The Unexamined Life...

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… is not worth living.

Socrates

This was originally written as an e-mail to a few friends - I'm posting it here because I feel like I need to...

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I’m not sure if you’re reading this stuff, and I suppose I don’t really care at the moment – I just need to write it to make sense of it.

A lot of things have become blindingly clear in the past few weeks, and while I suspect y'all probably think I’ve gone a bit off my rock, I really haven’t. I’m clear-headed, not spinning into mania or massive depression. The only thing that’s really gotten me is anger, and mostly that’s a reaction to how damn unfair the whole thing feels to me at this point, and how few options are available.

Let me try and express this all in as rational a manner as I possibly can.

I have Asperger’s. I have Bipolar. I no longer have any doubt about this.

I was emotionally abused by my father. My mom was a basket case. Meh – the facts speak for themselves as regards to those statements.

So which came first, the chicken or the gunpowder-filled egg?

Well, it starts with Asperger’s, since the neurological wiring for that is already firmly in place by the time you’re born.

Although I’ve suspected this *might* be a problem for a couple of years, I didn’t fully grasp Asperger’s until recently, and I didn’t understand the ramifications of it. Keep in mind that prior to ’94 nobody had even heard of it, and I stopped doing therapy in ’91 (with a ‘clean bill of health’ from the councilor and ‘you need to be on lithium’ from the psychiatrist – Oy). Even two years ago there wasn’t a whole lot of meaningful information available on the net, and I didn’t pursue it further at that point – it was just “oh, I might have the nerd disease… I guess that explains why I’m a nerd…”.

Asperger’s Syndrome is a debilitating condition that, if formally diagnosed, officially classes you as handicapped. I didn’t know that until a few days ago.

The tragedy here is that I was pretty much a poster-child for Asperger’s. I can put a check mark next to every bullet-point --- I had the full load, baby! Socially incompetent, naïve, terrible motor skills… well, it’s a long list actually. And in the era I grew up in, I simply got labeled as a problem child who was routinely beaten to a pulp by my peers. Dad’s solution to my lack of physical dexterity was to force me to play junior league soccer – which was about the worst thing he could have done since you can’t train someone to use skills they aren’t wired for. I’ve always been awkward, at least now I know why.

Enter the Bipolar, which probably started to get a grip on me when I was about seven. Again, in the un-enlightened 70’s, it was believed that children were incapable of being depressed (and thankfully this was still prior to the “it’s ADD – stuff him with Ritalin!” era). So, the brief possibility of some sort of therapy at an age when it might have made a difference was yanked out from under me like the proverbial rug.

There I was, a social mess, prone to manic depressive mood swings brought on by stress, and constantly in a state of stress thanks to my interpersonal ineptitude. There was no “loving, caring emotional support” from my family. Mom was by this time a post-ECT Bipolar space cadet, and Dad had withdrawn, focusing entirely on work.

Aside from being sexually abused by my “best friend” at age 9, the ongoing trauma of repeated moves between Ontario and Quebec, and the confusing onset of puberty (I read every biology textbook I could lay my hands on and had a thorough knowledge of reproductive mechanics by the age of 11 – well, I could explain it in great detail, but I don’t suppose I really “understood” it) there’s nothing much I can say about my life until about 1979, which is the year that Dad’s drinking really took hold and all the emotional abuse started.

Here’s the thing that always confused me the most – I was the one Dad laid into. Not Mom, not my brother, just me. And now, looking back at it with newfound clarity, I think I finally understand why. It’s the Asperger’s. I believe now that all those outward actions that are common to people with this condition just confused the hell out of him. He probably mistook my bluntness for provocation, or was pushed over the edge by anger at my naiveté – I’m not blaming myself for his alcoholism, just recognizing that my behavior probably pushed him over the tipping point into anger/frustration faster and more directly than anything else in the house. If I’d been “normal” he’d probably just have gone off on everyone equally, but I was in every respect an easy target, and I think that in later years he took advantage of that on some unconscious level, knowing that he could provoke me easily to do something to offend him – what I always called the “guess what you did wrong” game. Turns out that this isn’t an unusual situation for a kid with Asperger’s to be in. Go figure.

And so I became a teenager who remained socially inept, was yo-yoing between mania and despair, and was living in a house which might as well have been adjacent to the seventh circle of hell. In retrospect, I recognize that most of the people I called friends at the time were just taking advantage of me, but at that point it was all I had. I don’t think things really changed until I finally did therapy to deal with Dad’s abuse and drinking – damn shame there was no recognition of my social dysfunction at that point.

