244- Asperger's syndrome... (1)

The full title of this entry should be something like "self-discovery or redefinition as a person with Asperger's syndrome", but I felt it'd be too long for a blog title, so I left it vaguer.  

My wife had started research to understand some of her friends and relatives, and through her reading and knowing me for over a decade by now, she recognized some aspects of my own personality and started suspecting that some of my personality traits are due to Asperger's syndrome. 

After reading about it, my wife discussed the matters with a mutual friend who agreed with her theory. 

I need to specify that Asperger's isn't an illness, mental or otherwise, but classified as a developmental disorder. 

I started reading a few articles, which will be the basis for this particular blog entry as well as all subsequent ones. The information I'm gathering about the topic seems to mostly correspond to my character and could explain why it's so much harder for me to recover from social phobias which developed early in my life. 

Avoidant tendencies had become second nature, but now as it appears quite possible that I also had Asperger's syndrome, this wouldn't be surprising. 

At the moment, this is rather early in my own research about the topic, as I knew only a few aspects of it and I have no official diagnosis. I suppose I will in 3 weeks when I see my psychotherapist, because evidence seems quite solid.

I just took this AQ test also found here  (just in case the first link breaks at some point).  (AQ stands for Asperger's Quotient)  

in Interpreting my result, I find it's a strong indicator of having ASP (Autism Spectrum Disorder) which includes the milder form of Asperger's syndrome. 

But, further tests should be conducted before confirming. 

I move on to the articles. I started by a series of articles by Kenneth Roberson, who's a Ph. D, and therapist specialized in Asperger's. 

I loved his explanations regarding the problem of empathy, because most lists mention that people with Asperger's don't have any ; yet, the syndrome truly corresponds to me, and to the few others who share it and we all have empathy,  so this article replies to the question that naturally arose "is there such a thing as Asperger's with empathy and compassion". The short answer is yes, but I now invite you to read his fuller explanation. 

...

Ok, now we established that the two aren't mutually exclusive, I can talk about my own case : from other entries, you already know that I'm hyper-sensitive and from those about my veganism, you may have inferred already that I have a lot of compassion and empathy. 

Dr Roberson mentions the notion of too much empathy ; he talks about Markram's research pertaining to the fact that people with Asperger's actually feel too much and this is generally true about me - with the exception of moments or periods of emotional numbing due to cptsd. 

I find it very interesting that their research also found that those with Asperger's have hypersensitivity to experience, where "Everything is overwhelming. Lights, sounds, smells, tastes, and emotional experiences are intensified. The person easily feels overpowered, anxious and fearful". 

All my life, I have had difficulties with light ; in fact, changing too fast between a dark place and a bright one would give me migraines, and I always found it very difficult to swap between dark and bright webpages. It's only a year a half ago that I mentioned this light sensitivity to my ophthalmologist and I got lightly tinted sunglasses with the same bifocal correction as my regular glasses. 

Although my hearing isn't very sharp, and that wearing headphones far too often in the past two decades have reduced my hearing by 20% in low frequencies, I always get startled at sudden or loud noises and have also quite frequently thought the phone was ringing when it wasn't - out of anxiety, or, maybe also AS.

Now, sense of smell or taste aren't too developed but I don't think these to reduce my probable diagnosis. 

In the prior article to that about empathy, Dr Roberson mentions something that has always been true for me : not knowing what should be my proper response or reaction to any given situation. Despite many years of chats online and in person, learning the necessary skills in order to support someone, I still don't tend to know what my response should be. I often give unwarranted advice, with practical tips that I learned theoretically think would help, because I have a highly intellectualised approach to any difficulties and I am a "fixer" in my care of others.

Most of my friends have appreciated this, but every now and then, I was reproached and couldn't fathom why. Even when a supposed friend of over a decade with whom I had only chatted online all these years and who became a therapist had reproached my fixer nature and told me all she wanted was for me to just listen and not offer any advice. I was shocked, both at her over-reaction to my particular expression of my care, and also at her condescending "I'm a therapist, so I know this" reply. 

Whenever I'm invited by friends, I never know the social graces and rules of conduct in terms of participating in conversations.

Just yesterday, I went to read in the park (I'll talk about it more in-depth in an exposure entry), I was invited to sit with a friend who's very aware of my social phobia. I relied on her in many social occasions in the past 2 years, and she was with her boyfriend. I tried my best to participate and talk every now and again, but wasn't sure if I had to leave them alone after my friend had invited me to sit with them as I didn't want to disturb their time together. 

This and many other situations have almost always eluded me. I always need reassurance and guidance. This could be one of those multi-factor issues, and Asperger's would be only a portion of it. 

Growing up in my father's religious cult where upbringing was strict, and with no outsiders ever coming in - apart for the few followers that he had indoctrinated to believe in him as humanity's savior. 

Social events outside school were never a thing. I had only a handful of friends, mostly M from school and R from the supermarket. I had only visited M and one other classmates, and a few family members (paternal grand parents, aunts + cousins), but I wasn't ever taught social graces. Besides, the ones that I did learn were those of a whole different country, with different customs and culture. 

Once back to my home-country, the struggles to re-adapt and deprogram myself from all the conditioning have been problematic at best, and I still remain with the same types of questions about proper emotional reaction and response, as well as those of social etiquette.  

All these issues exponentially grew, because as the years passed, I let my fears and anxieties guide me into total avoidance of social situations, and thus the lack of experience and knowledge compounded with my evasion all helped to make the matters very complex and complicated. 

Now, it appears quite impossible to avoid adding this latest factor that needs an official diagnosis after suspicion and unofficial, self-diagnosis. 

I do know that I always felt very different to everyone else around me - be it because of my hypersensitives, my philosophies, intellectual pursuits or hobbies, or the fact that I was the only vegetarian or vegan in any given room... I always loved my differences and cultivated my uniqueness, but also suffered from feelings of isolation, mutual misunderstandings with those around me, and some bullying. 

As I thought, this post has become quite lengthy and shall receive several sequel entries. 

However, I'll offer you a tiny snippet, with this clue ; this man discusses his own life as an autistic wikipedian, and mentions how Star Trek's Mr Spock's traits have been often identified with autistic spectrum. Just know this : I'm a trekkie and Mr Spock has been my role model during my teens, and I always wished he had been my father instead of my real life one. Well, I'll discuss this and a few more in an upcoming sequel to this post...