Support thread for women with suspected/diagnosed/self-diagnosed ASD or ADHD

[EauRouge]

Previous thread here.

Hello all, I know I'm new but the old thread was full, so here's a shiny new one. This is a thread for adult women who have ASD or ADHD, or suspect they do, to support each other.

Here are some resources that might be useful:

Links

List of female AS traits by Tania Marshall.

Article about women and girls on the spectrum by NAS.

List of female traits by Everyday Aspergers

Musings of an Aspie- Cynthia Kim's blog (one of the few sources I have found about being a parent with Aspergers)

Autistic Women's Collective

Recognising ADHD in women from ADDitude Magazine

Resources for women with ADHD from ADDitude Magazine

Adult ADHD support (coming soon by the looks of things)

Books

Aspergirls by Rudy Simone

The Complete Guide to Aspergers Syndrome by Tony Attwood

You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!: The Classic Self-help Book for Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder by Kate Kelly (I haven't read this one but I have heard it recommended many times- apologies if it's no good!)

Online tests

(Online tests are not 100% certain but can give you a very good idea and a starting point for talking to your GP if you're seeking diagnosis)

RDOS Aspergers quiz (the best one IMO)

AQ test

ADHD test

ADHD questionnaire for women

Info dump complete

Please come and join in!

Friendships really are confusing though. I have been reading a thread over in AIBU, and people are sharing their experiences of 'bad' friends.

I have a tendency towards small groups of friends, but intense relationships with those in the group. But I know that is too much for a lot of women who prefer a larger, more casual social circle. So I do try not to be too intense, and can end up going for weeks or months before it occurs to me to contact someone. But some women might think that a gap of that long means you only want to talk to them when there's no better offer.

When I do contact people I will usually suggest doing an activity with the children (eg soft play) rather than coffee, as I'm much more comfortable doing something than meeting for a chat. But some women don't like being called upon to do activities every time, as it makes them think you're only using them because you don't want to go on your own.

Then there's the minefield of whether your invitations are actually wanted or not. If you're always the one doing the inviting, and the other person cancels a couple of times, are they actually trying to fade out of the friendship?

If the other person is going through a hard time and you keep contacting them, they might think you're an emotional vampire, feeding off their unhappiness. But if you don't contact them in their time of need, doesn't that make you a fair weather friend?

Argh! The whole thing is a minefield! How the hell do you know what rules to apply?

Chronic :o It's all so true!

But I think what's happened with me is I just lose the friends who are bothered by all these niceties when they realise I'm clueless. (Or I get fed up with their mind games and can't handle it.) So I'm left with the ones who accept me as I am – whether that's because they're similarly odd themselves, very kind and tolerant, or just because it's gone past the stage of second-guessing and it's all up-front.

So I will say to a friend who's having a hard time (by text or email, because that's easier) "I want to help, but I don't know if you'd rather be left alone or not. I am free for a drink/phone call tonight or coffee tomorrow daytime, let me know but no pressure". It's wordy and awkward but that's what I have to do because I can't guess. If they're still my friend by now, they know this is my style and they need to tell me what they want. They also know if they say "no I want to be alone" I won't be offended, because I really meant it when I asked. It wasn't secretly a test to see if they like me.

It's taken me a loooong time to get to this point, with a lot of disastrous friendships along the way, and making new friends is still always a minefield. I've also learned to spot that when people seem like amazing new friends and I get on with them like a house on fire straight away, that's actually a bad sign. Those people are the chameleons who are good at reflecting back at you what you want to see, and they often turn out to be needy and mind-game-tastic.

CatOfTheWoods - I've also learned to spot that when people seem like amazing new friends and I get on with them like a house on fire straight away, that's actually a bad sign. Those people are the chameleons who are good at reflecting back at you what you want to see, and they often turn out to be needy and mind-game-tastic.

Couldn't the same be said of an Aspie who's learnt by mimickery how to be sociable? And then as time goes on and you know each other better they are getting overwhelmed by things (because they can't keep the act up) and seeming 'needy'? I'm curious because I feel I straddle both sides here! (People have said nasty things about me...)

All the talk of social rules... something's clicking in my head. Remembering days of misspent youth with alternative types... erm, basically, give me a room full of people all on a small dose of MDMA and I'll be totally comfortable!.. I think it's cos the bullshit/pretence gets dropped, people start talking about deeper things, bonding. I feel like I'm surrounded by people from my own planet then - and I don't even need to be on the stuff myself!

element yes I see what you mean. I think there's a difference, but I could be wrong. I feel like if someone is "mimicking" in a learned way like that, they know they are doing it and the awkwardness is never really far from the surface. Two people both doing it may get a bit weird, and I think that's happened to me and can result in you just not ever getting close. But if the other person seemed to want to back off, I'd always be OK with that because I like my space too.

