Being a Woman with Aspergers

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Here is what I've learned about being a woman with Aspergers:

I learned that we need to have Control over our world to feel safe and avoid stress and anxiety. We achieve that in relation to others by
1- avoiding conflict by being pleasant and easy going
2- minimizing and simplifying our lives
3- avoiding stressful activities
4- accepting and owning our decisions and mistakes.
5- avoiding accessing emotional parts of our mind.

In the course of our lives we never stop learning ways to cope with others

1- we Learn to read others, their faces, their feelings, expressions, moods, social and cultural norms, and then we react and posture accordingly in order to come across as normal and acceptable( we find this exhausting so we need a lot of alone time to recover )
2- we Avoid others by isolating ourselves
3- we Make others back off by acting arrogant or aggressive when we can. This always back-fires.
4- we Copy others in what we consider socially successful behavior
5- we Posture and mimic normal social behavior
5- we try to dress well and look good so we can be acceptable.
6- We go out of our ways to do the right thing or say the right thing ( but always end up being misunderstood)
7- we practice when alone everything we do or say, postures, facial expressions, things we say

We become astute at reading clues, faces. patterns. We learn to try to predict outcomes based on patterns. We're often wrong.
Some of us ( the smarter ones) learn to manipulate others and control others.
Some of us prefer to avoid other.
And some of us learn to cooperate and appear to be easy going and agreeable even show silliness and sense of humor.

We become frustrated with learning things the conventional way. Our brains are wired differently. We need to come up with our own methods. We become angry at people who try to teach us their ways. We cannot read instructions or follow instructions. We need to figure things out for ourselves the way we understand them. Especially things that are physical like sports or dancing or tying shoes or getting dressed as kids. We hate competitive situations yet we are very competitive because there is a little voice in our brain that says we can keep up even be better and hate to be considered inferior and stupid.

We Know that we can. That we are not stupid. But we are unable to forcefully access some parts of our brain. We need to lay out the pathway and figure things out. This is why it takes us longer to learn things or figure things out. We also have to access our memory the same way. That's why we seem to have bad memories. We often find out the memory is there but we could not access it randomly.
We cannot multitask
We are easily distracted with sensory issues
We become lost in one thought and forget about the world around us.
We cannot see the whole picture
We cannot readily visualize the outcome
We think outside the box
We're analytical
We look for patterns
We're problem solvers
We are great with self discipline to cope with our deficiencies
We are loyal and honest because our brains are not sophisticated enough to be otherwise.
We take commitments seriously because we cannot stand it that others often find it ok to back out.

It is as though our brains are linear and that we don't have the collateral pathways normal people have when they see the whole picture, or are able to visualize the outcome and the end product or to multitask or to access their memories.

We can only live in the past and the present. We cannot visualize the long term future. We are not visionaries.

We become frustrated with people who treat us like idiots
We often become frustrated with ourselves thinking we're idiots


We sometimes have to force our brains to access emotions of happiness sadness humor love sympathy fear anger aggression but then we sometimes cannot control the flood of emotions. We become overwhelmed and become over emotional. We eventually learn not to access some of those emotions. When put in a challenging and demanding situation, we use the take it or leave it approach.

We need to analyze everything in order to understand them fully. We are unable to come to any conclusions about anything without analyzing things from every angle. It is very hard for us to judge others or to understand others without analyzing them first. We often change our minds as we find other facts.

We have bad short term memories because we are often distracted by sensory issues or other thoughts.

We love rules and clear instructions. They make it easy for us to function. We respect them and become very frustrated when others break them. We depend on justice and become frustrated when we see injustice or favoritism.

We are obsessed with logic. Whoever came up with Vulcans must've been an aspie
We can have very strong and overwhelming emotions. Sometimes we try to fathom other people's emotions by imagining how we would feel. That's when our empathy and sympathy goes out of hand.

We hate lip service because we don't know what to do with that. In years we learn not to trust and like people who give too much lip service.

We also hate being kept in "at arm's length friendships". We are all or none type. We feel hurt and angry and break up that relationship and never go back unless we have no other choice. Nevertheless, we teach ourselves to give lip service because we feel that it is socially expected.

I think we must learn
1- To always be cognizant of the fact that we are different.
2- That our way is not the only way
3- to learn tricks not to get stuck in our head when we need to be present.
4- to become accepting of situations we don't like rather than expecting others to accommodate us. ( this one is very important!)
5- To stop trying to do the right thing or say the right thing when it is not our place or required. It always back fires!!
" sometimes people with Aspergers take actions without realizing their effect on other people"
6- to learn to be appropriate in public. Not normal because normal is fluid and hard to grasp. To be appropriate and pleasant is easier to master.

What makes us so dislikable is that we sometimes treat others with logic and analysis thinking that it should work because they should appreciate it that we discovered something important about them. We don't understand that others don't like to be analyzed.

Even when we don't know we have Aspergers, we often expect kindness and special consideration from others because they should forgive us for our shortcomings and because we don't mean to be insensitive. Deep down we know that we are different and that we can't help it. We are always surprised to see how misunderstood we always are.

In time, as we grow older, we learn to adapt. We understand more and more the complexity of human relationship and start to expect less and less. Not in a sad way but in a realistic way. We still hurt when we are rejected and treated badly, but we also realize that it is what it is that we cannot expect others to like us. We also learn and realize that we don't need others and that we can find contentment in our own world where no one rejects us. ( some kids with severe cases learn this very early on )

We eventually learn that we can turn our emotions on and off. We are out of sight out of mind type. It is very easy for us to cut ties with people we actually once loved very intensely. Or we forget how to be mad at people who did bad things to us. We also learn how to compartmentalize to keep our emotions at bay.

How others deal with our idiosyncrasies and outbreaks

Avoidance
Rejection
Isolation
Ridicule
Shame
Force
Punishment
Seminars

I'm 55, too. Old enough to remember "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena."

Yep....that's Asperger's in a big nutshell LOL.