yo! need some advice or tips or just simple suggestions!

Post Reply New Topic

im almost 30, and the past 2 years i am suspecting i must be some sort of autist, after the thought first struck me, tons of pieces seems to have fallen in place

but it doesnt really help me, cus nobody else knows, suspects or cares.
(my entire life, everyone i know have been content with me being useless, crap at school, with almost no friends, probably cus i compensate w drawings, and an endless well of useless facts..... )
luckily im in norway, which means the gvt pays me welfare to sit around and do nothing. so far, my reasons for doing nothing have been vague "i dunno, i guess im just an a**hole." and that doesnt grant me the "good welfare", plus it labels me as a no-good leech, among my family i am simply labelled lazy, and as far as i know, no other thought has struck any of them, ever.

now..
very recently, after 6 years on welfare, the welfare office thought it was about time i got a job, and started to pay my taxes, and they quickly realized its not so simple with me..
so they aggreed to send me to a "youth shrink" at first. this guy specializes in chatting w depressed teens, and i felt like i didnt weep enough for him to take me seriously. in fact, i dont weep at all..
so i was finally sent to a "specialist psychologist", which made me excited, i loved talking to the guy, only one session tho, but 3 hours just flew by.
some weeks later, i get his concusion, which can be summarized to "childish, needs to get a job allready."
then, my stepmother (the only one in my family who actively wants to help me) arranged for a second session, with a collegue of that shrink, a week ago.
the second conclusion, after that session was: "not manically depressive, ergo simply childish. needs to get a job allready."

im quickly losing faith in everything that has to do with professional psychologists and the likes, as i see them as the fallible emotional people as they are, watching their clock, squinting at me, and eagerly trying to quickly sort it out by having me admit that i just hate my parents or something (which i dont, cus im not depressive... ).
in fact, i was basically told that as long as i wasnt explicitly SAD about myself, then there wasnt anything wrong with me.

the thing is......
i really suspect i am some sort of autist, and i wouldnt suspect that out of nothing. my entire life, ive only talked to 2 shrinks ever, and those two were just recently, and theyre dictating how welfare is going to treat me.
now welfare recieves reports saying "just kick him in the butt, and tell him to get a damn job allready! a haircut too!"
and i am getting more and more desperate.

obviously, i am unable to tell them EVERYTHING about me, in an hour, they only get the portions i can think of mentioning, for example, the last guy i talked to, didnt get the part where i am severely antisocial untill after the session was over, and i was on my way out the door..,....
which is unlucky, but he doesnt care about it, hes getting his next patient, and i am out of his life.

i should also add, none of the talks have been about autism or anything like that. the shrinks had one single task: find out wether or wether not i am manically depressive. i allready told them im not, but that was still their task. naturally, the second meeting was weird, cus we started out aggreeing that im not depressed.

how do i suggest the possibility to a shrink, without offending his professional pride, and ending up damning myself even more?
which is obviously my fear....

:/

Last edited by ZEGH8578 on 15 Feb 2009, 4:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

Get a haircut, so that you WILL get taken seriously?
I seriously think they don't find you very credible, to them you're probably in need of a job and such...
Or else its pure bureaucracy.

my hair is nice and short, it just looks stupid :]
i know why they brush me off, they dont have time, plus im not a real paying customer, im just sent there by the welfare offices. they wanna get me out of the schedule, and get back with their thing.

i guess my real question is:
how do you get a diagnosis, if theres nobody there to diagnose you? :S
how do you go get it?

ive never tried, it was never an issue. but im getting desperate now that years are running away from me.
the shrinks i talked to wanted to find out wether or not i was manically depressive. that was their task.
they concluded twice "he is not manically depressive. mission complete"

and i am nowhere closer to anywhere..

You should go to an independent psychiatrist.

that was the plan w the last guy, but since i wasnt crying at the session, he saw no further reason to see him.
he actually said the words "there's nothing i can do for you" :]

but im still hoping for some sort of psychiatrist arrangement..

Be assertive to those motherf***ers. WHat do you have to loose?

wow.. thats almost word-by-word exactly what orbyss told me, before she game me a link to this forum :O

but yeah. seems like all they do is dig for depression, so i might as well suggest it to them myself

A lot of govt appointed shrinks are only there to assess if people are a danger to themselves or others and while manic depression is one of those categories, AS isn't, so therefore you are not someone who meets their criteria for 'help' or assistance or whatever. If you were referred to them by welfare I would guess it was to assess you for 'danger to self or others' (which can mean suicidal) risk.

You can bring up autism/asperger's with shrinks, but it's not that widely known a condition, you tend to have to see one that specialises in Autism.

on the other hand, maybe you should just give in and go along with what they want, there seems to be a majority opinion that you are stagnating and need to get moving again. sometimes you have to go along with what people want.