Now here’s the funny thing – I think as a teenager and young adult the Bipolar actually helped, and that I’m probably fortunate in many ways to have it. When I was manic it suppressed the social inhibitions. Sure, I was a weirdo, but I was entertaining and talkative. I was the guy who’d told off teachers in front of a class full of students, and broke the bully’s hand when he tried to show how “manly” he was by trying to beat me up. The mania made the insular shell go away, made me fearless (though it didn’t in any way abrogate my inability to understand people – it just made me not care). While my report cards were quite clear about my “Himalayan peaks and valleys” and some teachers’ beliefs that I was either “a genius or a nut” (actually both, as it turns out) when I was in an up phase I felt like I was king of the damn planet.

When I was down? Well that’s a whole other story.

So did anything really change between my early twenties and now? Well, fundamentally, no. I’m really still the same confused Asperger/Bipolar person I was then. What I have managed to do is accumulate intellectual “tricks” that help me to behave in a socially appropriate manner. I know that I have to look at people’s faces when I talk to them – make eye contact (which I still find hard, but I do it as much as I’m able). I have an incredibly long list of “things that I should say/do in response to specific actions”. I’ve tried to learn how to interact “correctly”, and done my best to modify my behavior on those occasions when people I trust tell me to act in a specific manner. I even “practice” little things I believe would be important in an ongoing relationship, like always putting the toilet seat down (because I’ve read so often that this is important, and I can intellectually understand the rationale behind it).

An aside: Not to sound overly positive here – when someone tells me that I’ve done something that’s inappropriate or even (gasp) offensive, I’m gutted. I have a really hard time dealing with personal criticism, perhaps because I try so hard to act/behave appropriately. It’s like failing a final exam every time I make a mistake, and it hurts like hell. While it’s important that I learn from those moments, they make me want to crawl under a rock, and it’s doubly hard to put myself back in the same place --- I suppose it’s like the old “falling off a horse” thing, but I need a hand getting back up on the horse, and I’ve come to understand that most people just “write off” someone who flunks the first time.

What’s a bit amazing to me is that, from all I’ve read, I’m actually doing reasonably well. I’ve managed to carve a niche for myself professionally in an industry that is very tolerant of off-beat personalities (though I’d much rather be designing games then building infrastructure, at least I’m getting paid). I don’t have many friends, but I have at least two, and a few others who think well of me. And, somehow, I’ve managed to figure out how to get by day-to-day without the benefit of any of the support or education that now exists for folks with my particular problems. Hell, I never graduated from high school, but for a while I was a college teacher…

So I should feel happy about all this?

Well no.

Let me clarify something about Asperger’s that is a bit muddied in all the stuff you may come across on the net. You read a lot about “lacking empathy” and “inability to communicate emotionally” which, if you take it at face, suggest a condition that most people would interpret as something like sociopathy – but people with Asperger’s are not lacking emotion, just the ability to communicate it comprehensibly to “normal” folks. It gets walled up, or it comes crashing out like water from a broken dam, and in either case it’s fairly uncomfortable for people who rely on automatic non-verbal cues to indicate their receptiveness to that information. You might think “I’m open to hearing more” or “I don’t want to go there”, and your posture and gesture communicate that to most people. But if the other person has Asperger’s then they can’t read the non-verbal, and so “receptive” and “too much info” messages go unheeded. That’s generally a bad thing, socially. After a whole lot of miscues, the safest strategy thus becomes “say nothing at all”, and that’s generally where I’ve been heading for the past ten or fifteen years now.

Perhaps the worst aspect of Asperger’s is that it doesn’t diminish the desire for social connection – I want friends… I want a relationship… I do *NOT* want to be alone. That’s possibly the fundamental difference between Asperger’s and a large number of Autism-spectrum/Schizophrenic disorders, since people afflicted with those illnesses are typically not interested in social interaction.

Did my friends perceive my frustration? Did they understand how hard I was trying to “fit in” and how difficult it was for me to partake in what they considered to be “a bit of fun”? I doubt it. I think, if anything, they were all just baffled by my behavior – quiet/withdrawn = he doesn’t like it –-- but no, it means I liked it but didn’t have the experience to help me interact appropriately so I fell back on “say/do nothing until you know more”. If I’d disliked it I’d have said so in a very blunt and obvious fashion. For me, saying nothing means I’m trying to figure out the rules – I wish I could have explained this more clearly at the time, since my inability to do so apparently eliminated the opportunity for similar experiences….

So where does all this leave me?

