Your syndrome if any

[Marvin]

Ok, there has been some chit-chat about syndromes lately. Thought should make special thread to it as I noticed there are some members here with syndromes.

So, me, I have a quite strong asberger syndrome. Most casulties I take are social ones. I had more issues communucating during very young age. I find it hard to get new friends, algthough, once I do; they are for life! I do have moods but they are quite controllable. Usually most difficult draw-back is lack of identity. I am constantly searching for myself; who I am; why I am. Identity crisis. Why? Usually with asberger (more wider spectrum is just autism) and toward savantism comes with some kind of ability. Mine ability is infinite storage of motionary memory. I can remember peoples moves. Movie scenes and pretty much everything that moves. It is great to recall movie scenes. Although the image might not be very clear itself the movements are. I can mimic people very easily because I notice their parasite moves describing only them at glance. Over years I developed socially quite acceptable social personality by mimicin bits and bytes from different characters. This could leave myself to being 'fake' occasionally. This unique and thin autims specturm layer does not apply abilities in other sections; i am bad with math, and numbers, I need to write stuff down as normal folks. Daily work involes coding however. I am techincal engineer.

So there you have it. I am not proud to it nor feeling sorry for it. It is just something I have to deal with to go by daily life. People who find it out don't much change their behaviour but rather they understand my sayings and things much more better.

[Wrathborne]

Anxiety, depression, and Body Dysmorphic disorder.

The last one is a real joy to share, nothing like a type of OCD that makes you hate yourself to the point of unhealthy obsession over how you look, sound etc. Managed to keep the self mutilation to a minimal but I'm hit socially by it, as expected.

I don't have it anywhere near as bad as some people who never leave their house, or spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery to correct their "deformities", or those who have to fight to leave their house to go to work.

But I have it bad enough to stay inside my shell and hide from people when I need too, turned down probably half a dozen womens advances or offers in the last decade because I can't seem to allow myself to be happy or get intimate with them.
Its a strange thing to be around someone you have feelings for, but when they show any interest in you, your blood starts boiling and you start seeing red because your own opinion of who you are is being challenged and when you know yourself better than anyone else all you can do is get out of there as fast as you can and try to settle the rage inside thats starting to boil over.

But its part of life really, we all have our own problems and these are mine. Some you can take pills for, some you just have to find tricks to stay ahead of the problem with.

[Guest]

I was diagnosed recently with an Schizoid Personality Disorder (aka an 'Eccentric Personality).

I only communicate with people if it's necessary. I dislike being put into social situations, but I can do so normally if the situation arises. When I was younger, I had a perfect life, lived in the perfect area(had a waterfront property) for half my life, had tons of friends etc, then I moved into town 'cuz my parents broke up and had to go to a new school, was expected to make new friends etc. I basically just gave up on that and became withdrawn.

[Upaluppa]

WARNING! THIS IS DAMN LONG, JUST SKIP IF YOU'RE NOT INTERESTED, OK?

That's an interesting idea for a thread, actually.
I also have asperger and find it quite interesting to hear of other people's experiences with it and similar syndromes.

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was still in preschool and ever since I just assumed that all my "peculiarities" were caused by that because I didn't know any better. I somehow made it through school without any serious problems apart from not being able to rely on friends for help, because I never had any. Not too long ago I became a student of software engineering and it was there that I finally realized that I was unable to make it through study (not to mention life) without interacting with other people.

Well, I took a year off from university and my parents decided to have me visit a therapy on improving my socializing skills...
It was there that the therapist suggested that I might have asperger syndrome based on my behavior, which didn't really fit into the ADHD picture. I'd never even heard of asperger until then, always thought autism was just those kids who could play the piano at the age of three and sorted their gummy bears after colors, erm...

Anyways, I went to a clinic where I got tested and that's how I found out that I had both asperger and ADHD (to a lesser degree).
Now let me apologize for boring you people with my life story, I just felt like writing it down because I never encountered any others who only found out about their asperger when they were adults.



As to what my actual problems are, well, here's a summary of the more noticeable ones:

- What people immediately notice when they talk to me is that I never look them in the face.
(I feel uncomfortable when I have to look at someone's eyes)


- I find it hard to show my emotions, which means that I rarely ever tell someone when I am happy, sad etc. or rather why.
(You wouldn't believe how many people think that I am an ungrateful, self-centered asshole because I didn't tell them how happy they made me when they did me a favor. This makes me sad, because I'm not like that, yet fail to prove it in many cases)


- I am afraid of approaching strangers, which means that I find it very hard to just walk up to somebody I don't know and ask them something or start talking. I simply don't know how to begin, what to say. On the other hand, if that other person approaches me and does the first step by speaking to me first I can jump into conversation without any problem. I also find it near impossible to make phone calls to people I don't know. I am able to write in forums without much restrain, though, because I don't have to talk to people face to face and have enough time to carefully think about what I want to write and how to express it. That's the main reason why I have no friends - if people would get to know me they'd see what a nice person I really am, but it never gets that far because I don't talk to others on my own and they don't try talking to me because they think I don't want to have anything to do with them based on my behavior.

