New year: the inscrutable future

Its a time when traditionally people do the who "new me" thing. Me? I don't think you can decide to change yourself based on a date. That's not a plan which will work in the long term. You need more incentive.

I feel I have been moving in a different direction for some months now, and when I look at january 2013 compared with now, I notice a few differences.

1 - I am now diagnosed (obviously)
2 - I am not on a knife edge in my marriage
3 - I have a new job
4 - I am substantially fatter (and i was never small)
5 - My right arm is in a cast (and trying to type is a proper bugger's muddle!)

While some of those things were fairly predictable (increase in girth) not all were, and all of them have come with different effects on my life: my diagnosis has drawn me into the AS community (including another irregular blog here, my happier marriage has reduced my worry, as has my new job, although it is less stimulating that the old one, my weight gain has made me unhappy with my size and appearance, and resolve that I must do something to fix it, and my arm in a cast - really surprising, overall - is
making everything more difficult, including blogging

So my decisions for this year are informed by last year but also by my attempt at long term planning. To be clear, I am not good at this.  I don't know if its an aspie thing or just a me-thing, but I can't visualise further than about 6 months in the future, which means I am generally good at short-term and annual planning, but not long term. Whatever the basis for it, I need to work at making long term plans rather than undertaking actions which will have long-term consequences.

As a result, here is my list of thinks I need to do this year, and feel I have or can gather the motivation to

• try to buy a house: long-term plan
• go on holiday: annual plan, but secondary to house buying, if something has to give way
• lose weight: a classic, but i think my health is suffering. I look and feel terrible and need to change that
• get more involved in the AS community online
• volunteer in real life, perhaps undertaking fundraising
• find a social activity to get involved with.

For me, this is a tall order, but i have 350-odd days to manage to make progress on each of these.

overall, i am feeling optimistic about 2014: financially I am in a better position, I feel more comfortable in my marriage and we are looking to buy a house for the first time. Knowing i have AS has really freed up my mind to stop worrying about those things which are "wrong" with me and accept them. no longer am I the self-hating geek I have been forever but a guy who finally knows why he is different, and that its no bad thing. I hope everyone else can view 2014 with a similar level of optimism.

A2's guide to a low stress christmas for ASD families

I love Christmas. Always have. Even through my awkward teenage years when visitors were welcome but I would sit silently in a room with them.

As I have got older, it has become even more exciting for me, and with the addition of 2 kiddies to the household, I don't think it could be bigger.

Which also means its stressful!

Having a diagnosis myself as well as 2 kids on the spectrum means that to have the opportunity to enjoy christmas, we need to follow a few rules, and I think that these might be pretty useful to other people in a similar situation.

So, here goes.

1 - PLAN! Spontaneity is nice in its place, but at Christmas, ASD children will be getting wound up in a way its hard to calm them down from. The entire world is throwing Christmas excitement at them. So, have a calendar, or a wall-planner, or a visual timetable they can see, and talk them through what is happening each day so they know what to expect.  At the moment mine says

Dec 18 - School all day
Dec 19 - School half day then playing at home
Dec 20 - Take Daddy to hospital/ playing at home
Dec 21 - Daddy's Birthday
Dec 22 - Playing at home
Dec 23 - Granny and Pappi coming
Dec 24 - Christmas Eve, Uncle AJ coming to stay
Dec 25 - Christmas Day: Uncle AJ, Granny and Pappi visiting

etc..We also always make sure we have a laminated sheet like a social story which has details of what is going on at each point through the day. this gives them much-needed structure and routine.

2 – Minimise unexpected visitors. I know this one seems a little odd. How can you minimise the unexpected?  Well, consider who the most likely people are to come visiting, and get in contact with them pre-emptively. Suggest a day/ time they might like to come round, and agree a date time with them, and stress to them no unannounced visits! I always try to organise a single day, maybe two, over the holidays to have all of our visitors as I find that one day with multiple visitors is easier for our girls (and us!) to handle than a few visitors over multiple days.  This year, we have invited people round for a Boxing Day leftover party, so by the end of the day on the 26^th, we will have seen all family who are likely to want to come round.

3 – Have enough for everyone! Its bad enough when NT kids fight over things. Just imagine what its like for ASD kids with their very egocentric world-view and inability to grasp the world view of others. Wherever possible, try to make sure that there is at least 1 of everything available to avoid the inevitable screaming meltdowns when “sharing” is suggested.

4 – keep sensory stimulation to a minimum. Flashing lights, crackers, balloons, music, cooking smells, alcohol: Christmas can be overwhelming for the most well-balanced person. To someone with sensory issues, which come hand in hand with ASD, it really can be too much.  Try to tone this down where you can: static Christmas lights rather than flashing, or ones with a slow pulse, no decorations which play tunes or move.  My girls really don’t like loud noises, so crackers are a no-go (or at best, they have to wear their ear defenders when they pull them) and the fear of balloons popping causes hysteria, so they are right out. Involving the kids with some aspect of helping with the cooking can mitigate the dislike of the odours. Alcohol, I’d recommend holding until the evening when they are not around so that the very strong smell of alcohol (and over-the-top antics of the well-fuelled) don’t upset them.

5 – on Christmas day, give them the opportunity to be excited and open presents, but don’t give them everything at once – it can lead to sensory overload. Try to ensure they only open 1 or 2 gifts at a time and then enjoy those items before moving on to something else. But remember its still important to keep up the...

