Coming Out With Aspergers
Written on 03.03.20
All of my life people have told me I was different, I was
unique, that they felt like they knew me before having met me but this weekend
was the final piece to the missing puzzle which has been sending me wild for 26
years.
26 years and to the day to be exact. When I was younger, I read that a man reaches his optimum peak both mentally and physically at the age of 26 and so that’s what I decided to try and do.
I decided when I was about 10 that I would sort my life and problems, mess around having as much fun as possible, and then be married and with kids at 26 – but luckily this changed.
Everything that happens in my life is very specifically planned
– I want something and I obtain it, and to me there is nothing in-between. The
steps to get there are just simple steps to follow.
Emotional Development
I went to an emotional development group recently and we had to describe ourselves using the phrase “I feel like….” and mine was “I feel like a robot”. And it’s really how I feel and how I am happy feeling. I feel like a computer that is devoid of anything unlearned.
I completely lack empathy unless I have personally experienced the situation. I struggle to imagine how I would feel about something, and I struggle to imagine how my words and actions will make people feel – unless I use a process of logic or someone explains it to me.
This makes things easy to accomplish. I set a goal and I do what needs to be done to achieve that goal and its as simple as that. My life is robotically set between different stages of obsessions that I will DO at 100% until I learn everything I need to know about that skill or interest.
I LOVE LEARNING
Through putting myself in the most uncomfortable and weirdest situations possible all my life I have learned a great deal about human emotions and the incredible limits of the brain and will power, but I don’t feel or experience them in the same way as a “neurotypical” person – and I know that.
I understand that people feel emotions and that certain things affect them in certain ways, but unless there is logic involved then I am completely lost.
Aspergers Symptoms
Like a computer I run with numbers and logic and for this reason I have no filter and often end up hurting people’s feelings by saying things in a brutally honest way, but with the kindest intentions.
Why would someone not want to be told the honest truth about their flaws?
I beg my friends to tell me when I’m doing something wrong
because I simply don’t understand. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt
anyone that isn’t a bad person. I realised that people try and avoid the truth
sometimes because it is too painful to accept and so people would rather just
deny it.
Cutting Relationship Ties
I have cut a lot of relationship ties recently that cause me mental damage because I do not receive the same undying love and loyalty that I would give to anyone that I trust and respect.
But I have come to understand now that people aren’t perfect, and I have to stop loathing other people, and most importantly MYSELF, for imperfections. No-one is perfect and we all make mistakes continuously.
There is nothing wrong with making a mistake and learning from it.
Feeling Betrayed
Sometimes people make mistakes, they betray people and then feel awful about it, but I had never been able to truly grasp this concept of betrayal. To me it is the most painful and sickening thing that someone can do. However, I came to realise that people don’t often realise that they are betraying someone in such a horrible way – and the damage they have caused.
My life is black and white you either do something or you don’t, you love someone or you don’t, you want something or you don’t, something is either on or off (0 or 1 in Binary Code). But not all people don’t work like that and people have been trying to explain this to me for years.
I tried to summarise this in a sentence that would make
sense to me and I came up with the sentence below which helped me to understand
what people meant.
Life is black and white, but the grey makes us human.
Through a close “spectrum” friend of mine – who I haven’t
actually known for very long but feel like
I have known forever – I have learned through observing him that we
share all of the same strange behaviour traits. We operate in exactly the same
way.
We can communicate things to each other almost
telepathically that make absolutely no sense to anyone else. We portray what to
other people is perceived as extreme confidence and charisma but what is really
on the inside total fear and confusion.
Last month I was pre-diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome and referred to the Aspergers unit at Vall D’Hebron in Barcelona for a 7 stage full evaluation which will cover the Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Depression, Bipolar, Borderline Personality Disorder and various other disorders.
The Aspergers diagnosis to me is not important – and Borderline Personality Disorder is what has been mentioned to me, and the disorder with symptoms that I am increasingly experiencing as I mature. I spent my life hopping through period of extreme happiness and extreme depression (manic behaviour), as well as a whole host of other dangerous and toxic behaviours.
Every time something good happens to me I instantly sabotage it because I am addicted to being in pain. Its what feels most comfortable and natural to me.
Aspergers Diagnosis
Whilst the Aspergers diagnosis isnt important to me, what I care about is finding the right person to work with afterwards to help me develop emotionally and learn to communicate better.
Aspergers, Borderline Personality, Bipolar – whatever the label put on my personality disorder doesn´t concern me I just need help and a lot of it.
Now I understand why I spent my life happily living in my
own bubble drinking and drugging myself to the eyeballs unable to cope with a
world that was too intense and incomprehensible to me.
I understand a lot about so many weird and abstract things –
like how cultures intertwine and the subtleties of the grammar of foreign
languages – but the simplest and most obvious day to day things that are right
in front of my face don’t even exist.
What is obvious to some people is extremely complex to others and vice versa.
I also do not know how much of my lack of visual memory has to do with these disorders, or trauma or anything but I am excited to work through it and improve this aspect of my brain.
Read about my experiences with Aphantasia here
In bed checking myself out with my friends Stethoscope
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Conor@thequestforwisdom.com
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