What led you to discover...?
Verdandi
Veteran
Joined: 7 Dec 2010
Age: 54
Gender: Female
Posts: 12,275
Location: University of California Sunnydale (fictional location - Real location Olympia, WA)
I went through over a decade of applying for jobs, interviewing, and not getting hired. I didn't know why this was and came to some easy conclusions that weren't actually true (or maybe they were partially true). I remember one of the last jobs I applied to was one where I had several friends working, so I asked one of them to check on my application, and what I got back was that the interviewer didn't want to hire me because I was "strange" and something seemed "off."
For whatever reason I never really thought I was different from other people. Socially, I didn't really question a lot of confusing situations as my 20s were a lot better than my teens (significantly less bullying, for example, but I was also much better looking than in my teens, which may have contributed). I did have people say things like "I like Verdandi okay, but I can only take her in small doses" as one example I clearly remember.
I'll say I kind of had two tracks going on this, though.
On one track, I'd notice that some behavior of mine was autistic or aspie, and I'd try to quash it. Not because I thought I was autistic, but because I thought I wasn't. This was a gradual process that started with watching Rainman and ended about four years ago.
On the other track, I was really unaware of my cognitive difficulties as legitimate difficulties. I thought things were harder for me because I was lazy or stupid or whatever. I never really stopped to wonder why simple instructions were confusing or why I had a hard time understanding things or why I was the only person to complain about certain loud noises in some situations. I was kind of aware that emotionally and in other ways I seemed less mature than other people my age, which I didn't really have an explanation for.
Anyway, the first track stopped about four years ago after I read an autistic woman's blog and realized that what she described was very much like what I experience. So I had about two weeks of panic, meltdowns, and shutdowns trying to cope with the idea, and worry about not being able to get a diagnosis, and doing some research, and then just sort of forgetting about it. I never fully forgot it, I mean it was in the back of my mind all that time. But I was sort of hoping for an alternative explanation, which ADHD served as for about four months, when it started falling apart because it failed to explain everything. And over the next few months I suspected autism again, but not very openly or consciously (I did start asking an Aspie friend of mine about their perceptions/etc to see if I related to anything, but I dropped it quickly - later I mentioned to another friend that I thought I w might be autistic and I misinterpreted her response as shooting my comment down - she was later very supportive, and still is), and I didn't really start taking it seriously until early December of last year, at which point I started comparing notes with Pensieve and several autistic people I've known for awhile and finding points of similarity was astonishingly easy given how hard it was for me to see myself as autistic.
Tjolk
Hummingbird
Joined: 14 Dec 2011
Age: 48
Gender: Male
Posts: 22
Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
After a very sudden and severe depression almost a year ago I went to the the doctor and he gave me oxazepam and sent me to a psychologist for cognitive behavioral therapy. The questions and assignments in therapy didn't make sense to me and were very difficult to answer. Needless to say, we didn't make progress so he advised me to get a diagnostic inquiry at a specific centre for that.
The main reason for being diagnosed ASD is the way i performed the TAT test. In TAT you have to describe a series of very ambiguous (old fashioned) images and that took me a long time and a lot of words. I still have my reservations becouse real life to me is less ambigious than the pictures of TAT. Furthermore I'm very sensitive to sound but i thout thats HSP instead of ASD.
I've always known I was different, but at the same time I assumed everybody would feel that way. In a western individual society difference is often encouraged, Think different is even an advertising slogan. I never thought there would be a systematic difference. I interpreted my own whish for solitude as Introversion and my slightly odd hobbies and interests as nerdy or geeky.
In the past I have been a good liar (the best lie is embedded in the truth) a skilfull thief (years ago ), I ve not been bullied or harassed, I did social work , I understand word jokes and i can read mind and body. I mean those are not typical ASD traits/experiences/activities, right?
BTW, I can feel remorse and I do care about other peaple and animals, otherwise i'd be on a different forum right now.
I had just started college and one day I was with my OT in a cafe and I was telling her how difficult I was finding it because there were so many people making noise all at the same time. I couldn't explain why it made me upset. She asked if I'd ever been tested for autism, and I said no. She said that for a while she had been noticing things about me (poor eye contact, odd gait, intolerance to change etc) and perhaps I should read about it. We went to the library to find a book and I nearly cried because it was like reading a textbook about my life and that was the first time I'd ever felt understood, that somebody "got" what I was trying to say.
I had always felt different too as a child. I felt as if I were supposed to turn into a mystical dragon one day and fly away from everything.
Isn't everyone alexythemic? The scores just varry in each individual. According to wikipedia.[/quote]
The difference is I was 47 when I found out I had AS. As a child I had a more practical goal in mind; I wanted to live out in the woods far removed from the people I couldn't understand, and who didn't understand me.
