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 really don't like talking about my feelings, it makes me feel very uncomfortable, but I'm a very emotional person though and I get upset very easily.

This kind of explains about how I am with feelings and talking about them

I have been getting into a lot of misunderstandings recently. Some of them I know are due to the other person being illogical, but since I decided not to put a lot of effort into being 'normal' anymore, I no longer mind too much, and I also have the perspective to anaylse how things went wrong. And can get the situation recovered fairly quickly, at least sometimes, or leave a pause and change the subject.

I know I am jolly lucky to be in a postion where I don't need to go and over-stress myself working in a regular paid job, where I have to make the effort to talk trivia (don't get me wrong, I quite like talking about minutitae of life, but tend to come out with thoughts I think are just interesting that others find weird, and it's a strain having to check everything before I say it to see if it seems ordinary enough). And never again will I have to work in an open plan office - sheer hell for me, just gave me brain freeze.

People are just going to have to take me or leave me There are some advantages to getting older! So glad I found this thread :) x

Hi again, sorry I've not been around for a few days. I felt a bit of a fraud after reading that Times article tbh, as some bits just didn't apply, I don't have the extent of difficulties as the women interviewed, maybe I am more someone with autistic traits and undx'ed AS?

devil - I think the reason people ask about feelings re:diagnosis is not to put you on the spot, or suggest there's a way you should feel but because broadly speaking people have 3 attitudes towards DX 1)OMG, I was in shock and wasn/t expecting this, how can it be true I'm gutted 2)Thank god for that, now we can bat on with school/doctors etc taking the issues seriously or 3)Oh I was expecting but still feel bad and deflated. So asking the question is a way to guage how best to respond - whether it should be congratulations or commiserations iyswim

Brilliant analysis, TLP, spot on I reckon.

I'm not your standard female person with AS, either. I hate routine, and I seem to be less visual and more verbal than most of you? I think we should compare and contrast among ourselves, like a geek code!

First go, I have a degree of face blindness, meltdowns in public, and earworms which are not too loud. (In fact it's like listening to a CD in my head, almost) Touble getting motivated, trouble getting started, trouble stopping doing things. Very bad timing in conversations, partly due to self-monitoring. Hopeless at keeping a tidy house. Hmm, it's a start...

I am also very much not a visual person. except when it comes to making furniture etc, where the pictures make more sense than the words to explain it (but maybe that's normal, who knows). I tend to have enthusiams that wax and wane, but reading has been a constant obsession. My biggest issues are with social skills and social anxiety, not helped by having difficulty reading other people's emotions eg whether they are bored with me, only pretending to like me, whether they are joking or being serious etc. And of course the effort in pretending to be normal. I don't have issues with routine or food, but am hypersensitive to crowds or anything I perceived as blocking my way, and to sound. On a bad day I find my child too loud .

TLP- I have just spent a week at home with the noisiest ill child ever. Several times I had to go lay face down on my bed with a pillow squashed over each ear, to stop myself shouting at him to shut the f* up. Stuff like that makes me think I am a really bad parent, but at least I could stop myself losing it completely.

About face blindness, I have read about this before- does it mean that you totally do not recognise people you know, if you have it? I have no problem recognising family members or people I have known for a long time. Also I would recognise people i knew less well if they were in the place that I usually saw them e.g. other parents at school or shop assistants, but if I see them somewhere else it takes a while to work out who they are. I'm not sure if that is just normal but there is another problem that I'm sure is not.

If someone asks me to describe what another person looks like, I cannot do it unless i am looking directly at them. It doesn't matter how well I know that person or if i have been just looking at them, I can't even do it about myself or even my own children. If I try to visualise them in my mind I get like a fuzzy outline of a general face shape, with maybe a blur of the colour of hair but no details. i ts similar to one of those fuzzed out pictures on cctv footage on tv/ in newspapers. I don't know if this is a kind of face blindness or what it is, but I'm quite sure its not normal as I've never heard anyone else ever have a problem like that.

