Resulting problems from late diagnosed Aspergers

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jdenault & highplateau:

Thanks for the replies and the insight.

As an update to everyone, I was "laid off" about a month ago. Forgive me if I don't go into much more detail than that.

Still, being laid off is what I have taken to calling a "first-world problem." That is one meme that actually taught me something that stuck.

Cheers, everyone. It could always be worse.

Btw, there's a neat book out there called Mind Performance Hacks. Haven't read much of it but it's spiffy so far.

KLH9211
"As an update to everyone, I was "laid off" about a month ago. Forgive me if I don't go into much more detail than that.

Still, being laid off is what I have taken to calling a "first-world problem." That is one meme that actually taught me something that stuck." ("Quote")

Getting laid-off is not fun. My older daughter was laid off a year ago and had mixed feelings. She had 6 months severance pay and was assured she could use the company for good references. It didn't take long to realize she didn't want another taxing position so she researched companies that would be happy to have her as a volunteer and offered her services. (She's good at what she does.) They eventually offered her a position for less than she had made before, but she enjoys her work now and is learning to like going to work.

The Aspie son has been laid off many times and figured out how to stay employed. (He's an engineer and good at problem solving.) So he got an agent and takes jobs solving specific problems for large companies. And when he has solved the problem, he is "laid off by mutual agreement." It works.

I don't know what you do, but would guess you could figure out a way to be re-employed doing something you enjoy tailored to your specific talents. Good luck.

Thanks, j.

I love the responses on these forums. I've never been in discussions before (ever) that "click" so well with my own thoughts.

I have been thinking very much the same thing in two ways:

1) Take this opportunity to finish some kind of educational program that is actually relevant to my primary interest (academic philosophy) and then try to get into a good PhD program and slug through the abysmal philosophy job market.

or

2) Find some marketable areas of interest (project management, industrial/organization psychology) and then pursue them as an independent contractor with specific and pointed avoidance of long-term professional relationships. A series of sequential short/mid-term contracts is a relatively sexy proposition. At least, when you compare it to abject poverty. Been there, done that

I think option 2) is the more pragmatic approach, and if it works, I can leave myself time to pursue philosophical interests as a hobby without ruining myself financially. This is where self-regulation comes into play (just started giving self-regulation some new emphasis).

It feels kind of strange talking about myself so much. Meh. Thanks again!

The philosophy job market may be abysmal, but the intelligence and method of thinking is an asset in many jobs. A probable Asperger friend (two diagnosed Asperger sons and a brain like a steel trap) with his degrees in philosophy writes questions for law degree tests. He isn't a lawyer. He deals with the philosophical point of view. Most companies pay for further education. Jeanne

I may have been just diagnosed and looking for help now, but my problems started in childhood and many are still problems. I am also glad i found wrong planet because at least in words i can communicate and from reading i can emote feelings as well as 'say' how i am feeling. I need help in seeing the signals most pick up as babies to any from opposite sex. As to those looking for work persue as many options as are there because you may just find something that blends both as is possible in some philosophical roles. Or as i call it 'The Art of Common Sense" if you can see solutions to existing problems and can show how to solve, you have an in.

Aspergers is with you for life. It's in your genes like everything else. Even back before it was understood, experienced pediatricians didn't have a name for AS but recognized the syndrome. Three hours after he was born, my Aspie son's pediatrician came into my hospital room, plunked himself down on a chair with a sigh and said, "That one's going to give you trouble. I don't know why but I've seen it before. He's looking around and checking out the nursery as though he's planning to redecorate it."

Aspergers is with you for life. It's in your genes like the color of your eyes. Even back before it was understood, experienced pediatricians didn't have a name for AS but recognized the syndrome. Three hours after he was born, my Aspie son's pediatrician came into my hospital room, plunked himself down on a chair with a sigh and said, "That one's going to give you trouble. I don't know why but I've seen it before. He's looking around and checking out the nursery as though he's planning to redecorate it.

Until I realised I was probably on the spectrum I thought everyone was acting and FORCING themselves to be the way they were, in just about every area of life, as I would have to do if I wanted to be like that. Now I realise that they are almost certainly somewhat different to me inside and not (usually) acting.

I used to think that as well, that people were forcing themselves, which made it easy to despise the behaviour while never understanding why anyone would want to be so phony.

Later, which at the time I put down as a teen thing, I identified myself as 'different' from other people. While others were making it their life's work to appear DIFFERENT, I was struggling to appear the SAME. I think part of the result was suppressing and downplaying my talents, so that I chose work/professional/study life on the basis of what would make me fit in rather than making the most of my creative bents. Bents, plural. Art and music. [I have found in my musical life - the art life was absolutely squashed by circumstance, sadly, in my mid-teens - that most creatives have strong bents in more than one field. It is very common, in my observation, for musicians also to be talented artists and/or writers and/or gardeners and/or chefs and/or activists.] I even stopped wearing the 'hippie' clothes that I so loved for their beauty and colour.

