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I loathe introductions, "self" or otherwise.

Desertphile

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
Several people (all of them complete strangers I have never met) have mentioned over the years via Internet forums that the way I talk and act in my YouTube channel's videos suggested to them that I have "Asperger's Syndrome." One person even made a video mocking me, speaking like how I speak (and calling it "satire"), and called it an "example of Asperger's Syndrome." Considering the facts I am 57 years old; I have always spoken this way; no doctor, teacher, parent, or acquaintance has ever mentioned "Asperger's" to me; and I am cursed with far above average intelligence (if the test scores mean anything), it seems to me these people are wrong--- but it bothers me because perhaps they are correct.

o) By the time I was 8 years old my parents knew I was "different." I was taken to a doctor for evaluation, and diagnosed with Hyper Activity and Attention Deficits. Considering I seldom talked to humans (and usually only talked to dogs, cats, horses, goats, birds, chairs, doors), why didn't the doctors diagnose me with Level One Autism? I am thinking I do not have Asperger's Syndrome because no professional spotted it. Maybe I talk oddly for other reasons.

o) Even though by the time I was around 15 years old my reading comprehension skills were at an academic / university level, my school teachers considered me illiterate and I was often told, during in-classroom reading time periods, to "just look at the pictures" in text books. For the following 40 years after that day I have constantly wondered why I was treated that way by my teachers, and it makes me think they observed intellectual deficits in my behavior that I'm just not seeing. It makes me wonder if I'm dim of wit and I don't know that I am.

o) Universally speaking I have only a dim understanding of what strangers are saying when they speak because they communicate so poorly. When a person uses sentence fragments, or fail to include the subject of their discourse in each sentence, I perform furious mental gymnastics to pick out of the many hundreds of possible meanings those which seem most likely to me for what the speakers meant--- and I fail so often in being correct that I dread having to talk to strangers.

o) People forced to interact with me (store clerks, police officers, educators, librarians, guests visiting the vacation area I live and work in) treat me like I'm an idiot. They look at me like I'm mentally retarded, and they talk to me like I'm an infant. I get talked at as if I were a dull-witted pet; like an inbreed dog. This bothers me because I think it impolite and abusive to correct their misconceptions about me.

o) I came close to starving to death twice; I have been shot in the back once; I have been shot at several times; I was within a day or two of dying from pneumonia; I cracked my skull; I dislocated my right arm; I broken several bones; I finally consulted a physician and she asked me why I sounded "so calm" when I reported these injuries. It may be unfathomable, but it never occurred to me to seek medical care. The pneumonia was treated because someone literally dragged me into an automobile and forced me to go to a hospital for treatment; a physician put my arm back in its sockets after I tried and failed to do so. At the moment I cannot recall any time when I thought my life had any value.

o) As far as I can tell I have very few "genuine emotions." I pretend to be fond of my friends (both of them). The girls and women I have loved in the past 50+ years may have been "lust objects" instead of love interests, but I have no clue at all which was and is the case.

Now that I am 57 years old I wonder if it is even worth the effort to talk with a physician about the issue. What would be the point? I spent 29 months living alone in a cave, after which I have spent 17 years living alone in a tiny shack in the wilderness, miles from other people. Addressing any emotional or intellectual deficits at my age, now that the suggestion has been made that I might have some, seems utterly pointless to me.
 
The first step in any treatment is triage. You may be on the autism spectrum, you may not be. But if you want to change anything in your life, you need to know what you're dealing with first.

I would encourage you to go find out.

I am a few years younger than you (49), and getting an ASD diagnosis has helped me:
1) Understand that the difficulties I deal with aren't because I'm bad, lazy, better or worse, but because my brain works differently.
2) Start to understand how to work within the limits of ASD.

Basically, I'm finally reading the right owner's manual. I get to keep the gifts that ASD gives me (memory, occasional hyper-focusing, fast processing of possibilities, etc.), and I get to learn to improve the things I want to be better at (communication, frequent lack of focus, regulating emotions, etc.).
 
Hi Desertphile :)


welcome to af.png
 
Welcome Desertphile.
I'm a few years older than you and diagnosed at around your age.
I know about the wondering what can be changed after all these years, too.
So far I haven't found anything changing.
The only thing I have found is that I now know why
I was as I was all my life. I saw the traits were like reading my life's story in many areas.
And now I am more self conscious and aware if I catch myself acting or reacting in certain ways.
A good example happened today.
I was sitting in a lobby hoping the heavy rain would slow before I walked to my car when I decided to call an old friend while I waited to see how he was doing.
We were chatting away. I was holding the phone in my left hand and didn't even notice I was flapping the heck out of my right hand when someone walked in the door and waved at me!
Huh...oh, uh, yep I realised then. He thought I was waving at him then realised I wasn't. :oops:

Many things happen that I now become aware of why,
that I wouldn't have known before the diagnosis.
But, yeah, at my age, I don't really know of anything changing now.
 
