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Asperger’s – Empowering Different Ability

Published April 11, 2011 | By AJsiteadmin

Asperger’s Syndrome is often, like so many other “conditions” pathologized, defined as “not nomal” – what is normal anyway? Most people think normal is whatever they are like or value. There is no such thing as “normal”. It’s all about difference. Author, Life Coach, BPD/Mental Health and Self Improvement Coach, A.J. Mahari, herself, a person with Asperger’s Syndrome firmly beleives from her own life experience that those with Asperger’s need to learn (if they haven’t already) – those with any major and often judged difference from what the mainstream values as “normal” – to empower what is their own different ability.

Asperger’s Syndrome and Adulthood Ebook and My Asperger Experience Audio © A.J. Mahari

Posted in A.J. Mahari's Personal Journey, Asperger's In Adulthood, Self Help

The Pardox of Social Impairment and Profound Social Disconnectedness

Published March 5, 2010 | By AJsiteadmin

There is an inherent and burdening paradox within the reality of being an adult with Asperger’s Syndrome. Central to the most devastatingly-challenging reality of Asperger’s Syndrome is its synergistic social impairment intrinsic to or juxtaposed to a profound social disconnectedness.

A.J.’s March 2010 – Aspie Confession – Personal Update – CLICK HERE to read it.

The intricate labyrinth of this paradox exists within the assumption that a social impairment in and of itself, however that is defined and experienced in each individual (AS) life is tantamount to social disconnectedness

Gregory B. Yates, in his writing, “A Topological Theory of Autism,” – the website – www.autismtheory.org/topotheory.html explains that the three founders of “autism”, Eugen Bleuler, Leo Kanner, and Hans Asperger, “clearly saw other features of autism as secondary to social disconnectedness.” and emphasizes that this disconnectedness “…is the central, eponymous feature of autism it is the primary feature…”– “it is social disconnectedness that most defines autism…”

The degree to which there are differences, generally, between autism and Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), more specifically, in terms of this social disconnectedness varies greatly with each individual. It has been my experience that the manifestation of this social impairment and social disconnectedness also varies greatly between those with more classic forms of autism as opposed to those with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS). Even within those with AS the extent to which this paradoxical synergetic syndrome is present depends upon many individual factors including age of diagnosis, intervention, support, counselling and general educational intervention.

I experience this social disconnectedness, as an adult with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), in ways that I imagine are more difficult for me and others like me than they may be for those with more classic autism. It is the awareness that one has with AS that often brings with it a more painful lack of connection. Many, like myself, with AS, to varying degrees, have strong desires to try to be as social as we can. This is, however, coalesced with what is an equally strong aversion to being social.

This paradox of simultaneously desiring and feeling aversion to social connectedness is born out of a lifetime of difficult and painful experiences in the social realm coupled with a lack of understanding and difficulty in truly being able to feel a sense of joining in what others are experiencing as a shared experience.

A.J.’s March 2010 – Aspie Confession – Personal Update – CLICK HERE to read it.

I am keenly aware, in the social realm, that while I have learned to do many things that one is supposed to do from all accounts and appearances I do not experience them in the same way that neuro-typicals (NTs) do. There is still this feeling of not totally understanding the feeling experience of the shared social experience. This reality is accompanied by the anxiety and the stress (overload to my system) that much of this activity produces within me. To state it outright and forthrightly, I do not derive joy from anything social.

My experience of joy is very much a by myself internalized proposition. Knowing this can be, at times, a source of frustration and pain. Even when I am social I am not really totally there. It’s difficult to explain this but as Yates explains, “Autistic people live like Tantalus*, with the fluent social interaction of others suspended before their eyes, out of reach.” I can relate to this. To try to actually join in and feel a shared experience socially is like reaching for forbidden fruit that moves ever so slightly back every time I reach up and forward toward it. I have been in many a social situation where I do just end up observing because the social interaction of others is suspended out there before me and for me is out of reach in terms of experiencing it the way that others appear to be and report experiencing shared meaningful times that fill them up. Trying to socialize, which I don’t mind in small doses, despite the pain of it all, for me is so stressful most of the time that unlike my NT friends empties me out leaving me just wanting to retreat back into my own world.