Later again, I decided it was adolescent arrogance to declare myself different from others, and high time I got over it. So I convinced myself that what I was feeling on the inside was in common with everyone else. Anything that was glaringly different and just couldn't be reconciled with what I saw in others, I actually think I suppressed and more or less pretended it did not exist, that I had been inventing it out of egotism. This was the phase in which depression took a hold in me; the phase in which I have lived the most straitjacketed version of my life ever. It was the period in which my parents sickened and died, and each in circumstances causing immense additional stress (my mother fell sick and died on the other side of the world, involving two extended, disruptive and expensive periods of relocation for myself and young son; my father's partner so botched the announcement of his terminal illness that my shock reaction prompted a ban on one-on-one contact, so for the last year of his life I could only interact with my beloved affinity-parent in the presence of a chaperone).

I compensated by deciding I could 'do it all', singlehandedly. Then, after trying to cover all the bases and failing, I decided to drop music, my only 'frivolous' pursuit ... aka island of sanity. It seems now that at some very deep level I felt that if I denied myself this would somehow appease the gods, that my sadness had been caused by my own failure to do things 'right' and so if I stopped indulging myself (doing 'wrong') in playing music and immersing in the social world that surrounded it, that somehow my sadness would be assuaged and I would be able to provide a better life for my son. Writing that, I can see how addle-brained that was. What can I say? It made sense at the time. I was cut off from the world that truly made sense to me, and immersed in one that didn't.

When things go wrong, we make deals with fate, don't we.

This was also - significantly - the phase in which my primary job was parenting, so I think it was particularly important anyway to fit in as much as possible with observed 'artificial' mores in order to create the opportunity for my son to be accepted. I also fought hard, successfully, to gain him entry into a gifted and talented program at his school, where he could mingle with highly-intelligent peers. It seems to have paid off; at 21, he is strongly socially-embedded with great networks and an extended friendship base. He has also had doors opened wide in order to develop his own creative bent as an actor. He grew up and left home. We are good friends. It's a win.

Then ... wallop! The full realisation of my Asperger's struck me. All by itself, this would have been a massive adjustment to tackle. As luck would have it, it also coincided with empty-nesting, first-time home ownership and moving to a rural town, the breakdown of my cherished long-term relationship, crushing disappointment at work with challenging financial ramifications, the ugly protracted recognition of a lifelong abusive 'friendship', then several devastating floods of my home which caused eight months of living in a building site as repairs and remedial works were undertaken. I struggled - boy, did I struggle! - for two years. I took comfort in food and got fat. I drank too much wine too often. Even so, it wasn't all black: I made new friends and never quite gave up the effort to socialise and host house parties (thank goodness for those! worth the effort a millionfold); I learned about permaculture and began my gardening life; I managed to keep my head above water, just - came so very close to giving up several times, but I got through. Wouldn't wish that on anyone. Again, a manifestation of my true difference: I simply don't know another soul whose life is set up in such a way that it's even POSSIBLE for that many things to go wrong all at once.

Then, bang! The light went on. The path outwards started slowly, with some online friendships on which I may have depended a little too much; nonetheless, they provided a trigger to take stock of where I was at versus where I wanted to be. To cut a long story short, a great deal has changed in the last six months. The Asperger's awareness turned out to have been the missing link for me. Once I had got through the rearrangement of my personal history through this new filter, so much fell into place. Basically, I AM different.

That certainty has taken away a weighty burden. I am now entitled to choose, whereas before I was always looking for guidance externally. What do they say: 'If you keep on doing things the way you've always done them, it is far more likely things will turn out the same than be different.' Well, it sure took a while - several decades - but I got there in the end. That transformation of locus of viewpoint has made all the difference. I am now my own reference point. Where I am now is this: Happy. Fit. Slim. Optimistic. A better musician, and singing better than ever. Generating new plans and ideas. Finding worklife suddenly much more accommodating and promising. Alone but not lonely. Able to contemplate unknowns and take small risks in order to travel, or challenge myself socially. Excited to be alive. Full of beans. At last! I have met the lost toddler: the one I heard about, the one who was always 'sunny' and then mysteriously became 'odd'. I always wondered where that temperament was hiding. I have found it again. I never thought it possible I would be in this space, but thank my stars for it now. Oh yeah, and I'm wearing hippie clothes again.