6 – ROUTINE! As much as possible, get dressed at the same time, eat breakfast at the same time, if you are toilet training, have your potty breaks at the same time.  Nothing makes ASD children more anxious than unpredictability.

7 – Distractions. A good rule of thumb is always have something to hand to distract them with should it look like they are finding it too much

Christmas should be exciting and fun, but there’s no reason it has to be too much for ASD children (and dads like me!) to enjoy with everyone else with a little bit of planning and forethought.

For anyone else reading this who is part of an extended ASD family, please take note of how much work we have to put into keeping calm on Christmas. This is why we don't come to your house, its why we ask you don't arrive unexpectedly, its why, no matter how well-meaning your offer of help is, we've got this covered.  If you really want to help, come when you say you will, bring what you say you will, leave when you say you will and support our decisions and routine.  This will help us keep meltdowns at bad, and ensure that we all have the best Christmas we can.

The endless fortnight!

Last week I attended my final session with the psychologist team responsible for my diagnosis. They were very nice, very supportive and made me feel at ease. For the first time I can remember I went into a situation knowing that I didn't have to wear my mask, didn't have to watch what I said or how I said it. If anything, being careful of what I said and how I said it would potentially hamper the process.

At the end of the session they said that they couldn't tell me anything until they had made their diagnosis, but the lead professional did say that given the evidence, the diagnosis of Asperger's was a very real possibility. But it might take up to to 3 weeks for them to make their diagnosis, at which point they woudl get back to me for one final session where we could discuss the outcome.

That was a week ago.

I'm not sure how patiently I can wait over the course of the next few weeks. to me, the question of aspergers was resolved long ago. i mean, i wouldn;t call myself anonymous aspie if I didn't think I was aspie, but there is always danger in self-diagnosis that there is a professional that will come along and argue with you.  My problem is that, no matter how sure I am that I am aspie, until I have a confirmed diagnosis from a medical professional I will not be happy.  Basically, its not good enough that I know the answer, I need someone to acknowledge that I am correct (which is, sadly, part of my Aspie brain - "VALIDATE MY ANSWER! CONFIRM MY CORRECTNESS!")

I know its not long but it is becoming the longest wait fo my life, longer than waiting for my kids to be born - no, wait, they were both premature. That's not a good example - longer than waiting for the next series of Game of Thrones!

2 Weeks. I should know by October. That's not too bad, right?

Right?

Topsy turvy world

What a few weeks its been!

I had a meltdown at work. A full-on, screaming,  body-shaking uncontrollable rage meltdown which resulted in me going fully overboard, quitting my job and storming out.  There's more to the story, and it involves me putting a formal complaint in against the head of the department and working out my notice once in was assured that I wouldn't have to work with her.

But it was awful. I have never felt so out of control, so helpless and so frustrated and so ANGRY! I swear that woman deliberately goaded me into the meltdown, just so she could fire me due to my reaction.

Anyway, I left.

So, jobless, panicking, wife starting college, daughters just started school after summer holidays. For someone like me who thrives on routine this was as traumatic as it could have been.

So I work out my notice and on the last day, last Friday, I still did not have a job to go to. Terrified for what the future was going to bring for me and my family I left the workplace almost in tears. I was happy I wouldn't be going back there to work with that bullying, discriminating bitch, but just so worried.

And on Monday I had an interview, which by Tuesday had become a job offer and by next Monday will be back to full time gainful employment.

Awesome!

It just goes to show that sometimes throwing yourself into the abyss of uncertainty can have positive consequences. I have taken myself so far out of my comfort zone by doing this, but I think in the long run it will have positive benefits, not only taking away the stress of working in that place for that woman but just for the experience of having taken a leap of faith and have it work out.

My self-destruction: an analysis

I am aware I have been driving myself down a self-destructive path.

I am aware i am overeating and putting on weight and not only am I not addressing it, i am getting more gluttonous

I am aware that I keep not taking my medication, and every time I think about it, and look at it, I decide against it.

I am aware that I am suffering from depression, but I am no longer addressing it

I am aware that I am a slave to my rage, and I can't control it.

I am aware that I am close to the edge of physically lashing out, and I am not restraining it.

I am not really aware of why.

This weekend has been horrific. Twice I have had a complete screaming, lashing out meltdown in a fashion that I have not had since my late teenage years, and on both occassions the catalyst has been something very minor.

But the meltdowns have been linked: both of them have been due to DD1 giving no ground and not compromising, just as I would have done at her age. Suddenly I see how hard it was for my parents to cope with me growing up; how hard it must have been to have someone so absolutist who had no fear, no sense of compromise, and no matter what will only do what they want to do.

And I have 2 of them.

But my reaction to the minor things was far more than was necessary: slamming doors, screaming, hurling furniture and overturning bins.

If i'm honest, I'm surprised wife hasn't left me.

And maybe thats what I want.  Maybe its just time for me to admit that I am not flexible enough, and not able to cope with living in a house with 2 kids with ASD while trying to cope with my own limitations. Maybe I need to be honest enough to say that what I want is absolution from responsibility, but to achieve it i need to become the wretch no-one wants to live with.

I know it seems incredibly selfish -  No, not seems: IS incredibly selfish - but I just need time and space away from my kids to get some sense of sanity which I am sadly lacking at the moment.