The fact that most NT’s describe socializing as being a “filling up” experience that adds something to them and I know that it is the opposite for me, I don’t see this as needing to be defined as anything else aside from a profound difference after its recognition.

Yates continues with the assertion that, “Social disconnectedness is the horse of autism: Secondary features are baggage in its cart.”

Not everything about this social disconnectedness is experienced as baggage. That said, I think it would be highly negating if I were to say that this disconnectedness doesn’t in fact leave an adult with AS with some baggage. It does.

The most difficult aspect of this baggage, which I’m sure varies with each adult with AS, though having, no doubt, some common themes, is that we are left to fend for ourselves with it. There are (with rare exceptions) no services for adults with Asperger’s Syndrome.

In my own experience, the mental health issues and co-morbid issues that can exist with AS and its incumbent or subsequent baggage, are not effectively being dealt with by traditional Mental Health delivery systems. While there are some therapists who will assist adults with AS they are not accessible to those without the funds and even then they are rare as most, if not all resources are currently focused on children with autism and/or Asperger’s Syndrome.

Today’s children are going to be tomorrow’s adults. The baggage that they will encounter as adults will still be sitting here, as is mine and that of other adults with AS. I continue to not understand the lack of services for adults and for those who are transitioning from adolescents to adulthood with all its more complicated issues.

I must stress here too that not all that AS brings to my life is about baggage. In the arena of social disconnectedness and trying to navigate the world of social beings however, yes, I have some baggage that I am continually aware of, working through, and trying to come to terms with. In this area, this baggage does impinge upon my self-acceptance, still, though I’m getting through that more now too. This is the reality of a paradox that adults with AS must not only live with but wrestle with in order to not be left feeling less than. This is why I stress that we are differently abled as opposed to the common societal stereotypical assessment that we are just disabled

Yates also asserts, “While some secondary features of autism are unpleasant, in a social world one autistic trait is truly devastating. That is autism’s defining characteristic itself — social disconnectedness.

A.J.’s March 2010 – Aspie Confession – Personal Update – CLICK HERE to read it.

I have found this trait quite devastating. While I continue to make progress in terms of what I have learned about mapping my social efforts I continue to find them often as painful as they are anything else. I am still in the process of dealing with this fact. The fact that I have to live with a high degree of social disconnectedness that I have enough insight about to feel saddened by at times. It is here, I have learned, that my self-acceptance depends upon my ability to continue to learn and grow in my ability to use compensatory strategies to meet my needs in the adult arena of relating.

Yates states that, “Autistic people vary in their desire for social interaction. However, even those who do not desire social contact can be devastated by its lack, for thriving in human society depends on social ability.”

I agree totally with Yates here. I have known other adults with Asperger’s Syndrome. I’ve seen vast differences between them and myself in many respects. I’ve also noticed that there are numerous and vast differences between men and women with Asperger’s as well. (More on this in an up-coming article)

I have been devastated by “its lack”. The lack of socialization in my life. By what remains (or certainly feels like) despite my best and most fervent efforts to socialize, relate, and be available in my primary relationship, a feeling of disconnectedness that often brings me back to a familiar pain that like a brick wall sitting between me and the world of social ability, has and continues to affect my thriving in the way in which most people define and value thriving

All is not lost here however. I am a great believer that even when diagnosed with AS in adulthood, as I was at the age of 40, we can make progress. I have learned a great deal. I continue to learn to compensate and to let those closest to me know what I need in order to be able to build bridges to them and have them build meaningful relational bridges to me.

I also believe that despite not experiencing a kind of social ability that clearly indicates thriving to our human society, I am thriving and will continue to build upon this thriving in my own way as defined by my own understanding, needs, wants, and my continued dedication to straddle what is at times a very unforgiving philosophical paradox.

