What to do with Aspergers?

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Hello

It can be hard to me to sift through the galaxy of information on the internet, so I'd prefer to aqsa few questions here.

I'm new. twenty two and an aspie like you.

I think anyway. I'm looking into having an asessment, but I'll be pretty relieved to know if that's what's causing my problems. Wrong planet seems like the perfect phrase to sum up my life thus far.

Any advice here on where to go from here?

I went to a doctor to talk about depression a few years ago and that was a terrible experience. I'm curious about how this time, a doctor can make an accurate diagnosis based on data I communicate orally when I have cognitive and communicative issues. It doesn't seem very scientific and to the untrained eye (and even to myself for a long time,) I proabbly appear like just a normal person who wasn't slapped enough as a kid.

After a diagnosis, what happens? I'd like to work on some of the more negative aspects of it. I want to train myself to think better, sometimes I'm in terrible disarray with my thoughts. I get very stressed when it comes to deadlines or impending choices or prioritisation and it's getting very disruptive in my life.

I got my hands on some ritalin a few years back and it did wonders for my concentration - though not so much for social life. I don't want to self medicate anymore, but I'd be interested in hearing your opinions on what methods work best for sorting out thought patterns - drugs, meditation, etc.

I suppose that's all for now, I'll probably post later in the evening when I'm more coherent. I'm looking forward to taking an active role in this community, it seems liek a great resource to help and be helped.

Thanks

Welcome to WrongPlanet.net raggle-taggle-gypsy (oh!) I have found WP to be a great place to work out all my past issues and learn about how to cope with the issues I have now. I hope the same for you.

Merle

if you have clinically significant autism, then your parents and siblings will alert doctors when you are only a few months old.
no one "develops" autism in the course of their lives.
it is a thing that is inborn and immutable.
so if you were an autistic baby, then it would have been apparent and you would have come to the attention of professionals at a very early age.


nothings seems scientific to an untrained eye.

that does not compute.

it is not a problem to be worked on because it is innate and immutable.
negativity is in the mind of the beholder.



i think it is good to want to think better, but i do not think it is good to abandon unfinished ideas that seem unproductive at an unfinished stage.
a rose bush looks so ugly until the tiny portion of it's life cycle where it flowers.
to notionally jump from lily pad to lily pad as does a frog, is to never find a foundation that is truly solid from which to grow.



it depends on how much will power you have.
it also depends on how much you trust the correctness of your perception in the face of disagreement.
if you intelligently have interpreted a workable idea of how the world operates, then no matter how fervently that "average" people disagree with your mental construct, you know you are correct (albeit that you can not adequately find the words to say it to them)


i did not know you were not coherent.
do you mean you are drunk or on drugs, or do you mean that you are in some sort of naturally occurring mental "episode".?

whatever i am very tired now and i live on the other side of this wrong planet.
i live about 10 hours in front of greenwhich and 14 hours in front of ohio in the united states.
so it is 1:55 am here in australia.
good moonless and wonderfully silent and sleepy night!

it sure does for me! I was often told I needed a good whuppin', that that would cure me of 'what ails me!' and that spanking, or smack across the face was given to stop my to them controllable behavior. Avoidance therapy is what it's called by spurious doctors that will use corporal punishment on stims and behaviors they wish to modify. Just count your blessings, b9 if you have never had experience with those that would abuse you in the name of correcting your behavior.

Merle

I second that emotion. I'm just discovering now all the eccentric things I enjoy, because my parents thought if they could hit me enough, I might just be the child they wanted. For awhile, all I got was a nice case of PTSD and a lifelong prescription for anti-depressants. Now that I've discovered WP and been diagnosed properly, I can finally start being who I really am.

i would like to answer your questions later when i have thrown some cold water on my face and taken a bath. i drank too much last nite and my eyes hurt

ok i understand a bit more.
i perceived the "slapped" bit as "slapped on the bottom at birth" (to initiate breathing).
i could not understand how a certain number of slaps was significant.

Amazing, isn't it? At home "discipline" and "Self-Discipline" were the order of the day. Took YEARS to get over all of that.


To the original poster: what happens after a diagnosis? At your age, nothing really. Other than you have the opinion of whatever "expert" you go to. You can read up, you can find things to do to help with whatever you consider weaknesses in your personality, but there's not really any funded programs for that - you're on your own. Pretty much all that diagnosis will do, if you believe your expert, is answer the question as to your being on the spectrum or not. After that, it's all in your hands. Pretty much as it was before....