I have been through the wringer with all of this though. Rage, hate, shame, self-pity, self-loathing, guilt, anger and, once again, those suicidal thought.  I stood in the bathroom on saturday after my meltdown, preparing to shave with my cut-throat razor, and i found myself simply standing, naked blade open, feeling its weight in my hand, looking myself in the eye, and feeling that urge that I get to do something I know I should not.  I actully had to picture what using it on my own neck would be like and the horrific aftermath for my family, including the permanent mental scarring of my children before I could move on, and simply shave.

And now, looking back at it, I'm scaring myself. Seriously scaring myse;f  I may well have scared myself out of this fugue.
 God I hope so.

So, where am I now and what would come next?

well, for a start i'm going to make sure i take my pills. they may not make me happy but they certainly don't make me feel this bad.
I am going to try to find rage counselling
I am going to try to find some physical activity to give me a physical release
I am going to try to find a hobby that takes me out of the house and gives me a change just to be me on my own terms, possibly with other people.
Most importantly i am going to be inclredibly thankful for the wonderful, supportive wife I have. Yes, we have had ups and downs, but I don't know if anyone else would have tried to strap-in with me and help me, particularly after my completely aggressive flip out. I am sure she was scared of me in that moment, but she was more concerned than scared and helped me find the way out.

I truly do need to appreciate her more.

I wish I had spent more time at the office

I was really looking forward to Easter Weekend.  I get the Friday & Monday off (thank you Bank Holidays), and there was some very promising television, namely Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Revolution and Life's too Short.  I genuinely thought I would have a great time.

Simultaneously, however, I decided to see what would happen if I stopped taking my medication.  We're not talking anything really serious, just antidepressants (Citalopram, 40 mg daily).

And for the first 2 drug-free days I felt fantastic. This was Wednesday and Thursday, and I was absolutely pinging off walls, upbeat and lively and having great fun in work. It was the first time in a long time that I felt connected with people in the work environment and really talking to them. I even listened to them and paid attention.  I started to wonder if the drugs were actually doing more harm than good, so come the weekend I was confident I was going to have a great time with my kids and my wife!

Ok, the short version is that this didn't happen. What did happen was tetchiness, car sickness, unnecessary screaming, incorrect plating up of meals, incorrect plates, dislike of previously favoured foodstuffs, short tempers, thrown toys, short notice visiting/ visitors, silently counting to ten, weeing in chairs, defiance, gardening in a bloody cold wind and demand for trips out.

All in all, I would rather have been at work, which is a sad indictment of my ability to spend time with my family.  I have been high and happy at work followed by depressed and angry at home, and I don't like it.

As you might expect I have started taking my pills again, but what I really need now is a day completely to myself with no interference.  I can feel my head pounding and the thoughts trying to get out. I can feel the frustration under my fingertips vibrating with pent-up anger as i watch myself back over this "holiday" weekend, and see how little it felt like a holiday to me.#

I really just want 1 day of peace but don't know how I can achieve it, so in the short term I'll look forward to a blessed day of relief by going in to the most stressful office I've ever known.

Compared to this weekend it'll be a Zen garden.

Finding the balance: Social interaction vs: social isolation

this is approximately how I socialise

I like being in my own company.

I don't get lonely on my own very often.  I don't feel the need to be with other people. I don't enjoy being with most people and, frankly, if I can avoid a social engagement without offending people, I normally will.


I do understand, however, that this is not universal, and a lot of people would say this is not normal.

At the moment, Wife is trying to encourage me into more social activities. With all the changes that have happened to us in the last 12 months, she has decided to be more pro-active about her own social life rather than relying on me for one, and so now she has joined 2 different folk music groups, and her weekends are normally taken up with practice, ceilidhs, gigs and gatherings.  And she loves it. It makes her very happy.

So, understandably, she is trying to encourage me to find something that I am passionate about and locate a group to join. This isn't a new drive on her part, but it is more sustained than it has been previously.  I completely understand her perspective: that finding something you love to do is a blessing, that its fun, that it will help me develop friends and relationships, that she won't feel the pressure of being my entire social circle.

But here's the thing: while I'm not against the idea of having a social life per se, the more she tries to talk/ force me into doing it, the less likely I am to do it.

There is also the fact that the people with whom I am most likely to spend time are people not too dissimilar from me. Gamers, geeks, nerds and social outcasts, and if I'm perfectly honest, most people like that make me cringe, and while I might be happy to game with them, i really don't want to spend social time with someone likely to incorporate RP conversations into real life activities. I just can't deal with that.

What wife doesn't understand is that the biggest issue for me now is one of confidence.  Before I realised the extent of my difference from other people I was bulletproof in social situations: full of confidence uncaring about what other people thought of me and happy to do my own thing. It didn't occur to me that there could be anything wrong or inappropriate about what I said, what I did and how I approached people.   Now, however, things are different.  I am now very aware of my shortcomings in comparison to "normal" people, and i can't stop worrying about whether I am offending people, upsetting people or acting inappropriately.

Which means I am boring. I do nothing. I don't engage in conversation of my own accord, but wait for people to talk to me - which given that I am the silent stranger in the corner happens rarely.

I feel its a conundrum.  I don't want to socialise for the sake of it, but I can see that Wife thinks it will help both of us.  I don't mind doing it, but don't want to be forced into it. I can't be the brash, confident person I was before - turns out ignorance really is bliss.

I will work on it as i don't want to completely isolate myself, particularly with my recent marital issues, but I don't know what the solution is.

