recently diagnosed at 20 years old

Haha:) "professional snuggler", that is awesome. What a great article, it really helped give an insight into Asperger's and you.

Lydia said:

I know what you mean about beating yourself up when you do better than expected...I think we worry so much about fulfilling roles expected of us by others that we get anxious/feel like a fraud when we don't.

Is Lion a soft toy who helps you cope? I think that is really lovely:)

Feeling like a fraud when i did something i didnt expect of myself is / was a common thing. I realise this is because i am still operating on a "model myself" basis... not really that useful long term.

When i do get to relax (like on holiday recently) i was able to discover a bit more about... well how i am when not so anxious / heavily loaded.

Lion is indeed a soft toy (he prefers the team "plushie" or "snuggle professional") i wrote about him last year for Autism Awareness Day. (jkg3.com/.../on-autism-lion), i also named my company after him (www.pluslion.com) as everyone remembered the Lion!

Cheers,

Jamie + Lion

I know what you mean about beating yourself up when you do better than expected...I think we worry so much about fulfilling roles expected of us by others that we get anxious/feel like a fraud when we don't.

Is Lion a soft toy who helps you cope? I think that is really lovely:)

Hiya,

Welcome, not been here long myself, but its seems a kind and friendly place. I'm a little closer to your age (i am 24), i was diagnosed when i was a teeanger but by reading you anecdote i think i went through a similar stage.

I think the comment above about the inside outside perspective thing is important. I have recently had similar thoughts to yourself regarding (i attended a 3 day event with work, and for the most part, i was the most social person there, the last to head to the hotel etc).... this was nice, but i did feel it felt wierd. I started to get anxoius about why this event had gone so well. Doh.

Anyway, on further reflection i noticed a trend. That event was very easy for me, but then that may be because it was an event organised by experts in disabilities and attended by experts... i was also attending with two other people who had actully done almost all of the complex bits (all i had to do was stick by thier side). What more, i had lots of trust in those two people.  (it wasn't a perfect event, it did end with a minor shutdown due to a loud bar and tummy problems disrupting my sleep).

In that enviroment, I felt SAFER with the people I was attending with. I didnt know what to do when i returned the hotel room, and these people provided me with ample structure (the event itself was made up of a timetabled series of blocks. With many blocks being "pub till late"). I actully liked talking to the other people there and i was relaxed enough that i didnt get to upset if i was having speech issues. Others had issues too.

So, what i am trying to say (at least for me) was that part of my expectation of myself was based on that outside in view of autism held by others. When this conflicted with my expectations of myself, that was wierd. But, when i applied an inside out approach and thought about how i was feeling about different scenarios, my expecations were met.

I hope that makes some sense. I dont know if i am the only person who beats themselves up when they do BETTER than they expected, but I do and its not really a very clever thing for me to do. 

In the end, the diagnoses is a key to services and a starting square in the game of life. For me, it allowed me to make some definitive choices (i shall carry Lion with me everywhere, i will buy a bed i like to sleep in regardless of its shape) and actully those few changes made a HUGE change to my baselevel anxiety and before it knew it, i was more able than i could have previously imagained.

Kind regards,

Jamie + Lion

That is a really interesting analogy, thanks. I think you are right - if we don't know the rules, how can we know that we aren't following them?! I hope that you too can find the diagnosis helpful. :)

Hello!

Lydia said:

I am really struggling to accept the diagnosis, however, as I am confused about what Asperger's really is. I also don't feel like someone who doesn't 'get' or enjoy the company of other individuals; I just struggle with social anxiety and understanding the rules.

Well, that sounds very Asperger'sy to me!

I was recently diagnosed as well, and I'm now 42.  It seems to me that part and parcel of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs), such as Asperger's, is difficulty understanding how these ASDs affect us, and that this is itself a consequence or manifestation of our difficulty "understanding the rules".  Because we have difficulty understanding some of that social stuff, we then have difficulty understanding what it is we're trying to compare ourselves and our ASDs with, and so we have difficulty understanding our ASDs.

It's a bit like trying to understand what makes a motorbike a motorbike, by comparing and contrasting it with a car, when you don't really know what a car is in the first place.  And even when you do get the hang of it, you've still got puzzles like how to categorise quadbikes and Reliant Robins.

And then there's the problem that ASDs can seem quite different as seen from the outside, by other people, to how they seem as seen from the inside, by us ourselves.  We can enjoy the company of other people, participating in social activities, and so on, while having difficulty doing so, and tending to avoid such things because of the difficulties, including anxieties, that we have.  From the outside, we might then seem like we don't enjoy the company of other people, and so on, when really it's that we don't enjoy the difficulties we have and can also have difficulty simply getting involved in social stuff in the first place anyway.

I think it's also helpful to know that other people, who don't have ASDs, also have difficulty understanding this stuff.  It's not only us who have these difficulties understanding ASDs and how they affect us.

Does that make sense?  I'm still learning this stuff myself; it's an ongoing process.

Anyway, I hope you find your diagnosis helpful, even if it seems difficult to make sense of at first.

Thanks so much for your reply. It is very kind and helpful:)

there are lots of other people on the forum who are in a similar state of confusion about what they have and what it means to their lives.

For me, diagnosed two months ago, the diagnosis has been liberating and really positive. I'm 56 and always liked being with other people and I didn't realise I was different! I did go through life repeatedly being misinderstood and getting into arguments. I thought this was normal but apparently most people don't get shouted at by people at work, people in shops etc.

Social anxiety is common among sufferers. There are other people on the forum who really struggle to get out of the house at all.

There are lots of other people on the forum who are nearer your age (some younger, some older, both male and female)- i'm in a very small number of posters who got here very late in life!

my advice is that you can relax a bit now as you will start to understand that it isn't a bad diagnosis at all. There is lots of help and advice available here on the forum and i have found that this is enough support for me. other people are more or less affected and some definitely need other support from other agencies but you might find that, for your aspergers, you can get a lot of your puzzles answered right here.

don't apologise for being self obsessed! I think of this as we have difficulties reaching out and being understood by the world so we often turn inwards. Autism means self focused but that is different from being selfish or narcissistic. We are generally too open and trusting and desperately want to be social but somehow don't have some of the skills to get what we want.