Good luck and welcome.

Hi raggle-taggle-gypsy and welcome to WP.

Re: getting diagnosed. Most doctors won't just base their assessment on what you tell them orally. Some use different types of written tests, and observe your nonverbal cues. (I've heard that these nonverbal cues exist and that NT doctors can actually see them. Amazing, isn't it?)

Many of us Dxed as adults worry about appearing too "normal," but the truth is, we're often the last to know that we don't appear terribly "normal" to the rest of the world anyway. The other day, when I was feeling really down, I told my husband that I felt bad we got married without knowing that I had AS, because now we have all these issues to deal with. I felt like I was adding a burden to his life that he was unprepared for. His response was actually kind of funny. He said, "Well, you know, it's not like I haven't noticed from the first day we met that you don't exactly relate to people in any kind of conventional way." And I thought I'd been faking it so well!

And btw, he sees the diagnosis in a completely positive light. Anything that helps me become who I really am makes him very happy. And the diagnosis has helped immeasurably, along with meeting folks on WP and hearing their stories.

Unfortunatly most of today's kids just want the next hollywood portrayed perfect person to be their partner, and can't realize that such a person doesn't exist... For that reason alone, I find I do not want to be a part of just any relationship... I want someone who doesn't have a hollywood blurred reality, hollywood blurs reality so horribly, between James Bond getting every woman he tries to, and chick flicks portraying guys as being totally commited to romance in every way when in a relationship, I think that is why people are having difficulty where older generations did a better job. Today's kids don't even know what is going on in the world today. I have met a bunch of people that didn't know about the terrorist attacks in India until somewhen mentioned he was worried about relatives he had over there.... And this was at a university!

Im srry that was off topic...

No problem. Although I don't think you should be quite so harsh on your peers. My daughter, 21, has absolutely no illusions about Hollywood-type people. But then, she's worked in the theater and we've both been around the "real" Hollywood people before.

People of a certain age tend to idealize, romanticize things. They always have (look at the poetry of, say, Shelly or Browning). The jaded part tends to come with age. Don't worry about what people expect. Or what you THINK they expect. Because there's a good chance you're wrong, there.

It's not true that you would necessarily have come to the attention of doctors at an early age. My Mum said she would have taken us all to psychologists if she thought they knew what they were doing but she has no faith in psychologists. Also, Aspergers only became a recognised diagnosis in the 90s (despite Hans Asperger's actual studies taking place in the 40s no-one took any notice until much later). So, if I had been taken to a doctor they would have missed it, same goes for my Dad who was clearly Aspie too but obviously never diagnosed. And my youngest brother who is probably the most Aspie of all of us but it just wasn't a diagnosis back then.

Not much to add, but welcome to WP, anyway!

Exactly! I literally didn't know how to take care of myself properly; and my mom still didn't take me to a doctor. She thought that because I was smart I couldn't possibly have any cognitive problems.

that was my mom. matter of fact, she would tell me things like 'why are you asking ME how to (balance a checkbook, make out a grocery list, wash the dishes, cook dinner, etc) I am just your old stupid mother, you are the brainac! go figure it out for yourself! and then she would complain for hours and hours to her 'girlfriends' on the telephone how put upon she was for having an ungrateful child. Now that I look back at it, she was developing a cover story that I was not 'impared,' but incredibly selfish and angry and therefore when I left home at 17 she was not responsible for my behavior.

I think my mom and dad were continually angry with me, attributing my behaviour as being 'contrary' and 'rebellious' and it was a relief to both of us when I was 'sent to my room.'' Of course, this was back in the technology deprived 1950's so that meant I had an AM radio that became my whole (other) life. I lived my whole junior/senior high ostrisized at school and punished for it at home. Why my parents thought I would want to stay at home or even in Wichita, KS is beyond me. After placing me in a mental institution at 17 for being 'rebellious' and 'wayward' I excaped one day (literally running away to the Woodstock Festival in 1969) and never looked back. I did visit them once in 1993, when I was in my middle fourties and in College, but that was it. They never knew I was autistic, as they both died in 1998.
(sigh)

Merle