...and that's how i got banned from Tesco.

Its amazing how the little things you don't think about get you into trouble. Let me tell you a story.

Today I went shopping and took me eldest daughter with me. She is 5 and has autism

As I always do, just before we left I asked her to go to the toilet, just to make sure we were safe for the hour or so that we would be out.  I hadn't taken into account the amount of fruit juice she had been drinking in the morning. So it came as something of a surprise to me when she decided to tell me in a quiet voice, at the farthest away part of the store, on a busy Saturday at 2pm that she needed to go to the toilet.

Immediately I size up the situation. Not going to the toilet is, not an option. She can't really hold it and will melt down if wet. I start moving in the direction of the facilities. It's busy, so I am dodging in and out of trollies and people, causing a certain amount of havoc as I go against the flow.  Thinking on the move, I consider that I don't have a change of clothes, that she will not be able to cope with having wet pants and trousers, and so I determine I need to get there as quickly as possible and speed up. Credit to my girl, she sped up too, but not quite as fast as I would have liked.  By the time we reach the toilet I am practically running, dragging her with me.

I abandon the trolly outside the loos and aim straight for the disabled loos - Engaged. argh! Without a break in stride I hustle her into the men's toilet - 2 cubicles, both occupied. Dammit!

By this point she is dancing and whining, but all I can do is tell her she has to wait.  As I am looking for a solution my eyes alight on the urinals...

And I get an idea.

So, quickly whipping down her trousers and pants, I lift her up and hold her over the urinal. Genius me!

"right" I say "use the toilet".

And frankly, this is where I went wrong. For, you see, I hadn't asked her what she needed to do in the toilet. Imagine my horror when I feel her tense up and start to strain.  And sure enough what I assumed was going to be number 1 was number 2.

And with perfect timing a cleaner enters the toilet as I am trying to figure out how to clean her bum without access to a cubicle. He takes one look at the accusatory turd in the urinal. A quick radio message to security later and I am being asked to leave the premises and not come back.  

But I do not leave. I explain to them about autism and the likelihood of a screaming fit if they force me to leave now plus I already have a trolly full of food outside that they will have to put back on the shelves, so grudgingly the security person allows me to collect the final item on my list, pay for my goods and leave I peace but not before reminding me that he mows my face and if I return the police will be called.

Strangely I find this funny rather than annoying. I'm sure I can resolve it with a letter to the manager but what a way to spend your Saturday morning!

Is there a socially acceptable way to say "your tits look bigger!" and other stangeness

I've fallen into bad habits.

That is to say, I've fallen into my old habits, and am acting like nothing is different (again!). I have to admit its very difficult to reconcile the ASD side of myself with my self-image.  I find it hard to acknowledge that there is something different about me (there definitely isn't anything wrong with me!) when what I am is all I know.

But there are days, like today, when my strangeness is right out there in the open and I just can't escape it.  And when i do, I come running back to blogging like an old friend who will not judge me. Maybe this'll teach me to do it more often again. Who knows? (rhetorical)

Today alone I have had 2 incidents within the space of a few minutes which unbalanced me.  Firstly was when I overheard a conversation about one of the people in work needing to borrow a laptop - a scarce resource at the moment - and being told that we couldn't help. She then realised someone else who she would be working with may have one, and expressed this by saying "Steve might have his laptop, mightn't he?"

My face flushed and my stomach grew taut. I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate and had to keep my head down until they left the room. I immediately scuttled over to another colleague and asked "what do you think of the word "mightn't"?". She pondered this for a moment and said "well, its a colloquial use term, but not one I would use myself."

I frowned "so my instinct to throttle her for it is an overreaction?"

"definitely".

 That was an hour ago, and I still don't think it is! MIGHTN'T?!?!?!?!?! There aren't enough swear words in the world to express my distaste.

Shortly after that, I walked past another colleague who is lucky enough to be pregnant again, and I noticed that as well as her swelling belly, her chest is growing. She is fairly flat-chested normally, so its noticeable.

 I wanted to try to find a polite way to mention this, which appears to be an impossibility

 wow, you're really starting to swell now.  Have you had to buy new bras yet?  no, that makes me sound like I am interested in her underwear.

Are your nipples all sensitive? hmm... a definite no.

how many sizes have your boobs incre...just stop.

I found myself stuck in an obsessive loop: I can't not say anything, but there is nothing I can say, and I started getting frantic and panicky, and had to go and talk to the new girl (who is middle aged and sensible) with whom i have developed a decent working  relationship, just to say to her "Can you tell me if there is a polite way of telling a woman "your tits look bigger". I muddled this sentence out all in one, so it was more like

"Imsorryi'mnottryingtobeoffensivebutcanyoutellmeifthereisapolitewayoftellingawoman
"yourtitslookbigger"becauseihavetosayitandmybrainismelting!!!"

she took it in her stride, laughed with me about my dilemma and gave me a few tips on talking about how well my pregnant colleague is blossoming/ blooming/ looking flush with health. All of which will apparently be interpreted as "i can see your bosom expanding."

So I did.

And I am left feeling disappointed as I don't feel I said what i wanted to say, but at the same time the compulsion has left me and I can move on.  I'm glad its over, but it has jst served to remind me that all it takes is 2 minor incidents in quick succession and I am close to my limit.  I need to find a way to cope better.

