Does The Social Isolation of Asperger’s Ever Push You to Despair?
Adults with Asperger’s Syndrome often struggle with a profound social isolation. Some feel it more than others. For some it is managed but for others it leads to despair and for still others it could factor into feeling like one wants to commit suicide.
If you have Asperger’s, have you ever felt this way? I heard recently from someone with Asperger’s Syndrome who wants to remain anonymous but who asked me to post something they shared with me on this blog.
The person who sent me this email is a 44 year old woman who says she just is at a point of such emotional pain – an emotional pain she described to me as seeming not only endless in terms of her social isolation but an emotional pain that she realized recently she has always felt and struggled with.
This 44 year old woman asked that I just call her E. E and I had a long conversation about the reality and nature of social isolation in Asperger’s Syndrome. I know myself, it’s an isolation that isn’t always felt as isolation as such but it can bring about many different feelings. I think that for many with Asperger’s Syndrome issues within the social realm of life cause varying degrees of emotional pain and bouts of despair and/or loneliness that need to be coped with. They can often come and go. More and more in my life they seem to come rather than go though.
E writes:
“I am not a person who thought that I would ever want to take my own life yet I find myself feeling this way a lot lately. I don’t think I want to take my life. I know that sometimes there is just such a deep pain that I have absolutely no idea what to do with that it pushes me into feeling total despair.
I watch people socialize, as if it was a sport or something – a sport I can’t play, don’t get, and that makes no sense to me. A sport that I sure don’t have the rules to or for. Whatever it is that people are sharing seems important to them. I don’t get it. I really just don’t get it. It is foreign to me. But then I look at my own life and I don’t have any friends. I don’t have any family. I am not connected to anyone, place, or even thing. Sometimes that matters and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s hard to articulate.
All I really know about these feelings of despair is that they come out of feeling like I don’t belong anywhere. I don’t feel like anyone cares about me. I don’t know anyone. And to be honest, at least a lot of the time, I don’t know that I really care about others – not the way it seems you are actually supposed to, if that makes any sense?
I’m writing to you A.J. in the hopes that you can talk to me because you have Asperger’s Syndrome and because you are a life coach. I don’t know who else to even try to explain this to. I don’t want to put my feelings on to you but I figure you must at least understand what I am talking about at some level.
Do others with Asperger’s Syndrome, if they are really honest with themselves, ever also struggle with this painful place that can rise up out of nowhere and leave you feeling that you just don’t belong anywhere? Do others feel as invisible, weird, and unimportant as I do? Even sometimes? Are there others out there like me who have no friends and no family and just feel like society sees them as worthless as a result?
I really feel like I want to just quit on life. I have no plan or anything right now but when I get to this place where I hurt so bad, I cry, the tears juts pour down my face. And I know that there isn’t anyone to help me with this. I know that this cannot be changed. I have Asperger’s and what that mainly means, among other things, is that I am lost socially. I stick out somehow. I have been bullied all my life. I am a freak. People see that I am different. I don’t even understand how they figure that out when they don’t even know me. I feel socially helpless and so clueless – just totally lost and that means painful despair for me”
If you have Asperger’s Syndrome and you are reading this and relate, I’d sure welcome your comments so that E can get some feedback other than the feedback I gave to her. I wonder if we don’t all know this place of despair when it comes to the reality of that intersection between Asperger’s and social struggles to varying degrees?
I hope that some readers will share their feelings and/or experience about social struggles and/or being bullied or teased and having Asperger’s and if that leads to feeling so frustrated it ends up going all the way to feelings of despair and/or hopelessness.
I have known 3 people with Asperger’s Syndrome who did take their own lives. Do we talk enough about Asperger’s Syndrome and suicide?
I must say that I strongly identified with most of the despair that they felt, at one point or other in my life. I myself sometimes do feel a significant amount of pain at the difference that I know I own when it comes to social “stuff” because I have Asperger’s. Not that that means the same thing every day or in every single social situation.
I also wonder if there aren’t aspects of socialization, whether understood, cared about, desired, or wanted at all, that still somehow end up effecting us in ways that leaves us feeling less than in the face of what is often a glaring difference. I must admit that there are times when I realize later how unaware of my own glaring difference I can be. And when the awareness arises later I can’t deny that it can be extremely painful. There is something very cyclical about this that continues to unfold in my own social experience, at times, that I may somewhat intellectually understand or have some insight about but that still, in the actual unfolding moments of, I remain mind-blind to.
Does the social isolation of Asperger’s ever push you to despair? If so, what do you do when you reach that place? What do you feel?
If you don’t want to share a comment here on the blog, but would like to discuss this, please feel free to email me at aspergeradults@yahoo.ca
© A.J. Mahari, May 8, 2009
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This post has 6 comments
May 9th, 2009
Yes, the social isolation of Asperger’s often pushes me to despair. I am no stranger to suicidal ideation. I also experience this as having a cyclical nature. The cycle goes something like this:
1. Alone, treading water, working long hours on volunteer efforts (alone, of course) so that I feel I’m making some sort of contribution to society.