What is defined as social impairment, again, can be construed as disabled or contrastingly as differently abled. One must take to task the notion that we are all supposed to be the same or that we all must have the same values and capacity in the social realm.

Having Asperger’s and knowing it should be a gateway to understanding not some societally imposed label that implies lack and that sees that lack pathologized.

It is my hope and my intention the more I come to understand my Asperger reality and the more I write about it that my readers will come to appreciate the differences that manifest in many ways that are the indicators of difference in brain functioning. That NT brain wiring is not superior to the brain wiring of those with Asperger’s and visa versa. This is all about difference and more specifically, acceptance of that difference and allowing each group of people to live as they must and flourish as they will.

To this end, coming out of this most basic difference in social ability and social connectedness or defined disconnectedness it is my hope that the system and parents of children with AS will stop believing and insisting on trying to normalize the autism/asperger’s out of their children. We are born the way we are for good reason. Let society expand its definition and understanding of worth, and change itself, and stop requiring that those of us on the autistic spectrum change or have to fit the NT mold in order to matter, to be functional, and to be able. We are very gifted and talented in our own ways. Who we are needs to be “good enough”. It needs to be “good enough” firstly to parents, secondly to society and equally to each adult diagnosed and left to fend for themselves, with Asperger’s, in adulthood.

We need bridges of understanding to and from each other. We do not need to be the same. We are all okay as we are, differences and all.

© A.J. Mahari February 2005

•Tantalus – (Greek mythology) a wicked king and son of Zeus; condemned in Hades to stand in water that receded when he tried to drink and beneath fruit that receded when he reached for it. (Source: www.dictionary.com)

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Posted in Asperger's Syndrome, social impairment

Is Self Help Effective For Asperger Syndrome?

Published February 6, 2010 | By AJsiteadmin

Asperger Syndrome is an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It was first included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (American Psychiatric Association) under the general category of Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDDs) in 1994. It is named after Hans Asperger, of Vienna, who wrote about this cluster of characteristics as early as 1944. Are self help principles, ideas, and practices effective for people with Asperger’s Syndrome?

“Many individuals with Asperger Syndrome exhibit extensive knowledge of a specific interest and therefore are capable of major accomplishments.
Although Asperger Syndrome can be first detected in childhood, many individuals are not diagnosed until well into adolescence or adulthood.
The cause of Asperger Syndrome is not yet established, but a leading theory at this time points to genetic causes. Many individuals diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome identify similar traits in their family members.”

Source: Aspergers Society of Ontario

You might think well, if Asperger’s Syndrome is genetic and on the autism spectrum and since it is a pervasive developmental disorder that that may mean there’s nothing that can be done to help someone. For those of us diganosed in adulthood there are even more challenges because any chance for early intervention, counselling, psycho-education, social skills training and so forth has been missed. And, once in adulthood there are very few places one can go for this assistance, if you can find anywhere at all that works with adults. Most of the resources used in treatment and managing Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) are in place only for those under the age of majority. So, are you just stuck with it? How can you change anything when there isn’t a way to actually get rid of it? Mind you, most aspies I know, and I include myself here, would not want to get “rid of it” even if it was possible to do so.

Not everyone diagnosed with Aspergers is the same. Not everyone diagnosed with Aspergers has all the traits or has certain traits as strongly as the next person. It is important, if you are an adult with AS, to look at what your strengths and weaknesses are. For many with AS common strengths include a high intelligence and strong interest in a least one area of narrow focus. While this narrow focus can have its drawbacks it can also be harnessed as quite a strength in many ways. An obvious and quite common so-called weakness for those with AS is social impairment. However, I have come to realize that the way that is defined is very genernalized. Each one of us needs to examine our own abilities and challenges in this area particularily. I say so-called because to the degree to which one is socially impaired or not can depend quite a bit on your own idea of what that means for you as an individual.

