Likemathsbutnotnumbers..
Member
Hi, I decided to make a thread for this as I was trying to write something I can give the GP to actually take me seriously about aspergers this time, instead of brushing it off as "everybody feels like that" at a time when I was going through a lot of anxiety(mostly social). It inevitably turned into a two page rant, and so I just felt like putting it on here. Here goes:
Summary: what makes me aspie
While I am a girl, and much of the literature on autism will tell you that there could even be a ratio of 9:1 for asd in boys versus girls, there are now many girls and women out there trying to raise awareness for girls on the spectrum as the literature simply doesn't accept that many girls learn to hide deficits in social interaction as a result of societal pressure. For me, although attending a girls' school was already plenty of pressure I also had a family with many members who attended grammar school, and a highly critical mum, to make clear the importance of coming across well and being “polite”, which has many strange facets it seems. In addition to this, at school my hobbies may have been seen as bizarre and so I was constantly name-called on the basis of my red hair, and the fact I was literally never without a book during my passion for sci fi and fantasy books. Once I left though I'd already begun to make a serious attempt to turn the interests I had into career paths, although even at the age of 12 I was dead bent at having a career, wanting to write a fantasy book, and so by that point people had stopped thinking I was a strange misfit who wanted to do everything but what they did, and started to see me as the ambitious person I was trying to convey. I am ambitious, it's true, but it's also a fact that I was always looking for an excuse to devote my life to my interests without having to answer peoples' insistence that as a girl I MUST socialise.
Having explained all this I think it must be obvious that in a conversation I am not exactly what you would call normal. While I have learnt the rules from a young age, there is still a high chance that I will immediately follow the question of “How are you?” with a recent event in world politics which is upsetting me, or a new piece of music I'm particularly enjoying, or my favourite concert pianist for a particular composer...Sometimes I can't hold back because I enjoy these things so much, but at other times I am feeling intense pressure to say something and because I either take little interest in the person if I don't know them well enough, have forgotten their name yet again and can't figure out where I know them from in the first place, or simply don't have a clue how to translate the fact I appreciate them as a friend into any meaningful conversation about normal life, I often panic as to whether I've lived up to said friend's expectations or am about to sabotage another friendship. It takes a huge amount of effort for me to maintain what is to another person a normal social life.
Yet another thing which is often misinterpreted by doctors: eye contact. There are many people with Aspergers or even a more typical form of autism who can maintain eye contact, and it's not a question of do or don't in my case. Yes, I can look people in the eye. But the moment I do, I feel as if this is an incredibly important moment where I have to avoid making them feel uncomfortable. If it's a friend this is hardly a problem, I can just smile or something. But when it's a stranger there are a dozen thoughts going through my head. Should I smile, should I keep looking without smiling, should I just look away immediately, will that offend them, does my smile look awkward, and why oh why does the sun have to be in my eyes at this moment. However I learnt as a kid that the stereotypical expectation for a girl or woman is for her to ALWAYS be smiling. So I smile a lot of the time, even when I'm feeling quite anxious or even in moments where I recognise something has upset the other person(this immediately turns into my default awkward smile which seems to work better). I remember practising smiling in the mirror as a teenager, and being convinced it never looked right. I've always had a very low opinion of my appearance and thought that other people just seemed to have a knack for first impressions which I do not.
So this has given a bit of an insight into what my thought process is like. Just to make it clear, I overthink everything. I. Overthink. EVERYTHING. This would get on my mum's nerves to no end, because she hardly wanted a person around who after noticing they had hiccups, would then go immediately into a lengthy speculation of what exactly causes it and whether CO2 in drinks could affect the lungs to the point a nervous twitch developed in the diaphragm. I know I had no clue. But it was still fun to think about. Because I never stop thinking about stuff, I'd rather put it to use in trying to understand how EVERYTHING around me works. I want to understand the entire universe. I want to never stop learning. But she just wanted to rest and think about nothing. Sometimes my thoughts are very repetitive, and I will be counting my steps, or trying to match them to a rhythm. Sometimes I can't stop replaying a song in my head which I particularly like. Sometimes when I'm listening to music I will be creating pictures in my head to go along with it-I also do this with maths, but more as sort of vague diagrams. I do think I generally have quite a verbal based thought process, but it definitely has a mixture of lots of other things in there as well, from sound to images. But what I want to emphasise, is that this isn't particularly noticeable to other people until I try and teach them to do something. If I explain a figure skating move I want to explain each individual bodily motion which goes into a particular spin, and since people generally don't think about it the same way I may end up demonstrating, and yet otherwise I just look like someone who can suddenly pick up things quite well. I don't have a good rote memory despite this, and so if I don't fully understand how to do something, and really have a clear picture in my head(although that's not the only thing my understanding is based on), I have more difficulty with it than others. So I would generally find it a lot easier to study things entirely on my own, than be taught them by someone who would dismiss details as unimportant, and often I'd be frustrated that other people seemed to do better than me at exams even as I was processing things at a far deeper level and would find they couldn't understand me if I talked about the subject we were both studying-even on the same problem. I always considered myself a bit of a failure as a result of all this, because not doing as well in exams as I believed I should led to my belief that I was a hopelessly impractical person, unable to apply my vast stores of knowledge. And please don't interpret that sentence as indicative of arrogance, I know I have a lot of knowledge and many people have told me so, it certainly doesn't make me feel any more a member of society when I know neither how to use contacts and social interaction to find the job to apply these skills, nor do I have the ability to brush off exams as easy which is how people recognise others as “clever”.
