mark2

Hi BD o/ Kez that fills me with a lot of hope. I know real when I hear it and Ive saved your posts. You know this stuff. And youive pretty much tidied up what I wanted toknow here. (no, needed to know)So far its been awild few days I must say finding Ive been on the specvtrum all my life. Its a shock...ok not like a friend who heard they had lung cancer... but still a shock, its a real thing, and then it explains all my history so thats good, but then you xee what a mess its all been so its dismal...down up down up lol... this pack of how to go forward is great. Ive started already I mentioned to my first friend tonight that Ive passed the short online aspie test and it figures...no probs etc...but I was knocked over by her reply...gobsmacked is accurate "You have Aspergers. Of course you do. You re a man" I was like "Umm...I dont need this...this doesnt compute". But luckily BD hs just explained it...its a joke like multitasking and manflu etc. Goooood! Or not good probably from what BD says. I dont mind being the butt of a joke as a guy but it isnt doing autism any good probably. Or maybe it is if its raising its profile. Sometime maybe people will want to know the positives more. Tally I can see what youre saying more now. Somehow neither you nor BD expressed it well imo but youre saying Autistics dont have any more relationship problems thasn NTs. Yes thats fair enough. Its just my own life was full of them and I didnt realise thats because I just didnt know. I was the cat that thought it was a dog...or vice versa as you will? Extending the philosophy if hyou dont know ANY particular major thing about yourself it will have heavy consequences whatever it is. Thats cool. As Gary said right at the stsart it really doesnt matter me being definate. I certainly dont need a dx. I just need to say to close friends Ive had unusual amounts of relationship difficulty, Ive passed the online aspie test. It may or msy not be right but, in circumstasnces its not nothing so its worth taking on board blah blah blah......'total realism' ? And actually thats pretty much the minimum truth to get the subject introduced and probably done with for a bit ...nothing hidden thats the main thing ? Well its good to hear that everyones not been having such a bad relationship time as me. Erm I suppose (well youve got to laugh havent you )

Im sorry but I cant stop laughing at Mels post. Funny things are often close to the bone?... but seriously I really wouldnt like to be in that guys shoes! (gtg...washning up!)

Hi Tally, Lol at you sticking yr tongue out...you should try to write looking at that! Yes I guess the fact everyone has relationship problems will be a good reminder for people with an ASD dx. Its a comfort that everyone else has problems too. But for people like me WITHOUT a dx its not really possible anyway to forget that NTs have relationship problems. Thats 'the place Ive been living' as it were. Babylon! But, whatever, I am statisically very common I keep my coal in the bath I mean I am the standard single person with unknown relationship problems. Masses of us nowadays will live alone and just wont, quote, 'meet the one that lasts' Thats what I was saying about the wonky ski earlier ...if you cant fix it now...so when will you. Quirks? Could be. Almost certainly that will be a proportion of us...you only have to meet ppl with breath that will fell an ox and possibly dont know about brushing their back tongue as well as their teeth. But theres not that many. But mind blindness is a differnt category to a quirk isnt it. And if you then dont understand what you are...to present yourself to the other.... then there will not be a safe contract as it were. So the relationship is structurally faulted at the start....because its voiding what Kez is putting down as the primary rule. Lets take the young woman I mention above? Because I couldnt even mention that I score high for autism (I didnt know) she will have thought its was a reasonable proposition that she could take me on, present with child after a bit, changbe my behaviouir and enthuse me to ambition to suit her future life-view. Im an amiable guy so thats a reasonable guess perhaps but using Kez' formula...which sounds like emminent sense to me... given mind-blindness thats not going to work and this youing woman's feeling over the years will be of pulling her hair out because whatever she tries hes loving his family ok but sticking with his habits and not playing the social-advancement game as well as she could do on her own. It would be like her trying to push wet mud uphill! The conclusion is inevitable. End of relationship number one. Thats not quirks really is it? The difference between Kez' bro and me is we have the same problem but he knew he was on the spectrum(I would guess)...or somehow his partner did...there was a realistic proposition which she accepted. Whereas friends said to me, let it go, you are the most unsuited couple weve ever met. I could hear that but how would I know for myself? Im mind blind...and blind to being mind blind! # But hey luckily its a 'conundrum made flesh' that probably doesnt occur much now. Im still guessing a bit but I think its possibly from the bad old days when some people thought that if at all possible it was best not to stigmatise HFAs by telling them! I was hypnotised ...like they used to do with lefthanded ppl and it screwed up their lives too! Lol Anyway...thats sorted out why I'VE had difficulties. And Im really indebted to Kez description of how to do relationships...its a gem. Any more on ideas and tips on relationship success for us all though?

