rosewater
Active Member
Hi everybody,
I've posted a couple of times in this forum about my boyfriend, who is an aspie. As a brief update, things are great between us and really love each other.
The funny thing is that in the last couple of months I started to wonder whether I am an aspie myself. After reading a few articles on masking, which I thought would help my boyfriend, I felt very emotional because it really hit home for me. Since I was around 8-10 years old, I have felt quite different to most people, have had trouble understanding many reactions and ways of doing things, and experienced very frequently rejection and social confusion in general. My natural response was trying to 'mask' my personality and act the way it was expected, or let others comment/make the decisions (I was convinced everybody was doing the same thing). It may have worked occasionally but it wasn't effective in the long term and made me feel very uncomfortable. It often has taken -still takes- a psychological toll.
After getting to know about 'masking', I started doing some research on autism in women. Many pieces seemed to fit together. My anxiety and periods of depression starting at a very early age, the social confusion and frustration (also social anxiety for a few years), deep insecurities around people, frequent rejection, the amount of energy that socializing often required, getting into poetry around the age of 12 to channel my feelings and escaping a reality I had trouble dealing with, my meltdowns when I just couldn't cope anymore, anger outbursts or way over the top reactions, my obsessive interest in certain topics, a lot of uncertainty and confusion about who I was.
However, I've managed to keep groups of friends at different points in my life, I still have a few close friends and I've had a couple of successful long-term relationships, I can approach people without much trouble and I'm advancing relatively well in my career.
To me, my experience didn't seem anything like what I knew about autism until very recently. So it never occurred to me that I could be an aspie or anything like that - even though I've had a few aspie friends (I tend to be drawn to people with autistic traits). I knew there was something going on but I couldn't tell what. Neither did it occur to anybody else. I was just seen as "quirky" or "nerdy". My family just thought I was very sensitive and had anxiety issues.
The only thing I have ever been diagnosed with is a Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which to me made sense. After three years of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I am doing much better in most of the issues mentioned above and overall functioning in general. It has really been life-changing.
However, I am starting to wonder whether I may be an aspie, after starting to seriously date one (we've talked about these thoughts I'm having a few times) and reading information about the female experience. If that's the case, I'm quite surprised none of my therapists or anybody around me mentioned it. May just be one of many undiagnosed cases.
Hope you are doing well
Rosewater
I've posted a couple of times in this forum about my boyfriend, who is an aspie. As a brief update, things are great between us and really love each other.
The funny thing is that in the last couple of months I started to wonder whether I am an aspie myself. After reading a few articles on masking, which I thought would help my boyfriend, I felt very emotional because it really hit home for me. Since I was around 8-10 years old, I have felt quite different to most people, have had trouble understanding many reactions and ways of doing things, and experienced very frequently rejection and social confusion in general. My natural response was trying to 'mask' my personality and act the way it was expected, or let others comment/make the decisions (I was convinced everybody was doing the same thing). It may have worked occasionally but it wasn't effective in the long term and made me feel very uncomfortable. It often has taken -still takes- a psychological toll.
After getting to know about 'masking', I started doing some research on autism in women. Many pieces seemed to fit together. My anxiety and periods of depression starting at a very early age, the social confusion and frustration (also social anxiety for a few years), deep insecurities around people, frequent rejection, the amount of energy that socializing often required, getting into poetry around the age of 12 to channel my feelings and escaping a reality I had trouble dealing with, my meltdowns when I just couldn't cope anymore, anger outbursts or way over the top reactions, my obsessive interest in certain topics, a lot of uncertainty and confusion about who I was.
However, I've managed to keep groups of friends at different points in my life, I still have a few close friends and I've had a couple of successful long-term relationships, I can approach people without much trouble and I'm advancing relatively well in my career.
To me, my experience didn't seem anything like what I knew about autism until very recently. So it never occurred to me that I could be an aspie or anything like that - even though I've had a few aspie friends (I tend to be drawn to people with autistic traits). I knew there was something going on but I couldn't tell what. Neither did it occur to anybody else. I was just seen as "quirky" or "nerdy". My family just thought I was very sensitive and had anxiety issues.
The only thing I have ever been diagnosed with is a Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which to me made sense. After three years of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I am doing much better in most of the issues mentioned above and overall functioning in general. It has really been life-changing.
However, I am starting to wonder whether I may be an aspie, after starting to seriously date one (we've talked about these thoughts I'm having a few times) and reading information about the female experience. If that's the case, I'm quite surprised none of my therapists or anybody around me mentioned it. May just be one of many undiagnosed cases.
Hope you are doing well
Rosewater
