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.

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 anatomy of love

I have said for many years that you choose who you love, and I believe it. With all the girls I have pursued over the years I remember actively deciding that I was going to pursue them, and effectively selecting them for love.  I know not all of them have appreciated this but hey, everyone was someone's stalker once, right?


But now I am looking at things with my Aspie hat on I have started wondering if this is normal.  The fact that people have disagreed with me about it many times suggests that it is not.


From all around me in advertising, films, literature and people's descriptions of their own lives I get the message that love is an impulse; uncontrollable, unpredictable, that "the heart wants what it wants."


Not mine. My heart wants what I tell it to!


I've always felt that people who walk the "heart want" line are simply absolving themselves of responsibility to their existing relationships, being lazy or simply (badly) justifying adultery. I read a quote from Johnny Depp recently, and while I can't remember it word for word, it was along the lines of "if you love 2 things equally, choose the second, as if you really loved the first one you wouldn't have fallen in love again".  This just smacks of desperate justification and I just hate this binary view, that it is only possible to love 1 person.


But what if I am wrong? What if love is that wild and unpredictable? What if I am defective in my emotions, and simply don't have the normal "love" drive?  I am very much a slave to some of my other emotions - rage, frustration, anger - but I never hear anyone waxing lyrical about "the hands punch what the hands want to punch", but this is where I feel my strongest emotions lie, and when I lose control of them I know that people around me worry as I become aggressive and unpredictable, and it takes great effort of will not to be violent (I am well practiced by now. Violence only happens to inanimate objects)


But I wonder. Is this what neurotypical people feel when they are in love?  Overpowering, madly distracting, unfocused emotion that practically paralyses them until they can deal with it?


If so, I'm glad to be love-deficient, and glad I make my own choices.

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."

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

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.

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.

My life in bullet points

I recently found this article on How to describe an Aspie to a lay person whic was very helpful to me as it had descriptions of social situations from the Aspie perspective, and a lot of it was very familiar.

What i found particularly useful was the layout of the 3 categories AS is determined by as it is the first time i have seen it in a fashion which I can easily relate to myself.

Social Interaction

He or she may:

• appear to be indifferent to others or socially isolated.
• be unable to read social cues.
• behave in what may seem an inappropriate or odd manner.
• appear to lack empathy,
• avoid eye contact when under pressure.

Social Communication
He or she may:

• have difficulty in understanding tone of voice, intonation, or facial expression.
• make a literal interpretation of figurative or metaphorical speech.
• find it difficult to hold a two-way conversation.
• become agitated in response or come across as argumentative or even over-compliant.
• use formal, stilted or pedantic language.
• have poor concentration and thus poor listening skills.
• be honest to the extent of bluntness or rudeness.

Social Imagination
He or she may:

• have difficulty in foreseeing the consequences of their actions.
• become extremely anxious because of unexpected events or changes in routine.
• like set rules, and overreact to other people’s infringement of them.
• often have particular special interests, which may become obsessions.
• find it difficult to imagine or empathise with another person’s point of view.

right from point 1, that's me. i find it so hard to lead in a social situation and really need people to come and start the conversation with me. its not that i don't want to participate, i just don't know how or where to start, and even when i do its normally in a really inappropriate or unusual way.

I'll have to go and let aspienaut know I have linked it, and do more self-examination against it later.

The selfish view

For many years I have been aware that I am very self-obsessed in a way that I don't think other people are. Its not that I am vain about my looks - that would suggest that the opinion of other people was significant in some fashion. It could almost be said that my lack of regard for how other people view me is a sign of my lack of awareness.

But I am aware that I am selfish, and in some ways I feel very bad about it, and in the past I have tried to make up for it by being very humble, grateful and welcoming as much as I could be. I never spurned a gift (no matter how terrible) or turned down a kindness (even if it offended me if i knew it was done out of goodness). I have always been prepared to put people up if they need it and feed them if they are hungry.  I try to fight this nature of mine, but its just so easy to find myself caught in my own head and only able to understand how selfish I am being after a situation has passed.

At the moment I am marvelling at the simple fact that I have had a daughter who has been visibly developmentally challenged for 3 years, treated as disabled for 2 years and diagnosed for 1 year and yet it is not until now that I have really taken any huge interest in ASD, and that is because it now applies to me.  Worse is the fact that i have another daughter who has recently been put on the pathway to an Asperger's diagnosis and I still didn't investigate. 

Only now that its me. Now I'm involved.

Oh I know that the wife provided information from the Internet and doctors, support workers and teachers etc.. and that seemed good enough. only now, sitting in the middle of it, do I see how unfair it has been on her to be forced to attend all the meetings, medical and social, and find all the information and the strategies for dealing with the girls. And now here I sit, obsessing about my own condition and taking the time to post it all on here. back in my own head again.

Sometimes I really hate myself

The name of this blog says it all, and i need to remember it: its not all about me.

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 :)

The unthinkingly insensitive me

A meeting I had in work this morning was an absolute microcosm of my life and social ineptitude.  Lets call the employee I was dealing with Carol.

Carol has come in from what has been in effect a month's leave as she has had to look after her kids during the holidays. she is a part-time worker and is excellent at her job: she's a real hard worker.  while she's been away the department has been restructured and of all people within the team her job has been changed the most, taking away virtually everything that she prided herself in on the role.

But do I consider that before our meeting. Not nearly well enough!

So, we sit down and the first thing she says is "How are you?" to which I respond "Well, I'm here, but I'm going to tell you something that i haven't told everyone, but I'll tell you because I know you'll get it. I have been referred to the psychologist for assessment for Aspergers Syndrome."

Carol says to me "do you feel better?"
I nodded "so much better".
"Yes", says Carol, "because you have an answer"

There was something in the way she said it that didn't sit right. i still don't know what and I keep going back to it. but i followed it up with the response that is now making me cringe

 "yes, i said, and its a good answer, because now i understand why when it felt like the entire core of my job was taken away from me and changed that I just couldn't cope." She just nodded with dewy eyes. "but that's not why we're here," I continued. "we're here to talk about your job role." "well, " says she, "its good that you feel you can talk about it with me. thanks for sharing." then we moved on to talk about her new role.

And she hates it. HATES it. hates the fact we've changed it. hates that her roles have went to other people, hates that no-one else's have changed this much as hates that we've done it now and given her new responsibilities just as she is about to take time off due to medical need and so she won't even be able to define her job role. Someone else will put it all into place while she is away.  Now she doesn't put it in that way but I've known her long enough to see it in her, in her reactions, and in the long awkward silences where she fights back tears.

And all after I told her about how I understand why i reacted so badly when i felt my role changed. well it didn't change nearly as much as hers. its like comparing bruising your shoulder to losing your arm.  I wish i could have seen this coming at the start of the meeting. I wish I could predict other people's reactions better, and I wish i was less self involved.

note to self - if someone asks how you are, they are being polite. they don't really want to know!!!

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