2. Feel optimistic that this next community event will be a success for me (meaning, I will be received as a normal person based on my extraordinary efforts to get the social part right); spend more money and time than I can afford in order to help, but, also, having a job means I’m not just standing around in my isolation looking pathetic.
3. Fail at simple conversation; appear either painfully shy (which I am) or aloof, rude, stupid, etc. (which I am not); feel overwhelmed and invisible; eventually get physically ill due to anxiety; leave early (escape).
4. Feel hopeless, suicidal. I am just taking up air and space. There is no point to my existence.
1. Alone, treading water…
Part of my problem is that I am looking for external validation that I’m likable because I find nothing to like in myself. All of my life I’ve been told by so many people how wrong I am, in every way. When I was young and cute, my weird behavior sometimes got a free pass. Now that I am old and ugly, my behaviors are uniformly wrong, not normal, not worthy of anyone’s patience. I need to change my posture, my timing, my words, my laugh, my eye contact, my point of overload, my coping mechanisms, and the list goes on and on and on. I hear that I need to change me.
Well, I’ve been changing me for other people for forty years. It still doesn’t work.
Unfortunately, the advice from people who don’t know me to “just be yourself” also doesn’t work. No one likes that person. At least acting like someone else fools some of the people some of the time.
I have no friends. I can’t even get medical care for my probable ulcer because I have no one to sign as my temporary caretaker for the diagnostic testing involving anesthesia.
I don’t mind being alone per se. I love my dogs. I’m always working on some project or another. My list of things I want to do is so long, no one life could complete it. I pretend to be connected to people through the Internet.
What I mind is having no choice but to be alone. I mind being alone every single day, all year long, even if I’m around people. I mind very much being an outcast.
May 10th, 2009
One thing that helps me when I feel that kind of pain, and I have felt it deeply and often, is to find myself an example of something that was just discovered by science, or just something that is new to me.
If, for instance, I read that bees can count up to four, or a type of star has been discovered that no one ever knew about before, then I remember to realize that my painful feelings are based on incomplete information, and if I can prove to myself that I don’t know everything, then I remember that I undoubtedly affect the world just by breathing, just by thinking, and with each seemingly insignificant step I walk or tear I shed, there is a ripple effect, and I am performing my part perfectly in the world, and most of what good I do in the world is probably unknown to me and out of my control, but it is still out there.
You are real, even if nobody interacted with you today. You are going to need what you are going through today, in order to be exactly who who you will be somewhere down the line. Does that make sense?
May 11th, 2009
Hi, I can totally relate to these feelings. Up until the age of 23 I was terribly alone, but I was very lucky to find someone who accepted me for who I am, she’s very much the opposite of me, bordering on the bipolar range. But we find our opposites help each other, she helps me to make leaps into the unknown and I help her keep grounded. We initially met online, where it’s much easier for people like us to communicate. So I guess what I’m saying is it helps a lot if you have just one person who can support you, and I think there are plenty of people out there who can do this for us.
May 31st, 2009
Like others, I was not diagnosed with Asperger’s until I was almost 40 while seeking out treatment for my young boy.
But, this long winded note is about a POSITIVE message that I hope will help other adults inflicted with this condition gain perspective. Understand that this is not a terminal illness. It’s just a major challenge that must be dealt with if happiness in the physical world is to be realized. For all people, how we approach overcoming our handicaps demonstrates our true character. Abusers of alcohol or drugs face similar challenges. And, we must succeed, like everything else, on our own. No AA to lean on but, just the same, the condition must be dealt with every day. It never goes away.
My situation was bad as a kid – real bad. I wanted to die very badly. Rationally, I thought that this would solve a problem – for everyone. Needless to say, I am glad that I did not make this happen.
My suicide notes written as a pre-teen were met with, in retrospect, reactions of morbid indifference from those who were supposed to be looking out for me including parents, teachers and guidance counselors. Of course, at the time, I could not tell the difference.
Growing up, there was no doubt that I was famous throughout town as the designated bully target – even by bullies at other schools. I was the town “loser”. Never a friend. In fact, some non-bullies would go to extremes to avoid me for fear of being ostracized by their cliques for being seen with me. And, even in distant lands, strangers would instantly identify me as an outcast. I accepted this as reality.
I loved weekends more than anyone – not because I was out partying – but because I was able to retreat to my room and be alone with my darkness and tv.
When I made it to high school, the situation seemed to escalate. The bullying slowed down, but the new reality was that I was now 100% ignored. I actually missed the attention from the bullies!
I could never figure out what I did to deserve this. I recall looking back as far as my memory would allow to identify the person responsible for making me an alien. I was desperate for someone to blame.
After I started college, my darkness and pain moved to a new plateau. There was still no explanation for a terrible life I wished to end. So, during another lonely evening in a crowded dorm, I decided that I must make a choice before morning – take my life right now or face the unidentified problem head on.