Whereas for the social chameleon it comes naturally and then you get sucked into their world of cues and implications and expectations. The neediness that I find really hard is that thing where you feel like you are supposed to be able to read someone's mind and then they are offended when you didn't, or where they monopolise you and you can't work out how to say no to the pressure to socialise when you don't want to, and you end up giving offence.

Having said all that, I'm always feeling my way in the dark with this stuff. So I can't be sure!

element I think that sort of thing is why women with aspergers are sometimes misdiagnosed as borderline personality disorder. The difference is that aspies dont approach anything in a manipulative way. They are simply trying to fit in and make friends, by modelling someone with good social abilities.

I've also learned to spot that when people seem like amazing new friends and I get on with them like a house on fire straight away, that's actually a bad sign. Those people are the chameleons who are good at reflecting back at you what you want to see, and they often turn out to be needy and mind-game-tastic.

I do this. Well, sometimes. I try to be friendly. Then I'm not sure how to be and pitch it wrong and it all goes wrong, either I back off because it all feels too intense or they back off.

Element, I see what you mean. My closest friend apart from DH does not bullshit at all, she says it how it is. I've never realised that this is probably why I feel more comfortable with her.

I've had a tricky day due to bullshitty people. I've volunteered to do something, taking over from someone who has made a hash of the same thing. This person is very smug confident and doesn't care that what she has done is wrong. So I stepped in to help make it right and offer my expertise (it is expertise but sadly in a very narrow area which is not respected at all). The people involved, rather than being straight with me and either saying No thanks or yes please, are saying yes but in a way that makes me feel like I'm being a nuisance, or that I've caught them out doing something wrong. It's going round and round in my mind and I can't make sense of it all. I've offered a good thing, but I'm being made to feel like an idiot, and I don't like it.

Oh you've all been chatting away I have trypophobia too, have had it since I was a child, I had no idea there was a name for it until the internet. There is a horrible advert at my local pharmacy for a back pain cream where it is a man with cut outs all over his back so they can shine a blinking red light through. It makes me go all weird every time I have to walk past it. I hate it! It's funny that so many "medical" themed adverts have it. I suppose that you couldn't have trypophobia and work in the medical/pharmaceutical industry, so they must be oblivious to it.

OK I have caught up (mostly) now. I read something recently about ADHD and friendship which I really related to, but it was a bit depressing. It said that ADHD kind of makes you a terrible friend, because you end up coming across as either a flake (forgetting about things, being late, hence just not showing up or not bringing the right things, it appears to others as though you didn't think it was important. Whereas usually I am kicking myself inside and really want to scream and shout and hit myself, because it WAS important to me and now I just look like a rude person.) OR as a coping mechanism to avoid these situations, you avoid making commitments at all so you come across as noncomittal.

Similarly it's hard for us to stay in contact with people because unless they are THERE we tend to be focusing on other things. Facebook and such helps enormously with this - I definitely "connect" much more often with faraway friends when they use facebook. The ones who don't use it much, I really have to remind myself to stay in contact with. Often it is years between times that I speak to them. It's really not that I don't care about them or even don't think about them between those times. Most of the time I just lose track of the time and don't realise that I haven't spoken to that person. In fact most of the time I am amazed and appalled when I realise how long it has been.

Most of my closest friends are similarly inept so we just laugh about it and don't mind. But it does make it hard to make new friends - I really have to be really conscious about it and almost work at it, unless I see them regularly by default, e.g. at work, although again, I miss the cues as to when people normally arrange meet ups outside of work and rarely make the initiative to do this. By the time I do, I feel awkward and then I forget about it again for months, so again I come across as disinterested.

That's it with the contact- either I don't get round to speaking to someone for a long time because I just don't realise how long it's been, or I become obsessional and want to spend ALL my available time with a particular person, or I allocate them to a 'category' and only do things relating to that category with them. For example, I have a couple of colleagues I am very close to, they are part of the select group of people that I have told about my diagnosis, I tell them everything and I know a lot about them. Yet they are 'work' people, and I can count on one hand (actually, one finger!) the number of times I've met up with them outside of work, or work related social events.

I am like this too with friends. I am never good at keeping in contact with people, even though I like them.