By the time I was 8 years old my parents knew I was "different." I was taken to a doctor for evaluation, and diagnosed with Hyper Activity and Attention Deficits. Considering I seldom talked to humans (and usually only talked to dogs, cats, horses, goats, birds, chairs, doors), why didn't the doctors diagnose me with Level One Autism?
Welcome! If you are now 57 and you were taken to the doctor when you were 8 years old, that means that this happened in 1969. At that time, they had little understanding of autism and only ever diagnosed very severe cases, so it is highly unlikely that you could have received a diagnosis at that time. Something similar happened to me.
Universally speaking I have only a dim understanding of what strangers are saying when they speak because they communicate so poorly. When a person uses sentence fragments, or fail to include the subject of their discourse in each sentence, I perform furious mental gymnastics to pick out of the many hundreds of possible meanings those which seem most likely to me for what the speakers meant--- and I fail so often in being correct that I dread having to talk to strangers.
I have this issue, too. People assume that some things are a given or mutually understood and expect you to fill it or naturally get it. I have difficulty filling in this missing information, too, and need everything explained to me in full.
 
Several people (all of them complete strangers I have never met) have mentioned over the years via Internet forums that the way I talk and act in my YouTube channel's videos suggested to them that I have "Asperger's Syndrome." One person even made a video mocking me, speaking like how I speak (and calling it "satire"), and called it an "example of Asperger's Syndrome." Considering the facts I am 57 years old; I have always spoken this way; no doctor, teacher, parent, or acquaintance has ever mentioned "Asperger's" to me; and I am cursed with far above average intelligence (if the test scores mean anything), it seems to me these people are wrong--- but it bothers me because perhaps they are correct.

o) By the time I was 8 years old my parents knew I was "different." I was taken to a doctor for evaluation, and diagnosed with Hyper Activity and Attention Deficits. Considering I seldom talked to humans (and usually only talked to dogs, cats, horses, goats, birds, chairs, doors), why didn't the doctors diagnose me with Level One Autism? I am thinking I do not have Asperger's Syndrome because no professional spotted it. Maybe I talk oddly for other reasons.

o) Even though by the time I was around 15 years old my reading comprehension skills were at an academic / university level, my school teachers considered me illiterate and I was often told, during in-classroom reading time periods, to "just look at the pictures" in text books. For the following 40 years after that day I have constantly wondered why I was treated that way by my teachers, and it makes me think they observed intellectual deficits in my behavior that I'm just not seeing. It makes me wonder if I'm dim of wit and I don't know that I am.

o) Universally speaking I have only a dim understanding of what strangers are saying when they speak because they communicate so poorly. When a person uses sentence fragments, or fail to include the subject of their discourse in each sentence, I perform furious mental gymnastics to pick out of the many hundreds of possible meanings those which seem most likely to me for what the speakers meant--- and I fail so often in being correct that I dread having to talk to strangers.

o) People forced to interact with me (store clerks, police officers, educators, librarians, guests visiting the vacation area I live and work in) treat me like I'm an idiot. They look at me like I'm mentally retarded, and they talk to me like I'm an infant. I get talked at as if I were a dull-witted pet; like an inbreed dog. This bothers me because I think it impolite and abusive to correct their misconceptions about me.

o) I came close to starving to death twice; I have been shot in the back once; I have been shot at several times; I was within a day or two of dying from pneumonia; I cracked my skull; I dislocated my right arm; I broken several bones; I finally consulted a physician and she asked me why I sounded "so calm" when I reported these injuries. It may be unfathomable, but it never occurred to me to seek medical care. The pneumonia was treated because someone literally dragged me into an automobile and forced me to go to a hospital for treatment; a physician put my arm back in its sockets after I tried and failed to do so. At the moment I cannot recall any time when I thought my life had any value.

o) As far as I can tell I have very few "genuine emotions." I pretend to be fond of my friends (both of them). The girls and women I have loved in the past 50+ years may have been "lust objects" instead of love interests, but I have no clue at all which was and is the case.

Now that I am 57 years old I wonder if it is even worth the effort to talk with a physician about the issue. What would be the point? I spent 29 months living alone in a cave, after which I have spent 17 years living alone in a tiny shack in the wilderness, miles from other people. Addressing any emotional or intellectual deficits at my age, now that the suggestion has been made that I might have some, seems utterly pointless to me.

I am nearly 62 years old now, and only recently became aware that I have aspergers. WELCOME.
 
I would agree, Desertphile. However, you are here on this forum. Is the subject something you are simply curious about? I am fascinated by the idea of living alone in the wilderness for years. I would love to hear more of your story. I feel a bit like I'm living alone in a wilderness as well, though in my case, I'm surrounded by people.
 
