WHERE I AM AT AT THE MOMENT

I am currently suffering from persistent mild/moderate depression. My alcohol use unfortunately continues although I am now part of a support group for people with addictions that I am finding useful. The medication called antabuse that I was taking was not really a success due to me being somewhat inconsistent with taking it and the fact that I found I could still drink despite having taken it.

I guess I feel quite stuck at the moment. Where do I go from here? You see, because of the depression, I am caught in a vicious cycle of feeling low then self-medicating with alcohol that temporarily relieves the low mood but the next day I am low again and feel like having more alcohol. I don't always give in to the cravings and DO try other strategies to help me. Also I still manage to function well despite my low mood, for example I am managing to go to work one day per week. I also keep active during the week going to various groups run by MIND and other organisations.

I HATE STAR TREK!

I cannot stand Star Trek or for that matter most sci-fi (with the notable exception of '2001: A Space Odyssey' which strangely is my favourite film of all time). I am not into superheroes or computers. I use computers but that's about all. I don't know that much about technology and in fact am quite ignorant of a lot of it. I still don't fully understand what Facebook is nor do I know what a Podcast is or an 'app'. I think a lot of so called social media sucks!

Why am I saying all this? Well, there may be assumptions about people who have Aspergers or who are autistic that we are all into sci-fi, are computer geeks or maths geniuses. Speaking of maths, I am not very good at it. You know, I am just trying to dispel some myths here in that people on the spectrum are all different as is the general population. We are INDIVIDUALS and yes many of us do have obsessive interests but these are varied.

A dream

I had a dream last night about my Aspergers.

It was primarily about the use of facial expressions. In the dream I was with many other people who had Aspergers but a lot of them could use and read facial expressions but I couldn't. So I felt the odd one out. I had this overwhelming thought that if ONLY I could do facial expressions then I would be more 'neurotypical.' I would be able to interact better and not get caught up in this Asperger type speak where there is a strong emphasis on the words that are actually spoken. Do you understand what I'm saying here?

You see, it has been said that in the neurotypical world, a lot of communication is not so much about words but facial expressions, the use of body language and the WAY words are said. But with a lot of people on the autistic spectrum it is nearly all about the words spoken. I was watching a young girl on the bus today and already at this young age she displayed many facial expressions. What I'm saying is conversation flows better when there is use of facial expressions and body language. I then, in the dream had this idea that maybe I could 'learn' to do facial expressions, because I've not a clue really.

Examples of everyday situations that can cause difficulty and distress for people with Aspergers

ONE

A scenario: Two people both of whom have Aspergers. Person A is no good at DIY and person B is OK at it. Person B comes to person A's house to put up a shelf but they forget their drill. So they drive back home several miles to get the drill. Meanwhile person A gets very stressed due to things not going as planned and not knowing what to do and person B can't see any other solution other than to go back for the drill.

Now, for the average neurotypical, the above situation would go something like: The person who forgot the drill would be annoyed and the other person may well say something like 'Look, I'll go round to my neighbours and borrow his drill.' Problem solved!


TWO

A person with Aspergers, who is normally calm and rational organises ticket distribution for his friends at a theatre show. But things go wrong and the person gets confused and becomes visibly distressed, 'goes to pieces' so to speak.


THREE

One of the many baffling things with Aspergers is an apparent indifference in the person who has Aspergers. I was once in a café with a person who has Aspergers and his mother. His mother started choking and her son just ignored her. She went off to the toilet and I was concerned and went after her to see if she was OK. But even I was baffled by this! That a man could be so apparently uncaring and unconcerned about his mother!


FOUR

Another situation that happened to me. A man I know comes to look at my computer because I had a problem getting The Internet.

First bit of anxiety: Actually interacting and negotiating with him about when to come over. Then anxiety waiting for him as I have anxiety about ANYONE actually coming to my flat.
When he turned up anxiety level dropped but still somewhat uncomfortable with him here.

He sorted the problem and I felt better.

If I tell someone of the above, they might say 'Oh I'm like that. I can't do anything until they arrive.'
And here is where MISUNDERSTANDING occurs. The person who says this does NOT have the levels of anxiety and distress I have (or if they do, then like me they have a problem.)

But this is what infuriates me, that people just don't 'get' this disability or difference called Aspergers!