Lockerbie

Lockerbie

 For anyone in my part of the world, Lockerbie is a name synonymous with horror and pain.  It was probably the first really significant event in my life which had a personal impact, and looking back on my behaviour linked to it, I can see the early Aspie warning signs.
 I vividly remember the news report on the television, my mother wailing as she realised that the plane had landed on my Aunt & Uncle's house, killing them and their daughter, and at a stroke orphaning their two sons.  My mum was distraught as she had been close to her cousin when they were children, my dad was comforting her as she cried.

 Me? I was just annoyed that this had ruined my birthday. Sure I was upset, but mainly because I was feeling sorry for myself as this would now be what this day was be about.

Flash forward 4 years. On the morning of my birthday as I was getting my cake, my dad got a phonecall giving him the tragic news that his younger brother had committed suicide. He was devastated, and completely fell apart. I've never seen him as vulnerable as he was in that moment.

Me? I just flipped out that my uncle couldn't choose any other fucking day to do this. Looking back at it, its clear that all of this affected me badly, but I can't say it was through grief.  It was anger, self-pity, and selfishness that people kept ruining my day by dying.

I know it sounds like I was just a horrifically selfish teenager, and no doubt that is true, but no matter how self-centered someone is, surely an element of grief is normal for the deaths of 4 family members.  

Anyway, my solution for how to deal with these 2 family tragedies was to decide never to celebrate my birthday on that day again, but to pick a neutral day in May when nothing ever happens. I did this for about 10 years, and refused to acknowledge birthday greetings from my family.

Amazingly, my family went with it. They actually put up with this madness! And I am grateful for that, but came the day when none of it seemed to have any meaning any more, and I decided to take my day back. Ans since then I've been growing older properly.

But I wonder sometimes whether my rage and frustration about this, my inability to explain my rage to people, my lack of understanding of how important and painful all of this was could have - and maybe should have - been interpreted by someone as ASD symptoms.  I guess I'll never know, but it was from about then that I realised that I really thought differently to everyone else.

As a sad post-script to this story, my 2 cousins orphaned at Lockerbie have both since died. One stepped in front of a train, the other overdosed on drugs. An entire branch of a family wiped out because of this incident.

The pain of a "new" aspie

This is the email I sent to my wife yesterday, trying to explain my behaviour when she refused my help twice in the morning when she was trying to do a quick repair on a child's shoe.

"I'm sorry my frustration boiled over a little this morning.  You're right. You not taking an elastic band is nothing to get upset about. 
 
Its other things that are piling up, things that are concerning me more every day.
 
Since the Aspie question was raised, I feel that you have been looking at me in a different way, and I'm not really comfortable with it.  I always seem to be in your way, or interrupting you, or feel like I am interfering in something where you would rather I didn't.

I feel sad that trying to hug you elicits no reaction any more. I feel that when I kiss you, you seem relieved when the moment passes. Maybe all of this is my imagination, but it doesn't feel like it is.
 
I don't feel like you are viewing me as a partner any more. I feel like I am being seen as another child to be "dealt with", a burden to be borne and a problem to be handled.
 
And it frustrates me and makes me sad.
 
the elastic band thing was just another little thing on top of a pile of neuroses I have at the moment. It just felt like yet another way where I was just getting in the way, especially after my other suggestion had just been dismissed when i was trying to help you avoid having to stand holding a shoe for 5-10 mins.
 
And in the long run my worry is that we won't get past this, that "living with 3 disabled people" is going to be too much for you to handle. 

To my eyes it already is, and I wonder whether you're trying to figure out how to do it and  keep sane, or figure out if you could deal with the girls without me.
 
Honestly, I have days where I think you would be better off without me as I  would be 1 less person you feel you have to take care of, but then I don't know  how you would deal with the girls on your own.

I certainly wouldn't blame you if you said "too much".
 
I know that this has been hard for you, and will continue to be, but the thing that is hardest for me in all of this is not the stress of the summer, not the AS, not the reflection on my whole life, but its facing you every day and feeling I am less in your eyes."

The Missing head

Its driving me nuts!

I'm a section manager
within a department of a college. The admin section.  I have one of the other
section managers shouting at me that a learner hasn't received a full kit
and is missing a mannequin head.


Yes. A mannequin head

This is something that we give to our students for doing their hairdressing course.

So, cue me checking through the records to see if we have given it to the learner, and he signed for his kit in September. No mention of missing head

2 months later, MY line manager is telling me not to give him one if he's already had it ("you've got to protect my budget"), and the other manager saying he can prove that it never arrived (which he can't) and me stuck in the middle unable to do anything rational to resolve it.

Office politics sucks.

Combined with that is the fact that I am "not flavour of the month" with our system department as my emails "are tantamount to harassment".

What???

Those are pretty strong words.  All I do is email whenever I see an issue that needs resolving, or reply to requests for resolution from the other end.  Occasionally we disagree and I am as polite as I can be when i draft a response.

Now, however, I am such a loose cannon that my boss needs me to run every email I send to them past her to ensure I'm not offending people.  Its getting ridiculous, and on days like this I really wish I could just go back to bed.

I don't understand people!

What I'm hiding from

For a week or so now I have been aware that I'm avoiding writing a blog, I'm avoiding tweeting, and I am avoiding thinking about or addressing "the Aspie Question".

And the reason for it is pretty simple, and pretty sad, really. I don't want to acknowledge that I am Aspie.

