Coming to terms...

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...with AS. Hi all. After recently discovering I have AS and am not just a social ret*d (the assumption I made about myself for most of my life) I'm just wonderng if anyone could share any advice/experience about getting my head around everything.

I'm still feeling quite all over the place so I warn you this post might ramble on a bit. Basically my first reaction was relief to know that there's a real explanation and that 28 years of feeling like the odd one out and there's a big club that I just don't get the rules to were due to something real and not just an immense amount of paranoia and ineptitude. I also realise that the upsides of AS have been incredibly beneficial to me in that I've always excelled academically without much effort etc. I'm also more able to understand myself now and make allowances when I need to. Before this I used to pressure myself into certain situations because thats what everyone was doing, regardless of how miserable it made me.

However, I'm starting ot wonder if it was worth it to find out. I've always seen myself as someone who generally functions well but might be inappropriate/get very nervous in social situations. Other 'symptoms' I thought were just personality traits. Although I always felt like I didn't 'get' other people I thought that one day I would and that eventually, at some point in my life, I would 'fit in'. I know now that this is not going to happen, which has been incredibly disheartening. I wonder if there's any point in even trying to socialise any more. I see that as so much progress at work is made through networking and people skills, I am not likely to go far in any job, which is a depressing thought.

Finally, I'm suffering from an immense loss of identity. The more I find out about AS the more I realise that so much of what I thought was 'me' is just another symptom. It leaves me wondering what the hell is me any more (if anything), and what is just AS? I'm pretty scared of just becoming an illness rather than a person and giving up, or going to the other extreme of getting bitter and twisted at the world which I really don't want to be.

Maybe I'm approaching this all wrong but I'd really appreciate some help here.

Thanks in advance...

I can relate to the "loss of identity" you have experienced. As I started reading up on the symptoms and traits associated with aspergers I felt like I was a stereotype, a somewhat rare stereotype, but a stereotype never the less. I even read that aspergers have a tendency to walk on their toes "What the hell? Even the way I walk isn't uniqely mine?"

After much soulsearching I came to the conclusion that, it didn't matter why I was the way I was. Only that I like the person I am.

Each personality trait in every human, NT or autistic, can be traced back to some experience or something genetic. There is a reason psychiatrists ask about your past. Because it is near impossible to change part of your personality that you don't like, without first finding out where this part comes from. In this you are blessed. You have a reason, and so you can change whatever part of your personality you want to.

Because if there is part of yourself you do not like, then you CAN change it! It is hard and it takes time, but it is possible!

You seem to have two issues to address. I will attempt to deal with each.

Firstly is the issue of your personal identity in regards AS. I too have a hell of a case of it and have been surprised at tiny and seemingly unrelated issues such as toe walking. Everywhere I look at me, I see AS.

I didn't feel that my individuality was lost in AS though. I have a large list of sympttoms common to all humans, another set common to primates, a large set common to mammals. . . And yet I am within humans still an individual. Within the wonderfully strange set of AS symptoms or traits or whatever you would have them called, you are still an individual.

The simple fact that I found the similarities a delight and so curious a phenomon whilst you see a loss of personal identity shows a difference between us!

Secondly, as to your thoughts of giving up socialization because you will never whatever due to AS limitations. Dig this admission

I am a ret*d! Oh. I have a positively wicked IQ. But I am a social and emotional ret*d - I use that word with care.

To be ret*d is to be behind and slow. It does not mean to be dead in the water.

At your age I truly sucked. I was a loner. I thought I was hopeless. At fifty four my AS is still there. B ut I have grown. I continue to grow.

I have progressed even during my most recent year. I own a business. I am a eespected member of my community. I have friends who really do like to see me!

No kidding. The life adventure of AS continues. We grow and change. We can succede, even attain joy.

You are so new to life and to AS. don't give up. The adventure is just beginning.

Thanks for the replies. They both make a lot of sense. As I said its still very new to me so I imagine I'll got through a lot more ups and downs before it all starts to come together. I really get the point about sharing some characteristics but still being an individual, and I suppose I've been looking at it more as a pathology than just a difference, so maybe that's something I need to work on as well.

Thanks again