Asperger's the Great, really?

Now I understand what you meant about being lazy :-). I think the abbreviation is catching on, & I quite like it.

You’re welcome. I just hope that sharing this with us has had  some benefit for you. At least I hope you know you’re not alone as there can be strength in numbers. 

I've just seen this abbreviation of your forum name in another post. 

...I just don't know who I am now, or wonder if I ever did, I say 'wasn't happening being myself' but wonder if I even know who that 'myself' was...

I'm done with Christmas Cards said:

I guess what's keeping me going now is a renewed determination to be myself & damn the consequences.

Yes, I can see this is a fear for me....I think I was a lot more like this when I was younger but it wasn't welcomed and as the years have gone on I've tried to be even more like everyone else to be accepted and loved....as that just wasn't happening being myself...

Thank you IDWCC (being lazy) 

Thanks Martian Tom

Thanks for the reply BlueRay..

Roswell said:

As a child while others were learning about motorbikes and taking their first sips of stolen alcohol I was brooding over existentialist novels.

Yep, for me whilst others were going to concerts & clubs I was at home programming a ZX-81 & ZX-Spectrum, modifying my record player and playing with radios. In some ways nothing has changed today!

I guess what's keeping me going now is a renewed determination to be myself & damn the consequences. I've contemplated suicide often but never overcome the fear of it, and my logic is that if life is causing thoughts like that, then it's better to risk significant changes to your life than things coming to a premature end.

Overall I feel unhappy with life and what keeps me going is I'm modifying my diet to become healthier and slimmer. I'm weighing all the carbohydrates such as rice I eat and eating Michelin-star restaurant style portions sometimes now.

I'm also updating my wardrobe to become more fashionable, soon I'm hoping to buy a velvet jacket. 

If these efforts finally help me in getting a romantic relationship - something I've never had and always longed for - perhaps all was not in vain after all.

I've never thought about things like most people. As a child while others were learning about motorbikes and taking their first sips of stolen alcohol I was brooding over existentialist novels.

Yes I can relate to this, especially now I've hit middle age.

When I was younger (20s) I thought my intelligence would take me to great places, and to some extent it has; I've achieved a lot and have a comfortable life. But many times like you I've seen others achieve things (meaningful things like taking technology to deprived areas of the world and making people's lives better) that I know I couldn't do. Several times I've had an idea for something that would have made me a fortune, but couldn't see how to apply it, until someone else did it. In the 90s I had an idea for a website that could connect people with similar interests and would become more valuable the more people who were on it........

Now that I'm in my 50s, my bleak assessment of life is that my children are all grown up and 3 out of 4 have moved out permanently, so there's no practical parenting needed (not that I crave to go back to that!), my parents don't have a clue how I really feel & all my mother wants is for me to meet her needs, and I'm exhausted with life. I believe I have alexithymia and can't find any joy. I have few or no friends & don't really know what friendship is as an adult.

Over the last decade I became an advanced motorcyclist and advanced driver, taught advanced motorcycling, learned piano to grade 5, but then gave all of this up because I became bored with it (and to be honest the teaching I did started shining some light on the ASD that I didn't know I had).

Following my wife's lead I'm amusing myself with physical fitness goals, but I have absolutely no sense of purpose or mission or meaning. Following burnout at work I've stopped being passionate about that, and I have nothing else to keep me excited apart from "living"; get up, go to work, come home, eat, sleep.

Yes I know I can choose to look out of the window and take pleasure from the sunrise, the trees, the garden. But like the time my wife asked if I wanted to divert on our way home because the Red Arrows were flying nearby, "meh - I've seen them before".

Thinking about how ASD affects me is also helping me understand why job satisfaction (which for me is or has been a big part of this overall "life satisfaction" discussion) depends for me on quite a specific and fairly narrow set of criteria that it's hard to maintain over time (interesting and meaningful work, supportive colleagues, comfortable & ASD-friendly office space, IT that works, ASD-friendly working methods......).

Please don't anyone tell me to count my blessings / cheer up! I know how to do that, and I regularly do for survival. My reply here is aimed to illustrate that NAS49761 is not alone, and to see if anyone else shares these feelings.

Lots of identification from me, too.  I go through phases with my condition, since being diagnosed with it in 2015 (aged 56).  In one sense, I feel relief that I'm able to look back on my life and finally make sense of it.  I now know why I've always struggled with friendships, relationships, social situations.  I know why I've always felt like there's this invisible wall between me and other people, and this gap of understanding - like everyone else is in on a secret that I'm not privy to.  This has enabled me, naturally, to understand myself better, to accept myself more, to go a little easier on myself.