There’s no “cure” for Asperger’s – it’s not correctable. My basic neurochemical wiring differs from the bulk of the population and there are no drugs to correct that. Behavioral therapy can help, but only to a limited degree, and can’t do much more than I’ve managed to do for myself already since it’s centered on making an adult functional, not happy. There are virtually no resources available for adults with Asperger’s – the current focus is entirely on children, driven by responsible and loving parents in our “enlightened” era. I’m glad those kids will grow up and have a chance at a more normal life than I’ve been afforded, but it makes me really angry that pretty much every “we’re here to help” operation is just another “heh – take advantage of the trusting sucker” initiative. I’ve been screwed out of thousands of dollars by unscrupulous types, and as desperate as I am for some companionship I’m not stupid enough to fall for that again.

Frustratingly, the consensus seems to be that if you’re an adult with Asperger’s your best hope lies in the support of your friends and family. I never had a family that supported me, and my friends have enough of their own problems to deal with – there’s no reasonable way I can ask them to help me with mine.

I’m still working my way through all of this – I don’t know where it will land me, or what it all means really, but I do know that, as painful and frustrating as all of this is, that it’s a good and worthwhile thing. I need to understand and accept myself. I need to accept that the world doesn’t work the way I wish it would. Perhaps I need to accept that being abandoned is OK, and that I can survive it.

And the Bipolar? I’m honestly scared to treat it, because without those occasional highs I’d have nothing to look forward to – I guess I’m hoping that things will work out for me when I’m in that zone, because outside of the mania there’s no way things are going to get better.

I don’t know where this all leads/ends, but I do know that I’m just going to have to keep walking until I run out of road.

Nick

Thank you for writing this, and thank you for posting it here.

I understand your hesitation about mood stabilisers. Without my "up" times, I'd never accomplish anything.

The over-40s demographic is well-represented on this site. It's true that much of the remediation, resources, literature, etc. in the wider community is targeted at children and youths. Until that changes, we ourselves are our best source of support and information.

Meanwhile, I wish you well and hope you continue to post here.

Wow! Your first post is really thought provoking. I look forward to reading more of them!

A lot of your post, stunningly large chunks of it, feels like I'm listening to me! Not the parents ; I had well-behaved oddities for parents, on the A spectrum, but polite and careful, and well bounded by rules and routines. My Dad was fond of saying , when I was being bullied at school,for instance, "well, you can choose to flock with the sheep, or climb with the goats. Actually I wanted to flock quite often!!
But I had the manic-depression ( and know exactly what you mean about the way it helps; because don't care, almost don't believe in, other peoples feelings, don't have to include that in social-skill-calculations )but it went through the roof and I had explosive breakdown after which the wall was well and truly demolished , and so when I find myself thinking or feeling hypo-manic stuff beginning I run like hell, usually by cutting out wheat/gluten!! Because I got too ruthless on mania. It happened when discovered feminism ( "femininty as oppression"; I didn't realise that the reason I'd found it so crushing was because of aspergers!!) ; it fuelled a virtually fascist revolution in me.
Yes, I'm sad and angry too; I have spent decades of my life trying to figure this out.
Now I know, and might be able to think about something else ! !
Good you have a job, many don't, including me unless count " home-unschooling mother of 8 year old " (that I should never have had).
Thank for posting your story. It helps so much to hear what others have experienced.

Consider that the life of a human being contains within it - the paradigms, the DNA, the composites of personality, the biology, spirituality, potential. Within that potential is also the key to evolution and moving beyond. It is the natural course of how the system within and without runs. In this lies the awakening of DNA genetic codes that have lied dormant in the walling and freezing of AS. It is your CHOICE whether to activate this potential or not. But the cure does indeed reside within and nothing, but nothing in the human condition is ever written in stone, as free will is always operable.

Welcome home, Nick.

JJ, I don't think you quite understand what deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is, nor how it works - for starters, once you're born, it's pretty well expressed, and, comic-book biology aside, altering your DNA won't change you in any significant way (aside, perhaps, from encouraging the growth of cancers...).

Your neurology is pretty well set by the time you're born. The only ways to alter it afterward involve surgery (e.g., prefrontal lobotomy), or blunt-force trauma. In either case, you're physically changing the neural structure. Since ASDs aren't a matter of neurotransmitter levels, hormones, or glandular problems, pharmacotherapy is useless. And since the underlying differences are a matter of neurological structure, not thought patterns, psychotherapy can only be useful for treating either comorbid (clinical depression, schizoid disorder) or secondary (e.g., situational depression) disorders, not the ASD itself.

You can't "think" your way out of your DNA. Sorry. (Don't think I would if I could, though - I've learned to like me, pretty much.)