Another thing I will often see online is that someone, who was later properly diagnosed, was believed to be neurotypical and not on the spectrum because they were “too self-aware”. My answer to this would be that self-awareness is difficult to understand, and it's probably not as simple as self-aware versus not self-aware. I am for example aware of the way I come across, thanks to years spent at secondary school being name-called and corrected by other kids as well as family for a variety of things, from how I walked to how I dressed to (and my mum admits she's a bit neurotic with this) how I swallowed (she obviously had a problem with the sound, much as I do with any open mouth chewing). This is not to say that from the moment I was born I had a good understanding of how to behave normally, or that I recognised I needed to improve in these areas, and so it is not the same as saying I'm not autistic. The reason why people claim people on the spectrum are not self-aware is because of the high occurrence of alexithymia in autism. I also find this in myself as, put simply, if you ask me on any given day how I feel, my answer will be quite generic-I'm alright, or a bit awkward, etc-or I will spend a while trying to answer because I have this disconnect between myself and my emotions which means I often can't give a name to them. If the question is about how something MAKES me feel however, I can use logic to bridge the gap, and might give a more detailed answer.
The last part of life which sometimes makes things difficult for me is my sensitivity. I believe I am very sensitive to noise, with some sounds in particular which I hate and others I love, but too much noise makes me retreat into myself no matter what it is. Sounds I love are in classical music and also classical indian music, but equally sounds I can't stand would be things like chewing, sometimes acoustic guitar playing, drilling, people revving their engines and the list goes on. If I'm already tired, many of these things give me intense reactions, like a sort of stomach-churning discomfort with guitar or a sudden spike of fear with engines, and pure anger with chewing. I also stim by biting and picking at my nails, as well as wanting to pick at uneven bits of skin such as rough skin on lips or blisters. I often scratch for no obvious reason because I'm also quite sensitive to touch.
Summary: what makes me aspie
While I am a girl, and much of the literature on autism will tell you that there could even be a ratio of 9:1 for asd in boys versus girls, there are now many girls and women out there trying to raise awareness for girls on the spectrum as the literature simply doesn't accept that many girls learn to hide deficits in social interaction as a result of societal pressure. For me, although attending a girls' school was already plenty of pressure I also had a family with many members who attended grammar school, and a highly critical mum, to make clear the importance of coming across well and being “polite”, which has many strange facets it seems. In addition to this, at school my hobbies may have been seen as bizarre and so I was constantly name-called on the basis of my red hair, and the fact I was literally never without a book during my passion for sci fi and fantasy books. Once I left though I'd already begun to make a serious attempt to turn the interests I had into career paths, although even at the age of 12 I was dead bent at having a career, wanting to write a fantasy book, and so by that point people had stopped thinking I was a strange misfit who wanted to do everything but what they did, and started to see me as the ambitious person I was trying to convey. I am ambitious, it's true, but it's also a fact that I was always looking for an excuse to devote my life to my interests without having to answer peoples' insistence that as a girl I MUST socialise.
Having explained all this I think it must be obvious that in a conversation I am not exactly what you would call normal. While I have learnt the rules from a young age, there is still a high chance that I will immediately follow the question of “How are you?” with a recent event in world politics which is upsetting me, or a new piece of music I'm particularly enjoying, or my favourite concert pianist for a particular composer...Sometimes I can't hold back because I enjoy these things so much, but at other times I am feeling intense pressure to say something and because I either take little interest in the person if I don't know them well enough, have forgotten their name yet again and can't figure out where I know them from in the first place, or simply don't have a clue how to translate the fact I appreciate them as a friend into any meaningful conversation about normal life, I often panic as to whether I've lived up to said friend's expectations or am about to sabotage another friendship. It takes a huge amount of effort for me to maintain what is to another person a normal social life.