There are some days where the knowledge of AS and how it relates to me is a real comfort, as it means there is something that explains the often inexplicable in my life: the odd choices, the strange habits, the behaviour that even I have never been able to justify.

But then there are the other days, where I realise how different I am, how little I understand the people around me, how often I am excluded from conversations in a passive fashion, just because I can't read the body language of others, and I don't react as they understand.  Sometimes I look at it, and think that this is too much of a burden to bear, that if I stop acknowledging it I can continue on with my life as I understood it before someone suggested I might be Aspie.

However, today has stopped me in my tracks because of two incidents, each of which is powerful in their own right and together brought me to tears.

At my work, one of my colleagues has M.S.. I am her line manager, but she is one of the only people who I have told about my AS issues, because I feel she understands what it is to be different but look the same, and I really value her opinion and just to have someone to listen to me who can get it.  To be honest I see her more as a friend than a colleague. A couple of days ago she had a M.S. relapse, and as a result has permanently lost some feeling in her hand, her arm and her leg, and some bladder control.  She told me this, and I was truly sad about it.
 Today, I was spoken to by my boss, who told me that my colleague with M.S. doesn't feel she can talk to me as I gave very little reaction to her news to me about her relapse and her lack of feeling in her hand.  I was appalled! I am really sad for her and sometime give her lifts into work to try to make things easier for her, and am genuinely concerned for her well-being  but to hear her view, apparently all I did was stop typing for a few seconds when she told me, then started typing again.
 When I told my wife about this, she said that's normal for me. the bigger the news, the more emotional, the less likely I am to react to it. I simply sit still and absorb the information. I wasn't really aware of this, but I thought back and realised that she's right. Petty things can get me very animated. Big things stop me dead.

But following on from this, wife said to me that it often appears that I take things too well, and I joked about when our eldest was born by c-section. I was at work and the hospital called me to tell me that I didn't have to worry and that the baby would come today, I just said "OK, call me if the plan changes" at which point the person on the phone said "ah. no. you're maybe being a little too laid back. you need to come to the hospital now!" Wife didn't laugh though. she pointed out that she had thought about that recently, in the light of AS, and realised that this was typical of my reaction. someone said not to worry, so I didn't, but it hadn't even occurred to me that she might feel lonely, or in need of company, sitting lone in a delivery ward awaiting an emergency c-section, which is major surgery when you come right down to it.

And so I sat there, at the dinner table, considering that moment of 5 years ago, realising that not once had I considered how lonely and scared she might have been; how worried for our baby's health. I don't know what I did think, I really don't. but sitting at the table, for the first time, I became tearful thinking about how hard it must be on wife. 2 AS children and an AS husband who is now undertaking a journey of self discovery.  How hard is it on her to hold all this together. how often her needs get put last. how often her desires get overlooked.

And while I deny my Aspie nature I will never change, and I will always be that self-absorbed.  So, my task tonight is threefold:

1 - Read theories on Aspergers and dealing with it by experts, and find things that work for me
2 - Write my blog and remember why I started doing it in the first place as a self-therapy
3 - Acknowledge, and never forget.

Some days its hard, and some days its ok, but its an ever present fact that I need to face

I am Aspie

Stress in the workplace: How do I avoid it?

I find myself caught in a bit of a bind at work, at the moment. My co-workers expect me to do the same job I was doing before I had a month off due to stress and depression, while not seeming to realise that the job I was doing was the reason I had that time off.

So today, when I was asked to return to producing a weekly report rather than the monthly one I had changed to since coming back to work, I said no. Firmly. I even then explained that the repeated report writing was one of the reasons that I had had to take time off: too much expectation on me and too much criticism of the report, which was really only meant to be a tool to allow other people to complete their work. The criticism of the report became "shooting the messenger" and attacking it became more of a focus than dealing with the problems highlighted within it.

So after I made it clear that I wouldn't do it more than once per month, what I got was not a head-on attack but a barrage of sideways, sniping comments criticising me for being intransigent and questioning what use this report was.

To be clear, this data is available to everyone. Anyone could do this, given willingness to devote time to it. It’s not like I am the sole source of the information.

Anyway, I found that I couldn't deal with the passive-aggressive criticism and decided to deal with the situation in the best way I could, by picking up my things and walking out of the room. I fear, however, that this may not have been the best solution. It meant getting chased down the stairs by the deputy head of the department (my mentor) who wouldn't let me just go for a walk and clear my head but made me talk about it. As I didn't have the time to resolve it internally or calm down it means I resorted to a foul-mouthed tirade, threatened to walk out and let out my feelings on the guy who caused me the most grief. I don't think any of this was helpful. Looking back on it, my attempt to defuse myself has made me look unprofessional, childish, resentful, aggressive and unbalanced.
I feel I am letting myself down and don't seem to be able to find a way to fix this.

Finding out that I may have Asperger's has certainly opened my eyes to a lot, including why I react the way I do, but it doesn't always help me control my reactions or judge what is the best course of action in a situation. I can't gauge at the moment whether I did the right thing, but it doesn't feel like I did.

Right now I feel vulnerable and alienated, and I feel that I am being judged on the way I am trying to avoid the stress. I don't really know what I can do.

And as a beautiful irony, the guy who caused me to need to leave the room has just come to me to ask for a different report I promised him (this was no problem) and told me how hard it is to walk a line about firmly stating a position without offending people.

Not knowing is the worst!