System your last paragraph exactly matches my own. I wonder whether it has anything to do with me being extremely short-sighted for the first six years of my life, with the world suddenly coming into focus when I got my first pair of glasses.

I have no problem recognising people I know - family, friends etc. But some people that I see at meetings every month or so I still have to ask their name. Of course, they don't understand because it has only taken then 2 meetings to be able to recognise me, place me and put a name to me.

When I worked for the CAB, I once pissed a colleague off when we met by chance in the supermarket. I should have known her quite well, knew she was something to do with the CAB, but no idea whether she was a colleague or a client. Twas a colleague, she knew my name, and was highly offended that I didn't know her. I would have seen her many more times than a client, but we hadn't seen each other for a while.

When I fell in love in my youth, I remember seeing the beloved's face fade in my memory as the days passed since he left my life.

I hate Ikea exploded diagram thingies for assembling furniture. I prefer written instructions like you used to get a very long time ago in Airfix model kits - full of stuff like 'locate lug A in socket B' or whatever. Yes, there was a diagram with all the parts labelled, of course you need something visual to guide you if you are using instructions.

I'm not sure I could compare/contrast myself yet, I am still discovering so much! That's why I want to blog - I can divide symptoms into categories :o

Off to work today, it's only my second Saturday and I'm a bit nervous. My manager/line manager are not there today, and the person in charge hasn't spoken to me yet (still). I know I'll get used to it but it's just the combination of a) having to face masses of people at once, b) lots of staff I don't know, and c) not having anyone to talk to about it.

Is anyone else here quite negative? I am ridiculously pessimistic and I'm starting to realise how counter productive it is. For example on Thursday my line manager said she needed to speak to me about my new job and I was instantly panicking, it ruined the next three hours until we actually met (and it was nothing bad at all!). I knew that I was being pessimistic by worrying - and that awareness in itself is an improvement - but even though I knew it was probably nothing bad, I just could not let go of the fact it might be. It's like I'm protecting myself - I don't want to tell myself it'll be good because then I'll be even more upset if it is bad.

My results on the quiz was;
Aspie score: 107 out of 200
Neurotypical score: 81 out of 200.

Pussycat, it is exactly like a blurry out of focus picture, as if glasses were not being worn. Except I was never short-sighted so that would explain it for me. I am also very good at visualising other things, it is just people/faces where I have the problem.

I am reasonably OK at recognising people, even out of their usual context, but what you describe in the last paragraph about being unable to visualise people's faces in your mind is EXACTLY the sort of problem I have. I don't get pictures in my mind at all iyswim, except in dreams.

Hope today isn;t too bad at work fuzzpig. I am v much the same, convinced I am going to be criticised, v vulnerable and nervy about it. I have a nice colleague/superior who precedes mild factual corrections by - I don't mean to be funny/nit pickey but - which sets me off into far more of a tizz than if she just told me what I was doing wrong straightaway.

My Aspie score: 133/200
Neurotypical score: 99/200

It appears I have both Aspie & neurotypical traits.

This rings very true, I think. Going to read the whole thread but how timely because this is something I've been wondering about myself for a while.

Oh thelightpasseneger..How I identify with your work comments in your last post. I've left fab jobs because I just couldn't get through the first few weeks without torturing myself, when I left a particularly lovely job that I'd wanted for ages my line manager was alarmed and commented that he thought I'd have gone a long way. I have always been my own worst enemy. My epitaph will read: 'Worried too much about nothing...'

fuzzpig - Negative to the point I hate myself for it. Wish I wasn't but that's the way I am.

the whole small talk thing as well is hard at work - despite being very quiet, I always feel like I am boring people when I do try and chat. but if I don't try and chat I feel I look too stuck up and standoffish. I steer as clear as I can of the bitching/office politics, it's just too stressful (and obv dubious morally).

Work has been ok so far, I'm not really with customers much as I'm doing stock work, but I did storytime this morning which was fab.