One of the major aspects of self help that can be of great assistance to those with AS is learning more about self-acceptance and respecting differences, to the degree that you understand the ways in which you are different from the average NT. Even if NT’s around you don’t understand or respect your differences its important to not take on the judgment or misconceptions of those who cannot understand what its like to have AS. NT’s are often very confused by a lot of the ways in which we think. Just as those with AS find many of the ways that NT’s think a little other-worldly too. It is equally important to realize that a lot of what we do differently, or the ways in which we may think differently, can be positively framed in realizing your capability to function in and through what is a different ability.

I have come to realize in my own life that having AS doesn’t mean, for me in my life, that I am disabled. I am differently abled. I may have many differences in how I function – known as aspie lack of executive dysfunction – which I have found through my own self help efforts can really be transformed into different ways of functioning. Again, the key is changing the way you think about difference and being the one that is different. What NT’s call dysfunction can be turned into your own undersanding of many different ways that you actually do function – this aspie functionality is just not well understood by NT’s and of course is not the same as NT functioning.

You really can create change in your life like anyone else – like your neurotypical (NT) counterparts. Change for some with Asperger’s means personal growth and evolution in understanding and learning for many. For some it might be more about finding productive and workable compensatory strategies. Social strategies are also important to explore and implement. They can take practice. However, if you learn to be kind to yourself and avoid judging yourself you will find that what you practice and what you apply from self help philosophy can and will be very helpful.

As a life coach I have learned to apply self help strategies in my work with many clients with Asperger’s Syndrome. I have, of course, also learned to apply much of these same self help strategies in my own life. The first step in ensuring that you can make the most out of the self help you can learn much more about is to have an open mind about how much you can empower yourself to find ways to cope and ways to compensate for what isn’t exactly entirely changeable. Adaptation is a key facet of applying self help to your life journey with Asperger’s Syndrome.

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Posted in Asperger's In Adulthood, Self Help

Help For People With Asperger’s Syndrome?

Published January 4, 2010 | By AJsiteadmin

Many people who know people with Asperger’s Syndrome, or have someone with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) in their families write me exhausted and exasperated as to what to do to help the person with AS in their lives. Can you help someone with Asperger’s or is the help just perceived as too stressful and too intrusive? Do you feel frustrated and like your every effort to help the person with Asperger’s in your life just makes things worse? As a life coach, it has become apparent to me that this is a common experience for many a neuro-typical (NT).

Neuro-typicals need to understand that they really cannot truly know what it is like to have Asperger’s Syndrome. That’s a good place to start. Sound too simplistic or obvious? It is an important distinction to keep in mind because you might think you are offering someone with Asperger’s help based upon what you would experience as being helpful.

What most neuro-typicals find helpful or recognize as support is, more often than not, not the same for people with Asperger’s. If you approach the person with AS in your life from your own perspective without consideration of the differences in perspective, experience, and interpretation of those with AS the results will often yield more frustration for both parties involved.

It is also important to not put your own expectations upon your loved one or friend with AS. For many people with AS the help, caring, and/or support of others feels intrusive to them. It can be experienced as being a major stressor. It can lead a person with AS to retreat more inside of him or herself as a reaction to the ways they know they are different. The very things you may be stressing in trying to help may in fact leave the person with Asperger’s feeling judged or criticized because they do not have a common reference point with you from which to share in the reality that you care and are trying to help them.

As someone with Asperger’s who continues to push all my limits in learning and mapping aspects of life and relating where I have a different ability – commonly referred as “disability” by NT’s, I myself, have experienced others trying to help me at times when there wasn’t any help they could really give me. We didn’t have a shared perspective, understanding, or strong enough commonality in our experience for a meeting of the minds that could prove to be beneficial versus frustrating. I have also experienced people trying to help me over the years in ways that were about trying to change who I am and how I function. That doesn’t anger or bother me but I have learned that I have to point out that what I do and how I do it, just because it is different, doesn’t mean I’m doing something wrong. I’m sure there are easier ways or more organized ways to do many things but they aren’t things that fit the way my mind works – they just don’t jive with how I think and what will work for me.

