Hello from New Zealand

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Hello, I'm new, I signed up a few days ago. I'm a 35-year-old NZer, recently back home after a decade in Britain.

When I was a child it was strongly suspected I was autistic - I had some of the classic symptoms, stereotypies, isolation, very late language acquisition, etc - but I ended up with psychiatrists who didn't like the term (it was still the 80s) so wasn't diagnosed, slipped out of the system, and just coped as you have to do. I came back to treatment in my early twenties, and we realized it was close to Asperger's but not quite, and settled on PDD-NOS as the best diagnosis. I decided after a while I wasn't going to get anything much out of a psychiatric label, so I've moved on from that for the last ten years or so, but I'm coming back to the conclusion it could be helpful for me after all.

I need quite a lot of solitude, I think, and I'm OK with that up to a point, but the isolation can get depressing sometimes. Conversation tends to be really difficult, partly because subtle cues and contexts are often lost on me, but mostly because I don't - can't - think conversationally to any great extent. Thinking what to say is like coming up a against a brick wall. And more than a few people at once is just hopeless. And if there's much background noise I've no chance. All of which is a trial, because I've never been able to do away altogether with the need for company and intimacy.

Anyway, I'm interested in hearing about people's experiences with sense perception, as the way I react to sight, sound and touch seems to have something to do with the PDD part of my life. Also interested in the ways people process language - I'm somewhat hyperphonetic (if there is such a word) myself, both in reading and listening. Possibly why I've ended up being an editor.

All that aside, my main interest in life is literature, especially poetry, from Old English on through to contemporary.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Welcome to Wrong Planet. Wrong Planet has a healthy size of members of from New Zealand, you feel not alone here.

Welkome to WP

Mick

To WrongPlanet!! !

Welcome

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