Oh thats fantastic Kez. 'matching expectations with reality' ...so was your brother able to accuratly present his difficulties to his gf? ...online that would be I suppose. I guess he must have been. Myself I am so jealous there because my parents didnt tell me a thing in my youth...ever actually!... (which was probably more than common in my day). It was probably so I didnt feel stigmatised but that really didnt help me because then I couldnt explain myself properly. I remember 'something' going on while I was growing up...some fuss about me that I wasnt party to, and I remember being hypnotised by a leading london consultant at one point. But I was told absolutely nothing. So I had poor self awareness and ability to accuratly present myself it seems. It checks...my big relationship broke up for my percieved 'lack of ambition'! It was like she had been mis-sold...which she had in a way!

Bid. As someone with a weaker limb we get by...dont worry And , your fixation... the wedding photos?... but she will have sorted out how to put her arm round someone elses by then...a long practiced strategy option for if she wants it What to do with an arm will be less problem to her than you would have with a spot on yours. Certainly wont spoil her day. atb Mark

Relationship success is one thread which is GLARINGLY absent. Do we have anything positive about relationships and perhaps aiming at tips for others? This is a site challenge! I was totally naive about my condition a few days ago. Nothing has beaten me down in my life but with relationships for nearly sixty years Ive been like a beetle trying to climb a glass jar...nearly made it that time etc. I dont want younger adults to have to be here too? So lets sort it out...whats worked for you? Or what didnt work but looked hopeful nevertheless? ...a stroll into the positive? I cant see what I can offer myself but I want to work at it after Debs thread 'relationship problems'. That was so good (? 'real')that Ive finally dived into trying to find myself a celibate relationship. This is just me, but celibacy here is not so much an age thing (59),as a hunch that celibate friends/partner might work. Im just touring the dating site opportunities at the moment I might have something on that soon. But what has quickly come tolight is that I dont KNOW much about why my relationships come to pieces. Theres a sort of blankness...blindness could be the word...but its also a pressure in the head which happens when important stuff is being missed (Ive never been able to not go down with it though) And a vortex and paranoia And on that...stupidity!...a few times over... another relationship comes apart in acrimony. In my case as you can see 'whats happening' at such times is work in progress but I dont need finish it before asking here about how we get relationships to work. Do we need them? YES WE DO!!!! I have been so solitary and it is very unlikely to be anyones best way I promise! All one is looking at out there is oblivion (you can either push it a bit more...or live to another day but either way its coming) Is that a life? (Is that a life ...on its own?) For me its not in finding how yet more equipment works (like...what do you need to know! ) but finding how to work a relationship. Simply if 'relationships' were equipment... a problem putting on cross-country skis maybe... then long ago Id have stopped faffing or frozen to death. Id have got on my radio, described the problem...and then I would fix it. Lol.

Well... thats it in words then?

This is an old thread I know but its a common and most unfair source of anxiety the feeling that anyone can dial a fraud line and be a nuisance to you. Sadly Ive had this but the situation can be fairer than you'd tend to think in your vulnerability. Six years ago everyone around here was a savage cutthroat property developer (you have to laugh really? ) but one thought hed get some property advangtage by making up a story and around came the dreaded investigators... and, blow me, they were as good as gold. It took them about two minutes to see it was malice...and whats more they told me what houese it was!!! (and why not, they dont have to take being monkeyed around with?!) So...since then I have this demarcation as it were. Anyone can phone anyone. Its their right and Im not even going to think about it....because the people who pick up thosecalls are not idiots and they owe you a legal duty of care and know they do. So all that unknown 'stuff of nightmares' is a set-piece/a black box/'no need to go there' thing? ...which is a useful concept when youre a bit depressed? But everything else IS your business and you go at it from small beginings with a charm offensive...as has been said. Its not brilliant maybde but being nice to people is better than... a kick in the teeth? Mark PS Salisbury Hill???...would that be Little Solsbury Hill?...eagle etc and all that nonsense?

