So.....received my Aspergers diagnosis today

It sounds bad , as you're describing something that causes you distress but I'm glad that I'm not alone in how I interpret these things.

I know (surely) that not all of the emails that appear to be personal attacks, are actually personal attacks but where I struggle to understand communication, I just can't see what are actually confrontational and what is just a normal email that someone neurotypical would dismiss quite comfortably.

Your point about continuing to torture yourself over issues long in the past does strike a chord. I do the same.

I don't know about you but I have an outstanding long term visual memory (and an equally appalling short term one) and I think that this whilst in some ways is a good thing to have, it does make  the bad things which the memory should dull, ever present.

I won't bore you but I can "see" conversations from decades ago which people who were there will deny ever happened and they don't understand why I'm so vehemently insisting that they did. It's not their fault, they truly can't remember them and this is probably a function of a healthy mind/CPU

Regarding meltdowns. Yes I have them, although they are reasonably rare and predictable. 

I have to do some presentation work in my current job, which as you can imagine is quite gruelling for people with diagnoses like ours. 

These are the areas in which I've suffered meltdowns.

The biggest one ever was a disciplinary that I had to give a senior member of staff in November 2014. It should have been very simple.

We agreed that his Managing Director would start the meeting by laying out the issue. I would then explain the regulatory position and the problems it had caused and the HR Director would close with the disciplinary part of the meeting.

Sadly, when it came to my turn to speak, without warning, I completely lost the ability to speak at all.

With the panic building, I sought to force myself but nothing but verbal diarrhoea came out. 

This incident I doubt will ever leave me and the company (well meaning but misguidedly) made me go on what was a very expensive leadership course to try to fix me without really considering where the problem lay.

This was just as bad to be honest and anyone who has ever been on a 5 day residential management course will know that they are intensely inwardly focused and all played out in a room full of strangers, which as you can imagine was about the worst thing in the world for me.

There have been other meltdowns but nothing as significant as this one.

I don't include, the daily mini meltdowns where people's behaviour moves me to irrational anger to the point where I can't breathe.

Your work and how you are expected to act, perform and behave sounds very similar to mine .

It sounds bad , as you're describing something that causes you distress but I'm glad that I'm not alone in how I interpret these things.

I know (surely) that not all of the emails that appear to be personal attacks, are actually personal attacks but where I struggle to understand communication, I just can't see what are actually confrontational and what is just a normal email that someone neurotypical would dismiss quite comfortably.

Your point about continuing to torture yourself over issues long in the past does strike a chord. I do the same.

I don't know about you but I have an outstanding long term visual memory (and an equally appalling short term one) and I think that this whilst in some ways is a good thing to have, it does make  the bad things which the memory should dull, ever present.

I won't bore you but I can "see" conversations from decades ago which people who were there will deny ever happened and they don't understand why I'm so vehemently insisting that they did. It's not their fault, they truly can't remember them and this is probably a function of a healthy mind/CPU

Regarding meltdowns. Yes I have them, although they are reasonably rare and predictable. 

I have to do some presentation work in my current job, which as you can imagine is quite gruelling for people with diagnoses like ours. 

These are the areas in which I've suffered meltdowns.

The biggest one ever was a disciplinary that I had to give a senior member of staff in November 2014. It should have been very simple.

We agreed that his Managing Director would start the meeting by laying out the issue. I would then explain the regulatory position and the problems it had caused and the HR Director would close with the disciplinary part of the meeting.

Sadly, when it came to my turn to speak, without warning, I completely lost the ability to speak at all.

With the panic building, I sought to force myself but nothing but verbal diarrhoea came out. 

This incident I doubt will ever leave me and the company (well meaning but misguidedly) made me go on what was a very expensive leadership course to try to fix me without really considering where the problem lay.

This was just as bad to be honest and anyone who has ever been on a 5 day residential management course will know that they are intensely inwardly focused and all played out in a room full of strangers, which as you can imagine was about the worst thing in the world for me.

There have been other meltdowns but nothing as significant as this one.

I don't include, the daily mini meltdowns where people's behaviour moves me to irrational anger to the point where I can't breathe.

Your work and how you are expected to act, perform and behave sounds very similar to mine .