Uncertain if I have AS, dealing with relationships

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For some time -- at least a year -- I have been trying to make up my mind whether it is accurate to say I have Asperger's Syndrome. The question has been raised, and raised again, by my marital partner, who feels morally certain that I do, and that this is the explanation for many of the difficulties we have faced in our relationship.

I've read books and articles about Asperger's Syndrome, and while I do get a general sense of familiarity at the descriptions of the lives of people with AS and the difficulties they face, I find less agreement with descriptions of specific symptoms or traits. (I've read: The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome, by Tony Attwood; The Journal of Best Practices, by David Finch; and Asperger Syndrome and Long-Term Relationships, by Ashley Stanford.)

For instance, one symptom I see described quite often, usually as a key defining attribute of AS, is an impaired ability to recognize the emotional states of others, particularly "face blindness", an inability to make sense of facial expressions. This does not seem at all familiar to me; if anything, I'd describe myself as better than average at recognizing the emotional states of others. However, I'm often very bad at working out how to respond -- I have to intellectualize about someone's emotional state, and if I am myself feeling emotional or under stress, I have a very difficult time doing this. In some cases, I can become very irritable and irrationally stubborn in response to an emotionally fraught situation, and in others, I feel as if I'm physically unable to speak.

In general, I feel that I handle routine social interactions reasonably well -- but that I am "passing" as normal, that I've had to learn over years how to handle various situations and how to minimize or avoid situations that are especially difficult for me but easy or even pleasurable for others, and that I have limited stamina for social situations. This is where I've found accounts of AS life to be most familiar.

For a long time, I'd explained my social inadequacies and quirks as a result of having grown up in a rural area, isolated from my peers except in the context of school, combined with a natural inclination to be strongly introverted. I was an excellent student in the constrained environment of high school, and neither I nor anyone else realized how emotionally unprepared I was for the greater social demands of college life, where I developed severe depression and left college, a severe disappointment that I have spent years trying to overcome. In retrospect, my relatively simple explanation doesn't seem adequate to explain what happened to me, how I've lived my life since, or why I still seem to be so awkward in many normal social situations and have persistent quirks.

Several years ago, I met my marital partner, and became a step-father, to the general astonishment of everyone who knew me. And it is the difficulties I've had with this set of relationships which motivated me to seek out this forum. At least from my perspective, I feel that I am constantly pushing myself to interact with my family as they would expect me to, but this is difficult. While in general my home and family are comfortable and familiar, and the social situations I need to navigate are much milder and easier to negotiate than those I faced in my early 20s, it feels if breaks from those social situations are infrequent. When worn out and frustrated, I can be very irritable, and irrationally stubborn about trivial issues like how to load the dishwasher, or worse, when I am negotiating household tasks with our children.

My partner has insisted that I accept that I have Asperger's Syndrome, and that I see out resources to help with my issues. However, I worry that her expectations are unrealistic, and that really, I won't find a way to do a better job of acting normal than I do already. However, it is exceedingly difficult, perhaps impossible, to be objective in assessing my own behavior, and whatever my issues, whether I have AS or not, my issues are similar enough to those of people with AS that it's a good idea to come here to talk to people about it.

Welcome to WP.

Everybody is different in how they react and if they need a professional diagnoses. Some are satisfied doing what you did. People like that are referred to as undiagnosed or self diagnosed( you call yourself what you like). Some will have a professional say "yes you probably have it" but won't get it official. Others get a professional diagnosis complete with diagnostic report they can use to try and get accommodation or services or just to to be certain. If you go the professional route make sure you go to a specialist with knowledge of how Autism Spectrum Disorders/Aspergers (Aspergers is not an official diagnosis in some places anymore) presents in adults. This can be expensive and take time.

As you read Aspergers is more then just social difficulties. Hyper or hypo sensory sensitivities, Executive Functioning deficits (difficulties with multitasking, planning, organizing, time management), Repetitive/ obsessive routines and interests, black and white and literal thinking. One does not have to have all of these issues, and they will present differently based on your personality. People on the spectrum may not recognize they have these issues because it is normal to them or it may present as a social issue.