Id go with the psychologisty Mumble...were all saying that? Would it would be me that brought in this post-injury 'recoverable autism' idea? In which case Im SO sorry... but if so scrap it. Its a psychologist trying to roughly explain something to me...and in fact she did say this is very rough idea dont quote me (lots of shame) I forgot that and have...and if it was me...then now were in this mess! Grr!). I think bd is right. And there are differences between us... you were out longer than me...nine days for me... but I died and oxygen loss got to my brain. Different? I had a substantial level of short term mem injury (25% which is more than it sounds they say) and effects which you seem to have been spared thankfully...8 years on I couldnt communicate like you do....my adjustment prognosis was 18 years And this (junior)psychologist...who was only doing an FSIQ test...seems to have got it wrong in thinking what she was seeing was a temporary thing. ( my injury is clearing and I can remember that as a child I was substantially the way I am now mentally) So thats a big difference. Rather different to your skilled diagnosis? So everythings saying your diagnosis is probably correct it seems here. And btw (side issue)...re your study thread... I had a £1.5k computer/software bought for degree course and was over impressed. Did I deserve it?... etc. But it became obsolete pdq whilst my disabilities are with me for life. So no guilt? It needs firmly seeing as just a temporary attempt to rebalance things for you.

Thanks Tally, Yes I think now I felt it right straight off. I will have lost my coping strategies at injury. Ive had ASD all my life Im reasonably sure now but the psychologist guessed the other option (reasonably). I dont think I can use a diagnosis. Ive been thinking off and on since gary's post and, firstly theres nothing financial at stake, and I get enough ###### as multi-disabled at the moment! I scored 32 in the online little test btw And my guess is its possibly quite mild autism but was worse,more frightening, for being completely naive. Talking of which...and talking frightening!... I remember from aged maybe 11 (1963) a small dark room way down a dingy hospital corridor, a psychologist, and last thing a swinging fob watch! And a weird feel to it! Anyway...now its just marvellous. Yes ok strategies Ill check out now. Mark. PS Theres a weird jigsaw going on here Ive realised I was also sort of hypnotised after injury 1994 to implant my stm injury data. Which raises the possible that a childhood hypnotic fix was dislodged?...but thats a wild wild guess! I dont know how these things work and it hardly matters?...erm maybe! Why on earth???? No idea...but previous to first hypnotism I remember someone finding my eye holding faulty (which annoyed me as intrusive as it is of course!) Does hypnotism for ASD circa 1963 ring any bells with anyone? Did they do that?

Oh this is a lovely thread...and I totally agree with Mumble...it is so honest and enabling it has greatly affected me. Im happy to out myself straight off as first guy looking for celibacy... ...and note this is not easy for a guy, and natural born sex god, plus the myth that without sex partner we explode in some pythonesque way (erm, well maybe the last bit is not actually true but... I have to keep to the accepted party line??) But now for 20 years Ive been wanting a platonic/celibate partner. Its not easyof course but its longed-for realism. The reason is the destructive hammering effect of picking hopes up and having them hit the rocks....ditto for the people I care for. All my life. And yet never has there been a person who so much like holding hands etc. That is so cruel and I would much much rather preserve an active friendship. But Im going to take Mumbles route here of not saying much more...not needing too ... because really its been said by Deb. <'> Im just the male version of it, near enough. My reason for not getting anything acvtively sorted and just drifting along is probably as simple and silly as Im better at gardening/mechanics. Im at screaming poiint having lost someone (relationship)I care for and when I look to be positive in this area it probably isnt all that difficult. Im going to date platonically. I dont know but at 59 I seem to be well older than all you...but, I tell you what, I wish id got my bum in gear 20 years ago on this when I knew that somehow me into relationships didnt go. With some real introspection I could have done the laddish stuff and still seen it thirty years ago....easily. Why doI think it will work platonically? Just because I enjoy being friends initially that will have to go somewhere even if it doesnt get steamy? Well i dont know iof thats true. And Ive a hunch that somehow it isnt...that there may be more energy for respect and nurture in a platonic thing. OK! So I checked on Google and theres dating agencies!...covering all the perms of bonk-free behaviour or of course well known free site options probably needing a bit of creativity? I dont know, havent sorted it yet, but the way I feel is go for it. Get off bum and get proactive Thanks, Deb and all, Mark

