Hello! I'm new here...

Thank you very much, Meldrew. You are very kind and brave to tell your story and to come so far without a diagnosis.

I'm so happy that you have a wonderful family and I wish you all the very best. I will take your wise words and find a place for them in my memory palace.

Thanks again,

E x

Hi, I'm a 70 year old male who has, I think, experienced similar problems to those you describe.

I worked all my life, got promotions and ended up running a team.

I could do the work but managing other people was very difficult and I was glad to take early retirement.

I had problems relating to and communicating with people all my life. Not especially serious but enough to make my life difficult and unpleasant. Relationships were difficult to make and sustain. I've been married for over 40 years, have an understanding wife and have two wonderful kids and two even more wonderful grandkids. But how I came to be married is a story in itself and we have had many difficulties along the way.

How I coped was by focusing on and controlling what I needed to do and virtually ignoring everything else and not relying on anyone else. Excluding people except when absolutely necessary. I did that throughout my life. No one got too close. I was a puzzle to people. I lived my life in compartments that never really joined up. Other people's description, not mine. One even told me I was the most controlled person he had ever met.

All the time I felt that I was living on a knife edge. Far from controlled, believe me.

My point is that I coped. With difficulty and by doing what I described above but it worked. For me, anyway.

I only very recently realised that the problems I've had all my life might have had something to do with autism and I've not been diagnosed. Not yet anyway. But I've tried the AQ-10 test on here and a similar test on the Embarrassing Bodies website and the indications are that I am on the spectrum. I've got an autistic nephew but never made the connection with my problems.

If you can pick the bones out of that and find something useful, please feel welcome.

I'm so pleased he is in a school where he is being looked after. It's completely disgusting that a school that knows about his condition still puts his problems down to bad behaviour! It's simply that people with ASD see the world in a different way, they feel like a jigsaw piece that does not fit and become frustrated with the way everyone else functions! What they perceive as bad benhaviour is a coping mechanism and intense emotion at feeling lost.

Once I get a diagnosis, I'll probably write an article in my work's internal newspaper.

Yes, mimicking. I used to do that a lot and even now I observe and use what I see and hear to get by.

So glad I met you, please give your son a hug from me and I wish you both all the best

E x

Hello, thanks for replying.  I hope that you get the answers you need and all the best to you x

Thank you Eryberrie,

My son is now at a high shool with a speialist ASD unit, and they are brilliant. His primary shool was a different matter, they insisted on putting his stress behaviour and meltdowns sown to bad behaviour, even though he had a diagnosis of ASD.

He (I will call him Matt for the sake of the discussion although this is not his name), spends as much time at school learning how to deal with other people as he does in lessons.

Matt finds it very hard to put boundries in his friendships, and is so very trusting as far as other people go.  He often finds himself on the edge of the group mirroring what other people do, and then getting laughed at. It is one of the hardest things to watch your child trying to learn to fit in with theNTs.  I am working very hard with the school to teach him that he has so much more to offer people than the other children who think inside the box.

At least hopefully for you, like for my son, when you get the diagnosis, it will open a whole world of si[upport for you, from plaes like this.  There are also loads of books written by Tony Attwood that are really helpful

Hello Eryberrie, I'm 37 yo male awaiting diagnosis. It seems very likely I'm aspergers. I empathise with all you posted - it's all too familiar.

Allthe best,

Yeah, it's strange because socialising at work is harder than the job. It's the single most hardest thing I have to do in a day. There are people at work who do try and understand. 

Problem is with people with an ASD, we become experts in masking it and training ourselves to be 'normal' that we kind of lose a sense of self.

My theory is that the non-autistic person is born with a manual. They just have to learn it and apply it.  The autistic person is born without the manual and is fed bits and pieces of it at a time. It's like a PC that has a perfectly fine hardrive but the software is all over the shot. We receive bits of this manual and sort it out into a kind of order all on our own. Not only do we have to filter through it, we have to learn it like an academic study...

Hope this makes sense!

E x

Hi, thanks for your comments and I hope that your son gets all the support from the school that he deserves. BW,

E x

I wish I could offer you some advice on how to deal with social situations.  It's painful when you are able to mask your AS and appear "normal" too.  You sit there worrying and wanting to avoid the situations, or just avoid encountering them in the first place.  It's very hard work.  All that changes as you grow out of childhood into an adult is that you learn when to bite your tongue much more.  People remain just as much of a mystery as they ever were, but you pressure yourself to fit in so it causes anxiety.

Hi,

My son has AS he is 12, I just wanted to say hi! How are you, social situation are where my boy has real problems too, you have described it brilliantly!  He has often said that being at school is like being the only zebra in the Serengeti.  Any thing I can do to help, let me know