loner_fnq's comments

Coping with an adult with Asperger's (4) - Blog Entry

09 May 2009 03:28 AM

I am in my mid forties and have AS. I have always lived alone and that's how I want my life to be. I have no desire to cohabit whatsoever. You might as well suggest I share a home and a bed with a donkey or a pig, as a human. Its just total YUCK. I don't want other people's company at home. I am naturally self absorbed and a pontificator, that's the way my brain is wired and I make no apology about it.

I have sometimes approached psychologists and counsellors over various issues; I have generalised anxiety and my AS means I get problems in the employment situation, particularly because of my timidity and social naivete, and poor mood modulation. I always find that unless they are specialists in autism spectrum disorders, such people will not accept that I have AS (I have a diagnosis from a British clinical psychologist who specialises in autism spectrum disorders) for trivial reasons like the fact that I maintain eye contact, and am verbally articulate, and have a PhD. They say they have dealt with autistic kids and I'm nothing like that so I don't have it. They get quite forceful in asserting that my 'real' problem is emotional and social avoidance, I am living in a self constructed prison, and that I should "take risks" and immerse myself in personal relationships. I feel like giving them a real hard smack across the face. How can you possibly initiate and maintain a personal relationship when not one neuron in your brain has any interest in doing so? And for what purpose? And what would it do to the unfortunate other person? I just feel that these so called professionals are principally interested in relationships, that's their familiar ground, and they try and force every presenting case into one mold. They have absolutely no conception, and of course, out of sheer know-it-all arrogance, would never concede, that for some people relationships would be stifling, suffocating, while conversely, solitude is freedom.