I’m still around. The path to happiness took around 20 years and continues. I focused on one success at a time. Ace a test – make a little $$ at a job, working out very hard and seeing results, etc. etc.
These things were possible in my own world.
Even though it wasn’t natural, I began to look people in the eye – I was old enough to know that this was important. Same feeling of distance for me, but I can see that others were no longer running away. In fact, people began to hang around me – on purpose. I was suddenly a leader – completely eccentric – but a leader none the less.
Back in my hometown, my new confidence worked like a charm. A couple of girls I new from high school – the popular girls – started flirting with me at a party. It was not a cruel prank. Of course, there was no way I was capable of a relationship with someone from that group but this alien’s life was turning around. Although unintended, openly rejecting these queens made quite a statement to those present.
I continued to seek out one small accomplishment at a time. I got a good job out of college, an MBA, and met and married a wonderful woman who will be my inspiration for the rest of my life.
For sure, I still continue to seek solitude, but without the darkness. I work out of the house when I’m not traveling. I enjoy customer meetings and managing my group. However, I still dread work-related social events like customer dinners and conventions. But, like any other unpleasant job duty, I try to play my part well.
While my 2 “normal” kids are highly social beings, my wife and I spend the vast majority of our personal time together in private – alone, but with each other.
And, I am happy to say that I finally have peace of mind, feel successful, and have achieved happiness. Most, though, I am thankful for those that have raised the awareness of Asperger’s as a treatable condition. My boy is making tremendous progress and is on his way to experiencing a happy childhood filled with love and understanding.
I hope that this helps the community in some small way….
Take care,
RS
June 18th, 2009
Hi E and everyone else, I have just self-diagnosed doing several internet tests and they all say I’m an Aspie without doubt. I scored very highly on the test scales(like doing well on tests, ha ha).
My son was diagnosed a couple of years ago and my wife has been calling me an Aspie since.
I really get that darkness E is talking about too. I can retreat from the world for a while get over it, and then find some kind of stubbornness within myself to keep on going. My stubbornness to not end it all comes from having a near death experience 20 odd years ago – I know even at the darkest moments that I don’t want to go.
I actually thought I had just been suffering depression for most of my life, or that my felling of ‘not belonging or fitting in’ was because I was an adopted child. After reading lots on the Internet, the articles seem to be describing me perfectly. So, I guess I am very AS typical. A.J, I too have that realisation after a social event that I really messed up somehow, but in the moment I never ‘get it’.
I am lucky enough to have found a job where I look after business compliance (rules, regulations, legislation, policies, procedures, audits, advising managers and directors, liaising with regulators). In this role I guess my Aspie tendencies (as my wife calls them) have enabled me to excel. I can be so very pedantic and people just think I am doing my job well! My social life is really replaced with my work life. To me, talking to people at work is my social life. I told that to my (NT) wife once and she thought I was joking saying that relationships with work colleagues are not ‘real’ relationships like those with friends and family. Well, to me it’s enough.
Like gahusky said, I also despise work-related social events. If I can, I’ll do my best to make excuses and avoid them. I absolutely can’t stand it, and just don’t get why people just want to sit around and talk about ‘nothing’.
I have been forced many times to go to family social events which I get so apprehensive before-hand that it often makes me feel physically sick. I know it is because I am dreading certain things been said, for example comments about weight gain, discussions about religion, talking about sports I have no interest in to name a few.
But what gives me the most despair is when someone at work gets into a heated disagreement with about my area of speciality. When I get challenged like that, I can talk through it but I can feel myself going bright red and the blood pressure and frustration levels going up and up. I get very flustered if I can’t get that person to ‘see’ what I am talking about. After these types of meetings, I come crashing down and usually always end up with a headache or migraine and feeling very dark, depressed and sick.
Thank you for this site A.J, it has been quite helpful.
June 30th, 2009
Hi E, I can very much relate to what you wrote about life with Aspergers. I was diagnosed 4 years ago, and spent many years trying to imitate people socially, trying to imitate working in “team environments”, and feeling like I’d failed every time. People would gravitate to the one next to me, but not me, unless I had attracted a control freak that just wanted to control me. Suicide has been regularly on my mind also, for many years, but I believe that I will never take this path. I have hope that one day I will find where I belong.
I have been in and out of work all my life. I end up in situations that I just can’t handle : noise, team enviros, multiple tasking, social situations to name a few. The economic climate at this time isn’t in my favour either. At the present time I feel so desperate and despondent and bored, that by mid-day I am reaching for a glass of wine so the despair can’t strike so hard, not a good solution, and temporary, until I gain another clue as what to do.
In a very recent job application, I was once again confronted with the age old problem of referee contacts. That can be very difficult when I have no personal friends, or professional contacts, so it usually becomes the job consultants name & ph no, how embarrassing.
Like you, I wish there were rules I could learn for the socialness of this planet. But like thats ever going to happen! Well, this is the first time that I have ever written a reply on the internet, it somehow freaks me out. But your story sounded like how I felt….so…. cheers DS