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Hello; new to this aspie thing

LunaAurum

LunaAurum

New Member
Hello, I am an artist from Canada and have very recently been diagnosed with asperger's (ASD now I suppose). It took 37 years to get the right answer so I guess I'm still figuring out the best ways to go forward with it; though I am grateful to finally know what's been so wrong all along.

What prompted me to seek out a forum is that I don't want to overload my friends and family with my condition and struggles, but it has been getting very lonely and intense to deal with all the resulting emotions and life changes by myself. I've been feeling like I need to be more open about it, so I'm starting somewhere safe. Also it's been wonderful to find people who experience life in ways similar to my own, after feeling like a weird alien all my life.

Anyway, that's my intro. I'm bad with those, but I suspect that's pretty common :p

Cheers!
 
Hi LunaAurum :)

welcome to af.png
 
Welcome to the Forums! I hope you make new friends and enjoy your stay in the process!

There's a few other Canadians on the Forum, myself being one of them :)
 
how 2 aspergers

1. Get out of bed
2. Take shower, occasionally trying to eat water
3. Eat feakbrast
4. Do thing after doing other thing
5. Eat nulch
6. Do more things
7. Talk to internet friends who may or may not be friendly shoggoths in disguise
8. Eat ninder
9. Watch something bizarre and possibly from two dimensions over on YouTube
10. Go to slenp
11. Have lucid dream where you are a demiurge that can create things by forming balls of energy, telling them to do something and throwing them somewhere
12. Wake up with very vague memory of the dream you had at 3 AM
13. Fnord
 
LOL, don't mind me friend, I just like to make inside jokes. Welcome! Come in, have some carbonated ham!
 
Hi LunaAurum,
I'm new too. My name is Neri. I'm a late-to-realize-I'm-an-Aspie, too.
Not officially diagnosed, although I have other mental health diagnosis's (most accurately PTSD). I'm going to embark on the officializing process soon though.
I'm still coming to terms with the being on the spectrum thing too. I guess it's a relief in some ways, and feeling tragic in other ways.

I'm also artistic - I draw, paint a little, but mostly have spent a life devoted to making music and writing poetry; performance and recording and such, along with raising vast numbers of children, autistic and otherwise.
 
Welcome. I am a newbie myself and it really is such a pleasant relief to finally have a safe place to express yourself truly. To talk things through and make sense of who you are with friends. Xx
 
Hi!! Oh my god, I'm used to online forums being half-dead so I am amazed at the responses, thank you all!!

I guess it's a relief in some ways, and feeling tragic in other ways.
Click to expand...
Nauti: That's such an accurate way to put it. Right after getting confirmation, I was almost high, so happy and grateful that I finally knew what was going on, an explanation for who I was. But later suddenly I hit a wall... I got really scared that what it meant was that I was impaired in ways I'd never even considered. It was ambivalent to figure out if it was a victory or loss; maybe a bit of both.
 
Welcome LunaAurum.
Nauti said:
I'm still coming to terms with the being on the spectrum thing too. I guess it's a relief in some ways, and feeling tragic in other ways.
Click to expand...
I've been diagnosed about 3 years now and still feel this way.
I was glad to understand myself and why I had lived life as I did, yet it was hard to wrap my mind
around the fact I had always been on the spectrum and didn't know it until I was 58.

I have no one to talk with about it all except my therapist as I have no family now.
That's why I found this forum and it's been great having others to openly share with. :)
 
LunaAurum said:
I got really scared that what it meant was that I was impaired in ways I'd never even considered.
Click to expand...

I was told of my autism when I was a teenager and I'm now pushing 50. That would mean I'd been living with such impairments all my adult life, but I don't see them. If anything I've found I'm far less disadvantaged than was originally suggested to me back when Asperger's was a new and revolutionary idea.
Your diagnosis doesn't change who you are or imply that you've previously hidden difficulties. What difficulties you already knew about just have an explanation now - nothing more, nothing less.
Some people react to their diagnosis as if it were a life sentence. It doesn't have to be. Diagnosis helps you identify which parts of your personality are AS related and which parts are just you. It doesn't change your capacity or motivation to work harder at those aspects to make life more liveable or just accept them as part of you.
The great thing about interacting here, and likely why it's so busy, is that people here are either on the spectrum or are close to someone who is, sometimes both. It means we can drop the masks, be ourselves and help eachother. That makes it a valuable refuge and resource :)
It lights the dark night of being the perpetual odd one out with a golden moon of hope ;)
 
Autistamatic said:
Some people react to their diagnosis as if it were a life sentence. It doesn't have to be.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's very true. I didn't though, I was actually elated to have that explanation and have my life make sense for the first time. It takes fellow ASD people to understand the sheer level of pure relief at discovering you weren't just insane or making weird stuff up that entire time. I was almost high from it for a while. I felt like the right set of keys to my life had been handed to me after getting lost in the mail for 30+ years.

I think I'm feeling a low right now partly because I am swinging from that high. I guess I'm equalizing. Also I have been in a difficult life situation and working hard to get out of it. The diagnosis came because I pretty much had close to a breakdown. For years it had been spiraling down but it was believed to be anxiety/depression. At last a therapist put her finger on the fact that it was a form of autistic shutdown: I had overexerted my masking and coping abilities and they were crumbling away. We discovered that as long as I could be in environments that were good for me, anxiety completely went away. Problem is my current situation makes those settings rare. It's a catch 22: I need more resources to get the lifestyle and help I need to stay healthy BUT I need to be functioning at very high levels to work towards those resources. What is scaring me is to maintain a balancing act that hovers on the edge of unsustainable, now that I know how real that edge- and falling right off- is. I really can't afford to fall in, so it's scary.
 
LunaAurum said:
now that I know how real that edge- and falling right off- is. I really can't afford to fall in, so it's scary.
Click to expand...

Believe me - so many people here know exactly how that feels. Many of us live our lives an inch away from the precipice, but somehow we hold it together. That's one of the reasons why being part of a community like this helps a lot of people. We don't all have great support structures in real life, but even when we do, sharing with other people on the spectrum is a great release and a way of putting things into perspective. I realise you're not in that "life sentence" category, but also recognise you're finding it very hard right now.
Vent on here, ask questions, offer observations, help others when you can. We'll listen and respond in kind. Remember we're all in the same boat and face many of the same challenges. We may not be there in person but you are not alone in your struggles when there are other Aspies you can (virtually) talk to.
 
Autistamatic said:
Believe me - so many people here know exactly how that feels.
Click to expand...

Absolutely, I can totally see how I went into 'explanation mode' there because I've had to do it SO much for people around me lol. It's already feeling great to be around people who can instantly 'get it'. That's a big reason I've been quite isolated lately. It's not out of spite for them at all, but family and friends have trouble joining my problems with the image they have of me. They only ever saw my 'best', not the eldritch chaos I can have on the inside, so they are struggling too. I found that even though many of them want to help, I end up having to explain so much and often comfort and reassure them that it's just another source of stress and exhaustion. But it does get lonely to have nobody to express thoughts with, so I'm glad I joined :)
 
LunaAurum said:
They only ever saw my 'best', not the eldritch chaos I can have on the inside
Click to expand...

:) :) :)
Anyone who not only knows of the word "eldritch" but can use it appropriately in a structured sentence (as opposed to accusing the person who coined it of "making up words") is welcome in my book!
 
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