Published on 12, July, 2020
Hey everyone!
I know this is a common question, and I found many threads on this forums (as well as blog posts somewhere else about it), but I feel like they don't fully address preoccupation. Ideally I would like to have a chat with someone who's gone through this, but I find it difficult to attend local groups, specially in this state of uncertainty. If anyone wants to have a chat, here or on any other platform, I'd be more than happy to.
I have joked about being on the spectrum since I was young because of my attention to detail, my analytical skills and my somewhat lacking social skills. I never took it seriously because I was highly functional and I didn't have any of the well-known traits such as stimming or fixation with certain words. Now, as an adult (35yo), I'm starting to feel certain blocks in my life, specially dealing with social situations, and looking back at my life there are many things that can be explained really well by Asperger's or HF Autism. From small things like being fussy with food because of the texture, to massive things such as mental health issues like depression and obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD).
The reason I would like to be diagnosed is to find help in overcoming my limitations. It helped in the past with depression and OCPD. Just knowing how they worked allowed me to find ways of coping with them, to the point that I wouldn't say I'm OCPD anymore (except for maybe some minor things) and my episodes of depression are now very short (a couple of days) and very far apart (can't remember when was the last one). If I can learn how ASD works in my own head, I would be able to find ways of going around it.
What is holding me back is that I don't like the idea of being labelled. It's not so much a matter of stigma, although that's part of it, but the fear that it will change my perception of myself and how others perceive me. I have always fought against being boxed. I don't like when people just accept (or not) something you do or say just because of some label, and it's something I experienced a lot with other labels I carried.
But my biggest fear is using that label to justify my limitations, or even start developing some traits because now "it's official". I know it's irrational, that just the label will not change who I am. I proved myself and others in the past that it's not your skills/talents, but what you do with them. I've done things I have never imagined I could do, so I should expect to be able to get over this as well. But the fear is there. I don't want to end up saying "sorry for my lack of filter, but I'm on the spectrum".
So I'm tempted to not give it a name and dealing with these blocks in my life as I've done before: Learn to be more compassionate towards my limitations and finding ways around them. Other than giving it a name, are there any other benefits from a formal diagnosis?
Thank you for reading :)
Thank you everyone for your responses. It's been quite an intense weekend, and thanks to your responses I had some more material to think about it and come to a conclusion. I will not seek diagnosis, for now. I still have that option, there is nothing serious that needs to be addressed or that would immediately improve with a diagnosis. I lived up to this point without that label, and I haven't felt any different or badly impaired in any way. That said, I will keep in mind everything I've learned, I will read more about ASD and stay involved, and I will consider that what I read can be applied to myself. In a way, I'm identifying as an aspie, but by doing it in this way I can do with that label anything I want.
After the last couple of weeks pondering this, the responses I got here, and the one conversation I had with a close friend, I was having a bad time coping with all this information. On Friday, I was playing board games with some friends and I started seeing everything through the Aperger's lens. A simple thing that I've done before and enjoyed, became quite unpleasant. I was second-guessing myself, feeling like an outsider. Everything I did or said that would have been "normal" before, started to look weird. It took me a while to snap out of it, and couldn't feel at ease the whole night. I'm an introvert, with some mild degree of social anxiety, but this time it was a whole new level.
This got me thinking about Asperger's and what I understood about it. I know that aspies have difficulties with social interaction, that they engage in repetitive behaviours and many other things like not being able to look people in the eye or having problems processing sensory data. I knew a lot about the traits but not what's causing them, and that was giving me the feeling that my mind is playing tricks on me. I got into questioning things like "is what I just said normal, or is it just my mind making me think it's normal?". I felt completely delusional, I was losing my mind, and that was really, really bad. Luckily, I noticed this and was able to stop it before it unravelled. I sat down and decided to take action. If my mind was playing tricks on me, how is it doing it? This can be quite mind-bending (pun intended) as it is my mind that has to understand how it is tricking me, but let's not go there.
I started looking into the causes of Asperger's, and couldn't find anything relevant. In terms of how Asperger's happens, it's mostly genetic and environmental, but it's not dependent on education (you cannot be taught to be Asperger's and events in your life will not turn you into an aspie). The biological explanations are quite inconclusive as well, just that the size of the amygdala and cerebellum seem to be smaller than in NT. But there is no agreement, yet, on this or how this difference in size can produce the behaviours associated with Asperger's and other ASD.
So we are left with a condition (Asperger's, I cannot say for ASD in general) that has some behaviours associated with it that have no clear biological foundation. Most of this condition is based on the social dimension of a person, whether the person's interaction with others or how they fit in society. This is not like being deaf, or being unable move your legs, but about a part of human life that everyone has to learn their own way.
At this point, I felt relieved. It was not my mind playing tricks on me, it was not a physical or biological limitation, but more like a set of traits that are considered to be pathological (side note: I found a really interesting article and book about this that I will share on another thread). I might be wrong about this, but I couldn't find anything linking Asperger's to a physical or biological issue. Even if there were, the limitation would be affecting a part of reality that is not objective, something that we made up ourselves. Just think how social norms change from culture to culture, how it is ok to eat dogs in East Asia and how horrible just the thought of it is for us.
This doesn't mean it's all ok with us, but it makes it a problem we can deal with. I always believed that everyone sees the world in their own way, not only in terms of having their own opinions and values, but also having their own processing mechanisms. Some people are highly sensitive to other people's feelings, and so they become altruistic. Some others don't care what others feel and become egotistic. I guess this is why people started using "neurotypical" instead of "normal", but even "neurotypical" sounds unfair to me for both sides: It puts a label on aspies as "special" and it downplays the efforts of neurotypicals to become "normal".
So, in conclusion, I might be an aspie but I don't feel disabled. Before even considering this label for myself, I always assumed everyone has difficulties with life and that "normal" is just an illusion everyone is trying to achieve. Having that label at this point is not going to be helpful for me, and I would prefer to deal with my specific problems individually instead of clumping them together. I'd rather say "I'm not a good salesman because I'm not good at persuasion" than saying "I will never be a good salesman because I'm on the spectrum". For the first problem I can find a solution or work on it, even if I never end up fixing it; the second one seems impossible to overcome, you can never stop being an aspie or being less of an aspie. This doesn't mean that the label is not useful, and in many cases it is needed, but I learned to cope with my limitations without the label and adding it would not improve anything, or it would even make things worse for me.
I like the way you consider things Indecisive, I find it helpful. Just one thing I picked up on, was when you say nt's also try hard to be 'normal'. I would disagree with that. I think they try hard and work hard in life to build a stable and prosperous life etc, but that they are already 'normal', in that they already have the shared connection with other people which is referred to as nt which autistic people don't share. And I do think aspies are special