I’m sure the same could happen in reverse. If i were to try to help out a friend of mine, offering advice let’s say, about something that they do and how they approach it or do it, and gave my NT friend aspie methods of doing things how could I reasonably expect that they would change the way that they think and experience the world to fit my Asperger ways? That would prove frustrating for both me and my friend.

Help and support aren’t the same thing. Support is often met with less stress and anxiety than efforts to help. If you are a neuro-typical and you are thinking about helping the person with AS in your life ask yourself, what your goals are. What are you trying to accomplish and why? Is it for the aspie or more for you? Are you invested, perhaps without realizing it, in having the person with AS in your life be more like a neuro-typical?

This is an example of an unrealistic expectation that will leave you frustrated in trying help and that will leave the person with AS feeling intruded upon and/or stressed out by your efforts to help. Often when you want to help you want to see change from someone else rather than changing the way you approach a person or situation.

Sometimes the best “help” is accepting the person with Asperger’s in your life for who he or she is. NT’s will benefit from education themselves about Asperger’s Syndrome generally. They will also benefit from going one step further in asking the person with AS in their life about him or her specifically because each person with Asperger’s is an individual. We aren’t all the same. We don’t all have every trait or listed manifestation of what Asperger’s is stereotypically described to be and mean.

Differences that aren’t accepted will continue to fuel exhaustion and exasperation. Those feelings are generated in those trying to “help” who are really seeking to change someone into thinking, being, doing, acting like they do – in other words – trying to get someone with Asperger’s to act as if or find a way to be neuro-typical. It just doesn’t work.

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Posted in AS/NT Relating

There Are So Many Paths

Published December 17, 2009 | By AJsiteadmin

Asperger’s Syndrome is a journey within the over-all journey of life. For those of us diagnosed as adults the journey may have a few added challenges to it. Life is a journey, not a destination. Within this journey there are as many paths that lead to connecting points, junctures of mutual understanding, as there are people living lives.

This applies whether you have Asperger’s Syndrome or whether you are a neurotypcial (NT). So, you see, we do have something in common after all.

There are many different paths and individual differences among those diagnosed with Asperger’s as well. I believe that along with these individual and personal differences are interwoven the many distinctive ways that AS manifests or is evident in males and females.

Just as there are a plethora of differences between those of us with Asperger’s and those who are NT, there are at least that many differences between each one of us with AS. While we share many traits in common and are thusly identified and diagnosed as having AS this does not make us anymore all the same then all NT’s are all the same just because they are neurotypical.

There are so many paths. There are paths that we choose to take, in life, and there are some paths that are chosen for us. I see having Asperger’s Syndrome as a path that was chosen for me. It is a reality that has taken much but that has also given much and promises to give much more to me in the future. A road or path less traveled apparently. It is a path that encompasses a journey very far from ordinary. Having AS presents challenges that highlight and only serve to strengthen my most inquisitive resolve. Difficult to explain. Complicated to live with and process. Interesting to call upon in all the social/relational situations in which I am impacted the most by it.

I have been told by professionals that AS is actually the source of a lot of my strength and that as I continually seek to profoundly understand myself and how to relate to the NT world better there are ways that I can take this path and have it be an enhancing experience. I am just beginning to tap into this now as my self-acceptance continues to grow. This is a newly formed realization and belief of mine now based upon enough NT input combined with my own AS understanding. This is a testament, for me, to the reality that there are so many paths. I think ever since I was diagnosed I had a mindset that there was only one path or one way and that was the NT way. I had believed that any other way was less than, flawed, dsyfunctional, and abnormal.

It is so freeing to be opening much wider to seeing my path and journey in life as valid in and of itself. I am able to do this now because I can esteem myself for who I am the way that I am. I no longer feel like I have to apologize or make excuses for who I am or how I am. I don’t feel or believe that I am in any way less than because I am not NT.

Finally, the soothingly-sustaining entrance opening up paths not realized in my previously tormented and pent-up existence.