But DH (who was supposed to be bringing the DCs in to see me) has been sick and DD is nauseous too, so I am now in panic mode about vomit :( :( :(

Work actually ended up pretty good. It was incredibly busy - lots of students in revising for exams, we had to pull out extra tables and there were study groups on the floor! That bit I found difficult as it was really loud and bright. Also had to go into the mall for my lunch (hadn't taken any as I usually do, because I thought I was meeting DH and DCs) and being a Saturday that was busy too. I find teens hardest to deal with, I get paranoid and shy.

It was ok though as I did lots of other stuff. The deputy manager did ask if I was ok when we were alone for a moment, and it was a proper caring type of "how are you" rather than a chivvying-you-along one IYSWIM. I didn't say much, just that it was busy and I find that difficult, but it really helped just to be able to say that.

I sent DH to bed when I got home and the DCs are asleep so I actually have an evening to myself. A night in front of the telly is just what I need.

fuzzpig so glad it went well.

I too was a bit nervous of those groups of lads - till my own DS was 14. One morning he summoned the taxi service me to collect him from a friend's house, a bunch of his mates having gone out together the previous evening. As I drove along, looking out for him, and unable to recognise his friends in spite of have met them and given them lifts before, I passed about 4 or 5 different groups of lads that might have been his bunch.

It's what they do at that age. Hang out together and big each other up as a group. Slightly intimidated feeling is normal whether NT or AS. It's what young lads have been doing since the dawn of time... (well, since homo sapiens appeared on the Earth, anyway )

Had lovely morning with a friend and 2 of her DC in an ice cream parlour!

What are you planning to watch? Ex is watching the football, but I am happy pottering about on the computer, and reading some of the books we got going round charity shops today :)

Hi all!

I'm new to this site and wanted to share my story and gain some advice if possible.

Im 27 and last year I met my real father for the first time, it became obvious that he has either aspergers or autism due to many things he said/did, long story and won't bore you with that. My half brother, his son, also has learning difficulties.

My 7 year old son has recently been diagnoised with ADHD and as a toddler showed asd traits.

I came across the AQ test this evening i got a score of 30, so above average.

I researched this further (and found this site) and found a list of common aspergers traits, i read them to my hubby (didnt tell them what it was for) and he said i had all those traits.

All my life i have felt "different". I would say my main "trait" would be that I. HAVE. TO. HAVE. A. PLAN. FOR. EVERYTHING! to the extenct that it drives my hubby mad, he doesnt understand that i have to have one, he thinks that i can control it but i really cant. I completly freak out if my plan changes dramictally. I also hate making friends, hate talking to people i don't know or phoning companies etc. I come across as rude but truth is i just hate talking to people

Do you think I have inherited "traits" from my father and then passed adhd onto my son?? Am I too old to get a DX? How do I go about getting a DX?

Thank you for reading my epic post and look forward to all advice

It seems quite likely that your self-diagnosis is correct.

I have always had a problem with housework. This is because before I could get started, I wanted to work out an optimum order of doing things! Took me ages to realise I could just look around, see something that needed doing, and do it. (Any plan I came up with always began 'do washing up' anyway) In my case my working hypothesis is that this is a symptom of the symptom cluster known as ADD, and that I have an executive function problem to do with prioritising.

I really hate routine, so if I had a plan that involved routine of any kind (clean down kitchen each morning, for example), it lasted about 3 days before I abandoned it!

Has anyone read the thread 'aspergers hubbies'? Implying that people with AS have no emapthy. This really, really winds me up, I think I have empathy, I may not always be able to show it, but I do genuinely care about people. DS has more empathy than DD yet he is the one with an ASD diagnosis.

I would love to 'educate' people about these misconceptions, but I don't feel I know enough yet as this is so new.

I don't have the mental energy to educate an unwilling audience. I am always happy to answer polite genuine questions but am not prepared to get into arguments. The whole ASD = no empathy simplification massively irks me, there's a massive difference between being unable to read body language/social signals and being uncaring.

ASD = no empathy isn't a simplification, it's plain wrong. Research carried out by Cambridge University (I think) indicates that ASD = more empathy that normal, so much so that the individual shuts down emotionally as a coping mechanism, which appears as 'no empathy' to people with no understanding of autism.