A different 4 Stages of Aspergers – Where are You?

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Where is stage of confusion? While I agree with the four stages listed, I also think there's a stage where you just stop and realize you're not who you always thought you were and try to figure out who you really are now.

Very true. And the 2 stages after confusion:

- Mourning (for the person you always thought you could become when you got it right next time)

- "It's what it is" (the last stage, the acceptance and integration stage, where you realize that it doesn't matter at all what you have, what your diagnosis paper says, what it's called in this year's DSM, what your family says/would've said if they knew of your diagnosis, the only thing that matters is that you're a human with limitations and advantages and that you have to make the best use of what you have and learn to live with what you don't have, same as every other person on this Earth).

Nice additions...I'm simultaneously experiencing those two along with validation and comraderie atm. Its very busy and loud in my head.

I have told both friends of mine (I have known one for 45 years and another for 30 years). Neither understands what it “means” to have Aspergers. Nor will they take the time to understand it. To them, I am simply who I am. Certainly, I have an “impairment”. But honestly, so does everyone else.

For me, it’s a matter of figuring out how to move forward, finally discovering (after all these years) that my “impairment” has a name.

Thanks to -- Dantac, harrycontests, Moondust -- we are up to 8 stages:

Relief
Validation
Momentum
Camaraderie
Epiphany
Confusion
Mourning
It is what it is

Let’s see. I was diagnosed about 2 weeks ago. Initially, I was at Relief. I then started to move into Validation. Now, I am cycling between Epiphany, Confusion, Mourning and “It is what it is”. Sigh. Hopefully, this feeling of unease will not last long.

I've been diagnosed for years, so I'll go with none of them.

Along the way since diagnosis I went through mini-stages of wondering "what if I'd known from the beginning, how would my life have been different?" and also having to practise consciously not to berate myself because now I know it's not my fault. Also a stage of not taking any s^^^ from anyone because now I know I don't deserve it.

well said.

Even though I still find socialising very difficult and painful, I am seeking and finding happiness in life in other areas; meditation, exercise, 'letting go' of concerns - and by managing my social interactions carefully (i.e. keeping them very low, as I have so little capacity) I am actually able to pretty much enjoy them with my wife and one or two other close people (I think if we get no social interaction it hurts an inbuilt human system 'need' we have).

And we can also continue exploring for ways to make the social situations easier to bear (e.g. http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt230208.html )

Unfortunately, there are more stages.

What do you call it when you've been through relief, validation, momentum, and camaraderie, through whatever comes after them, and you're back to the frustration, fear, hopelessness, and self-hate that motivated you to seek a diagnosis in the first place??

'Cause that's where it ends, folks.

Yikes. Does it really have to come back to that (frustration, fear, hopelessness, self-hate)? If so, that's a very depressing thought.

hmmmmm...

I definitely relate to being kinder to oneself, and being less tolerant of other peoples crap. These "stages" are less fixed to a chronological sequence, as they are to me: epiphanies, emotions, and considerations, that I have been revisiting, as I get used to my diagnosis.

(of course I suppose an epiphany is inherantly a chronological stage, but I do tend to forget, and then re-epiphany )

lol.. i think my stage would be the very last one.. the reality at the end of the equation is the problem remains and cannot be solved.

Divide by Zero problem.



Hey.. that would be the ideal symbol for AS: Ø

I don't know if it has to for everyone or not. All I can prove is that that is what it has come back to for me, and I cannot find any way out that has any external justification at all.

I can regurgitate any amount of "difference does not equal deficit" rhetoric I want. I'm mouthing it. The fact that I am left with is that interaction with society still shows me as deficient. That is how people choose to judge me. That may be their choice...

...but at some point a person's value to society is defined in society's eyes.

Therefore I am left with, I can either become valuable in their eyes (ie a good facsimilie of NT, so good that it becomes effortless and I even fool myself) or accept that I have little to no value.

Having asked for tolerance only to be spit upon (and, yes, the asking from a place of self-acceptance preceded and IMO precipitated the bitter, foul person I am today) and having failed at making that necessary facsimilie, I am left with the conclusion that people in general have the power to FORCE the deficit model into correctness simply by believing in it.

I'm back to bitter self-hate, and it's like mental MRSA. It is now utterly resistant to the "treatment" of accepting difference as simply difference (shall we call it positive self-acceptance?) that worked in the past. All that's left is to continue bashing my head against the attempt to establish that necessary facsimilie or force myself to accept myself as a broken, incapable individual who somehow, through some fluke or stroke of luck, built a life for herself that she shouldn't be living and is no longer capable of having.

That is the truth for me. I f****d up and built a life on self-acceptance and the belief that I could still do the things that were important to me-- even if I had to work harder or do them differently, that would be OK. That lasted about a decade, then fell apart. I tried to rebuild it; it cannot be done as it is now clearly a false premise.

Frustration, fear, hopelessness, self-hate. Again. Life really is a circle.

I'm so glad you wrote this and it was well written. I find myself feeling this way more days than not. Some days I have the energy to fight for my right to be different and other days reality hits and I would just rather watch TV.

Feel free to PM if you ever want to commiserate.

BuyerBeware and Nymeria8

My suggestion is try meditation:

- It enables me to escape from the world (some people do 20 minutes twice a day, I like 90 minute sessions).
You could do TM and chose a mantra of escape.
(I like to think of how life is existing in only such a tiny moment of the universe's vast timeline (it will die out again as the universe winds down), and how tiny any one of us is in the vast, enormous scale of the universe. I find it good to think on the beauty and scale and grandeur of the universe.)

- most importantly, I find that doing meditation builds my inner resources; I find I am more resilient and happier, making normal life more bearable and sometimes even enjoyable!

Highly recommended - what's to lose by trying?