Hello! I'm new.

[Tom]

38 years of Jingle Bells. Maybe a title for your book?

We may have more issues with songs stuck in our heads then the general population. I haven't seen it on any list of symptoms but on some recent conversations here it seemed to strike a chord with many.

For me its not all the time, just frequent and the song changes depending on what I heard. I do have one song that has occurred on and off more consistantly then the rest. It also does not depend upon a external trigger like the others, and just comes from my mind, apparently at random.

 

[Berkana]

38 years of Jingle Bells. Maybe a title for your book?

We may have more issues with songs stuck in our heads then the general population. I haven't seen it on any list of symptoms but on some recent conversations here it seemed to strike a chord with many.

For me its not all the time, just frequent and the song changes depending on what I heard. I do have one song that has occurred on and off more consistantly then the rest. It also does not depend upon a external trigger like the others, and just comes from my mind, apparently at random.

Lol, yes perhaps that is a good book title.

To be fair, I have had other songs in my head, but that seems to be the default one for some reason. When my son was around 7 I heard him singing it to himself as he was playing and I thought to myself.. "oh no, you have that song too!?"

 

[Ken]

Hi Gerald,

Welcome aboard. So happy you are here! I look forward to learning from you.

I self-diagnosed in 2019. I am now 69 years old. I am 100% certain about my diagnosis; nothing left to question. I feel that a professional diagnosis would just be redundant. There are too many autistic matches to my life history.

My emotions on realizing I am autistic was a mix of relief, resentment and regret. I wished I had been diagnosed earlier.

But then, as I studied and ruminated my life history over the past couple of years, I have lost much of the resentment and regret. As hard as life was, I feel confident that if I was diagnosed younger, it would have changed the outcome of my life. I believe that we are all a product of our environment and experiences. Those hard, traumatic experiences has shaped me to who I am today.

Until discovering I was autistic, I was deeply disappointed in myself - my life. The common theme of my life has been, "what is wrong with you and why can't you just be normal?" In school, I was diagnosed as retarded, but it was a small "hick" school so there was no help for me. Autism was completely unknown. This made life tragically hard; complete with PTSD's, but now that I have looked over my life history, I see that all those hardships has actually benefited the outcome of my life.

It's almost embarrassingly funny that until learning about autism, I didn't even recognize that I had actually achieved my childhood dream of being an electronics design engineer. I now realize that is monumental and I don't believe it could have happened without my autism. So now that I understand my life and why everything was so hard, I feel quite good about it to the point of being proud to be autistic.

 

[clg114]

Welcome to Autism Forums!

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Welcome to the forums

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

38 years of Jingle Bells. Maybe a title for your book?

We may have more issues with songs stuck in our heads then the general population. I haven't seen it on any list of symptoms but on some recent conversations here it seemed to strike a chord with many.

For me its not all the time, just frequent and the song changes depending on what I heard. I do have one song that has occurred on and off more consistantly then the rest. It also does not depend upon a external trigger like the others, and just comes from my mind, apparently at random.

Agree. When looking to calm myself I can hear Return to Pelican Bay by Allison Brown.

 

[Richelle-H]

I was a late diagnosis as well, a bit later than yours, so I relate. Even to a song stuck in your head for like forever. Just be thankful it is only Jingle Bells and not the entire song catelogue of Rogers and Hammerstein.

Oh, and welcome to the site!

 

[MyLifeAsAnAspie]

Welcome to the forums. Two companies! Another Elon Musk type collecting companies . So to what do you owe your success? Do you have better than average executive function?

 

[Rasputin]

Hi everyone,

At this point I am self-diagnosed. I’m 40 almost 41 and my 16-year-old son has been telling me for a while he thinks I have ASD (he said Asperger’s but that’s apparently not used anymore?). I never really thought anything about it, tbh I thought he was joking, not meanly but just joking. The other day he explicitly told me he wasn’t joking, that he was serious. That hit home. My heart knew he was accurate.

All at once, everything changed and nothing changed. I’m still me, of course, but so much clicked into place. Things like my obsessions, my inability to make or maintain real friendships, my ability to intensely concentrate and research or build systems, my freak-outs if a dead strand of hair is on me, my ability to problem-solve, my exaggerated startle reflex, the fact that I’ve had Jingle Bells stuck in my head for at least 38 years. I’ve decided it’s both a malicious Christmas carol and oddly comforting.

The thing I’ve been struggling with is emotionally processing my resentment and disappointment for not finding out earlier. I work so hard at being in this world and I’ve always thought it was my fault that I made things harder than they need to be, why can’t I just be normal, just means I need to work harder at it, right?! I’m successful in terms of career, I run two companies, one is mildly technical, and one is a private practice for wellness counseling where I focus on stress and anxiety management and reduction. I’m fortunate that I have found a way to use my talents for what I love to do, I realize that. But it has been a very difficult road paved with anxiety, stress, and loneliness. I’m happy that there's a place I can be my own brand of me. Thanks for reading!