As far as being alexythemic goes, I don't know all that much about it. But my guess is that if everybody had it, it wouldn't be considered a disorder or syndrome.
Well my parents first discovered something was wrong on my first day at school when I was 4. Apparently I was frightened, and I mis-behaved badly, like hid under the tables, tried to physically hurt the teacher, kicked the other children, wouldn't play with anyone in the playground, wouldn't sit still in assembly and at storytime, and even tried to escape from the school by crawling under the hedge. The teachers were worried, my parents were surprised because I acted like I was traumatized. But I did calm down after the first week, but the teachers realised I needed extra help with my reading, writing and counting because I was lacking behind the rest of the kids.
The teachers and doctors suspected moderate learning difficulties, then ADHD. But finally, by the age of 8, they discovered mild AS.
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Female
SyphonFilter
Veteran
Joined: 7 Feb 2011
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 2,161
Location: The intersection of Inkopolis’ Plaza & Square where the Turf Wars lie.
The teachers and doctors suspected moderate learning difficulties, then ADHD. But finally, by the age of 8, they discovered mild AS.
winslow
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: 1 Jul 2011
Age: 53
Gender: Male
Posts: 72
Location: Orange County, CA
Like most others in this thread, I always sensed something was different about me but could not put my finger on it. Tried many times over the years to tell shrinks what was going on with me but could never put a comprehensive explanation together, could only piece out individual experiences. I had read about Aspergers before but it didn't resonate with me. It seemed like something with extreme symptoms/indicators involved. Like many others who are uneducated about AS/Aut the picture I had in my head were the hand flapping screamers bouncing their heads off the back of the chair. Then one day last year I was reading an article about it which explained that you didn't have to have extreme symptoms and that many people go their whole lives feeling like I do and not being diagnosed because their symptoms are minor, but existent nonetheless. It also went on to explain the different areas where you would have issues and I then read more on the internet, finding this place in the process. It was like the sky opened up and the universe imparted the wisdom upon me I had been seeking my whole life.
Mummy_of_Peanut
Veteran
Joined: 20 Feb 2011
Age: 51
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,564
Location: Bonnie Scotland
I was on-line and looking for explanations for my daughter's behaviour. I must have googled the right combination of words that triggered a whole load of sites on Aspergers. After reading a little, I had a eureka moment (mainly about my daughter, but a little about myself). I'd heard of Aspergers before, but I didn't really know what it was, to be honest, I thought I did but I didn't. Like many people, I didn't understand anything about the range of traits and had a stereotype image in my mind (I'm ashamed to admit), which my daughter especially is nothing like. Furthermore, I had no idea about the connection to sensory issues. That really got me intrigued, as this has been a major issue all my life. It also explains most of the problems we had with our daughter, when she was a baby, as well as the 'way ahead of the others' thing she had going. Then I bought 'Aspergirls' to try to understand my daughter and felt I was reading my own autobiography. I've never had my daughter's behaviour problems, so I didn't realise our issues could have the same roots. Everything just fell into place, after 38 years of knowing I was different and not knowing why. So here I am. I still don't know if I do have it or not or if I have ADHD. My daughter is waiting to be assessed for autism, but the school accept that she probably is on the spectrum.
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"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiatic about." Charles Kingsley
I thought for a long time, I guess since I was a teenager, that I had some autistic traits but back then I thought autism meant you had to be completely non-functional. Then I got my ADHD diagnosis, which seemed to explain everything but as time went on, it didn't.
In about the last year or so, autism kept coming up in conversations with people and it got me thinking about it again. And after I started watching House, there was one episode about an autistic child and Wilson talks about how House might have Asperger's. So finally I decided to do some serious reading up on it, and here I am.
I did not what Aspergers was until just about 1 year ago. I normally do not watch the show The Doctors. It just happens the day I watch it, it was the day they discussed the autism spectrum disorders. When they described Aspergers it sounded like they were describing me. They also mentioned some children with Aspergers in the 70's and 80's were misdiagnosed with ADHD. I was diagnosed with ADHD but really did not seemed learning disabled so I figured I must have Aspergers. Another good thing about the show is they mentioned WrongPlanet. I was diagnosed with Aspergers in 2010
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There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die -Hunter S. Thompson
There have been times in my life when I embraced oddity, but back in the eighties I set out on a personal development odyssey. Well, to me it felt like the odyssey started in the sixties but this was real, measurable work. By the start of this century I was close to standing on my own two feet, but still troubled by failures to perform in social contexts. Autism came up as a last resort and it stuck.