Asperger's & Autism Forum

So l read someone's intro here and it said social withdrawal is a key aspect of Autism. I have suffered from this as long as l can remember. But the people l hung out with now may have also been on the spectrum.

Do we suffer various degrees of this, and have we all suffered from this clear back to childhood?

Are you aware how much you suffer from this or just chose to not think about it much?

This one has been on my mind a bit lately.

What I mean by surprises is not like, really major events. Nothing like "omigod there was a big earthquake nearby" or "holy crap Mars just exploded", but more like surprises near & around you. Smaller things.

The sorts of examples I'm thinking of in my own experience is things like, say, having someone you know unexpectedly show up. Like if my father suddenly says something like "oh by the way, your aunt and uncle will be over later tonight", with no warning prior. Unexpected social stuff.

Or maybe it could be something like, having something you use frequently just abruptly break out of nowhere (that one tends to get me super agitated).

Or... worst of all (for me at least).... an unexpected doctor's appointment *shudder*

Things that arent inherently *bad*, maybe some are positive, but just things that are a bit of a jolt to whatever you were expecting your day to be.

Do you deal with it well, or does it give you trouble? Does it...

What exactly is black and white thinking? I read through a few past threads about it this morning, and a lot of people think it's synonymous with "holding strong opinions from which I will not budge." According to what I've read elsewhere, this isn't actually what it means. Kind of, sometimes...but not exactly. It's more immediate and impulsive and seems to me to be the result of logical thinking twisted in a strangely irrational and oftentimes emotional way.

Examples:

-You and a friend get into a disagreement, and you think it means that the friendship is over.
-You get a 98% on a test, but you believe you failed because you either get 100% or you fail.
-You abandon a hobby because of one perceived failure.
-You stop reading a book because there is one thing you don't like about the main character, so you assume that you can't relate to her at all.

So maybe black and white thinking is about attempting to apply logic to situations that can't be evaluated logically because...

So when you feel despair about parking, or rude cashiers, think about this story.

So l met a young lady from Hungary (40+) in a exercise class. We hit it off as kinda kindered souls. She moved away year ago and started having more ailments and mental break-downs to the point of calling the suicide line when she couldn't reach me.

She realised she was really in pain 95% of the time and decided to have her uterus removed. It was removed and the doc said a tumor had been growing for years and had attached itself to her spine, liver, tummy and uterus. The tumor had become so bad that when she ate food, she was always hungry. The pain was so bad she had turned sucidal in the last two weeks before removal. l was calling her everyday to see how she was doing and to help keep her focused. It is my belief that she is on the spectrum because of the way we hit it off. Could you have survived this, if it was you?

Do they make you feel uneasy? or what

My younger sister constantly has animosity towards me. Everyday her mood is one of passive aggressiveness and rudeness towards me, specifically.

She is never happy for me, nor is she generally decent towards me.

Every morning when she gets up she lashes out at me.

When I ask her (after work) how her day was her response is “[deleted] off” and it is the same if I ask her where she is going. She is rarely interested in interacting with me.

When she comes home from work, she goes up to bed and does not come back down again until 12 hours later when she goes to work again.

She’ll constantly hold grudges for DAYS and will never accept an apology.

She doesn’t do me any favours or anything that would benefit me.

If I ask her to get me anything from the shop, she’ll say “no” 9/10. This evening my mother asked me to transfer money to her account so she could get me donuts.

Well... guess what she didn’t get donuts claiming they were all out of date. I have just been to the shop she...

Belong to a breast cancer program. Every year I go for a mammogram, I'm in the control group, as there is no breast cancer in my family history.

So you go, making sure that you are wearing nothing that will interfere with the tests. You can't use deodorant on or powder or anything with scent or hair conditioner with scent (I don't use scented products anyway). No jewellery of any kind. I drive the thirty or so minutes, remove all my clothing, put on a hospital gown and paper slippers and wait to be called in.

Then spend twenty minutes or so having my breasts squeezed between two thick flat glass plates. While a technician re-adjusts the angles and touches me. The plates compress them to a thickness of about two inches. It hurts for two days afterward. The last time I went, I threw up my lunch in the hospital parking lot afterward.

I have a mammogram coming up this month. And don't want to go. I feel guilty as when I originally signed up for it, I was keen to do this for science...

Not sure really what l experience but l will over-analyze like l have OCD as a cognitive switch to think it (subject) beyond what it was originally. It was worse when l was younger.

Also l have to constantly see every connection, every pattern, l have to know how the bigger picture comes together. Luckily this has dimished somewhat with age.

It never dawned on me that this could be a issue. Also l really want to break everything down to mathematical odds, like a bookie. I need to know the odds of something going either way.

Descartes is famous for his quote : l think therefore l am.

Hey, what are you blessed or cursed with in thinking patterns that you deny but it's all there everyday of your existence?

I only ask that because I've heard that older parents are more likely than younger parents to have children with Asperger's/Autism

Because... My parents did not meet each other until mom was 32 and dad was 40 and they had four children after that... I was born 10 years into the marriage, so mom was 42 and dad was 50, definitely older parents

One reality of my life was that I wasn't going to have my parents for very long compared to most of my friends... My mom was 64 when she passed away from ALS/Lou Gehrig's disease, so she died fairly young, and I was 24... My dad lasted until the age of 83 before he passed away, but I was only 33, when other people I know have their parents alive for most of their life

And to make a long story very short, all of my grandparents died long before I was even born

That's my family! Plus three other siblings too