I am having a problem getting my dd to do her homework. I think dd has some ASD traits and I read that children with ASD have problems doing homework. I wonder if strategies for ASD kids would help her. My own problem is I really struggle to get her to follow any rules. I just can't make her do things that are not 100% essential (taking medicines for example, i managed to force her to do this even though she hates it). Normally I can encourage her to do things but if it is something she doesn't want to do and is worthwhile but not essential I just get stuck.She is really stubborn and will argue to the death, even though I try to stay calm I normally get sucked in to an argument, then give up as I don't want to row with her. Then I spend ages worrying about it and feeling awful.

Oh gosh, homework is a terror with my Aspie DS. His school are very accommodating and he only has one homework task a week - either numeracy or literacy - and then they do his other homework with him at school. It minimises the battles, as he has very black and white thinking and says 'school work is for school' .

He is due to start secondary school next year and the school we are going to name on his Statement has an Autism provision. They have homework sessions scheduled in during the week and don't expect any children to take homework home unless they want to. They have really good exam results for their ASC students, too. Cant help but thunk its because they have nailed this specific issue. The head of the provision said they had so much feedback from parents saying that homework was a major stresser in their households that they decided to tackle it in this left-field way, and it seems to be working well. She was really lovely and just said 'our kids are dealing with so much anxiety and tension just getting through a school day that in big parts is tailored for NT kids. They've done bloody well. When they get home they just need to unwind and have fun'. I bloody love her

Thanks sounding what a great school! I am confused if dd is badly affected enough by autism for a diagnosis and help in school. She is like me in that she is friendly and has several friends. She is extremely quiet at school and hardly talks at all in class. Of course this is generally seen as a good thing and the teachers just think she is shy or lacks confidence. Luckily I think homework will reduce soon after the SATs but I am concerned about her starting secondary school next year, when there will be more.

Hi everyone. I hope I'm not gate crashing, I find even the social dos and don'ts of web forums as impossible to navigate as everything else and I have a habit of barging only to realise I am talking in the midst of awful tumbleweed silences.

Does anyone else struggle with intrusive obsessions? Just that really. I have developed an infatuation with a person. Normally I am driven towards safe, inanimate things like jets and ships, or historical periods and places so this is very alien to me. My brain trying to convince me that this fictional man is the be all and end all, that I love him to death but I'm too fat/ugly/weird to even breathe the same air as him.

I hate it. I really hate it. It is causing trouble at home, its making me feel worthless and depressed, exhausted. Rationally I don't even LIKE him very much and my long suffering DH has suggested that maybe its not the man, but the face I am more obsessed with, as I like aeroplanes in particular for their aesthetic make up not their performance capabilities.

I've tried creative writing to sort of 'flush' him out of my system but now I have writers block and I feel hopeless. I have had some talking therapy but I was too embarrassed (didn't make a good connection with the psychologist) and omitted the details and focused on something else instead. I am desperate for my old 'before I met him' life to return, to be happy doing all the things I used to, like filling scrapbooks with military stats and maps instead of mooning over a man from a frankly quite crap if I'm honest tv show. The feelings are even beginning to almost erode my affection for my DH to the point where I resent him for not being more like someone else and I am completely aware that everything I am thinking and doing is wrong.

I was only diagnosed with ASD last year at the age of 33 and it just seems to have highlighted the issue as invasive and made it all the more shameful. I am a sensible person, admittedly naïve and I hate myself for this. How do you stop the obsessions? My lovely DH suggested he could burn all the pictures I have collected (not in a horrible way, just as a kind of catharsis pyre) but that induced a screaming meltdown as I feel panicked if someone touches them or the manuscripts I have written, bereft at the thought of losing them.

Sorry if this turned into a self absorbed rant. Do delete me if I am annoying but I felt better getting that out as I don't have anyone left to talk to.

Bertie thank goodness I am not alone with the Trypophobia!

At my job this morning, someone was showing off their works of art. They were all close up detail of trees, with the bark showing in incredible detail. Of course I started shuddering as soon as I glanced at one.

One after the other, tree bark upon tree bark. A real trigger for me.

I am getting the shivers just writing this. :)

Hi Astra I don't think there is any rules here, I just jumped in. I think from what I have read there is not much you can do to stop your obsession, but it will eventually go off. If you have another interest you could try focussing more on that. But as long as your dh is OK with it, its not hurting anyone. Maybe be sure to reassure your dh that you love him and don't compare him to the other guy. Being able to focus on a special interest is helpful to people with ASD so you don't want to lose that. I would just enjoy but careful not to let it interfere with your relationship with your dh.

Gaaaah that sounds horrid flumble, I saw a tree the other day where the bark had all bunched up and it was disgusting.

Anyway, let's not make the thread a list of horrible trypophobia triggers! I always avoid the threads for that reason!

Welcome Astra :) Yes don't worry about breaking any rules. Sorry to hear you are struggling at the moment.

