Aspergers/ASD support thread

purplewombat

Hi PN

Don't really have any advice or anything but I wanted to say thanks for your posts as they've really helped me. I've always found it difficult to explain how I felt and some of your posts have summed it up perfectly! Especially the one about feeling as though you're in a bubble. I feel like that most of the time.

I have a lot of trouble communicating, I either don't know what to say to people or what I want to say comes out wrong. I know what I want to say in my head, in there it makes sense, but what comes out is usually not the same thing. Hence why I usually lurk on here and don't post much!

seven-day-weekend

Snaggles wrote: »

That would drive me insane too!!

My job as an underwriter is to make decisions that fall outside of the normal 'rules'. I never understood until now exactly why I find it so stressful. In my head I try to create my own rules, which helps a bit, but then something will come up that doesn't fit with the rules I have created and arrrgghhhhh, stress.

Bit scary though to think that the career path I have chosen and worked towards for the last 10 years isn't right for me. But it could be worse......it could have been 20 years......:p

I quite enjoyed my last job in Town Planning as I had the Town and Country Planning Act to be a guide as to whether something was in breach of it or not, although sometimes things were open to interpretation. On the whole though, I could go by what it said in the Act, so that made me feel comfortable and secure. It fitted nicely into my 'rules' box!

Before that, I was a lollipop lady for nine years and that had rules too, so i was OK with that!

Funnily enough, I did one of these tests that is supposed to tell you what job would suit you and the top one for me came out as Insurance Underwriter.

seven-day-weekend

purplewombat wrote: »

Hi PN

Don't really have any advice or anything but I wanted to say thanks for your posts as they've really helped me. I've always found it difficult to explain how I felt and some of your posts have summed it up perfectly! Especially the one about feeling as though you're in a bubble. I feel like that most of the time.

I have a lot of trouble communicating, I either don't know what to say to people or what I want to say comes out wrong. I know what I want to say in my head, in there it makes sense, but what comes out is usually not the same thing. Hence why I usually lurk on here and don't post much!

Well you sound quite coherent in your post!

Feel free to join in any time.

purplewombat

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Well you sound quite coherent in your post!

Feel free to join in any time.

ty

Its easier on here as I have time to think about what I want to say and I get to read through it before and edit if it makes no sense.

PasturesNew

I can't ever complain or negotiate because although I could write down and practise what I wanted to say, the minute somebody responded, I'd be lost. You can't say "hold on while I write that down, I'll be back in a day or two when I've worked out my answer.

This applies for everything. I tried to (nicely) mention to a neighbour the other year that their exceedingly loud party until 4am kept me up all night ... their immediate hostile response was "live and let live".

I scuttled off. Obviously a response back would be "Yes, so let me live without your loud parties" or similar ... actually, I've no idea if that would be right or not .. and after that they'd respond again, so even having that line prepared wouldn't have helped.

Because I need time to think through confrontation and negotiation, it means I just avoid it at all costs. Which obviously leads to me just being walked over and put upon.

In previous jobs, if I've felt a need to discuss something with a boss whereby a workload was unfair or a deadline irrational/unachievable ... it would ultimately end in me leaving the job due to the frustration of having brought it up yet still not managing to have achieved a suitable or altered outcome.

Knowing about Aspergers, if I ever work again, will help.

Over the years I've not got on at work because of these communication problems, which mean you just retreat and become disillusioned before you can make progress. Not having to work is the answer isn't it.... and now I don't.

I stay at home all day now, creating money online and I do a bit of audio-typing which is posted to me or emailed. That works well, except the "surprise" element of the typing as (I have asked over 50 times now) they still won't give me a schedule! So it suddenly appears! I am not good at things suddenly appearing.... but now forcing myself to turn it around immediately because while it exists I can't mentally move on to anything else. So now I am training myself to turn it around within 1-3 hours, instead of leaving it the 2-4 days of the deadline I have.

Over the years I've often worked self-employed - and many people have said to me 'start your own business'. But I have always known I couldn't start a business because there were some skills missing... and now I know, I can see it is the whole negotiation/confrontation/networking thing.

I do know when I have met people who find out the sorts of things I do in internet marketing and other things I've earnt money at, they are very keen for me to do freelance work for them. But I usually knock them back and don't take the work on because of my unknown fears. It is the whole managing of the relationship that I couldn't handle. And chasing bad debts, which is in the customer relationship realm.

So now I use my internet marketing skills to further my own ends only. I please myself what I do and don't have to convince somebody else that if they want fantastic results they have to just leave me to it.... customers seem to want to be involved and they have opinions. And I am no good at answering questions within that relationship. I don't know how to say "I am sorry, but I know what I am doing, the results show it ... leave me alone because you are annoying me now and my best work is performed when I am not annoyed"



I said that badly, but I know what I meant.

blue_monkey_2

Hi everyone, hope all is OK. Having a calm day today - maybe because it is a new moon!! I got my forms for the DLA through and thought I had put the site for helping fill out the form into my favourites but cannot find it. Can someone point me in the right direction please. Also, it has a bit at the end on asking someone else to fill in the page for you about how Ryan is, because we don't really mix with other people who do I get to fill it in? Shall I ask his teacher again, she has already filled the other forms in that she needed but the only person we ever really see is my sister. I guess it is OK to ask her? Thanks for any help xx

tilly's_mum

Hi Blue Monkey

Cerebra do a downloadable guide to filling in the DLA form - http://www.cerebra.org.uk/parent_support/DLA_guide.htm or they will send you a free paper copy. Remember to write about the worst days, write about every little thing you help Ryan do, photo copy it before you send it back - helps to know what you have written for the next time or if you need to appeal and get somebody else to check it in case you have missed something out.

Ryans class teacher or the headteacher will be good to fill it in especially as they see him all the time.

Good Luck

blue_monkey_2

Thanks TM, that is the info I was looking for. Sorry, I think you gave me these already.

Yes, thank you, it is harder to think about as we have had a good day today but when reading through I found it quite scary to realise how much extra help he needs without realising it (if that makes sense).

Thanks again.

Snaggles

I'm sitting here filling in DLA forms too, so thanks very much for that!

tilly's_mum

Blue Monkey
that makes sense - we do a lot for our children without thinking about it!