People more like me?

[Hadarian]

Hi. I'm new here. I know very little about autism and Asperger's, but I have often wondered if I have some mild form of it. I once had someone suggest to me that I might have Asperger's, due to how socially inept I am and how unwilling I am to interact with people, how much I'd rather be alone, in addition to how sensitive I am to people's energy/feelings and how they have a bad effect on me and my functioning. I replied to her "I'm too stupid to have Asperger's." Indeed, if it were not for how stupid and illogical I am, I might have Asperger's. And I don't know how to get tested for it at the moment.

I have been so lonely in my life due to my social phobia and not being understood and I've lived most of my adult life with severe depression and anxiety. So just now I was watching a video on YouTube about human ET hybrids and the video talked about how these hybrids were appearing in the form of high-functioning autistic and Asperger's people. The woman giving the lecture said one thing specifically which piqued my interest enough to seek out an Asperger's forum--

"Part of the reason they [Asperger's] struggle to socialize...is because normal people have all these masks."

I thought, oh my God, I have to find those people, because this is one reason I'm so alone. I see the people around me as interacting with me and others in such a phony way, that I don't want to be around them. Are there people here who see this? Are there people here who are not like the mask people? Mask people have always told me I'm too serious and I think too much. And I'm too shy and quiet.

 

[MrSpock]

Hello Aura, and welcome to the forum. We seem to have many things in common that could indicate that you have Asperger's aka High Functioning Autism.

I am not like the mask people, and have a very difficult time dealing with them concerning social situations. in fact only yesterday I started a thread to do with trying to understand them - https://www.autismforums.com/threads/social-over-thinking-a-eureka-moment.26194/

There are several tests that can help you determine if you're autistic or not here - https://aspietests.org

We're within two weeks of being exactly the same age. I only found out that I'm on the spectrum a year and a half ago. It has helped explain why my life has been the way it is, why social interaction has been so difficult. Knowing these things makes socializing a bit easier, but it will never be truly easy with most people.

I hope you will find this site as helpful as I have. We're not all going to fully understand you instantly, but hopefully we will each learn to understand the other better than we've been used to out in the real world. Hopefully you will learn to better understand yourself, and therefore have a better idea of what 'normal' is so you can better deal with everyone else.

At the very least, you've found a place full of people who struggle to fit in in most places (or accept that they don't fit in), you ought to fit in rather well.

 

[tree]

 

[Hadarian]

Hi and thank you both.

@MrSpock Your post is very promising. Actually, just before I registered on this site, I took that Cambridge test you have in your list and I got 30/50.

I would not say I have a "difficult" time dealing with mask people, because I simply don't. I'm a recluse. I am not able to work with people in social situations, however. I had a solitary job, but as I suffered so many years from severe depression (suicidal) and anxiety, partially as a result of my solitary and too-intellectual job, I couldn't keep it up and had a breakdown. I tried a job working with elderly with dementia last summer and got bullied so badly by my co-workers that after just three days I got sick leave and I'll never do that kind of work again, even though I wasted 3 years of my life learning to be a nurse's aide.

I could never have thought I had anything like Asperger's, because of how slow I am. For example, I have a hard time following people who talk too fast, especially if they are trying to "pitch" something or pushing some agenda. And the more artificial they are, the more difficult it is for me to process the words they are using and stringing together. I'm also the stupid one in my family. I'm horrid at math and sciences and anything intellectual or logical--except languages. I have to count on my fingers, I can't figure out north-south-east and west in my head, or even left and right sometimes. So there was that, and then I spent all of my adult life trying to save myself from my anxiety and depression, not to mention a paralyzing social phobia. By contrast, I'm so sensitive to other people's thoughts, feelings and opinions that it's debilitating.

I'm going to try to find a place where I live where I can get diagnosed, but getting this kind of help is quite difficult in the country I'm in, because they force you to go through the system and I hate the system. I'd rather manage by myself then be dependent on them.

 

[MrSpock]

You use language much too well for me to believe that you are stupid. I'm not trying to say anything bad about anyone, but I might guess that you grew up around people who told you that you were not smart because you were different, and you believed them. Mathematical performance does not define intelligence all by itself.

People who are unable or unwilling to think well for themselves can follow a sales pitch very easily, they simply believe everything that the salesman wants them to. I suspect that you're trying to figure out what is really going on, and analysing what is being said more closely than the faking person would like you to. You're not supposed to have time to think it through for yourself, the faker is counting on that. It's no accident that it becomes more difficult for you as they become more artificial.

Different is all too easily and often seen as stupid, particularly when the difference is not properly recognized. If everyone else believes that the world is flat and you say it's round, many will think you stupid. The differences that cause miscommunication are not so simply cases of right and wrong, and often neither side is aware of the differences... it's a lot easier to call someone stupid than to attempt to understand them.

 

[Nitro]

Hi Aura Celeste

 

[clg114]

Welcome to AutismForums!

 

[Hadarian]

@Nitro Hi

@MrSpock Well, I've always been a writer at heart, not yet by profession, but working on it, and I'm a linguist, former, sometimes not so former, translator. I could always write. I'm so bad at speaking, and impromptu speaking under certain circumstances is downright traumatic for me. I even have somewhat of a phone phobia with people I don't know or am not comfortable with. It makes it difficult to get friends, because people do not appreciate my very slow approach to getting to know them. They have no patience. And if we have a phone call prematurely, it will be quite unpleasant for me. And not much fun for him, unless he's one of those motor-mouth people who don't notice if you're even listening or not.

By contrast to me, my brother skipped a grade in middle school, went to Harvard and got a PhD from somewhere else. My father has a PhD in psychology. I was never very interested academics and in high school I was mediocre at best in all subjects except French. I cried my way through algebra, nights at home trying to do the homework. My mother was a language perfectionist and became a lawyer. They less often told me in actual words that I was stupid, but they didn't like me at all, I was the "black sheep," because I was the opposite to them--not so great in school, though still better than average, but very sensitive, both for myself and to the feelings of other people. Feelings, or being sensitive oneself and to the feelings of others was seen as a weakness in my family.

The salesman was an example. I know a few languages, and even in English, which is my native language, I can't understand people when they talk fast. My mind just doesn't run that quickly. Also, I tend not to trust people who talk fast. I think people often talk fast when they are trying to distance themselves emotionally from what they are saying, which facilitates their lying.

If everyone else believes that the world is flat and you say it's round, many will think you stupid.

The worst thing about this, is that the nature of my life, especially my childhood and adolescence, has left me with such a tenuous grasp on reality, that I would think myself to be the wrong one in this scenario. My family members, all three, spent so many years gas-lighting me (they call it nowadays apparently), that it doesn't take a lot for me to question my own perceptions of what I experience. (Yet another reason to stay alone.)

 

[Hadarian]

Welcome to AutismForums!

Thanks