Yes DeaconBlues, DNA and I are on familiar terms and I can share with you that it is NOT a done deal, cycles can be broken and disconnects be reattached. Entire patterns lying dormant - can and are being *awakened* with consciousness applied to our biology - in simple terms with our minds (thought patterns) we can (and are) changing our DNA structures and paradigms (reality).

IronicChef is the subject here, not the Science Debating Club. It is a point of view from age and maturity.

While it is all so true, and like you, one thing I neve had was any support, and a lot of cheap shot artists with agendas, I did survive, and found some things with meaning in my other self.

The Universe welcomes us as much if not more than those who never had to look at every little thing, those who can live with a vauge instinct, and get by.

Socrates was right, and we examine more than others. He did understand it was not science, biology, or all men, but that life differs for each, and each is the only one who can find the right answers for them.

For as much as I have felt loss, that I was denied, I still was, and it opened other paths. We may not go to the same places, reach the same ends, but where we walk the road continues, the road less traveled.

Self, exploring the new, the uncommon, is why we are in books, define science, fill the Patent Office.

When I grew up, became myself rather than something that failed to fit in, I looked around and my generation was dying, and wanted it that way. They were tired of life, I was just starting.

The ideas that come before thirty, the creative years, are produced at fifty, the productive years. We may not fit in, but we are a collection of thoughts others surpress, and our writing has meaning for them, they dared not live it, but felt it, and want to know where that path lead.

The Medical treatment is to give the Universe a pill, so it will create uniform creatures, instead of the variations it has always favored. I take the hand I was dealt.

We have something no other had, or could have, WP, a place where our type is the dominate culture. Medical Science did nothing for us, but Alex did a lot.

Lived fully, defined from the inside, not one but many, a sameness in our differance. We are not a Science Project, a Doctor's Discovery, we are a people numbering in the millions.

All we have is each other. A support site that speaks what we feel, a place to not be alone.

No one could understand but one of us, we do, I hear your words, share your feelings, and say, I have had some good times beyond the reach of the ordinary, they make up for all. Opposed at every turn, we walk beyond them, and discover the Universe is large and welcoming.


Welcome home Nick.

Consciousness is the overlord of science and philosophy is the poor relative that comes knocking with conjecture, theories and surmisings when adequate *scientific proof* fails. When one bemoans there are no solutions, there will be no solutions to be found. Or alternately if you believe without a shadow of a doubt that healing is transpiring and solutions are being applied - so it is. The tools for transformation are acquired through wisdom, knowledge and understanding aka consciousness. You are the creator of your own reality with these tools at hand and in mind.

Hi Nick, reading your post was sorta emotional for me, it was like reading something I'v been avoiding writing. (does that make sense?...only to you all.)
Why "IronicChef" I must ask? (Naturally curious fine-dining server.)

Welcome to WrongPlanet!

Thanks for the responses - I'm glad I found this place

@reika -

IronicChef because (1) I love to cook, (2) I enjoy watching Iron Chef, and (3) because I believe that if there is a single force in the universe that drives all things it is irony. "It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together" --- Well that and duct tape at any rate.

Nick

My parents were similar to yours it seems. I was the target of both of them. My father was physically violent to me as well as emotionally, and my mother was emotionally abusive. She constantly picked on me and tormented me (and still does). They refused to accept my differences as well and forced me into all sorts of crazy therapies. Eventually they decided it was a waste of money and chose to mistreat me for it instead. I was constantly reminded I was "adopted" and a burden and I should be so grateful as to take it from them.
Here, on this board, I found acceptance. Welcome!

I like what you wrote, Nick. I could have written it myself. I was born in '58, was sexually, physically and emotionally abused by both parents. High school drop-out, etc. The butt of the family (4 sisters).

Finally diagnosed in 1992 with ADHD, and then diagnosed with bipolar 5 years ago when I went through a divorce. I think the doctor was wrong, though. I don't think I was bipolar just because my brain hurt. It was a DIVORCE for chrissakes! And then someone told me about 4 years ago that I might have AS.

I finally got counseling and put away the childhood abuse. Then I had to deal with what it meant to have ADHD and then Aspergers. It's been like peeling an onion back or something. Not all of it has been pleasant, but I think what I'm left with is this:

Everything I am, everything I have been through, has helped me to be the person I needed to become in order to help other people.

I apologize if I sound optimistic. And I'm not meaning to sound like I'm sending you a message about your life. I'm just talking about my life.

Your article was really well-written, and I could have written it at one point. Sometimes, when I screw up socially, I can easily go to that place where I hate myself because I can't figure out how to fit in. And then I hate people for not making it easier, because I love people.

But then, luckily, I have a short memory, and the next day is a new day, after all.