Good luck let us know

Well, unless your partner is a trained Psychologist, it's just an opinion and you know what they say about those. I'm not saying your spouse is wrong, just that until it's been professionally evaluated, that diagnosis is not definitive. Asperger Syndrome/High Functioning Autism is first and foremost a physical neurological condition involving sensory neuroreceptors, not just a set of behaviors.



Not all symptoms exhibit in every case, or to the same degree in separate cases, thus the term "Autism SPECTRUM Disorder."



Says who, you? If you have a neurological impairment that causes you to misread nonverbal social signals, how would you know? Maybe you recognize obvious signals, but how many of the finer, more subtle ones are you missing? When you walk into a room and see someone you know standing and silently looking out a window, can you tell whether they are depressed over a personal issue, or just watching people walk down the sidewalk?



Some of the Learning Disabilities that come with HFA may be problematic when we're children, but by the time we reach adolescence and adulthood, we've either gotten past them, or developed coping mechanisms to hide them. Autistic children may take things said to them literally and be baffled by sarcasm and metaphor, but barring any intellectual impairment, we generally figure it out as we grow up and many of us develop a keen sense of humor because of those tendencies and the misunderstandings they cause.

Eye contact can be learned, but being able to do it because it's a social expectation doesn't mean it's not horribly uncomfortable to do. Things like this are why AS/HFA is trickier to diagnose in adults than in kids, because we learn as we mature, to hide it, in order to function in the neurotypical world.



Being temporarily unable to speak under social pressure = "Selective Mutism," like Raj Koothrapali on Big Bang Theory (exaggerated for comedic effect).

Basically, everything you just described are all symptoms of the neurological impairments I was speaking of earlier. Do you also notice in those moments of complete disorientation, that ambient sounds, the quality of light, or even the very air pressure in the room seem GROSSLY MAGNIFIED AND INTENSE? You know, little things like the sound of air rushing through the central air vents seems louder than normal? Autism. Sensory overload, due to having an overabundance of neural sensory receptors in the brain.



Been there. Raised 2 steps and one biological. Same issues. I didn't find out about my AS until many years later. At this point I'm going to agree with your SO's amateur diagnosis, these are classic problems of High Functioning Autism.

The neurotypical brain has it's own natural filters that take in sensory data (light, sound, touch, taste, sensation, voices, body language, etc) and evaluate, assess and collate that data, according to level of importance: URGENT, not so urgent, irrelevant, and so on. It keeps the normal human brain seeing the world as a comprehensive "Big Picture."

The autistic brain, because it has too many sensory neuroreceptors is like a microphone with the gain turned up too high - it picks up too much information, too loud and causes it's own feedback. The filters that are supposed to be organizing all that data are overwhelmed, the processor is overloaded and the little 'buffering' icon starts spinning, leaving the conscious mind to take on the extra burden of figuring out just what the hell is going on around it, a task that ought to be automatic and effortless now becomes a frantic chore.

This is the normal state of an autistic brain. It's why we live in a perpetual state of low-grade anxiety and why many of us develop 'stims' - rocking, swaying, hand-flapping - full-body motions, to help dissipate that anxiety. If that's "normal," for an autistic, you can imagine how much more pressure the brain is under when social interaction gets thrown into the mix. And with each extra person we're forced to read, comprehend and communicate with, the pressure mounts. When that's just a fact of life for you, you learn over the years, to cope with it the best you can, but doing so will invariably leave you EXHAUSTED. It's a huge mental effort to juggle all that stuff. For many of us, every hour that we spend socializing, can require two hours of solitude to recover.

People you're familiar with and already have learned to 'read' to some extent, are easier than strangers, but it's still hard work, no matter who it is.



You're right. There are no resources and there is no help. The problems that come with autism are HARDWIRED into the brain. They cannot be changed, medicated or cured - there is no treatment effective for them. The only thing that will help is for the people around you to ACCEPT the fact that you have a disability and try to be as understanding as they can, that there are just some things you CANNOT DO to their expectations, because you are not like them.

Everybody who loves their family wants to spend time with them, but the family of an autistic also needs to understand that solitude is not just a personal quirk, it's a physical, mental and emotional requirement. We simply must have time to decompress from the pressure of socialization, or we will implode in an emotional meltdown.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Thank you all for the welcome and the thoughtful responses.