But then it swings the other way, and I get into a pit of wondering what my life might have been like if I'd been diagnosed much earlier and had been able to get early interventions.  Or if I hadn't been born with the condition at all.  I generally try to counter that with the thought that maybe 'corrective' support measures might have messed me up even more.  And if I hadn't had the condition at all, would I now have this singular and unique view that I have on life?  Would I be in a position to look around me at the way other people live their lives, and to feel glad I'm not a part of any of that?  Sure, I feel like an alien much of the time, which can be isolating.  But I'd still, in many ways, sooner be me with my autistic brain, and my sense.... not of being superior or special, but of not needing to have many of the things that - particularly in our culture and society - seem to be regarded with such importance.  I find much of it to be trivial, frivlolous, empty and meaningless.  I'm not hung up on fashion or looks.  I'm not bothered about keeping up with the Joneses.  I don't need material things in abundance, the latest gadget, the latest app, the latest car.  I don't need lots of money.  I enjoy simple pleasures.  Okay, maybe I would have been like that, anyway.  But I think my life-long sense of being 'outside' has certainly helped me there.  Essentially, I wouldn't want to be any other way.  I don't see that other way as a route to 'happiness'.  I think happiness, actually, is a much over-rated thing.  It's like an orgasm: it's something that we feel briefly, and then it subsides again.  I've read time and time again about people who thought that success, money, fame, possessions, etc would bring them 'happiness'.  But they still need the fix of something... so where do they go next?  What do they do next?  What else is there to buy, consume, achieve? 

Having said all that - yes, I still get very low times.  Not now, though, as bad as they were when I was still in that cloud of unknowing: when I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me.  Nowadays, I try not to think about it as something 'wrong' with me, but as something 'different' about me.  That might not help a lot of people, but it gives me some much-needed reassurance.  And I take that from wherever I can find it.

One Golden Rule I've learned is: never compare yourself to other people.  Ever!  I, too, have relatives who've done very well for themselves - again, in accordance with how our society assesses 'doing well for yourself'.  My older brother has a big house that's all paid for.  His kids have both got successful businesses, houses, cars, the trappings of 'success'.  They all seem settled for life.  And here's me, the only person in my entire family - extended on both sides - with a degree, but in a minimum wage job, in a small rented flat, with no pension pot to look forward to.  No property I can sell to ease my retirement.  No savings, stocks, shares, etc.  No ability to jet off on another foreign holiday at the drop of a hat.  But I'm managing.  I don't want any of the stuff they've got.  I'm fine as I am.

Can I construct a future?  Well... I have seven years to go before I retire.  I'm looking forward to retiring, to have the freedom to focus full-time on the things that interest me: reading, writing, education, maybe a little light traveling.  It may not sound like much, but it's enough for me.  I admit that I do get times when I feel a little hopeless, but that's usually when I'm going through a dead spell with creativity - as I am now - when everything I try to start winds up in a blind alley.  I realise, though, that I'm probably putting too much pressure on myself with it.  So a rest and recharge is probably good.

I don't know if any  of this will help you.  It's just my own perspective.  Again, I do identify.  The whole thing has been - and still is - a roller-coaster ride.

Maybe there's some comfort in numbers, at least.  That's another things that's helped me, too.

I can relate, especially the bit about depression being about not being able to imagine a future. I worked that out myself, recently, but I must have read it somewhere. But I have nailed it. It took me a long time, more than six years, and a lot of practice, but I get it now and I can imagine a future, sort of. It still keeps changing but I can feel that it's that old habit pattern that you describe, so perfectly (the whole thing is described perfectly), that keeps trying to hold me back and now that I can see that, I'm starting to push through it. It's not easy, but it's happening, I'm doing it. 

If you want any tips, message me, but as someone else said, depression isn't inevitable, we can change it and I know that what we feel on one side of the coin, we feel in equal amounts on the other, once we get there. You can get there. But it's a whole paradigm shift. We can no longer see the world through the eyes that we have always looked through, we have to change our view, and we absolutely can, if we want to. 

I know how you feel though. You described my life so beautifully. You definitely have the gift of self expression through writing. 

Thanks, I've tried every class of anti depressants, a few anti psychotics, get really bad side effects even at low doses so can never reach a therapeutic dose to know if they'll even work...only medical option left for me apparently is ECT....

Please make sure you speak to a professional about how you feel. I'm no clinician but it sounds as though you may be depressed which is quite common amongst people with an ASD diagnosis. There are things that can be done to help including medication, talking therapy and I'm sure other things. I know of people who have felt very much better on medication alone once they have given it to time to work.

It might also help to know that not everyone with an ASD diagnosis feels depressed, it is not inevitable that life will always feel this bad. Getting treatment or support may well alleviate the depression and your view of things might change greatly.

Thanks Binary, I will....

I can definitely relate to feeling trapped in your own brain and I do get frustrated by my autism at times, especially when it gets in the way of things I want to do. I do feel like i sit and watch other people succeeding in ways that I cannot. It really does suck at times.

Having said all that, I see my autism as part of me. I wouldn't be a person if you took away my autism. You cant just take away the autistic bits and leave the rest because autism affects me in so many ways, good and bad.

I go through phases of feeling low about it but most of the time I'm pretty ok with being autistic.

Have you ever spoken to a doctor about any of this? Whether it is depression or your aspergers, its obviously having a massive impact on your mood and life. I don't know if they could help you but it might be worth a try.