Aspies discussed about Self-Diagnosis, CBT, Emotion Delay and Emotion Preference

From INFJ:

I concur with jrjones9933, 

There are some upsides to diagnosis, even self-diagnosis. For my part I realized it myself, about 10 years ago, when a friend of mine, who was a caregiver and teacher of life skills to highly autistic adults, told me that he was able to understand them so well since he was also autistic. I was incredulous, since he didn't seem excessively abnormal. He told me about the spectrum and mild autism, and I immediately looked it up on-line. It was a revelation. Instead of feeling like all my social difficulties were my fault, that I was some kind of freak, I could accept them as the natural outcome of AS. This did wonders for my self-esteem. I'm also better able to manage melt-downs, avoiding situations that I know would be problematic. I'm also able to tell my employer about my limitations if the need arises (not very often).

A sense of relieve, for one, that there is a good size group of people out there with similar challenges, from the social awkwardness to the physical issues (like chronic fatigue and gut issues.) 

I plan to be kinder to myself as a result of this diagnosis.

My parents always knew, I was somewhat different, but I myself never could understand, why all the social stuff had to be so difficult, and why I had to be such faliure in so many respects. 

During my long social case, I have been called "personality disordered" and it has been a pain reading about how impossible I am, how fragile and immature and all that.

I suddenly see, that all their descriptions of " mixed personality disorder " are recordings of asperger difficulties: The poor communication face to face, the nerves and anxiety, the poor handling of multifunction, the need to have things explained more than once, the open confusion in jobs and, and, and.... 

Even my associated psychiatrist has called it "personality disorder" after having described, what I now know to be typical aspie difficulties. 

The two conditions are often confused. 

After having become aware of this, I am much more forgiving towards myself and as a concequence of that, more social, it seems. 

As RedSpiralHand writes: a layer of stress and blame has gone. 

I think, that the only author who wrote something about adults with Aspergers is Tony Attwood. The difficulty is, that adults have so many layers because of learning how to cope, that AS can be hard to detect. 

I would recommend Tony Attwood: "A complete guide to Aspergers Syndrome", "Aspergers Syndrome - A Guide for Parents and Professionals" and Liane Holliday Willey: "Living with Aspergers syndrome". 

Listening to Attwood on youtube is also worthwhile.

_________________

INFJ 

Female

For me even self-diagnosing has been helpful and made me feel less like a failure as an individual. 

I had been pushed relentlessly by my mother and nobody even allows me to say I am socially awkward because I can perform sometimes and seem like I fit in and everything is fine. But it is a performance which is energy expensive and draining and hardly ever fulfilling. OK, I will admit to have enjoyed on occasion having a bunch of people in rapt attention over some story I was telling, but after that I feel like I need a lie down and sort of like I have been used. It is just a performance and they then expect you to be this sparkly thing all the time. It is exhausting. I was taught to act when I was very young so that is what I do. Any time I allow my actual self to come forth I get met with disapproval. Still, that isn't as bad as disapproving of yourself and having now an idea of why I am the way I am I've stop disapproving of myself quite so much. It feels really good.

Welcome and check out wrong planet's "In-Depth Adult Life Discussion" section. It is geared towered mature adults there. 

OnPorpoise wrote "I'm immature for my age, but not in the same ways younger Aspies are immature. It's hard to articulate." 

I feel the exact same way. 

"Wow! I haven't expressed these feelings to any strangers before". 

It is great feeling to do that isn't it? 

Strangers? I have discussed things here I have not told anybody, even myself to be honest. I have discussed things that on other boards would bring days and days of mocking and being laughed at. It's only the beginning for you and it is hugely helpful.