In the next 3 days I am seeing a psychologist, and occupational therapist and undertaking an exam on accounts. I am also meant to be undertaking a project for my accounts qualification, but am currently 2 months behind and it is the last thing on my mind.  As well as that I have numerous projects going on at work that I am trying to complete within certain deadlines.

And its all very stressful.  It feels like  my time off for stress has had little or no impact on my work. I still feel under pressure that I am not sure is actually there. 

So tomorrow's psychologist appointment is the first in what I expect will be quite a number of appointments, or just a few strung out over a long period of time, to find out if i am likely to be diagnosed as ASD.

I'd like to say the diagnosis isn't that important to me, but it is. I'm that sort of person. I have to know. I can't just make a self-diagnosis, or have my doctor say "maybe its AS."  I have to know or I will obsess about it forever.  And as it is it is the thing that is on my mind virtually every minute of the day.

Its such an odd feeling, and it does make me anxious that I may have AS. I know there are people who would frown at me for saying that but it does.  Not because of what it is, but because I would have had it for so long without realising, without it being diagnosed, and in a lot of ways it means I don't know myself.  If I knew that I had something that affected my social interactions I would have looked into it and tried to integrate better, rather than assuming that other people have always got it wrong about me and are idiots.  I am open and honest, and very loyal to my friends, but I have damned few of them because I don't come across well on first meeting (except to other people who are similarly unusual, I have found) and this is part of my frustration.

I wish I had known.

But I also have anxiety the other way; that the psychologist is going to say "actually, you're pretty normal. you don't have ASD".  I can't believe it would happen, all things considered, but I can't help worrying about it.  I genuinely don't know what I would do.  I need other people to understand how it is for me. I need acknowledgement that I have these issues. My whole life has been a trial of frustration, loneliness, resentment, outbursts, inexplicable rage stupid, unjustifiable decisions (to any NT person), and as I have got older pretty regular periods of stress and depression as I fail to find a way to cope with my life.

I'm not looking for an excuse, but I do need to find who I am to find how to cope

An inexplicable worry explained

Around my mid-teenage years I remember becoming aware that I could be help responsible for things, a concept that seemed to elude me until then.  It was only when someone pointed a pretty serious accusation at me that I realised that things that I did and said could have serious consequences for me in my life.  At that point I resolved always to be completely truthful. Until then I had used truth or lies as I felt necessary, although there is no doubting that I am an awful liar.

But from that point I have always had the nagging worry that at some point i was going to end up in prison, and i don't know if that is normal. I assume its not. After all, why would people just generally worry that they were going to end up behind bars?

I have never been able to fully grasp this worry. I am generally a straight-up, honest and law abiding individual. Even times when I have broken the law during my wild years are unlikely to have carried jail terms: petty theft, smoking weed, illegal streaming/ downloading. But still, in the back of my head: you're going to end up in prison.  It really didn't help when wife's dad ended up in prison recently. It is the first time that it has been so close to home, and I overreacted hugely (of course).

But I begin to see now that the worry about prison was my brain's way of telling me that there was something wrong, that I didn't quite fit, and that I had to be extra careful as my rules and the rules of the NT world in which I live can clash.  A perfect example of this is when I was driving the other day and someone did a really stupid overtaking manuever on a fast junction.  Because he was breaking the rules I effectively tried to run him off the road, then when we reached the traffic lights I pulled in front of him, blocking 2 lanes, and had a confrontation with him on a busy road.

I started that. I could have just let him go, with his bad driving, but I almost crashed into him (my fault) then blocked the road (my fault) then nearly started a fight (which would have been my fault). if the police had become involved I think i would have been in serious trouble.

Looking at myself through the AS mirror I can see how close it has come a few times in my life that I had never realised before, and I need to be very careful which what I say and do to avoid getting into trouble.  I can't believe its taken me this many years to realise it.

Still, hopefully now I can avoid that prison which has been unconsciously following me around for years.

The strain of relationships

In  my life I have had very few serious relationships, and wife is the first woman I have ever lived with as part of a couple. I am aware that I have always had trouble interacting with girls I find attractive, and have found myself drawn to the  but unable to talk to them, first manifesting in high school with a girl I had a crush on whom I followed round during breaks. If I didn't know where she was it made me feel uncomfortable, and I know that it bothered her.  While she was a nice girl and we were occasionally friendly, she did have to ask me to stop following her around more than once.

It took me until I was 19 to have my first girlfriend (let's just skip over a couple of periods of investigation with other kids my age in late primary school years) and to become sexually active, and while we had a relationship which lasted 3 years it was not often healthy as I was obsessive and jealous and she was sexually liberal (and inducted a number of my friends in the ways of men and women)

Other relationships I have had have been of mutual convenience, self-destructive, short-term flings or simply disastrous   Fact is, wife is the only woman I have ever been with who I have felt comfortable with, who has made me see the world from another point of view.  I find her fascinating as well as lovely, although like all other people there is a lot she talks about that I have no interest in, but I am not so self involved as to completely ignore her. I just do the guy thing of smiling and nodding.

But...

but I wonder what harm I am doing her by staying with her. We have 2 children, one of whom has been diagnosed with autism, one on the path to a diagnosis of AS and then there's me, realising that I have AS, or am at that end of the spectrum.  Its all so very unfair on her. Wife is beautifully free-spirited, spontaneous, life-loving, a hippie and proud of it, but the hand that life has dealt her means that everything has to be organised all the time. There can be no spontaneity, no surprises, no sudden, unplanned decisions.  Routine, planning and organisation are her life now, and day by day I see the joy draining out of her.