Oh, and you don't need to write an essay every post, condense your writing, takes less time to read Good point Robert but its already taken. I wont need a site to put down my blog dont worry ..Im already doing short posts. And I wont condense things ...that doesnt fit with stm injury.. Instead of condensing its easier for me to keep the information down but.. o/. I just had a lot to describe earlier And being here... on what was only my second day ever of knowing I am on the spectrum... was entirely fabulous For example... Echo lal lia...?... ...there are words and phrases and people's stories in here telling me more about my life than I could have imagined. Similarly I like the energy of your blog . Its got a radicalism that I remember from being regional organiser of DAN fifteen years ago and you move it on a bit perhaps. "Stuff the medical model...the world is our oyster" You got it/ we get it. Is it a blogs worth? Yes it is... its a good read....and then we have to achieve...to solidly work away from the medical model? OK... I can keep it short when I try!...and thanks for the links!

I’m sorry but I wasnt saying NT ppl are not bright Lynden. The context is the whole of humanity needs its parts. And that applies to the intellect as much as anything else. Just as a simplified pertinent example... verbal intelligence needs non-verbal intelligence? And I was talking on a community wide basis ...our future skill requirement as a species will only come through helping the less abled at whatever we need to do. Lol Mumble...I took the gravity route...once! I can vouch for if it were as simple as that we would not have our light gymnastic skeleton for jumping back up! We climb out of trees very carefully because our skeletons are so fragile...because getting back up fast is the selected-for survival skill. We're asymmetric in this way...much harder climbing down than up.

That is a cracking bare-knuckle argument you two just had. Myself I think its a draw and youre both right just describing different bits of the elephant. I think Robert scores on diversity...itll prove anything but strangely that doesnt fault it. And Tally creates havoc with the too-cosy link of autism/computing. Yes lets pull it all apart...test test test... but the core of this will not fall. Those who talk do not see and those who see do not talk. Neurotypicals need autistics....theyre really pretty dim in some places! As we're talking evoluition Tally how we got out of the trees is pretty damn simple...but not for those who communicate too easily and pass their grades to become studiously loaded with bias. And for sure not everyone needs everyone at the first tranche, or the second...or the third...but eventually without the rest of us... little people of all sorts... who would then stand on the shoulders of giants? They cant exist on their own. Diversity rules? So we just keep talking as the man said? lol. Thanks, Great stuff!

lol

hi Gary, Thanks for the welcome and I really take your does it matter point. It largely doesnt...life goes on lol... but it might help to be able to say 'Im like this...and give someone a frame of reference...at times when its very important to be seen to have given fair descrip[tion? Just saying 'I have no luck with relationships to date' can be seriously underrated. I can remember it being taken as a light wry comment before now....exactly what it sounds like. But I guess now Ive passed my autism test (when trying not to, other than being completely dishonest)that might be enough of an indicator that Im not messing about And no Im not going to talk details of my strange year. That would be against the normality of it really. Generally what it felt like is it came after years of difficult communication...whilst hindered by my stm injury in wording things up myself I was particularly noticing I couldnt understand other people as well. At the start youre so injured you dont notice...but as the cotton wool comes off over the years and youre increasingly trying to interact there comes an almost unbearably miserable time of heightened understanding of poor self expression and contacts. I visualise it like a squeezed brain needing to pop out somewhere!... but obviously its communivcation distress forcing the brain to above normal achievement (well I think so anyway). NDE is a piddley non-existant subject imho. Its a created-out-of-nothing thing. The really big mantra in that area is the two forms of death. So many cant get their heads round natural and medical death....with 'NDE visuals' slipping out from the false dichotomy. A starting point obviously is youve seen both 'deaths' a few times (or youre just running on dogma?) but even so it seems these two things... like quite and quiet and new-clear and nukeular... some people just cant see! And once natural death is located conceptually then unsurprisingly given resus techniques a lot of us come back....and the prelude to that death is 'energy in less than energy out' so people are going to be in a low energy state by definition. And thats even enforced too ,in a way, by survival mechanisms? Help me if you can with what the inner auditing mechanism is called? I never knew the name. Its the thing that takes over...body management system? like safe mode is it...Ok that energy auditing system will switch consciousness off simply as a waste of energy 'like flicking a light switch'. So you could ask ...given energy saving is the top issue, why does consciousness come back and I believe myself its a survival tool ...for a check back through the memory for a survival clue... and youre conscious of it. You may just come up with once having heard a tampax can plug a bullet wound...I think its for that sort of reason? Its the memory and if you led a religious life then there would be religious iconography around obviously...and so on but, option a), theres nothing survival mode can find in which case the pressure is off. No-one procreated at this stage so theres never any inherited survival hassle...freedom!... just the beauty of life and death. OR, option b ) there IS some remembered thing survival mode can find in which case it may fail and you will die...see option 'a'?... or it will suceed and you will live...lets say ' option c'? a, b, and c...two deaths and a nearly...have in common a romp back through your memory in the lowest energy state imaginable so unsurprisingly any combined imagery from that lot however amazing is as weighty as dreaming (not a bad analogy?...sometimes you wake up in morning with answer to something?...and can always take it or leave it that an ex-partner/ fiery Archangel told it to you?). So in summary its like dreaming but less chance of doing anything with it ...2-1 youre way past life by then? Hence I see NDE as nothing myself. But Ive only been here five minutes and Im bang off topic! Your fault Gary!