I am very glad that I found out that I had AS 9 months ago. Since then, I have read about 10 books on AS. They gave me so much insights about myself, my strength and weakness that I would not have known if I didn't find this out. I really appreciate that my friend who is a physicist who tutored a lot of autistic children had identified that we have a lot of traits in common. Watching the video from female aspies such as theAnMish also give me a lot of rapport and know that I'm not alone. With the new insights and suggestions from books and various sources, helps me to problem solve lots of social deficits e.g. fail to read subtle social cues. Currently, going with the psychologist and social worker for the intervention program, I am so delighted that within 3 months, I already pick up a lot of effective ways to handle my social situations e.g. I have strong emotion for myself but weak emotions for others, which caused inconsiderate verbal attack toward my friend. So they practice role play by reversing the role, so I can feel the impact of my saying to others feeling. Another effective way is that I was not considering other people's feeling on making decision, so I need to make an effort to put myself as other people in that situation and breakdown all their emotions step by step. e.g. I would be very excited when I see Tsunami because I omit the emotions of the victims. The psychologist asked me assume I am the victim and thought of their emotions. This way helps me a lot because understanding other people's feeling as the priority is a preference not a disability. We just naturally delay and weak in detecting other people's emotions. By reprioritize the way we see things, we can be much better in handle relationships. 

I used to be very low self-esteem, and feel that there is no way for me to be better in social maturity. But with the professional help, I am glad I have found an effective way to keep improving. One day I'll get there.

Reply from Gonewild:
What a nice surprise to hear from a member in Hong Kong. Happy to hear you are progressing socially in a way that helps you. We always hear that Asian cultures stress formal social behavior and conformity to the group over the individual. If true, this must have made being AS very difficult. You know that in the U.S. we are very casual socially, and yet, AS people are bullied, rejected and called mentally ill, especially as children. Until recently, AS females were mostly ignored. I guess being different just isn't acceptable wherever one lives! 
As a westerner, my view of the individual / group relationship is probably different than yours. Fitting into the social majority is not my priority! My goal is peaceful coexistence. 

I'm a geologist, so yes, I saw the earthquake and Tsunami as exciting also. How often as scientists do we see the phenomena we study happen in real life? But I also saw and felt the human tragedy. Emotion isn't only about people; I am very emotionally attached to Nature. I don't like the Neurotypical view of relationships, in which emotion is used to control other people and to gain power. My emotions are more complex and hooked up with reason. I hate lies and injustice. How can that be bad?

I do know I didn't get much of the nurturance and role model that I needed for interacting successfully with other people from either parent. It's great to be able to have an Aspie "structure" and read about it here! I've been dealing with, it seems forever, the unspoken, surface sets of rules of behavior that the average person follows. Usually people judge on verbal responses that are sufficiently laced with emotion. Blurting out, like I do sometimes, either with opinion or thoughts, seems to not always work and I'm working on introductory statements before I say something cognitive, because people like their communications cushioned. So I say something off, hurt someone's feelings or they hurt mine. Neither I or any person, wants to get hurt from what someone says. For no matter who or whatever you are, for example, a person who is bullied at school, the hurts pile up, or snowball, making it diificult later to get out from under the memory of these experiences. it's harder to cope. So it's a necessity to withdraw for periods of time.Then, return, having destressed. I hope the future holds that all people feel understood and tolerated by others: beneficial, both for bringing relief from stress and comfort that you are okay the way you are.

I like your explanation of the NT and Aspie communication insights. From my experience, I couldn't put all those insights in word. But all your explanation helps me a lot to understand how things work better. For me, I always skipped the cushion part of the conversation and enter at the main point. From feedback of mentors, that's bad. I guess I'm too impatient. So I learnt that I have to put some head start and good ending to smooth people's feeling.

This is a very interesting thread. I had CBT for 5-6 sessions last year because of anxiety. The anxiety was because I was going to start practical education to become a medical secretary (which I now work as). When I studied to become a nurse I failed that practical education so that´s where the anxiety came from. I had always been very good in school and had high expectations on myself so failing like that didn´t exist in my life. During these sessions I for the first time brought up that I might be slightly autistic. 

I don´t know if the therapy itself helped that much although it did give me some good techniques. Like thinking about everything I have instead of everything I don´t have, trying to think "in the moment" (which is very difficult). But in the end, it had been me realizing myself that it´s alright to fail sometimes and that I can´t be good at everything. I still find that very hard because I still get angry/sad at myself when I can´t do things quick or good enough as NT:s, but I´m trying. I do feel much better now compare to 1-2 years ago.