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AutisticGuy1981
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02 Apr 2014, 4:03 pm

I can maintain a life living as a single bloke doing everything by my self.
I can not make friends but when I've had them in the past I've been fine.

It's just initiating a friend ship, I have no idea how to go about doing it without seeming creepy or something.
I have the ability to be in a relationship as I was married at 18 and we didn't split up until I was around 31-32 and I'm still on good terms with her so I obviously did something right during those years.

I think high functioning to most people is the ability to lead an independent life, it doesn't have to be a successful normal life



GibbieGal
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16 Apr 2014, 5:59 pm

Eureka13 wrote:

I've talked extensively with my therapist about this - she has studied Asperger's, particularly in relation to patients who had dysfunctional families in early childhood, and believes it's possible that a lot of us suffer from "attachment deficit." Insufficient oxytocin (the "bonding hormone") means we have a hard time making attachments and/or form extremely strong attachments when we do manage to form one. I've been reading up on this, and while I am not yet versed enough to relate the information in what I feel is a concise and coherent fashion, I have come to believe there's something in what she says.


It can be soooo hard for me to feel connected; usually in friendships, the other person is attached to me, and I feel like I'm just there to try to make someone else happy. But then, just a few times, someone has 'clicked' with my heart and suddenly I am VERY attached, and it is so desperately painful when they're gone. I'm trying to learn to live with a broken heart that is willing to stay broken rather than build up more stone walls.

I'm so sorry for your loss -- the loss of him, of your sense of peace, of belonging, of life, love and friendship. It must feel like someone put an axe through your heart.



Summer_Twilight
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17 Apr 2014, 9:53 am

Yes I am very HF and I have proven to break through many barriers. I am even in the midst of preparing for a real estate license so that I can get back to a team that hired me two years ago doing cold calls.

1. I have my own condo
2. I pay my own bills
3. I buy my own groceries
4. Cooking for myself
5. Cleaning
6. Budgeting

As far as friends go, I do better making friends when they are on the spectrum than when they are NTs. They seem to want to come to my things while the other refuse.



Adamantium
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17 Apr 2014, 10:08 am

Summer_Twilight wrote:
Yes I am very HF and I have proven to break through many barriers. I am even in the midst of preparing for a real estate license so that I can get back to a team that hired me two years ago doing cold calls.

1. I have my own condo
2. I pay my own bills
3. I buy my own groceries
4. Cooking for myself
5. Cleaning
6. Budgeting

As far as friends go, I do better making friends when they are on the spectrum than when they are NTs. They seem to want to come to my things while the other refuse.


Do you find paying bills and budgeting easy? Do you use any systems/specific practices for making this easier?



QuidditchChick
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30 Apr 2014, 8:57 am

I would guess I am high functioning as I have been able to easily get good paying jobs, graduated college (though my grades kind of stunk even after high grades throughout grade school) and have been married to a great guy for nearly five years. I am very organized and budget well, even figuring how to pay off my husband's phenomenal private university student loans.

My only issues come from social situations.



NACA2414
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18 May 2014, 10:48 am

New member here, but have been following for about a year

I am a 46 yo who throughout life has always been different. i am a physical therapist, which can be a challenge and am very fatigued at the end of most days from dealing with people.
My wife and friends in health care all are convinced that I have Aspergers. We have 2 children on the spectrum, one is more of an aspie. I began seeing similar traits in my children as I had in my own childhood and to this day as well. My children have helped me learn much about myself.
I too share many of your issues, and have recently realized that I spend large amounts of time in my day working behind a sort of socially acceptable facade, but also realizing that it is draining to keep it up for extended periods. If I talk to someone for an extended length of time on a social level (professional conversations are simpler) it is as if a timer starts ticking and eventually the facade times out and goes down which is apparent by the confused expression on the other persons face that tells me I may have breached some acceptable protocol.
I am very good at what I do and my patients seem to appreciate my level of knowledge within my field. I have problems nurturing friendships, but do have friends that I maintain occasional contact with. I use caffeine and alcohol as needed but will go extended periods using neither.
this may sound terrible but alcohol is the only thing that allows me to tolerate large crowded parties or social gatherings especially if noise level is high, otherwise I just cant tolerate that atmosphere and will avoid social gatherings if given a choice.



Webalina
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24 May 2014, 12:57 am

I reckon I'm pretty high-functioning, which is why I'm having problems with the idea of being diagnosed. Because I've had a semi-successful career, can socialize very well in one-on-one situations, and have a respectable I.Q. (128 or thereabouts), and a really good sense of humor, I sometimes feel ashamed that I'm trying to get a diagnosis and fit myself in next to people who are truly disabled by their autism.

From an outsider's view -- at least the people I've talked to about this -- most people I know don't see me in an "autistic" light. I think when they think "autistic" they're thinking Rain Man. Since I'm not an autistic savant, they're having a hard time buying that I'm on the spectrum. (Dr. Sheldon Cooper has made it a little more clear for some people, however. I've been compared to him quite a bit lately. And yes...I know he isn't officially an "Aspie" but I'm sure -- who DOESN'T believe that character is one of us?)

But when I look at my problems -- terrible anxiety and awkwardness in social situations and lack of understanding of how all that works, little to show in the way of dating and intimacy experiences, few IRL friends (even my web friends ignore me most of the time), severe eye contact issues, sensory and hygiene issues, LOTS of stimming behaviors, job history all over the map -- I realize that I fit as well on the spectrum as people who are outwardly more "afflicted" than I am.


