First of all, I am a partially diagnosed Aspie (My shrink agreed that I very likely am but my insurance didn't cover the testing for it). I just found out a couple weeks ago (though I kinda already knew) that my son is likely an Aspie as well. Yesterday my car caught in fire and on top of that I'm also having relationship and financial issues....

I'm trying VERY hard not to be upset or depressed as, I have truly been working on being more positive lately. (been reading up on the whole positive thinking stuff) However, the fact that I have very little help or support besides my holier than thou sister almost sent me over the edge earlier....

She took me to clean out my car, and to the grocery store. Mind you I was just trying to stay positive and get things done despite the fact that she's one of those people that are late for everything but have the nerve to rush you along when you get where you're going. Things went fine until we were leaving the store. I was teasing my son (in my monotone way) about the fact that he opted to stay with my sister instead of come w/ me and his brother. Surely my son knew I was joking, (or at least I would hope so by now) but my sister jumps in and starts going on and on about how i should "just be happy" I had someone to take me to the store. WHAT?! This pissed me off, not only because I HATE when people who have NEVER been through something have the nerve to tell you what you should "just be happy" about. But also because I WAS TRYING very hard to be positive in the 1st place & I wasn't even talking to her!! I about lost it! I don't even remember exactly what I said but it was something along the lines of the fact that she should close her mouth because she still had a car, no kids, and doesn't know what struggling is....

I guess I raised my voice but that's part of my Aspie, I can't control the volume of my voice, I often raised my voice when excited or mumble when having regular conversations. I have told her and my mother this PLENTY of times as well as explained why. They of course don't take me seriously....

On the ride home she starts going on and on about how I can't just talk to people any kind of way and expect them to do things for me & proceeded to talk about me raising my voice. I. Saw. Red. I said "LOOK I HAVE ASPERGER'S SYNDROME, I CAN'T CONTROL THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE! WHY DON'T YOU GOOGLE IT AND LEARN HOW TO DEAL WITH AN ASPIE INSTEAD OF BLAMING ME FOR MY DISORDER?!" She looked at me and said "Since when did you have that?"  (REALLY?!) Me: "Didn't I tell you this before?" Her: "You may have" *Silence* Me: "If someone told you they got into an accident and couldn't walk very fast would you yell at them for walking slow?" Her: *Silence* *rolling eyes*

She then watched me and my 2 kids make 3 trips into my apartment building in 90 degree heat, w/o so much as offering to help, out of spite. &&& Now I don't have a way to get to the family get together tomorrow......*SIGH* I try so very hard.....

You poor thing!  I have three younger sisters, all of them NT.  Luckily, I get on pretty well with all of them, but there is one who is consistently late to things, it doesn't matter what it is, you can bet your life that she'll be late to it. Another one is obsessive about being early and will ring if she thinks she's in any danger of being less than half an hour early.  

But I can understand the problem with people not hearing what you're telling them.  That again seems to be something we Aspies get a lot of, it's like people just switch off when you're talking and don't hear the salient points, and then you're left wondering what they WERE listening to.  I sometimes get the feeling that people use other people's conversation as a break for them to think up what they're going to say next.  It's very frustrating.  And then they accuse US of lacking empathy.

Alison

Exactly Alison, VERY frustrating. I truly try to get along with people but why does it seem that no one tries to get along with me? All I get is told to behave more like an NT...which I can't do. It really just makes me lose faith in the world some times...

It makes me wonder how humans will react when they finally meet aliens (assuming there are any).  I mean, they all seem to imagine that these creatures will be evolved from social creatures like they are, using sound to communicate and just pretty much the same as NT humans, really!  Just perhaps looking a bit different to them.  Yet they can't even understand us, and we're part of the human species.
Alison

They've actually been preparing us for alien contact for a while....I believe they exist, and always have but am not quite sure why they would be telling us now...either way, whether they look like us or not, surely there would be differences which would likely cause a massive panic and a bunch of irrational thinking. You know how much people hate differences...

The most ridiculous thing is when some arrogant, deluded NT tells you that YOU need to listen - as if they have a clue what the word listening actually means.

Just OT for the moment, but my personal feeling is that aliens exist, in fact I believe that life thrives in the universe, but only because it's such a really big place, and that each galaxy is probably life-poor.  This is due to the galaxies being pretty inimical to life in general, what with pulsars, asteroids, solar radiation, etc etc.  The odds, I feel, are that life gets started again and again, only to get wiped out pretty regularly.  Leaving planets like ours, the Goldilocks planets, where life gets started and survives numerous mass extinctions.  Whether or not we'll survive the Anthropocene is another matter altogether!  
Alison

Exactly! I truly think that my sister believes that if I just "listened" to her, I'd have a chance to be a "good" person just like her. Meanwhile she completely ignores me every time I try and explain what being an Aspie means and how me and my therapist arrived at my partial diagnosis. I wonder how she'll react when she finds out that my son is one too....

Yeah I definitely feel like there's something going on in the cosmos and that life as we know it will drastically change, and soon. But I also feel like the gov, and a lot of important ppl are already well aware of this which makes me feel like they would actually prefer that most of us didn't survive (just my personal opinion). I also feel like it's no coincidence that we're being continuously told the same end of the world stories over and over again in TV and film, most of which are related to alien invasions. Which fuels my skepticism about why we are now being told that an invasion will occur soon...If it happens in the next couple years, I won't buy it....

