Autism is slowly ruining my life

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I have aspergers (now determined as high functioning autism). It is basically turning my life into ruin, let me give you some examples.

It has caused me double depression which I cannot dislodge or get rid of.
It has caused people to avoid me and tease me, especially at work.
At work my coworkers single me out of all events and shun me completely, and my boss isn't as friendly to me as he is to the other coworkers
I have an appalling and terrible focus and short term memory, leaving me virtually dumb and useless in most situations.
I barely function during the day due to sheer exhaustion, having no purpose, no talents, and nothing to show for my life.
I can't drive due to poor motor skills and attention problems
Girls barely notice me and think I don't exist.
People are nice to me till they get to know me in most areas except work.
Aspergers has caused me to listen poorly and be left out unable to fit in.
I feel alienated from society and feel like I'm unfit for the world

Also another thing i can't get along with my dad and my mom doesn't way me to be myself or be depressed anymore, so my only choice to be myself would be to stay alone. I hate my life quite a lot at the moment and am virtually stuck.

So why is his happening to me? If anyone can relate, please post down below. Thanks.

Last edited by duck12 on 28 Sep 2014, 10:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes I can totally relate I have a detailed answer I want to write to you but I must do something first so please check back later.

Yes, me, too. That's exactly how my life has been. It's very frustrating. I don't have some of the problems that you listed. I have no memory problem or attention problem. I don't give a s**t about girls. But otherwise it's pretty much the same. I have the magical ability to instantly put people off. Wherever I go, I am hated. I have no chance of getting accepted in a group. In any workplace I'm surrounded by haters. When you are scared of (interacting with) people, it's impossible to do a good job. I still won't give up though. You shouldn't, either.

Not to sound like Pollyanna - but as they say, "The sun will come out tomorrow." Certainly when I was in my early to mid twenties - I had gotten extremely despondent with life. At one point I even took out a large life insurance policy with the idea that I would wait for the two year suicidal exclusion to pass and then do myself in and at least leave a decent chunk of money to my mother - so at least then I would neither have lived nor died in vain.

But things did eventually start to get better - I acquired an occupation that gave me some enormous travel opportunities I had always dreamed of doing. I got a little better at my social skills like learning to make and sustain eye contact and become more interactive in my conversations with others. By the time that two year exclusion period had finished - I had ceased being suicidal and didn't even want to keep making the payments to keep the insurance policy anymore.

For me, bit by bit things got better. Not everything about having Asperger's or HFA is bad. Sure it has its drawbacks. But there are situations a lot worse and one gets to look at the world from an angle most people will never experience. I think that is in many ways a good thing.

Hope I didn't sound too chirpy or perky. I do know very well what you are describing.

I have AS and a speech disorder and I have attracted 4 girls in 2 years without trying, I guess good looks has something to do with it and that I have a good sense of humor and have interesting conversations.

Autism does not ruin your life: the way you and others around you handle it does. You have, within you, a great power and a great potential for success. There are hurdles to be taken, obstacles and problems a plenty. But in the end, whether you fail or succeed depends entirely on your own input and attitude.

Autism does not ruin lives the same way guns do not kill people... people ruin lives, autism doesn't.

People ruin lives not Autism is true. However the idea that you are totally in control of your life is a result of brainwashing by the entertainment industry(including New Age gurus). It is not real life. You are 22, you have yet to learn that other peoples attitudes and action does highly effect how your life goes. Your own attitude and toughness are very important, just far from 100% determinant how you life will evolve.

Unfortunately for the OP all he has seen is non acceptance and hostility towered his autism so it is not surprising it got internalized. The OP is young and has not seen that attitudes towered autism vary widely. It really is as the the cliché goes about location, location, location. While it is it probably is a lot more negative then positive. And frankly a lot of us often mistake the most common attitude I don't care about you, I got my own life to deal with, for hostility. While positive would be optimal, just being left alone, the cessation of constant roadblocks being thrown in his way will give him an opportunity to breathe and start finding out about himself, what, works, what doesn't. etc.

    ^^This is an excellent example of one of the hurdles of being on the spectrum that can help ruin your life.  (by making people hate you)

It gives many people the appearance of hostile argumentativeness of insisting upon a "pointlessly" pedantic complex concept that is only partly true, and then only from a certain point of view.
  That's what it looks like to most people.
  It also looks like criticism.

In other words: it starts arguments, derails the subject, and inhibits solutions. (which is pretty normal for us to do)
 "Look out for that bus!"
 "That is not a "bus," that is a metropolitan area Rapid Transit Series vehicle originally manufactured by General Motors Cor-" *Splat!*

It also pisses people off. (been there, done that, will again)

I believe Charloz was trying to say that a happy attitude and an impassioned dedication can overcome the limits of autism.
Sometimes this is true.
Sometimes Autism kills the person. (7 of my brothers died at or near birth)

Sometimes it's not true. (even this quote shows this)
Because how much could one achieve with those same resources if they didn't have to be partially burned off just to keep up to "normal?"

I believe Charloz was actually trying to be optimistic, logical, and encouraging. And that should count, imo.
If he was NeuroTypical he may have said it better.
Of course if he was NT he might have just said, "Awww, it's not that bad. Let's go have a latte!"


.

Last edited by 1401b on 28 Sep 2014, 2:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Brilliantly said! =)

Well i can relate, its not easy, especially if you are on the worse end with symptoms like i am, sounds like you are about the same as well. I would be surprised if ive been constantly depressed my entire life.

But i guess life is what it is, some of us just get dealt a bad hand, that sadly isnt easily overcome.