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desertnomad
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24 May 2014, 1:12 am

I'm as high functioning as they come. I'm bored as hell with life though



Dox47
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24 May 2014, 1:42 am

I was actually quite difficult to diagnose, and was told that I was on the high end of high functioning after my doctors had to use childhood video tapes of me to confirm the AS diagnosis. I know my masking is very good from having met numerous other Aspies with whom I can compare, and I know my cognitive abilities are at the upper end, both from tests and from comparisons, but those things come with their own burden, in my case constant minimization of my difficulties from people who cannot or will not see them.


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B19
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24 May 2014, 6:18 pm

OP, your post could have been written by my son in law. He is at the top of his game, invited all over the world to lecture in his specialty, but faces the same issues as you.

So I think this high and low functioning thing is a crock, really. I didn't used to. But now I am tending to think that it is as unhelpful in terms of resolving the difficulties we face as ASD people as - for example - it would be to talk about "high and low functioning diabetics".

The terms high and low are very loaded terms, with underlying built in judgements, expectations, stereotypes,
and help feed the stigmatisation of all of us by those critters on the "other planet".

It sounds very mechanical to me too. We are not machines!



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24 May 2014, 6:20 pm

And can anyone enlighten me as to who started off this whole high/low functioning division? I think it is relevant to the topic though a bit laterally so.



Webalina
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24 May 2014, 11:30 pm

Summer_Twilight wrote:
Yes I am very HF and I have proven to break through many barriers. I am even in the midst of preparing for a real estate license so that I can get back to a team that hired me two years ago doing cold calls.

1. I have my own condo
2. I pay my own bills
3. I buy my own groceries
4. Cooking for myself
5. Cleaning
6. Budgeting


I should have added similar things to my previous post in this thread. I went so far as to buy my own house with my own money, and without help from anyone, and have done all the things in this list for many years (I suck at cleaning, but nobody's perfect). However, when I went through a hellaciously stressful couple of years back in the mid-2000s, my anxiety ramped up to ridiculous levels and my ability to cope with my traits backslid. I'm now living with my mom, but it's more for financial reasons than for coping reasons.

Quote:
As far as friends go, I do better making friends when they are on the spectrum than when they are NTs. They seem to want to come to my things while the other refuse.


Same thing happens with me. The people I seem to most be able to relate to are others who are/seem to be on the spectrum. I read that this is because Aspies tend to communicate in a similar way, we recognize it (maybe subconsciously) in others and so gravitate towards that familiarity.


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EQ: 45/50

Go as far as you can see. When you get there, you will see farther.


MELODY-S
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26 May 2014, 11:39 pm

I suppose I am high functioning. I have a great career, take care of my own home, have (mostly successfully) raised my children. I was even a long term caregiver for a family member who eventually died. Which was the most horrible stressful thing you can imagine.

On the down side my marriages/romantic relationships have all been horrid and I have now given up on them. I have a very limited number of friends and after work I am basically a hermit. I could have a social life if I really really tried, but it is so much work and I don't derive any significant pleasure from being around other people.



hemocyanin
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27 May 2014, 5:35 pm

NACA2414 wrote:
I use caffeine and alcohol as needed but will go extended periods using neither.
this may sound terrible but alcohol is the only thing that allows me to tolerate large crowded parties or social gatherings especially if noise level is high, otherwise I just cant tolerate that atmosphere and will avoid social gatherings if given a choice.


I totally get this. I had friends over yesterday who I've known since law school ... they unexpectedly brought their kid who is 17 and was content to go off in another room and watch Netflix and was absolutely no bother, but it made me feel awkward and tongue tied -- generally uncomfortable. So I made some drinks for us adults, and had an extra for myself. That helped a great deal.

I tend to constantly self-monitor everything I am saying in order to ensure that I'm saying the right things. For me, this is primarily what makes social interaction so exhausting -- it's like running two programs: the chat program, and the chat-monitoring program, and the more off balance I am, the more effort I put into the self-monitoring. However, getting a little tipsy dulls my thinking capabilities enough that I can't afford to maintain the self-monitoring, and as a result, I can converse more easily (though I'm also more likely to say wrong stuff, so it is a tradeoff, but one can always just blame the booze).

I've tried pot too, but I don't like it -- pot makes me get totally trapped in my head ... instead of obliterating my self-monitoring program, pot obliterates my chat-program and I go into 100% self-monitoring mode.

Anyway, this thread has been really interesting. I consider myself high functioning (lawyer, been in business for myself for 11 years now, etc. etc). I am often faced with terrible anxiety though because just about everything I do is contrary to my natural state, so while I am outwardly successful, I always feel like I'm right on the brink, ready to drop off the face of the earth and move to some quiet remote corner of Alaska or Chile -- kind of like I'm perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown.



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27 May 2014, 10:04 pm

hemocyanin wrote:
Anyway, this thread has been really interesting. I consider myself high functioning (lawyer, been in business for myself for 11 years now, etc. etc). I am often faced with terrible anxiety though because just about everything I do is contrary to my natural state, so while I am outwardly successful, I always feel like I'm right on the brink, ready to drop off the face of the earth and move to some quiet remote corner of Alaska or Chile -- kind of like I'm perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown.


Welcome to my world...

Somehow, I'm able to put forth this persona of being a really bubbly, optimistic "people-person". I'm a grocery store cashier, and as long as I'm behind that counter and am dealing with only one customer at a time, I can converse, socialize and joke around to beat the band. But if people could go inside my head, they would see woman completely terrified of the world around her. I'm in a constant state of anxiety, even to the point that it invades my dreams. How I am able to hide that I don't know.


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NT: 66/200
EQ: 45/50

Go as far as you can see. When you get there, you will see farther.


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27 May 2014, 10:25 pm

You hide it because you perform a role with a script, just like an actor on a stage in a play. But this drains off vital energy that your inner self needs in order to be your best self.