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.

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

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

Missing the obvious point

My biggest problem, I feel, is that I miss the obvious.  I can sometimes see a lot within a situation which other people miss - particularly if its a repetitive process - but I really do have a blind spot for the immediately obvious and the long-term consequence.

Today's example is this:  Wife and I were talking about the fact that school happens again in about 10 days, and she was saying she's not entirely looking forward to going back to seeing all the other parents and having to deal with them, and I jokingly suggested she find a job that pays the same as mine and we swap. She laughed a little, then said "if I thought you could handle it, I would give it some serious consideration".

I was a little taken aback.  "what do you mean?" I asked "I can certainly do the housework and get the kids to and from school". "Yes," says wife "but can you cope with the parents? Can you cope with the small talk? Can you deal with them watching you, how you treat your kids, judging you?"

"Dead easy," says I, "this is where I have the advantage of not giving a fuck what other people think of me". At that point, eldest daughter comes into the room and announces she needs the loo.  Cue a break in conversation.

When wife comes back she says "I find it hard sometimes that you completely dismiss things that I think are important. I don't make small talk to impress people. I don't often want to spend time talking with them, and I don't really care about them judging me, but our daughter has Autism and they will judge that, and they will judge her, and the only way that we can try to break down the barriers caused by her being different is by being friendly and accepted.  She is going to need friends, and we can't afford to alienate the parents of people that she wants to be friends with."

And with that statement I suddenly understand. Her concern for how she is viewed is nothing to do with her, or with me, but to try to ensure that there are people watching out for our eldest when we're not around: people who will accept her odd little ways rather than trying to change them, people who will accept her, not ostracise her and most importantly try to make sure that people see her first and foremost as a lovely little girl, not some sort of disabled weirdo.

And without that conversation, I never would have understood. I would just have gone on thinking that she spends too much time worrying about what other people think of her, and not understanding why.

I love my wife. In all the world she is the only person who has ever been able to get me to see someone Else's point of view, and right now i think that might be the only thing that will enable me to be the dad I need to be.

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.

Full Achievement Granted

So I managed to go to the RP group last night.

It did take some effort

a: to go to the place (where i was, of course, the first one there)
b: to wait around for other people
c: to go into the building
d: to stay

but i did it all.  it was very awkward at first because of course people don't just swarm around you and fully socialise, so it took me some time to really integrate but by the end of the night i was fully involved in a game and talking well to a couple of the members

the only thing that I'm not happy about was that i couldn't seem to help myself in my nervousness telling the guy who runs it, and whoever else was listening at the time, that i have real social issues, have difficulty attending something new, may not come back next week. we'll see.  i mean, its all true but there's just no need to divulge it, particularly to strangers.

i am happy about the fact that there was a girl there who made a comment that really annoyed me (beyond her habit of shouting "ROLL A 1" every time i rolled the dice) and while i wanted to argue with her i made myself stop as i didn't want to be the new guy who causes trouble.  i even managed not to give her the cold shoulder for more than about 5 mins. Score!

so, all in all a successful night. i enjoyed the game (Dystopian Wars, which has some really excellent steampunk navies) and by the end of the evening i was back to being my old rambunctious gaming self.

its nice to be back amongst my own kind :)

partial achievement

one of the positive things that has already come out of this is that i now understand that my lack of social life is due to my general anxiety over meeting new people rather than a lack of desire to have friends.  if i look at my life at the moment, all of my friends are either family, made through my wife or friends i have had for years from school & college. i can onhly think of 1 real friend i have made since i moved down here and i very rarely see him.

so, yesterday i looked for a group interested in rpg/ wargaming in my local area (which frankly seemed unlikely) and managed to find one which was open to all comers. even so i had to email them and check it was OK to come along just because i wouldn't be able to cope with simply turning up without warning. it would have totally freaked me out.

anyway, I've made contact with the group and will be going to meet them and see what they are about tomorrow, and I'm even going to have some food with them.

this is only a partial achievement as i still have to brave the actual activity yet.  I'll see if i can convert this into a fully achievement by tomorrow