Worst Experiences From AS?

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I had some profound ones. I blogged about it here. Feel free to comment on there or post your own here. I know I'm not alone, especially among those of you who received a diagnosis only in adulthood.

I'm only just beginning to realise the full extent. I thought i understood how it had affected me soon after finding out about ASD this summer. But after a three month period of euphoria and excitement and relief, ( punctuated with some tears and anger, but full of energy) i have just the last few days begun to see the trail of destruction it has wrought, the damage it has done, throughout my life. Unwanted sex, abortion, drink problems, unwanted motherhood, wrecked jobs, wasted studies, lost friendships.....
Consequently i am a lot less happy and smiling about having Aspergers this week.




To reply in advance to UncleBeer who has chosen to quote my post a little below me on this page as an example of the dangers of "living up to" a dx, i would like to point out that i only self-diagnosed THIS summer, and that ALL of the damage, wastage, huge mistakes, etc that i refer to above occurred many years before, so that i do not see in what way this could possibly be called "living up to " a dx. I would appreciate an apology for using MY post as basis for a warning to avoid " living up" to anything!! ! THANK YOU in advance also!!

Last edited by ouinon on 12 Dec 2007, 5:56 am, edited 4 times in total.

The worst one that I can remember was having to go up in front of a class and give a speech about me and my AS. My parents really "asked pretty hard, if you know what I mean" me to do this. I didn't want to because I thought it would make me even more ostracized by the other students. I even started to cry a little bit during the speech. After the speech, for a few weeks, people were nicer to me, but then they pretty much forgot about the speech I think and the usual stuff started to happen again.

Yes, I have led the life of a social 'simpleton' and suffered the consequences. At least a dx clues you in.

It's quite shocking how people behave when you look 'normal' but you have no 'common sense'.

Last edited by Wabbits on 15 Dec 2007, 3:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

Living life with AS in general. Everyday I am treated like crap and alienated just becuase i'm "different" or "a little bit slow" or "ret*d" or "like forrest gump". The pains of it all

A word of caution from my own experiences: Once you know about AS and how it plays out, it's all too easy to live up to the symptoms: Start over-reacting to (for instance) fluorescent lights, even though there wasn't a previous propensity; being even more socially-avoidant than before (simply 'cuz it's in the DSM); a trend to extreme introversion that may not have been previously evident. It's easy to fall into living the diagnosis . . . in essence, being an AS caricature.

I'm not denying these symptoms are real; just that it's all too easy for the DSM to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Having to say no to some request by somebody. By the way this might be in itself the subject of a thread.

The worst things happened because I tried to explain myself to myself without the benefit of a diagnosis. From first grade to fifth grade I was absolutely convinced that I was uneasy in social situations because the Others were ostracizing me. I lashed against these Others for perceived wrongs so frequently that they began to ostracize me in earnest (wearing my father's ties as belts did not help).

In sixth grade I learned about gay people and how they felt different from their peers at a very early age. The Others called me a lesbian sometimes, and I was not attracted to boys (in hindsight, I think I am actually asexual or close to it). This became the new theory. The conviction that I was growing up gay in Tennessee plunged me into such a horrid depression that my mother pulled me out and homeschooled me.

A year after that, I read a book called The Sociopath Next Door. It was about how there were more sociopaths than previously thought. A sociopath is someone who is emotionally dumb and lacks empathy (check), feels distant from the human race as a whole (check), and, except for a few crafty exceptions, do not get along well with other people (check). Rachael the nonviolent sociopath replaced Rachael the miserable lesbian, much to my mother's horror.

After some time this hypothesis was proved incorrect, as I acquired emotional awareness through reading novels. Then I believed that I was a nerd, plain and simple.

I left my home to go to high school, hoping to establish ties to my fellow nerds. Unfortunately, the nerds proved to be shining overachievers or sluggish underachievers, and all as socially adept as the rest of their age group. I quickly dropped out of their crowd, and despaired as I saw myself running out of explanations. I tried to be normal. I got a boyfriend and hated it.

My mother spoke to me one day about how I had always behaved strangely, and when I was five a psychologist told her about new research being done on a mysterious condition called Asperger's syndrome. She could never get me diagnosed, because my father would have none of it. She took me to several psychiatrists and her
suspicions, conieved a decade previous, were confirmed.

I was overjoyed that the ordeal of being a sociopathic, nerdy, lesbian outcast was finally over. I am almost certain that my childhood and youth would have been much more bearable if I was diagnosed at five instead of 15.

im actually quite fond of my aspergers

The worst I've faced has been delivering inappropriate body signals and people mistaking my intentions.

Others acting like they know more than me and refusing to respect my intelligence because they can't (as they say, "it takes one to know one") and don't want to.

Thats what I tell everybody! And thats what happened to me. I was diagnosed at the age of nine, then I researched it OBSESSIVELY (my bad) because I was trying to figure out ways to get rid of it. Then unconsciously I started acting even more like it. It was all a huge nasty cycle I could not escape. I desperately tried to rid of the label but more and more I was becoming it. Well the DSM said to do these things, and I am the DSM, so I must do these things I thought.

I was only nine.....

Da worst experience havin AS is dat ppl don't accept me who i am just cos i act a little different at da end of da day im a human being n just want 2 live without ppl havin 2 grass on me.

I agree on that one I know I have to live in a NT world, but since partly withdrawing from them so so much happier and able to be the real me, I now live in their world, but play in mine.

Love this quote: Seeing ourselves as others see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them. - Franklin P Adams

Wow. That's awful, but how was this caused by AS?