Support thread - adults on the Autistic Spectrum :)

[fuzzpig]

Hello!

I've seen a lot of MNers mention being on the Spectrum, whether diagnosed or not. I thought we could use a long-running place to chat, share coping strategies and basically to know there are other people like ourselves, who won't judge us for being different.

I'm new to all this myself - only realised there was a possible name for How I Am a couple of weeks ago (thanks to MN)! Now I have a referral to an adult ASD specialist, to see if I have Aspergers. It's all happened very quickly.

Enough waffle from me (for now anyway...) but I hope other people will come along and find this thread useful. :)

I haven't taken them since having children and I wouldn't again as i don't think they are worth it in the long run.One of those sleeping talets (zopiclone) was very strange. I had to be laying down in bed before I took it because it would work all of a sudden( no sleepy feeling first) and I would just go to sleep where I was. When I first started taking it I would wake up after having slept all night on the floor and once I fell asleep while stood up in the kitchen and had to be taken to bed by my boyfriend.
I have always been a bad sleeper, my mum says i didn't sleep right through the night until after I had started school. i can remember after I learnt to read i would just lay in bed all night reading until morning and I still quite often will have nights where I don't go to bed but it is just normal for me now.

I feel a bit down this evening... Work was fun but after yet another awkward laugh in the staff room (where I'd said something stupid) I find myself wishing I was NORMAL. I am glad I have an explanation for why I keep embarrassing myself but knowing that it's AS that makes me so socially useless, rather than depression as I'd always thought, is sad because I can't fix it. Depression can be cured - I always held on to the thought of being ok one day, happy even! But AS is forever. I hate that. It's like I have a life sentence of being how I am, instead of having the chance of being ok someday.

Do you feel confident enough to share what you said and its context? And any post-utterance analysis you have about the incident? I am a trained conversation analyst (one of my many unmarketable skills) and have used it on myself with good results. It has taken a long time, but at nearly 60 I have managed to find workarounds for nearly everything - except for my tendency to talk far too loud when it's something important

Or at least I can, after all these years, get out of any conversational scrapes with good(ish) grace and minimum embarrassment...

Colleague was texting somebody and had the keypad tones on so she apologised for being loud. I started waffling about how the numbers make music because all the numbers have different notes and how I make tunes in my head when I'm doing the phoning

Cue the weird looks and nervous laughter. I knew it was crazy but I couldn't stop!

They do though... When I do the phoning I automatically him along (in my head) to the numbers because they have a unique sound. Each column of numbers (1,4,7 etc) has the same main note but each row has the same bottom note which creates a different harmony with the main notes. Mostly I dial 7 numbers at a time as we don't need the dialling code so it makes nice little tunes...

I have spent the last hour crying to my manager. Fuck.

First, that is so cool about the ring tones. I am not musical at all - but I used to make words out of numbers on calculators (which was actually widely done by NT people) - however, I do notice ring tone patterns but don't understand the theory like you do.

Secondly, you were responding to her apologising, and trying to smooth things for her by waffling on (I think?), that was a nice thing to do :)

Was your manager understanding during your hour of crying?

Yes, very. Basically I had a very small criticism (in fact it wasn't even that, but this other member of staff is quite brusque which I find difficult at times) and I find that sort of thing really hard.

So I cried. Then I kept crying because I was embarrassed. Then I kept crying because I was angry at myself for not keeping it together.

My manager was lovely and let me waffle about everything. I feel quite vulnerable now though.

I have been through the very same thing, but without the understanding manager.

Need a kip now, but will be back when I'm refreshed.

Its a time of adjustment, you're going to be vulnerable. Its good that your manager is being supportive. Its a period of adjustment for ALL of you! :)

I had a lie in this morning - felt a lot better for it! I've been helping my Aspie son with his literacy homework. It started badly (we attempted it a couple of days ago). "Pick a section of your favourite book". He is mad about Harry Potter atm, couldn't pick which one was his favourite. Major meltdown. 2 days later, it was me saying "OK, they're all your favourites, which one is it easiest for you to be able to complete the exercise on? I think it will be Goblet of Fire, because I know you can draw dragons, and one of the tasks require you to draw a scene from the book". We did nearly all the homework, had another minor meltdown at "which character would you like to be and why", until I told him "if you don't want to be any of them, you don't have to be, and the reason why is that it would be too scary". Final task "write a diary entry as if you were one of the characters". At which point we gave up. ARGH!

Ha at DS's difficulty in deciding - I recognise this. A is better than B in some ways, but there again B is better than C in others, oh and C is better than A in yet other ways. It's called intransitivity, and shows the Aspie understanding that life is not so straightforward as some people seem to think...

Fuzzpig if you are like me, you may overempathise with people who apologise, thinking they are more embarrassed than they are - just because we so often have to apologise for ourselves. Hence we feel we have to say something to make them feel better - but actually to them it was no big deal. Does that make any sort of sense?

Um, I think that makes sense, although I think in this instance I just wanted to share my enjoyment of the music

Can totally relate to the indecisiveness of homework! Argh indeed!

