Newbie here! Would like to introduce myself.

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Jimmy FL
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15 Nov 2021, 3:21 pm

Hi, my name is Jimmy, I'm 27 years old, born from an American mother and French father in Paris. Currently living in South Florida near WPB. I have always had a difficult time with pretty much anything, school, social, family etc. Multiple teachers told my parents take me to see someone, either for not keeping up in school or behaving in a socially unacceptable manner. My parents did take me to a few people at an early age, a therapist and a couple others that sound more like pseudo scientific nonsense to me (my father was into that kind of thing :roll: ).

My mother struggled to convince him just to take me to a normal therapist, though unfortunately that therapist did not have the expertise required to diagnose me with anything. The therapist basically just told my parents everything was their fault according to my mother. This doesn't surprise me at all seeing as my mother, psychologist, and I agree my father has narcistic personality disorder. My mother definitely has some ego issues as well. So anyways, that did not go well and pretty much nothing changed. My father still beat the crap out of me on a regular basis (belt and all) for pretty much anything. My mother was quite emotionally abusive and manipulative, she would basically do this thing where she holds her feelings for you hostage, sometimes for days at a time, until you succumbed to whatever behavior/actions she wanted. This doesn't even include the verbally abusive side, such as being called a loser by my mother a few times throughout adolescence.

Outside of them handling things poorly whenever things were bad, my parents were actually quite good. Or maybe I'm just saying that because I would feel guilty not to. What I do know is they have always been incredible "providers". Whether it was through a private tutor, a psychiatrist, materialistic gifts etc. Unfortunately pretty much everyone we know, only knows about that side of things and of course a lot of what I did wrong. Anyways I'm getting off topic and I didn't want that stuff to be the main part of my post.

At 10 years old, we moved to the united states to live in South Florida where my grandparents lived. When I was 11 I was finally taken to someone with an actual MD and real medical experience. He was a child/adolescent and adult psychiatrist. First thing he did was say I had ADHD and start me on stims. For the first time I succeeded in school, went from just barely keeping up my entire life to all As and Bs. Unfortunately, I hated the side effects and I did not care enough about doing well in school at that age to put up with the weight loss/increased social anxiety. After a semester on stims, I said I no longer wanted to take them. My parents/doctor decided to force me on them, to the point that school faculty was in on it and someone would pull me to the side and take me to the bathroom to see me take my med. After a semester of that nightmare my parents gave up and I was taken off it at the end of 7th grade. Sadly, this experience made me very anti-psychiatrist/medications. At some point in the year of seeing this doctor he believed I was on the autism spectrum. He kept mentioning it to my mom but she and my father said they did not believe it was true. We decided to leave him and I started seeing a different psychiatrist for a long time. The new psychiatrist and all others I saw until adulthood did not specialize in child/adolescent psychiatry though and it is my understanding that is why they did not have the expertise to diagnose me on the spectrum. They only saw psychiatric conditions though which were latter shown to be inaccurate.

Well that was a lot, now that there is some summary of my childhood I'll fast forward to adulthood. I saw a clinical psychologist for the first time at 26, they did a full evaluation over multiple appointments. This included ADOS 2, family interviews, and so on. She said without a doubt I had very high functioning ASD. Supposedly I have a very female-like presentation of ASD, which is how I blended in for so long. Anyways, it was the first diagnosis to make sense to me. Since then, 2 more doctors have corroborated my diagnosis and they all seem to be on the same page. I actually really like my 2 new doctors, a new clinical psychologist and psychiatrist. My therapist has helped me a lot with the "delayed emotional processing" I have been basically just reacting to my entire life.

Today, I'm living at home with my parents (unfortunately). My relationship with them is sometimes good, mostly just "okay" but with no idea when things will go sour again and only this tiring anticipation of when it might happen. I've started a BS in physics at an online university, though I might switch to micro-biology. I have a small part-time job.
I have had a best friend for about 15 years who I'm lucky to know. However, he lives a couple hours away and he recently got married and even had a baby a month ago. The idea of doing something like that myself seems so far away/impossible. I do love his family though and try to drive up and see them on a monthly basis.

I've been looking to expand my interests recently and maybe make some new friends through events at local game stores or something. This week I bought some mtg(magic the gathering) cards to build a deck. I just picked up mtg as an interest recently though and have never really played other than online (starting a month ago). Now, I have yet to make that leap and go to a local event.

I've been procrastinating introducing myself on here for a while now. I wanted to make my intro maybe a bit more positive but today happened to be a kind of "blue" day and I thought I should finally do this.
Looking forward to talking with everyone here!



AnonymousAnonymous
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15 Nov 2021, 3:35 pm

Welcome to Wrong Planet! :D


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Double Retired
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15 Nov 2021, 4:51 pm

Welcome to WP! I hope you find it a pleasant place to visit...it sounds like you could use one.

I'll note that my bride is half-French, but she was born and raised in Texas and officially is solely American. Despite being in Texas, for her first few years she was raised speaking French. When she approached school age her Mom and Grandmother realized maybe she should learn English. :roll:


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Tim_Tex
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15 Nov 2021, 6:34 pm

Welcome to WP!


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cyberdad
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15 Nov 2021, 6:44 pm

Jimmy FL wrote:
I've started a BS in physics at an online university, though I might switch to micro-biology. I have a small part-time job. !


I have a degree in microbiology so if you need any careers advice I'm happy to share. Good luck.



autisticelders
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16 Nov 2021, 6:47 am

welcome


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Jimmy FL
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03 Dec 2021, 5:03 pm

Thank you very much to everyone for the welcome posts!

Double Retired wrote:
I'll note that my bride is half-French, but she was born and raised in Texas and officially is solely American. Despite being in Texas, for her first few years she was raised speaking French. When she approached school age her Mom and Grandmother realized maybe she should learn English. :roll:

That's hilarious! :lol:
cyberdad wrote:
Jimmy FL wrote:
I've started a BS in physics at an online university, though I might switch to micro-biology. I have a small part-time job. !


I have a degree in microbiology so if you need any careers advice I'm happy to share. Good luck.

Thank you cyberdad, I may end up taking you up on that offer. Was it undergraduate and/or graduate microbiology studies?



Feccy
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15 Jan 2022, 6:46 pm

Hey Jimmy

I’m new to here and Aspergers (only came to realise I’m ‘on the spectrum’ a week or so ago!) so am probably ‘behind the curve’ a little for any advice!

However, I lived in south Florida in my early 20s, living in Lake Worth and working in WPB. I do miss the place especially the weather. That was back in the late 80s! Currently back in Scotland along with the miserable weather!

I follow US politics closely (it’s an addiction really!) and the state/country seems to have changed a lot since I was there.

Hope your journey is going in the right direction and nice to kind of meet you



cyberdad
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15 Jan 2022, 10:04 pm

Jimmy FL wrote:
Was it undergraduate and/or graduate microbiology studies?


Hi Jimmy, unfortunately it was UG. I have however worked briefly in hospitals as a tech with a couple of graduate students (I think they were masters) maintaining a culture collection for them so I kind of know the projects they do (Masters is a combination of advanced coursework and projects).

Had I been able to do more specialised further studies myself I might have been able to get a permanent role as a microbiologist instead of being a tech looking after culture collections. The longest contract job I had was looking after a bacterial collection for a teaching lab at a university.

By 2003 I left the field and just work in the higher education sector first as a tutor and then as a research assistant/analyst doing data analysis now as a ed designer/ed consultant.



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15 Jan 2022, 10:10 pm

welcome JimmyFL..hope you enjoy your visits here. :D


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