My experience with Aspergers post-DX

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This is a repost from my MySpace blog. Feel free to add me as a friend on there as I'll hopefully be posting more about this (and other stuff). I'd appreciate any comments or experience from other members

Since I found out that I have Aspergers Syndrome (AS) my life has been turned upside-down a bit. I've struggled with depression, social exclusion and shyness for as long as I can remember. The strange feeling of being alone in a room, no matter how many other people are there and never knowing what to say or how to keep a conversation going. I've always blamed myself and seen it as a weakness in me that I am just no good with people. I've always felt somehow inferior to other people and that has often manifested itself as paranoia and a complete lack of self-confidence.

I've thrown myself into a lot of activites in an effort to boost my self-esteem and I've been pretty successful in a lot of ways. I've played guitar to screaming fans, won sporting events, performed well academically and even turned my hand to writing on occasion. Everything has always left me feeling very hollow, mainly because a lot of it has come pretty easily to me. Even when involved in team sports like basketball or in a close-knit group like a band, I've always been on the periphery and I think it's the feeling of "belonging" I've always craved more than success.

When I was diagnosed with AS, I did some reading and I was pretty scared by how closely the listed symptoms and observed behaviour mirrored what I've experienced over the last 20 years or so. It was almost like reading a biography instead of a medical reference! I've always known that I was terrible at reading body language and signals. I've never known how to flirt or when I'm being flirted with and many times, after the event, friends have told me that someone had been "all over me" and I've just not noticed! On the other hand, I'm told I often give out confusing and contradictory signals myself.

I certainly find conversation, even casual chatting, extremely mentally tiring and when possible, I prefer to listen. This often leads to exclusion within social groups because I tend to miss the point of conversations and find the dynamics of a group conversation pretty bewildering. When it's just me and another person, I find that I'm either very overpowering and drive the conversation with Totalitation control or totally passive and unengaging.

I definitely tend to be too wordy, almost to the point of being Hyperlexic. This combined with a very "black and white" logical approach to thinking makes me sound more like an encyclopedia than a person and other people seem to find my way of speaking both hard to follow and rather boring. I tend to wander off into monologue because it's much easier to speak at someone as opposed to with someone. This has lead in the past to accusations of arrogance and also of being condescending, which in a way is the opposite of the truth.

Looking at myself now, with a new reference point, has shed a lot of light on some long-standing difficulties and I'm hoping it's going to allow me to really start to make an improvement in my quality of life and in my social life. If anyone who knows me reads this, I'd expect them to recognise at least some of the things I've mentioned above and maybe that might help explain they way I behaved towards them and towards others. I've got a final meeting with my therapist Annika on Wednesday before I get referred for treatment, which I expect will be Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This could take up to 10-12 months for the referral, but at least now I have something to focus on in the mean-time. I can't believe anyone can ever have been satisfied by going to the doctor and telling them "I'm depressed" and being diagnosed with "Depression"! !!

Welcome, Dave.

I think and hope that life will actually become easier now that you know you have Asperger's. Life is hard for everyone, off and on, but if you finally know what platform you come from, you generally have an easier time figuring out where you're going.

Kris

I can identify with this paragraph. It very much echos the last 12 years of my life, minus the guitar playing. I actually identify most of what you've written.

I think a person can have depression, that depression is the actual diagnosis, and that treatments for that depression can be effective, but I think that, overall, the "depression epidemic," that exists is because of depression that arises from a myriad of other difficulties that can have either external or internal causes. It takes effort to get at the cause of depression in order to address and change the circumstances that caused/triggered depression to begin with.

Knowing one's self, knowing one's own strengths, and one's own weaknesses, and understanding one's own self, as well as the events in one's own life can be empowering because it provides insight into why things are, and allows a person to develop coping strategies. "This is who I am, and this is how I'm going to work with that," is a big improvement on "what's wrong with me? Why can't I deal with these things?"

Which is, essentially, the same thing that's already been said twice, but I'm currently of the opinion that it can't be said enough.

I'm somewhere in between being undiagnosed, and diagnosed. AS was never something I knew much about until the person I had been seeing about my depresson brought it up. When I learned more about it, it felt like I suddenly had a context for who I was, and how my life had been. So there's a general concensus that AS is more than likely the context I always needed but never had, but also mutual agreement that, for me personally, self knowledge is really more important than formal diagnosis. Just so it's clear where I'm coming from, what my perspective is, and what tint my words will have.

The difficulty with such an informal half-diagnosis is that it's been very difficult to adjust to the idea because it very much alters my self concept, but it's also been very hard to explain it to the people I need to talk to, such as my significant other. He can see how AS applies, and rationally it makes a good deal of sense, and since I've started addressing certain problems in my life with better strategies suited to what I can and can't do, life has been better, but he says that part of him still says, "this isn't you."

But the more I learn, the more I start to think that it really is, but the only people who would really be able to see that are those who knew me as a child since a lot of who I was back then has been suppressed by years of difficult life lessons, and well meaning, but detrimental, advice and teaching.

That's all. I just wanted to respond to you, and share some of my own experience. I hope that's all right.

Last edited by greensocks on 14 May 2007, 10:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

Extremely well said, and describes my feelings too. Discovering what AS is and how it puts "who I am" into perspective helped me understand for the first time WHY.

Not just alright, it was brilliant! Thanks so much for posting!

I'm pending assessment right now, but even at this point there's a sort of 'freeing' feeling to have seen what I have recently about AS that makes so much sense out of the mess my life has been. I'm hoping to continue to make more sense out of things (hopefully with a diagnosis), and to be past the 'what's wrong with me?' and reach the 'I'm going to work with it (fill in the blank) way.' It'd be a really nice change.

I can relate to above postings. I was diagnosed as a kid but it was kept secret from me for almost 45 years. I got a strange family. Then again, who doesn't. So now I'm full of mixed emotions. I kind of feel like some of those child actor stars who weren't allowed to have a normal life. I feel like I want to relive my entire life all over again knowing what I know now about AS.

This is pretty much exactly how I feel.
I recently (a couple of weeks ago) learned about AS and after reading about it on the web, reading lots of posts here on WP everything seems so familiar. I also felt like I was reading a biography. I also could see many signs in my life that I never even gave a second thought to as I didn't even know that they were not normal.
About a week ago it washed over me and I just sat in my backyard by the lake and wept. Finally people who understood how I felt. It was so refreshing and strengthening to know that I am not alone in how I feel.
I am still deciding whether it is worth my time and money to seek a professional analysis.

Welcome, WhatWouldDaveDo. I've had these experiences pretty much as you describe them, if anything a bit more extreme. Please keep us posted how the therapy goes - I would be very interested as to whether your therapist merely listens, or gives you advice, or what. The reason being that I was in counselling for a while, but the therapist refused to give advice - I don't know if it was just her, or it's a more general thing.
I do not have a formal diagnosis, I learned aboust AS by accident, saw how it could apply to me, learned more and basically and was shocked at how well the description of an aspie child matched my childhood.