I have also been told by professionals that I am “very high functioning”. Okay, well, I am still trying to figure out if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Truthfully, I realize there are many blessings in being high functioning. It is my experience that there are also considerable challenges associated with this reality, this path, this way of being AS in an NT world. It is not without heart-wrenching pain. The pain of knowing one is other, outside, different, and being profoundly aware of all the times in the social/relational NT context I simply don’t get it. In the past it has been disgustingly devastating to me over and over again that no amount of applied intellectual prowess on my part has been able to ameliorate what I refer to as asperger lostness.

It seems clear right now though that I stand on the precarious precipice of evolving edgy contradiction – correlating my high functioning AS path with the indefatigable paths of the NT world of existence, connection, and communication. I feel compelled to continue to push my limits.

Through this ardent approach to the challenging of my limits I have found that there are a myriad of archetypal paths to be discovered and synthesized as I now consciously travel this barren wasteland, this seeming vacuum of void, this largely collectively unmapped adaptation of paradoxical dualistic survival by creating my own algorithms.

The algorithms that are relevant to my enterprisingly energetic exposure to all that is non-aspie-like are step-by-step problem-solving procedures that I am continually processing and mapping out to assist me in developing a stronger sense of the lay of the land on planet NT. Specifically the lay of the social/relating land.

In my qualitative quest I am now buoyed by my new understanding, and more importantly, my new acceptance of the fact that I, being on the autistic spectrum and having AS, need to acquire my knowledge base and working understanding of socializing and relating cognitively. I am not able to acquire it or understand it through observation, or the trial and error that NT’s learn social skills by. What a pivotal piece of the over-all ever-unfolding puzzle this is for me. It seems and feels strange and yet it is a huge relief to finally get this.

Clearly, there are so many paths each of us can choose to travel that will facilitate our connecting and communicating capacity and capability.

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Posted in Asperger's Syndrome

Does The Social Isolation of Asperger’s Ever Push You to Despair?

Published May 8, 2009 | By AJsiteadmin

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

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Posted in Asperger's In Adulthood

Asperger’s Syndrome – Living in Another World

Published May 3, 2009 | By AJsiteadmin

Many who have Asperger's Syndrome are either described by others or describe themselves as living in another world. What does that mean? Is that true? What is it about having Asperger's Syndrome that leaves us, at least part of the time living in another world?

In my experience I get this "other world" feeling or have this "other world living" experience primarily within the social context of what it seems to mean, to the average neuro-typical, to be "in" the world or connected to the world out there. The world out there meaning the social "world" out there.

I really do not have a problem or issue at core with the awareness that I do often experience living in "another world". It is my inner world. It is the world of my narrow focuses (2 or 3 of them) of interest. It is a world that makes most sense to me. It is a world that holds within it the experience of my purpose, and who knows maybe even "the" purpose for my having Asperger's in the first place.

I think the problem, or the rub, if you will, for many with Asperger's about this living largely in another world comes from the reality that any world other than the neuro-typical "social" sphere such as it is, is somehow a less than way to be or place to be or both.

I think it is important to realize if you have Asperger's Syndrome (AS) that living in another world is part of who you are. It is part of how you are as well. It is part of your way of experiencing life. That doesn't make it less than the neuro-typical way of experiencing or living life – just different.

Different needs to be dissociated from meaning less than. What we do not understand about each other and each other's "worlds" needs to be accepted and validated and not judged.

Living in another world, my aspie world, doesn't mean that I do not have any connection to the "outside world" or to the neuro-typical world. I do. There are many ways and times that I have this connection. It is not a connection that I need per se. It is not a connection that fills me up by any means. It actually empties me out.

I do, however, continue to be most puzzled at the neuro-typical social world and all that entails. Do I connect to that some times? Yes. Do I always get how? No. Do I feel lost in that connection often, socially, yes. Does it matter anymore? No, not to me, not really. How come it doesn't?