On apparent selfishness

It sometimes seems people with Aspergers come across as selfish. In many cases I don't think we are any more selfish than anyone else, it's just that we tend to see the world just from our own fixed point of view and find it very difficult or even impossible to imagine someone elses' point of view. This is where the 'social imagination' problem comes in.

A psychologist once told me people with Aspergers are egocentric and I said to him is this the same as being selfish and he said no but it does mean we feel the world sort of revolves around us because this is the only way we know. It is very hard to be flexible. I often have NO IDEA how other people feel or think. It's not that I don't want to know how they feel, I do.

People with Aspergers are also often accused of having no empathy. Again I don't think this is true. We do I think care about others but often just don't know how to show it.

An update

What I have not said in this blog is my problem with alcohol. I began 'self-medicating' with alcohol
some years ago. I found it relieved my Asperger symptoms as well as relaxing me and making me feel better albeit temporarily. I am not of course recommending others do this.

My problem with alcohol became a real issue so that I had to seek help from an addiction service. I have been with them for over two years. I have stopped and started the booze several times. Many strategies have been tried but still I continue to drink. So as a last resort they have prescribed antabuse which is a drug you take to stop you drinking as if you drink on it you will become very ill.

Soon I will take the antabuse, then I will NOT be able to drink!

 

On how things have improved for me in the last four years

 

It began with some feedback from a counsellor I was seeing. When I said to her people always seem to exclude me she said is that really true? She suggested next time I was with people to try and ‘join in’ a little by maybe suggesting to the others something like ‘Does anyone like the cinema?’ and they might say yes and perhaps I could suggest we meet up one day to go see a film.

So the next time I was with a particular group of people at a club I go to for people with Aspergers, I MADE AN EFFORT to join in with them a little. They did indeed seem to accept me and INCLUDE me and before too long I was hanging out with them being invited for example to join their quiz team. I realised a number of things and errors I was making and had indeed made all my life. And that is I was assuming that other people were rejecting and excluding me when it was usually ME EXCLUDING MYSELF AND REJECTING THEM. I wasn’t conscious I was always doing this. Another thing I realised was that I HAD TO PUT SOME EFFORT IN MYSELF when I was with people as I couldn’t expect people to come to me all the time.

I am not saying it is easy to do the above, but if you can manage to be with a group of people who you feel comfortable with then it is worth taking a little risk and come out of your comfort zone a bit and try to say some things to join in.

So now I had a small group of friends but generalised socialising was still difficult. I began to do a number of things to help myself. One was to sort of ‘study’ neurotypicals and observe how they socialise and interact. Certain TV programmes were good for this such as soaps but more helpful were the so-called structured reality TV shows such as ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ and ‘Made In Chelsea.’ Basically the people in these shows are neurotypical and just ‘ordinary’ people although I know some of it is set up and some of it probably scripted. Anyway it was useful to observe people this way and to look at their reactions, facial expressions and body language and just how they interact with each other. It gave me some idea how to possibly do it myself.

Another thing I did was to come OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE more and try to not stay in my flat doing the same old same old. So in my area I was lucky enough to have and excellent MIND service (MIND is a mental health charity) which provided me with opportunities to: a) go on various confidence building courses such as assertiveness training and b) to attend the drop-in services that they run. After two or three years of this I started to actually feel quite comfortable with people and had more confidence. It was about learning how to be with people again and what not to say and what is appropriate to say although I still tend to say what I think sometimes perhaps revealing too much information!

Although it is now easier to be with people, I still like a lot of folk on the spectrum have problems with personal friendships. They seem hard work and I still don’t know all the ‘rules’ and etiquette surrounding personal friendships. Having said that I do have four or five fairly close friends, four who happen to be women as I seem to get on better with women and one male friend who has Aspergers. But the big thing for me is an actual relationship with a woman. This is still incredibly difficult. Where do you start?

 

Relationship aside, I have done pretty well putting a lot of effort in MANAGING my problems because perhaps that is all you can do with Aspergers, to MANAGE it.

I still have bouts of depression and anxiety, worry and upsetting intrusive thoughts but these too have to be managed. Things like CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) and mindfulness have been useful. So has ‘practising’ in my head certain difficult and anxiety-provoking situations so that they become so well rehearsed as to become easier when I am actually in them.

Aspergers is a difficult and complex condition to have. It causes all sorts of difficulties and it is near constant hard work for me to keep dealing with and managing it. I would like to think some of what I’m saying might help others on the spectrum but I’m not in the habit of giving ‘advice’ because I think to give people endless advice is often damn irritating!