Trying to find out how different adults feel their Asperger syndrome has effected them. Anyone care to share?

There are a lot of biographies, mostly Jessica Kingsley Publications (the four page advert that generally comes with Communication. Some of them are American or Australian. Two I've found useful are Marc Fleisher's "Making Sense of the Unfeasible - My Life Journey with Asperger Syndrome" Published 2003, and Luke Jackson's "Freaks, Geeks & Asperger Syndrome - A user guide to adolescence" published in 2002.

There is also Daniel Tammet's "Born on a Blue Day - a memoir of Asperger's and an Extraordinary Mind" Hodder & Stoughton 2006. This is interesting re colour associations.

There's an American one I have read with mixed feelings: Kamran Nazeer - send in the idiots - stories from the other side of autism" Bloomsbury 2006. And another very upbeat American biography is "Look me in the Eye - my life with autism" by John Elder Robinson, 2007 Three Rivers Press, which I really enjoyed.

The trouble with some of these books is they are individual and strong stories, and it isn't necessarily easy to relate to them if some characteristics have that "definately not me" feel. That's the trouble its so variable in so many ways. There could be a lot more about than gets published.

Hope this helps.

Hi

This isb what I posted quite a few months ago, all remains the same but apart from I not have a apprenticeship and I'm 22.

So I recently had a diagnosis for asperger's syndrome and apparently I had it since 2001. I am now 21 years old and looking for a job. I also have OCD linked with it where I have loads of different rituals that I do every single day which I find really annoying and it has gotten worse recently. It's mainly the colour rituals which annoy me like when I look at a certain direction or think of the bright white colour in a vertain direction, I have to think the bright white colour back to the normal direction which I feel is right mainly back from top left to bottom right direction. If I don't do this, I get worried and I think that this bad thing would happen forever etc.

When the doctor gave me more information on asperger's syndrome, I read more about it and the bad thing is, the more I learnt about this disability, the more symptoms I am actually getting that are new when I never had them before. I had a few things what matched but most of them didn't.

One of the main things that I always noticed was the understanding and the social side of things with me, like when someone is speaking to me, they have to speak to me in the simplest possible way ever in order for me to understand what they are saying. If I meet someone new, I find it really difficult to get to know them / talk to them to start a conversation and also knowing what to talk about next. I also noticed that I find it quite difficult to describe what I mean. When I want to say something I’m thinking of, it usually confuses the person then they ask what do I mean by this/that etc... This only happens if I needed to describe something that is formal if you know what I mean.

After I read the symptoms, I hate how now it effects me with buying new things, It recently effects me because for example now I just bought a new gaming headset and I had to test everything on it if it works properly. And since there is a shhhhh sort of sound all the time, it's always in my mind like such as I need to swap it otherwise I’ll regret it in the future like this could of been better/ that could of been better etc, it just gives me a lot of anxiety. I even think up to the stage that there is no point in swapping it since what happens if I swap it for another headset and the headset has a even worse problem? ( I think of this thought just to make myself feel like there's no point to swap it to make my thoughts better). Even with Blu Rays, I need to check there are absolutely no scratches on the case and also after I buy them, I need to test them straight away whether or not it works or not. I also always kept receipts for them thinking it just would be better to keep the receipts, after I read the symptoms, I now always keep receipts because I like to know the exact time and date I bought them just in case that thought comes to my mind in the future. I now even feel that it's better to write the days and times I watch a Blu Ray movie! Like I write it on a piece of paper and then after I written all the relevant information it, I put it in the Blu Ray case to keep.

I think mainly asperger's syndrome effects me with the anxiety, I can get easily worried about certain things and then I would end up doing the rituals, even the littlest things I get worried about, I would not know what to do and the thought would constantly repeat in my head until the issue is resolved. I always think too much negative thoughts about things going wrong.

Taking people literally would be another symptom I realise I have as well, just small things what people say that annoy me (mainly people who I don't know that well) would get me really feeling anger inside me but I won't express the anger out as I hold the anger all in. But I just won't talk to that person for ages and hate on that person for so so so long!

Another point I realised (because I have a friend with asperger's too) is that when I recently been abroad, I was in a hotel, because I couldn't sleep, I ended up writing down numbers repetitively on my notepad. I wrote from the numbers 1 to 3402! This wasn't done all in one go but with a few minutes/hours rest then I continued again. But it only happens when Im bored but apparently my friend said it has to be the aspergers because "normal" people would read or something when their bored.

I also have to have everything or most things absolutely perfect otherwise if they are not I get worried. I'm not normally worried if they are not important things or things I could just change anytime I want.

After writing all this out, I'm just wondering if anyone else has similar symptoms like I have in the way asperger's effects you. Because I know that autism/asperger's effects people in many different ways.

Edit: Oops, I mean I had it diagnosed since 2001 but my parents didn't know what it was, the other doctors said to me they didn't know what it was....

ASPERGERS is stress by social contact and communication, with sensory issues, causing problems as a life story. You can't place a value or measurement on the condition,, it is not a spectrum, it is a condition which is relative to yourself and the environment. Okay we share a few core issues so that we can be grouped together for classification purposes.

There is a lot of shared biomarkers but how you correlate that into data to differentiate between aspie parties would be difficult ?