Simply because I realize the importance of letting go of ever thinking that I will ever get that neuro-typical social world. I know I won't. So many times I have tried. So many times I thought I did get it, for a few minutes. So many times I thought I was in an experience of it only to come to find that, no, actually, it was its own version of hit and miss. That's okay. It is what is. And actually each and every time I experience the awkward feeling meeting of my aspie world and the neuro-typical social world I think that I do gain more insight and awareness into the differences – the ways in which I am different.

Does that insight and awareness mean anything in the actual unfolding of relating or experiencing neuro-typical social world? Nope. Intellectually, yes. In the unfolding of the relational dynamic, each and every time, no, not really.

I can map out more each time I gain more awareness but the truth is I make some of the same – what neuro-typicals may well think of as "mistakes" each and every time I leave aspie world to connect with their social reality in the not-so-effective ways that I actually do that.

There is a truth, in fact, though about living in another world, living in my aspie world and that is that even when it seems I can unstep it or escape it - it is a painful and often times frustrating type of desired (at times) illusion.

The trick is to first accept living in another world. Secondly, it is important to not allow yourself to feel shame or wrong or less than when you realize later or it is pointed out to you later how you didn't quite get to where you had hoped you had gotten to, socially.

It is what it is. Its meaning is only imposing if we let it be. We don't have to engage the idea (or what can be painful feelings) that we are less than because we aren't the "norm" or the average social majority.

Living in another world is just a part of having Asperger's Syndrome. I as someone with Asperger's Syndrome don't value or need or even really want the same type of socialization that most neuro-typicals seem to want, need, and thrive with. I thrive in different ways.

Have you ever stopped to really think about how many different worlds there really are within our one over-all world? There are likely more than you've ever even thought about. We are divided and sub-divided many times over by what we have in common and more often than not by all that we do not have in common.

It is and will be okay the minute you just accept that for what it is. Accept it. Celebrate who you are. Let go of the idea or concept that we all have to be the same. We aren't and we don't. No one is right and no one is wrong. That's the true beauty of difference.

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Posted in Asperger's In Adulthood

Do Aspies Really Feel Love For Others?

Published February 7, 2009 | By AJsiteadmin

Neuro-Typicals (NTs) often wonder if those with Asperger’s Syndrome really feel love for others. As someone with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), in my own experience, I think that what is more at issues isn’t so much what someone with AS feels or doesn’t feel but can they communicate what they feel or do not feel in a way that NTs can understand.

Recola, who has an aspie boyfriend and posted in the discussion area of Aspergeradults.ca Forum describing some difficulty encountered with her aspie boyfriend. She described his not being there for her in times of needing emotional support and understanding when she needs space due to her own stresses and/or his not fully understanding her need for space when she feels this way.

She asked this question: “Do Aspies really feel love for others or do they just stay with people who give them a comfort level?” and described that her aspie boyfriend seems to take leave of the relationship when she is depressed and that things seem to switch from him professing his love for her to him saying to her that “You need a helpful loving person, someone who can get you through those tough times that you have. I don’t have the energy for that”.

The first thing I want to make really clear in response to this is that each and every person with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) has their own individual responses to life, to the stress of relating. Each individual person with Asperger’s has varying degrees of understanding of “other”. Whether or not Recola’s boyfriend can actually understand what her stresses or feelings of depression are like and what she needs and why or not is not clear. He may well not be able to empathize. Some people with AS lack empathy. Some have empathy and can’t express it. Some both have empathy and express it in their own ways.

It is important to remain cognizant of the fact that each and every situation for those who are involved in relationships with those with AS is somewhat individually different. There is no blanket statement to be made that every aspie will do this or that or not be able to do this or that relationally.

Asperger’s Syndrome is indeed a complication to many aspects of relating generally and specifically in interpersonal relationships for most. I believe that those of us with AS can learn to compensate for
that which we don’t understand very well. We can learn how to meet our partner’s needs, or at the very least how not to stress them more when they are facing emotional turmoil or other life challenges.

