Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello everyone,
I am a 24-year-old female suffering from what seems to be a life-long state of depression. This depression has been with me for as long as I can remember and basically stems from some kind of deep chronic loneliness I can't understand. In trying to understand this loneliness, I have always had questions about who I am and why I am so different. I have considered bipolar disorder and ADHD. But in my search for answers, I came across the help4aspergers website that listed characteristics specific to women with aspergers, which has been making me think.
Before I decide to seek professional help, my question is, can someone out there please give me their own opinion as to whether or not they think I could have Asperger's Syndrome?
The challenge is that I do not seem to experience the 3 main social/communication aspects of the disorder strongly, although I can say that there are times when I do.
Here is a run-down of the my basic eccentricities/habits:
1.) I am a loner and introverted. Although the irony is that I have a very sunny and outward personality (people say that I am quite hyper and high energy), I find it difficult to sustain real friendships with people. After being introduced to people and getting along perfectly well, I disappear.. I don't know why I do this.. But it's as if I get panic attacks imagining what I would do or say if I had to hang out with them..
2.) In school, I had only one or two close friends. I was definitely an outsider and couldnt mingle the same way that the oher children did. I had a tendency to daydream quite a lot.Teachers said I was "physically present but mentally absent."
3.) I read the same books over and over. My main interests are fantasy/science fiction, children's books, and memoirs.
4.) I had one obsession in high school, which was music. All my awards were music related. In fact, this was the only area of interest I had and bothered pursuing.
5.) When I was younger, I hated being touched and felt very awkward when people would show physical displays of affection towards me. However, after my last relationship, I like hugging people now (people I am close to).
6.) As a teenager, I wore the same 3 shirts and 2 pairs of jeans my entire life and never bothered about fashion.
7.) I had very poor personal hygiene when I was younger. It was as if other girls my age knew instinctively to be squeaky clean and pretty, brushing their hair and all that. I was known for my messy hair and unkempt uniform and sometimes did not take a bath.
8.) I can be incredibly emotionally immature and moody for the shallowest reasons. Ex. not eating my favorite food for the day. Not having my usual time to daydream.
After many years of knowing myself for having the above eccentricities while I was growing up, I thought I had just matured and was over all these.
But my recent corporate experience has left me severely depressed and in a state of trauma. I felt like an outsider, a child once again.
Someone help me, please. Would appreciate your feedback.. Thank you very much.
Well now let us see LeaST ThoRNY I have quite an act to follow, for I have done much and journeyed hard and with a solitude that takes much courage. But it is a compliment to be alikened with the fervour of youth and the steadfast continuity of a keen knowledge.
I am the second of three generations of Autys and we have a great variety of different expressions on the spectrum. I KNEW so the diagnosis was a formlity that the professional gave in the process of catching up with the things that I and mine know.
I am not a great respector of the medical process or all of its professionals and vet them with a good deal of scrutiny as they have yet to catch up with the skill and understanding that is gained from being part of a generational Auty family. They have a lot to learn and much to prove before trust is part of the elemental understanding that comes with any medical position or skill.
I see them as eduated walking libraries and when I meet one who is willing to cooperate in imparting knowledge, so that I can enhance my own understanding of my own condition. It is my own experience that NT people have yet to grasp the extent of diversity and different cosmology that is part of the AS condition and all the while we are refered to as a subset of health and mental faculty we are a long way from being able to entrust our well being to the willing but largely destructive willingness of those who want to help but are not yet in the position to understand the complexaties of autistic as healthy.
Whilst this is possible so much of what we are cooersed to comply to is far from healthy for us and only a version of health that in itself is often an inherited story of hear-say passed down the generations of subjugated people who are far more lost than they know and languish in the sorrows of hidden health that they do not know as real or seen to them or theirs for generations.
The blind and sick leading the blind and sick indeed. I we are to be healthy then we will need to lead and inform inspite of the preconcieved ideas that aboud for so many.
WB
Gird yourself, for the journey is long and the road rough, it is hard to find the path of the self and keep it especially in the forests of life. The mountains of life can sap the inspiration from your very bones and rob you of the rewards that the pinicals offer. So be wise and steady and do not rush and remember what it is you seek and why it is you journey. There is much to rob you along the way, be proud of all you are and shake off shame for it is a coat theat is readily handed to you when it is cold by the unwhitting.