Welcome to the Forums! I agree with your son based upon the way you describe yourself. It sounds very familiar, and reminds me of myself somewhat. Your business/professional success is admirable, as you pursued your interests and sound very authentic.

I am sure you will find answers to any questions you have, and hopefully will make new friends in the process.

 

[VictorR]

Welcome!

 

[Nitro]

 

[SusanLR]

Welcome to the forums!

I was a late diagnosis also.
It took a trauma to start the ball rolling as my grief counselor noticed traits and my answers to her
questions led her to tell me she was sure I had Aspergers which was complicating the moving on
of the grieving process.

I was officially diagnosis in my mid-fifties.
Then everything fell into place and I understood why my life had been as it was.
That was helpful.

This is a good place to be to learn and share. I've been here ever since I found out that I was
on the spectrum.

 

[Telepath John]

It's fun for me, noticing a small change and figuring out what it was and how to best move forward. What did you do?

That is very interesting. My career was in the computer field. The company was value added computer sales. Most of my income came from contract programming projects. The focus being business systems.

 

[ForestGumpett]

I turned 60 recently and only figured it out in the past year. Yes I got mad too, felt let down by so many. I did go to the teachers at school and request help but got none. I look ok, so to them I must have been. Other people got help, I got failing grades, then put on the deans list at the same time? Nothing made sense yet I never got help. Same with family, even at 60 some family still denies it when it’s so dang obvious it’s not even funny.

Now I’m just happy to be retired and away from everyone - sick of getting judged.

 

[Magna]

Welcome, Berkana! This is a friendly place and accepting of everyone whether professionally diagnosed or self-diagnosed.

I hope you learn a lot here and feel supported.

My personal request for clarification is that you continue to refer to yourself just as you are at this stage of your journey as self-diagnosed. If you choose never to pursue a professional assessment that's perfectly fine!

Again, welcome.

 

[Richelle-H]

By my reckoning, I had to have been conceived within a month after the end of WW2, at the very leading edge of what came to be referred to as the baby boom generation. I knew I was different from a very early age, and so did my mom. She may have been an RN, and she tried her best to fit me into the 'normal world', but I could not relate to anything going on around me.

Jump to the early 90s when I finally received a diagnosis.

In my case, it did little in the way of altering my place in the world. All the repressed anger and confusion at why the world seemed to be deteriorating around me, has never gone away, but knowing the symptomology helped me hide my differences a tad better. I let life more or less drag me along from birth to my diagnosis, and managed to make a decent living with a fantastic number of 'I can't believe I actually got to do that' moments.

Has the anger and resentment from my early life disappeared? I am afraid the answer to that is 'not really' but I have managed to gain a enough enlightenment to let go of a lot of it. The thing is, even though I know it is pointless and inflammatory, I can't help wondering how my life might have been different if I fit in better, but then I realize if that were the case, i would not have had some of the unigue experiences that I stumbled into, and enjoyed. It is a form of mental ping-pong where no clear winner ever gets established. But all in all, I am comfortable and moving forward.

WELCOME to the forum!

 

[Berkana]

I was a late diagnosis as well, a bit later than yours, so I relate. Even to a song stuck in your head for like forever. Just be thankful it is only Jingle Bells and not the entire song catelogue of Rogers and Hammerstein.

Oh, and welcome to the site!

Thanks, and yes it is nice to have a simpler song perhaps running around in there, lol.

 

[Berkana]

Welcome to the forums. Two companies! Another Elon Musk type collecting companies . So to what do you owe your success? Do you have better than average executive function?

Yes, I would say that is accurate. I think it also helped while I was building my career that I put in much more time than others. I was supposed to be in at 8am but would get in at 5am, I did that so I would have hours before people bombarded me and I could get a ton of work done. I would stay later than everyone else as well for the same reason. While most of the people in my same position put in 45 hours and I was putting in 70 or so. That's (give or take) an extra 1,300 hours a year I had in experience over the other people, and I didn't stop during the day to chit-chat, I just solidly worked most of the time. I think just by putting in more time it helped me get ahead and be seen as an expert in my field.

 

[Berkana]

Welcome to the Forums! I agree with your son based upon the way you describe yourself. It sounds very familiar, and reminds me of myself somewhat. Your business/professional success is admirable, as you pursued your interests and sound very authentic.

I am sure you will find answers to any questions you have, and hopefully will make new friends in the process.

Thank you, I'm looking forward to learning more!

 

[Berkana]

Welcome, Berkana! This is a friendly place and accepting of everyone whether professionally diagnosed or self-diagnosed.

I hope you learn a lot here and feel supported.

My personal request for clarification is that you continue to refer to yourself just as you are at this stage of your journey as self-diagnosed. If you choose never to pursue a professional assessment that's perfectly fine!

Again, welcome.

Thank you, I think I will and that makes me really happy. I will do that, I have a professional assessment set up. Although for me, there's literally 0 doubt, but I would like to see what it says. I'm not sure if I think it will validate or give me some closure, or what, but I'm doing it.