To the question posed, “Do Aspies really feel love for others or do they just stay with people who give them a comfort level?” forgive me for sounding like a broken record when I say that it is such an individual thing. There is no lumping us all together generally or when It comes to the ability (or perhaps lack thereof) to relate to a significant other. What it sounds like the aspie described by this poster to the discussion area of this topic is struggling with is lack of emotional reciprocity. This may well be because he, like many with AS, has mind blindness, which is described through the “Theory of Mind”

Theory of mind, or mind blindness is an impairment that those with AS must learn to compensate for to one degree or another in order to maintain heathy and functional relationships with those who are Neuro-typical (NT).

Those with AS may lack the ability to be able to consider, understand, and cope with other people’s thoughts and feelings. There may be times when an aspie may have a degree of understanding but not have found a way to communicate that understanding in a way that an NT would readily comprehend.

This reality can lead to difficulties in the areas of trying to comprehend the intentions, motivations, and subsequent actions and feelings of others.

If you are in a relationship with someone with Asperger’s you must remember that NT’s and those with AS do not share similiar ways of processing information and/or communicating. So to highten the chances of successful communication each must be willing to be patient in hearing the other.

People with AS may also lack understanding of their own emotions and/or the emotions of others. This often manifests as a lack of empathy.

At times any lack of understanding of emotions, one’s own or those of others, can be the result of the time it takes aspies to process information. Sometimes, just allowing the person with AS a little more time will help him or her to identify what they feel or to understand more about what an NT feels.

There are compensatory strategies that can build strength and more understanding to decrease the impact and potential negative effects this impairment. This has been my experience. However, that said, not all aspie’s will be able to make these efforts or even desire to consider making these efforts to learn to bridge the emotional and social gaps between themselves and those who are NT.

To answer the question then, I believe that aspies really do love others in their own way. What that way ends up being, looks like or consists of varies. As an aspie who has stretched and grown in compensatory ways in this area myself I know that in my own case I am not seeking to be in a relationship in the search for some comfort level. Comfort is often elusive and over-shadowed by the anxiety that presents when I am relating to my partner. So to the degree that any aspie seeks to be in relationship to another (and especially an other who is NT) I believe that in most cases this would be from a place of love – love as the aspie understands it which may be quite different and much more limited than an NT understanding and experience of love.

When Recola’s aspie boyfriend says he doesn’t have the energy to cope with her emotional state or needs this may be the product to some degree of mind blindness. It may also have a lot to do with the stress that dealing with emotions causes many with AS.

The bottom line here for Recola, or anyone who is NT in a relationship with someone with AS is that you have to decide what you need. You have to clearly ask yourself what you can and cannot live with.

I would encourage each individual NT in relationship to a person with AS to also consider just where on the spectrum their desired significant other is. I say this because I know from my own experience as a high functioning aspie that I can be taught how to respond to what my partner needs. I continue to educate myself and to challenge myself to learn and grow and adapt the best I can. My partner continues to learn how to best cope with the areas that present difficulties for her and then we both work at communicating and understanding each other.

I do not believe that aspies just stay with people who give them a comfort level because the exposure anxiety and general stress involved in relating are often formidable and for most I believe would be (as in my case) motivated by very real feelings of love. The territory that those with AS have to navigate to express love and to cope with relating is very different from the terrain traveled by those who are NT.

These relationships, between those with AS and NT’s require continued effort on both people’s part to address the challenges that will present themselves and it is crucial to understand that all that a couple seeks to mirror to and for each other within a relationship will be two very distinct reflected images presented in very differing styles of relating, communicating, and emotional expression.

It is therefore very important that assumptions aren’t made “facts”. Each person, and perhaps even more so the NT in the relationship need to clarify and re-clarify things in order to accurately understand the feelings and intentions of his or her partner.

A.J. Mahari is a Life Coach who, among other things, specializes in working with those with Asperger’s Syndrome and their partners, relatives, or friends. A.J. has 6 years experience as a Life Coach and works with clients from all over the world.

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Posted in AS/NT Relating

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