Thank you, every one, who has replied. I am weary of maintaining my constructed "normal" personality in public places, but I must also do so in my private life--- as I live and work at the same place. My genuine personality appears to be considered by people I interact with as abusive and "cold," since apparently I do not express emotions such as fondness for people, gratitude, and interest in other people--- traits my fabricated personality has. I have almost no empathy for humans at all, and a few people have mentioned that they resent this trait even though I work constantly to hide it.

I am utterly exhausted from working hard to appear normal. I pretend to be personally engaged when people talk at me; friendly; interested; cheerful; eloquent; mature. But it's all fake behavior on my part. My genuine personality consists chiefly of me wanting to never speak to any human ever again, while I lay under a tree in the forest reading and sleeping all day, every day.

Also, I am weary of walking into things, walking oddly, forgetting what people told me seconds after they have done so, and constantly asking people to explain what they mean. I want this life to end, as I cannot "do it" any more. My fabricated personality "slips" often, and when my genuine personality shows even I can see that people think I am a babbling idiot.

I long for death so that I will no longer be required to live this way. Every night I lay down on the plank of wood upon which I sleep, longing to never wake up. However, I am not depressed; I am not manic. I just want to stop living. My friend has told me to "adjust" and try harder, but I've been trying hard, 100% maximum effort, for over 50 years; I have learned to emulate and simulate normal behavior, but nothing "inside me" has changed. Logically, reasonably, I have no reason at all, and no motivation, to continue living except that my two friends would be inconvenienced if I'm dead--- though I feel only the vaguest sense of fondness for them (and yes, I am ashamed of that).
 
I would agree, Desertphile. However, you are here on this forum. Is the subject something you are simply curious about? I am fascinated by the idea of living alone in the wilderness for years. I would love to hear more of your story. I feel a bit like I'm living alone in a wilderness as well, though in my case, I'm surrounded by people.

I have written a memoir on the subject of my extended stay in a cave in the Avawatz Mountains for 29 months. A best-selling world-known writer (with at least 14 New York _Times_ best-selling books of his published) read my memoir and pronounced it "Fantastic! It is a cynical, fabulous, outrageous, politically incorrect, foul-mouthed and absolutely hilarious modern-day Walden." I suppose I could get a copy of the manuscript to you if you are interested, but I caution people to not do what I did.
 
I never introduced myself when I came here three years ago @Desertphile , simply began reading and posting. Also dislike introductions as I feel that I'm somehow promoting myself so that people will be interested in me, which seems false in it's own way.

There is no need to consider traits that you have as deficits. That perception has come from other people opinions. I've had a lifetime of judgement and opinions foisted on me by the socially adept but somewhat inane rule makers.

Since I retired at fifty-five, three years ago, I've limited my interaction with people and so has my husband. In many ways I've become to a real extent a quite unsociable person in everyday life. I avoid social interaction in person as much as possible. Here, I can limit interaction, and pick and choose what to respond to that interests me, or that I can contribute something to. My idea of acceptable interaction, on my own terms.

You don't strike me from your writing as someone who is cold and abusive, perhaps more honest than some would like. People with autism do feel and express emotions and empathy, simply not in an expected socially acceptable way.
 
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Thank you, every one, who has replied. I am weary of maintaining my constructed "normal" personality in public places, but I must also do so in my private life--- as I live and work at the same place. My genuine personality appears to be considered by people I interact with as abusive and "cold," since apparently I do not express emotions such as fondness for people, gratitude, and interest in other people--- traits my fabricated personality has. I have almost no empathy for humans at all, and a few people have mentioned that they resent this trait even though I work constantly to hide it.

I am utterly exhausted from working hard to appear normal. I pretend to be personally engaged when people talk at me; friendly; interested; cheerful; eloquent; mature. But it's all fake behavior on my part. My genuine personality consists chiefly of me wanting to never speak to any human ever again, while I lay under a tree in the forest reading and sleeping all day, every day.

Also, I am weary of walking into things, walking oddly, forgetting what people told me seconds after they have done so, and constantly asking people to explain what they mean. I want this life to end, as I cannot "do it" any more. My fabricated personality "slips" often, and when my genuine personality shows even I can see that people think I am a babbling idiot.

I long for death so that I will no longer be required to live this way. Every night I lay down on the plank of wood upon which I sleep, longing to never wake up. However, I am not depressed; I am not manic. I just want to stop living. My friend has told me to "adjust" and try harder, but I've been trying hard, 100% maximum effort, for over 50 years; I have learned to emulate and simulate normal behavior, but nothing "inside me" has changed. Logically, reasonably, I have no reason at all, and no motivation, to continue living except that my two friends would be inconvenienced if I'm dead--- though I feel only the vaguest sense of fondness for them (and yes, I am ashamed of that).


Can you return to a hermetic life? I envy you for the past years you speak of, as I have wanted to live that way too.
 

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