Lol...its complicated! Ive just read the thread 'why are there so few aspies on line' (which is why Im here basically...for inf?) and now I see theres the problem of those with hypochondria. Arghh...complications! I dont THINK Ive hypchondria.Ok who does...but this quote from the thread seems more relevant to me 'how can I possibly be autistic? everything seems perfectly normal to me' ie.....Im NORMAL NORMAL NORMAL...and yet things never have been! Mainly its relationships that crucify me...all relationships and especially close ones have always been a problem. Normal peolple date and split up but for me Ive only to get totally happy having met someone and then its like all the carbon atoms in the universe suddenly turn against me and Ive no idea why or how...and 'why me'!. And ok its reasonable to be like that for the first teenage crushes but this never stopped and I seem to have 'distanced' somehow in my mid years...busy with material things and given upon love.I dont know if I can say that really but I was at least aware I had a funny version of it which needed looking after. And im generally very self-reliant. And then aged 42 I had a massive climbing fall which broke my spine and everything (chest and every other bone almost ) and killed me briefly four days later. It was a very late resuss that got me going again but with loss of oxygen to my brain. That gave me amnesia and a hefty short term memory injury and took me out of socialising for nearly two decades as everything was complete mayhem then unless I was on my own. Since adjustment Ive aimed to be more open to new relationships...same probs as ever... but there was a tragic recent one. She appeared to me to leave me in a nasty way but I liked her very much and she'd been very ill so I followed my feelings and kept in touch and six months later Ive managed to get it from her side. Apparently she had wanted to get back together from the start but I was really rude to her in some texts so she gave up (thats painful tome but as yet it doesnt seem to compute with her that I was in enormous anguish at my end). Anyway I want to learn from it and what is odd with me and what I can do about it. I first latched on to Aspergers on Google when I saw oxygen deficit was linked...but it didnt seem likely that MID-LIFE anoxia could have caused this...and anyway Id always had it...whatever it is!...but then I wondered if Id had it from birth and somehow created a patch for it...patch in software terms...resulting in this distanced midlife Id mentioned? A patch that was somhow trashed by the big injury and my subsequent vulnerability. In the stm injury peak year for anguish in 1998 I had a savant year where I was undrstanding problems that were hundreds of years old....but it got so I didnt want to solve anything else. Ie 'I wouldnt look as long as the anguish would go away'...a trade? And it did thankfully ...leaving me with a huge feeling of amazement and sympathy for savants. The only other thing to mention was growing up. Balancing things ws my trait...towers of things...(is this autistic) not ordering them in size which Ive read is a symptom. If I did that I've forgotten it. Otherwise I was reading at three but seemed to lose interest in academic education by around 11 and went for art in mid teens. Anyway, here I am now just visting unless we think I might have Aspergers. Seeing a specialist through my GP is possible but, in this case, its tactically better to keep my nut down. I have my spinal injuries which medics have been very involved with and also the traumatic stm injury has caused a lot of psychological investigation. All this costs the NHS money and thats a big issue now for GPs Being labelled hypochondriac as well would not do me any favours ! The psychologists have noted a high iq...especially non-verbal... but very low learning capability...a huge gap. And one has said 'its like autism...but recoverable'. im wondedring now if it isnt simpler and that I am autistic. There is a simple test online...30 or so questions...and that says I am.