I have been a loner most of my entire life, i like to think ive gotten pretty good to handle it. But there are times it gets me down as well. I guess the loneliness and feeling of being different will always be there something in the shadow eating away at you.

Ive tried to get out more lately. ironically i feel like the more i live my prison aka home. I feel like the worse off i am. I honestly thought i was getting pretty good at handling being alone as well as emotions. But being outside and seeing what other people have, that special something you can see, but dont understand it. That can really eat away at me, and get me down, cry and depressed. Just last night i have one of those moments. That really takes the last bit of happiness out of ones life.

I always feel like im a born mime. Everyone gives you strange looks, and even thought they see you, they avoid you. On the other end as the mime, you are just in this strange world that you dont understand and cant speak out to anyone.

It takes a strong personal character to stay strong positiv and keeping the will to live. I know how i had it the other day, its like getting a knife stabbet into my heart.

I guess the real positive thing is that, the amount of suffering and pain some of us can endure, would have broken normal people 10 times over. It takes a strong mind to not lose your sanity when living a life full of misery.

I wasn't diagnosed with aspergers until I was 49 years old. However I had a bizarre infancy - my mother's maternal grandfather, who babysat me all day, six days a week, from when I was three days old to three and half years old, used to fly me to heaven with him after lunch every day to visit his dead wife, mother and father. Whilst there I used to have tutorials from God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, Gaea, Zeus, Hermes, Grim Reaper, King David, Emperor Hadrian and Saint Thomas. All of the other kids in the village where I lived knew this, and I continued making those trips, flying solo, after he died, until I was seven and a half.

These are called 'out of body experiences' or 'near death experiences', as those of you who have them and read of them know. They aren't 'normal', but fairly commonplace. A survey in 1969 recorded over 400 people in the UK had them, and a guy in the USA set up an institute to study the phenomenon in the 1970s and recorded thousands upon thousands of people who had them, and even developed mechanical methods of manifesting the phenomenon by people who couldn't do it naturally the way the others did.

But until these scientific systems were put in place in study the phenomenon, people thought that it was witchcraft, and when I started attending Junior School, the Head Master pointed me out to the rest of the school and said to them. "Remember, the Bible says 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'!" with the result that they all tried to kill me. At the end of the week, I was almost believing this myself, and as they hadn't succeeded, I ran away from home and tried to kill myself; and ended up in 48 hour near death coma, frozen solid in an industrial cold store that I locked myself in.

I was hated so much the police refused to join in the search for me and the doctors refused to treat me when I was found. But I survived and my parents withdrew me the state education system and taught me at home for the next four years.

I then had four years as an articled pupil at Grammar School and qualified at fifteen and a half to leave the UK and work abroad. However the Head Master of the Junior School had other ideas and cracked my head open, when I was on my way home from sitting my finals at the Grammar School.

The last thing I remember was seeing the bottle flying towards me and ducking to avoid it from killing me stone dead. So it hit me just below the crown on my skull, giving me concussion that caused me retrograde, anterograde, psychogenic and dissociative amnesias until I was 49 and was diagnosed and treated for aspergers syndrome by hypno-regression therapy.

So, I forgot I was a pariah and, apart from the memory problems, had a 'normal' life - got a great job, met a teenage sweetheart, bought a sports car, married, bought a house and a boat, had a child, developed professional identity and reputation, etc., etc. Nowadays I'm an autie/aspie activist, author and publisher. I have five bestsellers on Amazon and I'm a featured blooger on The Huffingtom Post.

So my advice is, find a better way than having your head cracked open to forget all that victimization crap you are whining about and "get a new life".

Hit the internet for tons of positive psychology stuff - such as Brian Johnson's 'The Philosophers Notes' and 'The Optimum Living Academy' - grab a hypnosis program - like Dr Robert Anthony's 'The Secret of Deliberate Creation + Deliberate Creation Self-Hypnosis' - and engage in leading edge neuroscience such as Dr Joe Dispenza's 'You Are The Placebo'. Wipe out your depressions and your bi-polar schizophrenias by taking the advice of Dr Sonja Lyubomirsky's 'The How of Happiness' and Dr Deepak Chopra's 'Synchrodestiny'.

If you are on low income or have no income at all, Brian Johnson will give you a free scholarship for most of his study products.

We auties/aspies hold the future of this planet inside our heads. Face it by being a bit more constructive instead of feeling sorry for yourself.

A couple suggestions that might help.

First, there are some things you have control over, and some things you don't. You obviously have no control over having Aspergers syndrome. However, you're lifestyle directly affects you're quality of life. You're lifestyle can either exasperate or mitigate the symptoms of AS. Do you eat a lot of junk food? Do you drink a lot? Do you do drugs? Do you sleep well at night? If not, what might you be eating or doing that prevents you from sleeping well? Also, think about how work affects you're life. Is you're job making you're life better or worse? If you need the money and can't afford to quit, then obviously you can't. However, if you're job is making you're life more difficult, or if you're job is not helping you to improve yourself, you might want to just quit or at least look for something else.

In short, separate the parts of you're life you don't control from those you do, and make sure what you do control is not making what you don't worse.

Also, if you can't avoid being alone a lot of the time, try finding some hobbies you enjoy that you can do by yourself. I enjoy reading and solving puzzles. I also like to dance. I watch dance tutorials on youtube, and then practice in front of a mirror. I can do these things by myself, and can enjoy myself immensely doing them.

Just keep an open mind, and you should be able to find a hobby that will keep you busy for hours, oblivious to the fact that your alone.

Read the thread in my sig about how I've managed to treat my symptoms. Feel free to pm any questions.