Aspies For Freedom

Thanks for the welcomes, everyone

@atypical - your son sounds cool, that was great comeback

-K-

I'm jealous of your affinity with sound

With exception of your introverted nature (I'm very extraverted myself) and your affinity with sound I find a lot of similarities with my own personality. I haven't officially been diagnosed with AS (in fact, the psychologist I went to denies that possibility), but I'm pretty sure I have it anyway. Based on your first post, I would say you are clearly an Aspie too.

Again, thanks for all the welcomes everyone... (there's got to be another way to say that, I can't keep repeating myself!  I sound like a broken record)

@IlluSionS667 -- what did you do when the psychologist denied/ignored the possibility of you being an Aspie?  Did you change Doctors or just stop going...?

-K-

This just happened last week. After the diagnosis, I sent her a mail where I asked her to give a more in depth explanation on why she doesn´t regards AS as an option. Today I received her explanation. She basically said that the tests showed no signs of serial information processing and that my life was too normal (friends, girlfriend, job) to have something as pervasive as Asperger´s. The fact that I had no friends whatsoever when I was 16, no girlfriend until I was 19 (it´s thanks to the Internet that managed to picked up girls in the first place) and that I had complaints about social skills from both current employer and previous employer seem to be irrelevant to her. Surely there were no signs of serial information processing, but with an IQ of 137 it´s quite easy to bypass such limitations when doing simple tests.

I never planned to go to a psychologist on a steady basis anyway, so there´s no hard decision to make. I´m just disappointed by what seems to be a very superficial diagnosis. I´m planning to get a second opinion and (if my suspicions are confirmed) join a self-help group for people with Autism-spectrum symptoms as well as Mensa.

Wait...I'm confused, sorry:  the Doctor thought that a colour somehow physically influenced your husband's thyroid and convinced it to make him depressed?  How did the thyroid gland figure out he was wearing black?

I'm guessing you've switched Doctors permanently, right?

-K-

Ah, right.

I didn't realise you could turn them into an insurance company - will that company give the doctor into trouble somehow?  

-K-

Excellent.  Seems only fair

Have to say I agree with Korrigan.  A second opinion certainly sounds like the best thing.

-K-

It is definitely important to me. After years of struggling to "fit in" within normal society, I still have a long way to go if I ever want to make sure not to have ackward social situations at work that can hold me back professionally. Also, my girlfriend still has a hard time adapting to my excentricities. A proper diagnosis could help me find the ways to deal with that and move on.

The black phase.... I had that when I was 17. Although I never really wore any typical goth outfits, I somewhat turned goth. I listened to goth music, dressed black and even wore black nail polish occasionally. It's a great way to vent depression or frustration and show it to the rest of the world

What is your profession, if I may ask?

It's good to know I shouldn't keep my hopes up too high. Thanks for the enlightening info.

IQ tests only one part of intelligence, mostly related to how one deals with language and/or maths. For someone who isn't talented in those areas, IQ tests don't really give an accurate image. Also, IQ doesn't tell much about ones flaws beyond the limits of how one deals with language and/or maths.

Joining Mensa would look good on my CV and might provide me with a partner to play the GIPF series games (my favorite board games) with. I would already be glad with that

How old are you now? What music do you listen to?

I tend to live in phases. For some years I'm completely obsessed by or indulged in something and then I move on to something different and I'm no longer interested in what was before. For example, I started collecting stamps, moved on to graphic novels, then MP3 files, then DVDs and now antiquarian books... but always to an obsessive degree. At some point I collected various things, but now only the antiquarian books are left. This results in a collection of about 1500 graphic novels, 200 Gb of MP3 files (consisting of almost every musical genre), 250 DVDs (mine and my girlfriend's combined) and several hundred antiquarian books and magazines. Almost all of my money goes to whatever I collect at a specific time.

Oh yeah!

Once you start working at an office, your lifestyle is likely to change due to dresscodes and all that. Few people manage to be goths during the evenings or weekends and "regular" people during the day

I'm an IT consultant. Although there is no explicit dress code in the company I work for, you are expected to blend in at whatever client you're sent to. It's one of the more social IT-jobs, though... I wouldn't recommend a consultancy job to other AS folks as it can be quite tricky to keep a job like that for folks like us. Nevertheless, it pays well.

There are many IT jobs where dress codes don't exist at all, though. If you want to have long hair and a pony tail, IT is definitely a good choice

In IT, it won't be hard to find a

An all black outfit and "heavy" music is usually associated to goth subculture (like in my case). My mistake.

Damn lack of editing options....

In IT, it won't be hard to find a job without a dress code at all. I know people who work in a company like that.

If you're really lucky, you can find an employer where you can continue to wear such an outfit. Most people aren't that lucky, though.

It also depends on what job exactly you're doing. If you're a system admin or a software tester who never gets in contact with clients, your employer cares far less about your outfit than when you're a consultant who's always going to clients. The IT business is far more diverse than most people think.

I figured that

It's one of the more boring and less awarding jobs within IT, but it does have some benefits (especially if you're doing night shift and there's almost no one else in the building). It's not uncommon for system admins to play computer games, watch films or do other silly stuff at work when the pressure is low