Hi Astra, just remember the obsessions go in time. They seem to work themselves out of the system. Oh and welcome too.

Nice to see so many new peeps.

Welcome Astra. I know what you mean about stumbling in but you've introduced yourself and that's enough for us!

Obsessions/intrusive thoughts are tricky. I get intrusive thoughts of places I used to know. I find the more I resist them and get frustrated, the worse they are. Instead I say to them yes I talk to my invasive thoughts! 'No thank you'. It has minimised my stress about it and the thoughts themselves. I agree with flumble, this will pass. Maybe try to analyse why he appeals and focus on the aesthetics?

Astra, I agree with the others who said just go with it. Tony Attwood has a bit in one of his books about why obsessions are a good thing, they are relaxing and comforting because we can control what we experience with them ie you get what you want. Why do you think you feel bad about it?

I didn't know that about homework. I loved it as a child, to be honest, as I was good academically and it was a pleasant relief from sport or social things that I was crap at. I used to do quadratic equations for fun! I was rather looking forward to ds starting to get some but he is a stubborn guy, so perhaps it will be a trial.

Thank you everyone for your replies.

I've done a lot of analysis over this particular obsession as it does seem particularly virulent in comparison with my normal items of interest, which I am trying to pick up again. Also quite draining.

Both my DH and DS2 have Aspergers, (DS1 is currently being assessed for ADHD) and I am really good at indulging their obsessions and love to see them doing their happy stimming pogo-bounce when they are excited, they were doing it in the Lego shop last weekend at a Star Wars event.
I haven't felt happy enough to do that for at least two years, the last time I recall was in summer 2013 at an airshow, I spent so much time waving for joy, I ended up with sunburned armpits
It never occurred to me to put the sun cream there as well .
Then not long after, a few weeks in fact he occurred and everything seems to have ground to a halt.

BatFox I thing the reason there is so much shame attached to this comes from my toxic mother. I was the scapegoat in a house where knowledge was the enemy. Books were a waste of money and so were interests of any kind.
I remember being shouted in public several times, shot down in flames and humiliated because I was talking about something I was into at the time. If I had a passion or obsession it had to be hidden and protected otherwise it would be mocked and ridiculed and, oddly enough the thought occurred to me today as I was very carefully vacuuming around DS1's stuff, that my mother often, in fits of rage, would destroy my precious things on purpose.
Rip up posters or throw things away. I had several action man type toys I was really attached to and at least one of them ended up on the open fire.
I think maybe the internal critic is ridiculing me all by itself for liking someone who logically I can see is a bit of a twat in real life.
DH suggests trying to separate character from reality and I have tried but I feel that somehow the reality keeps polluting the fantasy. If that makes sense?
My mother is undoubtedly a narcissist and I daren't indulge in any fantastical whims that aren't based in grim reality in case I end up like her.

Oh no, that's horrible :( Yes perhaps you're right, that in fact far from discouraging your obsessions she actually made them MORE important. Grrr.

There was talk above about counselling or psychotherapy specifically for people with ASD, as the considerations are different. What is helpful to a NT person probably isn't as helpful for you. That might be something to explore, I wonder. There's also a good thread in the Relationships section which will be called something to do with "Stately Homes" - it's a thread for those who had abusive, toxic, narc etc parents. Some of the posters on there are absolutely incredible.

And - don't worry, you cannot become a Narcissist. You either are one, or you aren't. The very fact that you carefully vacuum around DS' toys, and listen and care about your DH's opinion, and feel worried about barging in on the thread - you are most definitely not a Narc.

Yes that's sounds horrid for you and no doubt has attached a lot of shame to expressing your interests. My own family was very negative about anything that wasn't academic or useful. I don't know how to enjoy myself and feel massively guilty about wasting time. Its very hard to shake off those attitudes from childhood.

Can you try and set a timer to allow yourself X (the character) time and you will go and do some task you need to do when it rings? Or repeat a kind phrase to yourself eg "its ok to like X". Because I think it is ok to like X. I think it is the shame that is causing you problems, not the actual obsession.

I love the armpit story. There are some funny parts to ASD.

Astra loads people are huge fans of a celebrity and they enjoy it, so it needn't be a problem as long as you manage it, and dont let it consume all your time or affect your relationship with your dh. Stop looking on it as an obsession and start thinking of it a hobby and it will seem more normal.
batfoxhippo I think the homework thing is not helped by the fact dd is not doing brilliantly academically. She is quite bright but most schoolwork does not come easily. She is very good at art and enjoys that, but even then she seldom finishes a picture. She will find a small flaw in her work and give up.

Well, I have Aspergers. I'm quite shocked!