is no cure, things will not improve.
though i cant blame myself any longer for not being more posative, not trying hard enough etc- THIS IS IT.
i will always feel confused in my thoughts, i will always feel upset by noise, sick from certain touches, the desperate need for solitude...

so since finding out about as, ive become further and further depressed.
not helped in anyway by the f*****g nightmare that has been my attempts to get diagnosed- seeing a f*****g DICK who didnt know anything baout a/s, but none the less insisited i dont have it (despite being told i DO by another expert)- he's the one making the referral, so he gets taken notice of. ACE.

ANYWAY- you sound pretty normal. its something really big to come to terms with; its invisible,a nd the longer one is undiagnosed, the less aparent the symptoms can become, because one covers them up. its also invisible, and untreatable- so even if you DO convince other people taht you DO hvae something wrong with you- they dont nuderstand it,a dn there is not anyway any hope of it getting any better.

on the up side, since its a spectrum disorder, everyone has different facets of it, so you may well find life far more bearable than others; some people here are even MARRIED- even have JOBS!! ! two things i will never be able to do.

redrach,

I think a lot of your experiences are pretty normal for someone who finds out they have AS. I've experienced many of the same things, more or less.

I sense a lot of dispair in this thread, and if it's helpful, I'd like to shed some light on the dispair itself. As is clear from your thread, the dispair comes from other people and their expectations. They say ignorance is bliss, but knowlege is power (sorry for the cliches, just happened); that is, now that you know, you can decide to some extent if you will be happy with who you are and develop tools for surviving.

When I was young, probably long before I even heard of AS, I used to think "if it weren't for other people causing problems, I'd be really happy."

This is all really interesting - thanks.

They do say ignorance is bliss, yes, and that phrase all of a sudden has such new meaning for me. However, I am not, nor have ever been, ignorant - what I am is blind to other people's approach to life and intentions. It is a different thing.

I recently spoke to a woman at the Autistic Trust in my town and mentioned to her that I'd decided in order to 'cope with' my AS I could no longer worry about other people and their reactions to me: I have AS and I have to understand it, so everybody else will just have to deal with it in truth. This is not said in a selfish or flippant manner but purely to emphasise that I realise I am the most important person in my own life, not other people.

One final point I would like to make is that I do believe that AS excuses behaviour that most other people do not understand - not that it is 'acceptable', just that a person with AS is not viewing the world in the same way as most other people, and therefore cannot be judged by the same 'social rules'. Other people may wish to cast me out because I do not behave as they do but this does not mean I have to cast myself out! Yes we need to co-exist with other people for a cohesive and harmonious society but that does not mean I, nor anyone else for that matter, have to view myself in the same limited terms as the 'average person' might.

Perhaps what I would really like to do is change the world! But let us not rule that out - things can only change when free-thinking individuals like us really believe they are able to....

btw, 'ive been doing a lot of research over the past few months'- VERY aspie.

gosh, i spent AGES last year researching it before i was even 60% sure i had it..
10 months on, it has not helped me to know, and i feel as bleak as ever...

First off. I'd like to say that I am a diagnosed Aspie. And further more, I can look back see all the bad things that people have done( molested, raped, lied to cheated on. etc, etc, etc. It's not worth wasting your life trying fix what can not be changed) to me and said ( You're eccentric, you're weird, you're crazy. blah blah blah) to me. And I don't have to look very hard. But here's the kicker. YOU also have HURT peoples feelings by what you have said and things you have done, even if YOUR intentions were innocent. Even if you meant well or what you were doing was trying to help and it was misunderstood and taken wrong. Sure people have done you dirty. But those same people have done others the same way. Do you think they singled you out? Not likely, possibly but, not likely. Likely it's the kind of person they already were/are. The biggest thing I am noticing in Aspie's (including myself) is a pity party to an extent. Once we find out that we are broken, (or at least we think we are) then we start wondering why no one understands this. The fact is; we are just as prejudice toward those who do not think like us, the shoe is truly on the other foot and we just don't see it. So if you are wondering why no one will accommodate your handicap, why also do you not want to accommodate their limited perspective? The real truth is that we are all trying to muddle through this world. So you see and think differently. Get over it. Find friends you can relate to, create your own unique space with those you have something in common with and stop trying to put a square box in a round hole. It's NOT going to fit. But, you do fit in. You just have to put forth the effort to find those people you connect with, and they are out there. Granted, it my be a little difficult, but don't expect them to fit every aspect of YOUR personality, accept them also for who they are. Remember we are more susceptible to depression and sensitive to failure, but put the disorder where it belongs and realize this. Use it to your strength and not your weakness. As long as you act weak minded, people are going to treat you that way. Also keep in mind that if you are 1 in a million, there are 10,000 more just like you. So you are not truly unique in your plight.

redrach, thank you for making this thread, I can relate to what you wrote on so many levels.

Truly finding out what consequences it has to have AS can be a lot worse than staying ignorant to why one has troubles - because in the former case, one might realize there is no solution, and give up altogether, whereas in the latter case, one still has some hope left, perhaps to some extent still believing it is simply "bad luck".

I needed the explanation because of I am the type of Aspie that needs to categorize things. I still feel bad and blame myself when I screw up but get over it quicker because I can now explain/understand why and what happened when before knowing I was on the spectrum I was dumbfounded or came to the conclusion that it was another example of me being hopelessly socially flawed. Now that I am aware I can stop myself self sometimes mid mistake before I make things worse.

I also know that some of the mistakes that others made that hurt me a lot were done because of ignorance despite good intentions. I am not one of those persons who says always be happy and never be angry. In fact those type of people annoy me. There is really nobody to direct my anger at for the lack of knowledge of Autism most of my life so it is a waste of energy. I just consider myself very fortunate that I was able to find out before I die. Many generations of people did not and died without knowing and thinking they were a bad person. Many Aspis/Autistics in my generation did not make it to find out and many that are still around will die with tortured soles because that won't find out.

But as noted by another poster in my age group I am worried about what happens when my heath starts to turn bad and there is no money and no network of support. It is likely to happen sooner because I am running life's marathon in the opposite direction of everybody else. But I was worried before I knew why. It was one of the reasons I sought diagnosis.

Most of the threads here are thoughtful and insightful, but this is one of the better ones. Thanks you all.