This turned out to be a long ramble. Old habits die hard; I was going to apologise for it. But, really, no apology is due. I just wanted to get the message through: if you are in hell, know there is a way through and that 'out the other side' exists. Sometimes all you have to do is hang on. Don't deny your talents; instead, give them full rein, even when this seems to be going against the tide or elicits disapproval. It is the disapprovers you need to escape, not your true self. If you don't yet have a full picture of your true self, don't worry or obsess about it. You will find it or it will gradually take form - like crystals around a catalyst - if you allow your talent to guide you. Switch off your head whenever you can, and become more alive to where your gut is pointing you; you will get better at 'reading' this the more practice you have. At all times, and especially when you don't feel like it, get PLENTY of intense exercise; this will turn down or entirely eliminate the depression and make room for your creativity and passion to grow.

That, in short, has been my experience of 'late revelation Asperger's', and I share it in the hope that it helps somebody else hold on when things seem dark.

New here
hiya
someone has recently suggested i have aspergers
news to me
how do i get a diagnosis?
i do seem to have a lot in common with the stories on this site
have been fired from about 50 jobs
never had a girlfriend
had a fist fights over people who touched my stuff
lent money to people who disappeared
and eventually lost my friends
who got sick of my "BS"

so do i just go to my GP or what?

Some places, a GP is the best route to finding the right specialist. You can take tests on-line and present those results to help out. You might run across people who prefer to mis-diagnose you so that you can become a profit center for the drug companies and their agents. They may not be conscious of the hold money has on their minds. Sincere but wrong is not uncommon.

have taken a few of those tests
i dont know how accurate an online test is
but i usually get a high score
35 out of 40 and the like

I have AS and I also have chronic depression unrelated to the AS. I also have other mental disorders. However, going back in my life and looking at things through the lens of AS, I realize a lot of things that were so painful, so incomprehensive, in regards to relationships were not really my fault. I am finding increased self-esteem as a result. I quit my job about two months ago, so I have a lot of time to think about these things. I have AS. I have learned to function well enough to live independently. I plan to keep learning and improving. I am just glad that I know I can improve. The hopelessness is started to life as I keep learning about AS and about the way that normal people think. The most frustrating thing about AS is that people will not tell you the social rules. They expect you to know the rules and they punish you for breaking the rules. It leaves you wondering, "Why? What did I do?" It makes me extremely angry. It also makes me super paranoid. I never know when it is going to hit me, the silent treatment or the angry outbursts. I feel that I am lucky because I am young enough to build an enjoyable life if I take my AS into consideration when making decisions.

definitely angry about the way ive been treated in life
is that normal too or just a by product

Gosh, I am so sorry to hear man. I can sympathise because I am currently on a break from grad school living in my parents' basement whilst trying to develop strategies and a medication regimen that will help me cope with life management when I eventually return to my studies.

However, now that I am diagnosed here in Sweden, I must say that there is a very good support system available. For example, if you were born with AS or any similar condition, or if you are physically disabled, there is a government programme to motivate employers to hire such people by subsidising their salaries up to I believe 80 percent. I.e. the employee receives the same level salary as his or her colleagues, but the employer pays less. In fact, qualifying for this type of programme can even be a competitive advantage on the job market depending on your diagnosis and the job itself. I am now in screening programme to evaluate my ability to keep a full time qualified job which is a prerequisite for the subsidy I mentioned above, and during this period I receive a minimal (about $700-800/month) pay, but, hey, it's better than nothing, and it helps me not to feel like a total leech having to ask my parents for money to buy red bull and candy like I was 14.

I'm 40 and was just diagnosed. My life has been incredibly lonely and full of social and employment failures. I spent many years being angry at myself for my inability to function at work, for my social problems, etc.
It has affected me today in innumerable ways - first, financially: Not only did I not have a clue how to handle money, I moved around a ton because I could never get along with my neighbors. I took out a bunch of loans to go to nursing school after my divorce, thinking: This is the first day of the rest of my life. My career is ruined due to my focus, communication and interpersonal problems. All this has led to my having no money saved, horrible credit, no way to make a living.
I stayed in an unhappy marriage for 10 years, because I knew I would not be able to go out and make a living. My wonderful children are growing up without a father - not only are we divorced, but he skipped the country after our separation.
I will likely continue to have self-esteem problems, owing to my negative feelings about myself and many, many years of being bullied and mistreated (not just by kids - I've been treated badly by adults, too).
Today we went for an orientation for my daughter. She's participating in yet another leadership program. I manage to feel pretty good about myself when I'm on my own, doing the things I'm good at and like to do. But being at a gathering of successful, articulate, well-dressed people (the kids, too!) was pretty difficult for me. I know that, without the ASD, I could be in a wonderful career and have the kind of life they do. I felt very small and alone. My daughter understands my feelings, but it was pretty embarrassing for her to see me staring blankly at the walls and ceilings, tracing the patterns with my eyes.