And I wonder whether things would be better or worse if I was no longer part of the equation.  Since I have been with her I have been through 3 periods of depression, and there's no guarantee that this wont increase.  I have had 4 significant episodes of poor mental health in 8 years, and none before that(at least none where I knew that was what my problem was).

I am concerned that my mental state will only get worse, and that she will end up having to be nursemaid to 2 disabled children and a disabled husband who is mentally shattered, and I don't want to do that to her.

I am sure that defining the AS will help significantly, but I managed for 30 years without succumbing to depression, 30 years where i must have had AS, so it must be more than that.

What to do troubles me.  I love wife very much and don't want to do the wrong thing, but is it harder for her to deal with 2 disabled kids with the help of someone like me, and have to deal with my issues too, or to deal with them on her own?

Is this my lot in life? To never fit on to a relationship, to take the joy out of living?

I don't know, but its a thought that will certainly remain with me for some time.

The agony of work

Anxiety.

Its my constant companion. From the moment I wake up in the morning until I go to sleep at night I am either feeling anxious about something or awaiting the next visit from the anxiety fairy.

It is at its worst when I am at work, and my mode for combating it is to sink into the job itself as much as possible and to shut out the outside factors. However, this is not always possible for two reasons

1. I work in quite a busy office environment which is open-plan and always has at least 4 members of staff
2. I'm the admin manager.

Being the Admin Manager means that I am a destination, and that people want to talk to me and ask me questions. As long as they relate to the process of work, this is fine. I can handle that. But when it comes to gossip and general office chat I am not so good.  There is a lot within conversation that isn't said, so many significant glances, nods of the head and in-jokes that are over my head.

I find it difficult to judge whether people are deliberately talking around me as they don't want me to know something or whether they expect me to be able to interpret this implicit sign language.

I can't.  I just can't.

Dealing with my boss is very difficult as well. While I can interpret most conversations (I think) I find it difficult to deal with her very definitive yet vague statements of "you know what needs to be done. Please sort it out" because I very often don't know what needs to be done, and I hate sitting looking at her blankly, and having to say "no I don't".

I also hate the fact I can't play the office politics games.  NO, scratch that. I hate the office politics games.  I can't bluff, disseminate, use delaying tactics or distract by switching people's attention to another topic. it doesn't work for me and even trying just makes me more anxious.  If I haven't done something I will say so, unlike some of my co-workers who will claim they are "nearly finished", or that it is ongoing.  The worst thing about it is that I am the one who ends up looking bad and ineffective, simply because I have been honest in my appraisal of my own work.

And of course people don't realise that this bothers me because even I'm new to being AS, and I certainly don't expect my co-workers to take it into account. Why would they? It really is my issue to deal with.

Every day I have to remind myself that no-one is doing any of this to deliberately upset me. Every day I try to bury myself in the work and interact as little as I need to. Every day is a struggle, but its a struggle that I feel I am getting on top of as I accept my AS nature.

Money and its issues

Until recently I have considered myself to be "normal". My Aspie revelation is still very new to me, and every day I find something else that may be affected by my ASD issues.

Today's is money.

It doesn't seem to matter how much money I have, how carefully I spend it or how carefully I track it, I just can't save it.  If my income increases, my outgoings increase.  If my income decreases then I feel under a great deal of stress as it is hard for me to find where I can cut back to make it all work.  It is without doubt the single biggest cause of stress in my life on an ongoing basis, and the fact that we have just lost somewhere in the region of £600 per month due to government cuts is very hard to take.

Now, I know I have issues dealing with money, to the extent where I am actually training to be an accountant and have worked as a bookkeeper in the past. But even this financial awareness, my spreadsheets for keeping track of direct debits and standing orders and a constant stifling of my less frugal impulses (a new Final Fantasy game? Buy It! The latest game by Bethesda? Where do I put my money???!) doesn't seem to make me any better at keeping it in my pocket!

Its frustrating constantly and it really does stress me out but thankfully wife took the time to do 2 things.

1 - reassure me that her research into ASD (which she does a LOT! There are 3 of us in this house who are spectrum) shows that saving, spending and budgeting money is something which many people with AS find difficult

2 - talked me through our current spend, our income and the things which are unnecessary luxuries that we could cut back on if we needed to.

So while I worry about money generally, I'm not worrying about it right now. I get paid at the end of this week, and while I know I have overspent this month, wife's reassurance and support go a long way to making me feel that its something I can resolve.

Joining the community

In the last few days I have dipped my toe in the water of the Aspie and wider ASD community online, and I have to say that being able to see the struggles of others and reading about the support they receive has been  very comforting for me.
 After creating myself a twitter account and making a couple of posts under the #Aspie hash-tag I suddenly found myself receiving mentions and direct messages from people who wanted to talk to me and invite me to interact with the community at large.  To feel so welcome so quickly into a society where my experience has always been one of social awkwardness, long pauses, anxiety and not knowing what to say was a blessed relief.
 And its been very constructive: finding a good description of what it is to be aspie, joining a group to discuss ASD and Aspie issues or simply having people respond to you or forward your tweets
Finally after having spent so long feeling I have to work as hard as anyone else and never get the level of social acceptance that they do, I'm finding that there are other people out there who are having very similar experiences, and suddenly I don't feel quite so isolated.