Last edited by Postperson on 15 Feb 2009, 6:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

the thing is, im not stagnatING, i was never moving. as i said in the post, ive been on welfare for soon 7 years, ive been to every single one of the courses and programs they got to offer. theres no "again" in my potential movement. MY main mission, when asking for a shrink was to find out WHY i have been so useless for my entire life, at the time the thought of autism/Asperger's didnt strike me, i never saw it as a possibility (in all honesty, i thought the entire genre were like the savants). later on, ive become more and more suspicious of it.

one thing is to be a silent and weird kid, when your a kid.
another is to be a weird and silent teen, when your in high school.
but im now a weird and silent adult, i got nothing going for me, and i am getting genuinely worried that im gonna focus on "getting a grip" and stuff, and just waste more and more time on an impossible task. i simply CANNOT just "snap out" of this situation, if i could, i would have long ago.

if i just go with the shrinks current opinion, im right back on minimum welfare payout, leech-stamp, and absolutely NO oportinity for ever getting out of that loop, cus they will leave it up to me to "snap out" of it, with some motivational courses that i have attended to no end, and to no avail :/

I guess you can look at it from two angles.

On the one hand you might go to a doctor with an explicit request to be tested on AS rather than leave the diagnosis procedure open to the doctor.

On the other hand, you might think of why exactly you are in the situation you're not having a job. Is it because you don't know anything or don't have any capabilities, or because you don't pass job interviews, or because you can't find anything that interests you? So you may work on this part of the story as well.

Of course, the one track doesn't exclude the other.

the job part, i pretty much got sorted out. ive gotten two jobs, i obviously passed the interviews, but with jobs, as with school, as with the military service (involuntary in norway) it comes down to the same thing: among people i shut down, and block everyone out. which is rather counterproductive in, well, school jobs and anywhere.
so i have decided to simply not try any more jobs, untill i know more about why i shut down.
i dont even want a job, i like it here, allone in my flat. i enjoy the lonelyness, but the outside pressure pushes me on, and i simply cannot do any more of an effort than what i have allready done, and apparently its not enough, from the angles ive come from. if you get what i mean :/

i am an intelligent person, and ive done a lot of autoanalysis, i know myself very well, the only mystery that remained, for years and years was why i cannot function socially.
when i found out about Asperger's, only a few years back, little by little, i saw more and more of myself in it, especially weird traits that i had just categorized as "weirdo-habits" before that, such as memorizing trillions of numbers and statistics, for absolutely no reason
that combined with a total shutdown in social situations, plus other factors, such as never understanding the cues given to me by a chick. my (few and stillborn) dates are like my job experiences, a well prepared and motivated beginning, followed by a total stop against a concrete wall, where everything just seems to dissolve, and i, disencouraged and apathic, just return to 0.

i have never functioned socially, in any level, but i never thought much of it. just laughed it off "ah well, thats what i get for being the weirdo!!", but ive realized, even before i thought of Asperger's, that i may be beyond "just a weirdo", so much so, that i am most likely to remain like this.

I think you should make the Aspergers in you speak for itself.

gather as much information about it as possible. make a nice fat file full of research by Atwood, Frith, Baron-Cohen, Hans himself.

make another fat file with all your symptoms, starting with early childhood, together with testimonies by all of your family members, teachers and doctors. you might want to divide them into separately coloured parts or in some other cataloguing system.

make another fat file with all the information you've gathered about your special interests since early childhood.

and one more for all your rituals.

next time you have an appointment make sure you bring all of that, add a little crazy sparkle in the eye and don't hold back your stims.

that should do it nicely

haha, rituals, yes
i can only gather so many testimonies tho, since ive never had any contact w my family doctor, and my mother would probably be reluctant (another issue ), my dad and the stepwife would probably be more than happy to assist me.
if i could get hold of some of my old teachers, i bet that could help as well.
damn, i got a lot to think about right now
thanx!

Good luck

You may have the same problem I do: My social skills are barely passible, but stick me with a therapist and I'll talk their head off. It's because I'm not worried anout offending or annoying them, they're being paid to listen to me so I'm just going to talk. And I will seem pretty normal.
What I did (when I got diagnosed) was take the Aspie Quiz ( http://www.rdos.net/eng/ ), print my results, write notes all over them.... And also typed up a couple pages (it got long) of stuff in my past, ect. And dropped it off ahead of time, as instructed.
She said I'm definately one, but she was suprised at just how functional I can be.

So maybe do a bunch of writing/ typing, so they have something to go on besides what you present right there?

yes, i definitely recognize myself there. people complain to me about ranting their ears off when they least wanna hear my useless chitter, if i get in a room w someone PAID to listen, i blabber on, as if im on top of the world

i should definitely write stuff down tho, because, like i imply, i get into ranting, which means ill drag a detail out for 45 minutes, and waste both our time. the bottom line is that the therapist only gets portions of me having stupid sleeping hours, no job, and few friends, and naturally, his first conclusion from that would be "get a life you bum."

in fact, they havent even been interested in my past, the previous guy cut me off each time i ventured into the past, cus he simply wanted to know wether im depressive or not.
to be honest, i feel absolutely certain myself, but ill get nowhere with that, unless a shrink officially aggrees.

this forum wasnt so bad after all i was all reluctant to let myself _associate_ with anything
(probably unique there too, eh? )