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Hi there. I'm very glad to have found this forum. It feels like a dream come true to have found a group of people that I can maybe share some experiences with, which in the past I have been unable to share in a very meaningful way and which I thought were unique to me.

A few nights ago I watched this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-Z4iqrezAU The second group of people she talks about, the 'actors.' That describes me almost perfectly. I am so awkward in social situations and have a vague feeling of constantly being offensive and/or annoying but I have been constantly confused as to why. I thought everyone was like to that to some degree and I was just really bad at it. Now I realise I have an ASD.

I have come to this realisation after a long journey. I have been receiving treatment for PTSD, anxiety and depression for some time. I have perpetually felt like I was on the verge of a major breakthrough. (In writing that I realise I've felt like that for most of my life. Like I was just about to figure it all out. I would only need to read one more book, or go to one more workshop and then I would have the skills I needed to be properly social.) Now I see that this was the breakthrough I was looking for all along.

Since I watched that video all the bizarre things that have happened in my life make sense. I've read about Asperger's and Autism before, with the same cold detachment I read everything with, so I never really thought that those words could apply to me. A lot of the time I apparently seem to do reasonably well in social situations. I have all these rules that govern my behaviour. There's basically all these tables in my head with probability distributions on human behaviour that I use to decide what words to use in different types of conversations, in different settings and with different people and for lots of other social stuff that I have recently found out almost everyone else takes for granted. But none of it makes sense to me. I can use it, but I don't know how it works.

I've always been intensely interested in how business work. Ever since I was a little kid. I have observed all these odd things about them. Like the fact business can make millions of people go to places they don't really want to be and do things that they don't really want to do. It also interested me that business could make people do things in their own houses through the TV and the radio (they call this marketing). I realised early on that businesses were things, they are important and that I needed to learn how they work. I decided when I was quite young that I wanted to build a very big business. I didn't really understand what that meant at that time, but I have a good picture of it now

That's basically what I've been doing since I left school and if I knew what I was up against when I started, I probably wouldn't have bothered. There have been times when I have been so confused, and completely unable to grasp what is going on, but I have managed to get through. I have developed lists and systems to cover all these different things like how to be confident, how to do small talk, how to do presentations. My job is very complicated and requires a great deal of human interaction. I have managed to develop coping mechanisms which allow me to do my job and I think that they will be useful to people on here. I work for a wholesaling business. We sell things to tradespeople. I am going to refer to myself as a supervisor for a plumbing wholesale business, but that is not true. (I don't want to say where I really work or anything like that, I'm sure you can understand why). The supervisor bit is true and that is the part which I believe is important. Plumbing wholesale is a very close approximation of what I actually do.

The point I'm trying to make is that every day I am forced to talk to lots of different people, about lots of different things. It is a reasonably limited scope in that I know 90% of the people who are likely to ring or walk in the door. And they pretty much all do the same job. But I have to be resourceful and adaptable. That's always been really hard for me and I thought it was just part of life, for everyone.

I have had to get a degree, work in my job for over two years and move to a different town to get to where I am. Almost every day I have been terrified in ordinary social situations, thinking this was normal and never talking about it (until last year). After spending the last few days reading about Asperger's and Autism and what all this means I think I have a great to deal to share that could help make some people's lives at least a little easier. A big part of my research has been on sales and marketing, so I have learnt lots of facts and theories about sales. I've even done sales before, I have learnt how to say things in just the right way to produce and emotional reaction and make someone buy something. I still don't understand how it works but I can do it and that's the sort of thing I'd like to share. When I was at uni I even did tutoring and I have a system for that too.

It hasn't all been roses for me though. I think the worst thing for me has been the times when I'm just sitting there minding my own business and someone comes up to me and says "What's wrong?" I can only reply by saying there is nothing wrong and I am happy. Then they don't believe me and I try to explain that when I feel normal, for some reason other people think I am sad or upset, but I'm not. They just don't understand, they keep asking all these personal questions and I don't know what to say and next thing you know, there is a problem. I don't know how many times this has happened to me during my life. I believed for a very long time that there really was something wrong with me and that I needed to be 'fixed.' I have spent my whole adult life looking for an answer, in all the wrong places.

Now I have found the answer. I see now that the source of my frustrations is also the source of the gifts that have enabled me to get by. Sorry about having such a long first post, but I have a roundabout way of saying things sometimes and I think if you are on this forum you will understand I look forward to interacting with some of you. And if you have read all of this... thankyou so much, it means a lot to me

Welcome!

Welcome to WP! It's great to hear that you've found something that explains your experiences. It really is a wonderful feeling to realize that you're not the only one who does specific things. I hope your time here is helpful.

Hey Layercake welcome.

Welcome ^^

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Thanks for saying hello everyone.

The last week has been so strange for me. I have suddenly become fully aware of the affect I can have on the people around me and I finally realise it is not because lots of people are jerks. I can't help wonder how many people close to me might have already known.

There have been many times in the past that people have advised me to seek an ASD diagnosis. The potential disadvantages they were describing sounded absurd to me and I simply could not assimilate the information they were giving me. Those conversations have taken on a whole new significance now. I feel so silly for not taking any of those people seriously. And they were probably just looking out for me.

I am very grateful that I have developed the ability to write well over the years and now have a way of describing this thing, as well as discovering this forum of people Who I can truly relate to and share my feelings with.

This all feels so surreal, I even made a comment in my journal tonight that all my life I have been telling people that I feel like I was born on the wrong planet and everyone else on it crazy. Haha.

I just remembered a time in high school where I went up to a fellow student that I hadn't spoken to for about two years and told him about how I had been having very strange recurring dreams. He went inside the classroom sat down and never spoke to me again. That use to be very confusing for me. Makes more sense now though.