Yet another thing which is often misinterpreted by doctors: eye contact. There are many people with Aspergers or even a more typical form of autism who can maintain eye contact, and it's not a question of do or don't in my case. Yes, I can look people in the eye. But the moment I do, I feel as if this is an incredibly important moment where I have to avoid making them feel uncomfortable. If it's a friend this is hardly a problem, I can just smile or something. But when it's a stranger there are a dozen thoughts going through my head. Should I smile, should I keep looking without smiling, should I just look away immediately, will that offend them, does my smile look awkward, and why oh why does the sun have to be in my eyes at this moment. However I learnt as a kid that the stereotypical expectation for a girl or woman is for her to ALWAYS be smiling. So I smile a lot of the time, even when I'm feeling quite anxious or even in moments where I recognise something has upset the other person(this immediately turns into my default awkward smile which seems to work better). I remember practising smiling in the mirror as a teenager, and being convinced it never looked right. I've always had a very low opinion of my appearance and thought that other people just seemed to have a knack for first impressions which I do not.
So this has given a bit of an insight into what my thought process is like. Just to make it clear, I overthink everything. I. Overthink. EVERYTHING. This would get on my mum's nerves to no end, because she hardly wanted a person around who after noticing they had hiccups, would then go immediately into a lengthy speculation of what exactly causes it and whether CO2 in drinks could affect the lungs to the point a nervous twitch developed in the diaphragm. I know I had no clue. But it was still fun to think about. Because I never stop thinking about stuff, I'd rather put it to use in trying to understand how EVERYTHING around me works. I want to understand the entire universe. I want to never stop learning. But she just wanted to rest and think about nothing. Sometimes my thoughts are very repetitive, and I will be counting my steps, or trying to match them to a rhythm. Sometimes I can't stop replaying a song in my head which I particularly like. Sometimes when I'm listening to music I will be creating pictures in my head to go along with it-I also do this with maths, but more as sort of vague diagrams. I do think I generally have quite a verbal based thought process, but it definitely has a mixture of lots of other things in there as well, from sound to images. But what I want to emphasise, is that this isn't particularly noticeable to other people until I try and teach them to do something. If I explain a figure skating move I want to explain each individual bodily motion which goes into a particular spin, and since people generally don't think about it the same way I may end up demonstrating, and yet otherwise I just look like someone who can suddenly pick up things quite well. I don't have a good rote memory despite this, and so if I don't fully understand how to do something, and really have a clear picture in my head(although that's not the only thing my understanding is based on), I have more difficulty with it than others. So I would generally find it a lot easier to study things entirely on my own, than be taught them by someone who would dismiss details as unimportant, and often I'd be frustrated that other people seemed to do better than me at exams even as I was processing things at a far deeper level and would find they couldn't understand me if I talked about the subject we were both studying-even on the same problem. I always considered myself a bit of a failure as a result of all this, because not doing as well in exams as I believed I should led to my belief that I was a hopelessly impractical person, unable to apply my vast stores of knowledge. And please don't interpret that sentence as indicative of arrogance, I know I have a lot of knowledge and many people have told me so, it certainly doesn't make me feel any more a member of society when I know neither how to use contacts and social interaction to find the job to apply these skills, nor do I have the ability to brush off exams as easy which is how people recognise others as “clever”.
Another thing I will often see online is that someone, who was later properly diagnosed, was believed to be neurotypical and not on the spectrum because they were “too self-aware”. My answer to this would be that self-awareness is difficult to understand, and it's probably not as simple as self-aware versus not self-aware. I am for example aware of the way I come across, thanks to years spent at secondary school being name-called and corrected by other kids as well as family for a variety of things, from how I walked to how I dressed to (and my mum admits she's a bit neurotic with this) how I swallowed (she obviously had a problem with the sound, much as I do with any open mouth chewing). This is not to say that from the moment I was born I had a good understanding of how to behave normally, or that I recognised I needed to improve in these areas, and so it is not the same as saying I'm not autistic. The reason why people claim people on the spectrum are not self-aware is because of the high occurrence of alexithymia in autism. I also find this in myself as, put simply, if you ask me on any given day how I feel, my answer will be quite generic-I'm alright, or a bit awkward, etc-or I will spend a while trying to answer because I have this disconnect between myself and my emotions which means I often can't give a name to them. If the question is about how something MAKES me feel however, I can use logic to bridge the gap, and might give a more detailed answer.
The last part of life which sometimes makes things difficult for me is my sensitivity. I believe I am very sensitive to noise, with some sounds in particular which I hate and others I love, but too much noise makes me retreat into myself no matter what it is. Sounds I love are in classical music and also classical indian music, but equally sounds I can't stand would be things like chewing, sometimes acoustic guitar playing, drilling, people revving their engines and the list goes on. If I'm already tired, many of these things give me intense reactions, like a sort of stomach-churning discomfort with guitar or a sudden spike of fear with engines, and pure anger with chewing. I also stim by biting and picking at my nails, as well as wanting to pick at uneven bits of skin such as rough skin on lips or blisters. I often scratch for no obvious reason because I'm also quite sensitive to touch.