Finally on way home from work, eyes still stinging from this morning. Managed to get through, just about. Keep welling up slightly at the thought of how bare I laid myself (IYSWIM) and how right now I can't see myself ever feeling differently. I really wanted to run away and never go back to the job I love. I shouldn't have crossed that line. And TBH I am starting to see why suicide rates are so high for Aspies. Giving up is a very attractive prospect when everything is so bloody hard (though a lot of it ATM is due to other circumstances). PMT doesn't help - it has got much worse recently.

I feel like I should go to the GP but what can they do other than stick me on ADs?

On a more positive note I told one colleague that I have AS and I am very proud of that. She is new (though I'd met her at county-wide training sessions before) and I was supervising her doing something new, we were chatting about customers etc and she said I don't seem like I am rubbish with people like I'd said. So I thought I may as well say it.

Mary there is no way I would have been able to do your DS's homework either. I am bad at making decisions too and those tasks invoveled way too much imagination and pretending for me. It is the kind of work that I would have just not done and not been able to explain why to the teaches either. Luckily because the work I did do was of a good standard the teachers didn't seem to care if I sometimes didn't do stuff I think.

I got my appointment today to see the educational psychologist. Its on wednesday 25th and appears to be in somebody's house! They still haven't told me what will happen at it though except she will write a report afterwards. That means I won't be able to stop thinking about it now until then and I am supposed to be revising for exams next week.

Generally speaking us female AS folk are better with people than blokes w AS, I think it's supposed to be with our female brains being wired more for social interaction, plus learning the skills to relate because, well, we want to relate to others.

I do, I am desperate to, I wish I could socialise like normal people. Whereas DH is quite happy not having friends or nights out etc.

I'm thinking of buying the Tony Attwood book but it's £10+. Getting sick of waiting for it at the library [impatient emoticon]

Id have no problem with the pretending and imagination. Perhaps DS should have claimed the Harry Potter books were really one book in 7 parts

I've got the Tony Attwood book, but don't really look at it much. I've ordered the Rudy Simone book from the library as I thought it might be more relevant.

I occasionally get myself into trouble when pretending. To pretend, I convince myself something is real and then I can function pretty well, and very convincingly. This is fine until I get into difficulties distinguishing reality from the role play that I am in.

:o at Harry Potter book being 1 book in 7 parts :o

As I am a hopeless liar (I mean, no good at it, not that I lie all the time!) if I have to lie about something, I pretend in advance to myself that the lie is real, then I am more convincing in my lies, as I myself am half convinced they are true!

If I need to lie, I phrase my lie in a way that its ambiguous and technically not lying (at least in my mind) or just say nothing.

How is everyone?

I am dreading work tomorrow.

Not very good. I have exams this week that I haven't revised for yet. I have loads of coursework to do still and have missed 3 lots of other coursework so far this year that I need to somehow catch up on as well if its not already too late. Also am supposed to have organised my work placement for the week after and I haven't because I really don't want to go to it. then to make everything 100 times worse, i had a message left on my answerphone on friday from a social worker asking me to call her back and that is never good news.

My life is so messed up right now and I really can't see how to fix it all. i am worrying too much so I can't even think about how. I wish I could press stop on it all just so I can have some peace and have a chance to think on my own without all the interuptions all the time.

System have you got a list?

What I find helps is to plan the next hour, and only the next hour - 3 different tasks, worked on for 15 min, then a 15 min rest. Repeat as necessary. If you can bear it, schedule the worst first (the phone call?)

fuzzpig twill be ok, your manager is sympathetic, and you now know to keep comments to the very banal though that is. I have these great whacky thoughts that I think will be interesting to others, and give me something to input to the conversation, but I learned not to do this at work. Although sometimes it's worth the risk, as you may come across someone who 'gets it.' May I ask what your work is?

I work in a library :) great job for me, people are lovely though it's a bit of a minefield working in a team. I've never really done that before.

In a way it feels like being back at school again, now that I'm full time - being around the same people every day and having no space. I've started to relish the tasks I do alone, but the whole thing is taking its toll, I was in an awful state yesterday and DH even asked me if I wanted to quit! I don't - I love the job and it has good potential long term - and anyway DH physically can't work now. It's just been more difficult than I expected to go full time.

No team player, me !! Although I like having colleagues to talk to and share ideas about how to do the work better.

fuzzpig you may not want to do this, but as you have a diagnosis and it's shared with management, a small amount of reasonable adjustments may be in order (and is your legal right, if it is possible for your employers) - perhaps a bit of time out during the working day if you need to wind down from overwhelm? Could be a problem if your colleagues don't know about your condition, though.

I've thought about that. In fact my managers have been brilliant, and have asked what they can do to help.

I printed off some info specifically for employers and actually a lot of their suggestions are already done! Because it is a big library there is a heavily structured timetable with different tasks every hour or so. It tends to alternate between customer facing, and behind-the-scenes stuff. This is perfect for me - smaller libraries have no structure and when I did some cover at one it was awful. There was also no 'escape' IYSWIM - in this library we have security doors with a massive staff room, workrooms, toilets, showers etc - it's fantastic.