This is endlessly frustrating.  I went through 24 years of private hell before recently being diagnosed.  I failed miserably at everything everyone else wanted me to do no matter how hard I tried.  Every one said I was selfish and lazy, a complete monster without an ounce of empathy and I believed them.  I woke up every morning feeling like a waste of oxygen.  I cut myself, burned myself, injected drugs, and attempted suicide multiple times.  Everyone I met took advantage of me and I was always blamed because I was "smart enough to know better."  I had just given up and was waiting to die.
The diagnosis explained EVERYTHING.  Some people understand me now... some don't.  But that beats NO ONE understanding me (I include myself in that).  It has been a struggle.  Keep going and keep thinking positive.

the most powerful thing is understanding and accepting yourself, as you are

Err... It sounds like your sister might have some issues herself. The chronic lateness goes with having ADD issues and linear perception issues...

The thing is, if your sister is empathetic to you she will use your (partial)diagnosis of Asperger's to find better ways to communicate with you and work with you. If, however, she prefers to see you as the "bad" person the label simply becomes an insult.

I find it better not to blurt out the diagnosis to everyone, family or otherwise. It works better for me to find out if they tend to be open to differently-abled people, and then if they are I might share the diagnosis.

It's sometimes a bad thing to share. When a new dentist took over the practice we had been attending, he gave me forms to fill out on my kids and the form asked if they had any medical or health issues. I wrote that they had Asperger's and that they had sensory issues in their mouths. The result was that I had to change dentists because the new guy assumed that my kids would be uncooperative to having dental work and he started giving them abbreviated and incomplete cleanings... He took the label and applied it to mean quite the opposite to what was appropriate.

Anyway, from the sound of it your sister thinks you should change to make life more convenient for her and may not be open to accepting your limitations. We ALL have limitations. She might be able to accept your voice if she hears that you are attending lots of session with a speech therapist, or learns enough about the subject to understand that other people have different control over their voices than she does over hers, but it may simply be a blind spot with her.

The thing about a diagnosis of Asperger's is that it gives you a whole new approach to things that have been difficult for you in the past. You get to analyze them in a completely different light, and this is likely to give you a enormous number of new things to try and different approaches to take.  For example, in your case knowing that neurological issues may make it difficult for you to enunciate clearly, you could consider trying to whisper when you get angry or excited. It's likely that up until now all you have done is tried to lower the volume of your voice since theoretically that was all that was necessary to stop yelling. With a diagnosis of Asperger's you can start speculating if perhaps your hearing is what changes when you get excited, or that perhaps you are tapping into the part of the brain that controls involuntary vocalizations, not just the part of the brain that controls voluntary speech.

You might also ask yourself why your sister was impelled to jump in and scold you for not being happy. Was she looking to score points from an old sibling rivalry situation? Was she afraid of getting upset on your behalf? Does your monotone drive her to screaming distraction because she has to really concentrate to make sense of it without clues from the intonation? Why is it wrong for you to be unhappy if your car just got written off? It seems to me that if you wanted to be inexpressive on that trip because you were dull and unhappy it was perfectly reasonable, just so long as you didn't try to spread the feeling to the rest of the party. But it sounds to me like she resented taking you on the trip and frankly she could have picked a fight with you so that she couldn't be asked to help out again.

Anyway, it sucks. She was half-hearted about being helpful and supportive. Fights are exhausting and can be hugely demoralizing.

One final thought. Cancel the insurance on your dead car, if you haven't done so already. You might just find that the savings on insurance will cover the cost of several taxis a month... Depending on the distances to your nearest grocery store it you could end up spending less for transportation if you don't own a car.

Good luck!

Wow, tm, I can really sympathise with what you went through!  I've found that the hardest thing in the world is to try to live up to other people's expectations of you.  And I also wondered why I wasn't allowed to have expectations of anybody else?  So I eventually did what I wanted, and life became so much better!  I agree with you 100 %.  Keep going and keep positive.  It's the only way to go.
Alison

Hah, exactly! I'm 44, and this is still a serious problem for me. And I had another truly annoying Acknowledgement Refusal the other day. I was told, in the usual dismissive tone, "oh, but many people I know say they have Aspergers," bla, bla, bla. He didn't even pause for one second to consider the very demonstrable fact that my life was NOT LIKE other people's.

something like this happened to me once. someone saw that I was able to talk to people on deviantart, and somehow came to the conclusion that I didn't have aspergers because of this. when I explained that aspergers was to do with face to face communication and text based messaging was easier, she refused to accept this and told me that since I was autistic, that meant that I was incapable of communicating with others. When I told her that she was oversimplifying the issue and that aspergers made it harder to communicate with others, not impossible, she simply told me I was wrong and that autistic people were ALL the same and I had obviously diagnosed myself and was lying for attention. when I offered to send a copy of some of my documentation that proved I was diagnosed by several professionals, she suddenly stopped messaging me, and refused to even look at my evidence. I think she was an intellectual coward, to be honest.