The other reason is that I can't stand loud noise, alcohol and smoking (things which other people of my age usually spent much of their free time with) and thus never visit any such places where I could possibly find friends.


- Another problem that greatly affects my life is that I often have extreme, sudden fits of rage over ridiculously minor things when I am under stress. When I'm just left alone during such a phase it's over as soon as it started, but when someone angers me it gets worse and worse up to the point where I either threaten to kill myself, break something in the room, or run away, leave the building and hide in some lone corner...

I've never physically hurt anybody when I had one of those breakdowns, but I'm still scared of doing something beyond my control one day, not to mention being scared of possibly screwing up my entire life, should it ever happen at university, or at work.

I really hate myself for this, nothing hurts more than acting like a monster towards the people you love (mostly the family, in my case) without wanting to do so. I always apologize afterwards when it happens, but it still makes me feel very, very bad.
It's driving me crazy that I can't get this under control...


- On the other hand, though, just as I can get furious, I am also often getting extremely excited for little or no reason whatsoever. Well, I never fail to surprise my parents when I suddenly jump up from my chair in joy, simply because some word or sentence I just read on the internet happened to catch my fancy.

It's not unusual for me to have rapid, totally random mood changes from deeply depressed, to extremely happy and right back to being depressed, all in one single day...


- Similarly, I tend to become deeply obsessed with things that happen to interest me, such as programming, languages/dialects (such as English, which I almost like more than my native tongue, and it's regional variants, like Scots, Hiberno‐English and so on), music, poetry, science, and videogames (Resident Evil, all kinds of retro games, prototypes and game hacking in general). It's bizarre, I love language and poetic use of words, I literally soak up new vocabulary the very moment I come across it and I also like sarcasm, yet I have great trouble talking to people, fail to see the sense in small talk and lack a deeper understanding of emotional expression. Also, I am weak at math, despite my love for programming, not that it really matters. I can work with incredible dedication when something fascinates me, I'm quite the perfectionist in these cases.

Other than that, all that is left to say is that I am often deeply depressed for no particular reason, phases in which I am unable to do much anything beyond basic needs like eating and breathing. Phases which made me fail my exams on more than one occasion, sigh...

I also have zero self confidence, I'm never satisfied with the things I do, with how I look, and with life in general, always thinking I didn't do well enough and should do better, even when other people tell me that things are perfectly fine.



Phew, I just wrote way more than I intended at first. Sorry again, I have a bad habit of bloating my phrases and expressions to extreme length when it isn't really necessary. Not sure what you guys will think of me, should you actually dare to read it, but just let me say that it felt good for me to just open myself and write down what goes on in my mind. I'm still doing a therapy, with which I hope to overcome my socializing problems and that I'll be able to continue my study and make something out of my life.

Keep in mind that I only know about my asperger for about a year now, and that I am still in the middle of getting along with it and with myself. This is the first time I ever wrote about my problems in a public place, such as a forum. I dearly hope you won't think of me as a dangerous psychopath or cold and unfeeling individual, now, after reading this.

I'm the most gentle, well mannered and caring person you could wish to meet, it's just that my ways of expressing these things are sometimes different from how other people do it and that you need a bit of patience before you get to see me the way I really am. Just like every human being I have my problems, but I also have my qualities. I didn't make this up to get people to pity me, I am just interested in seeing other people's reaction to my case and maybe hearing of others who had to face similar problems in their life and how they managed to overcome them.

Edit:
Now that I think about this, a Resident Evil forum might not be the right place to post this, and I am tempted to just remove my post altogether, but you've got to start somewhere, right?

Plus, the recent discussion about Colvin and now this thread made me realize that I might not be the sole person in this world to suffer from asperger or similar psychological conditions, which is something that makes me kind of happy, I think. I was going to say that I never talked to any other autists or people with serious depressions so far, but I guess that it has less to do with them not existing, than with me not talking to other people enough to find out...

[Marvin]

Thank you all for posting. I feel better that there are "special" people too here. And remember, we are not special, we are limited editions! Thats the way I see myself. One thing to mention is that to each his own problems are difficult but there are people who have more difficulties than others. All I can say from my heart toward you all that - just push it! Inch by inch... it is all possible once you nail that inch a time. Life really is nothing else but winning a game - inch by inch.

Now, Upaluppa, while reading your post I felt how you might feel, a lot of similarities. To your comfort I can assure you that I found out this asberger syndrom when I got 28. I had some nervous breakdown (really ... to the darkest place) and syndrome was relevealed with help of psychologists. To this point I just thought that I am different and broken minded lunatic. I too find myself not being able to start talking with new people. Especially females. Especially the ones I am very interested in. It is because low self-esteem and constant worrying how we peform , how we hide our disabilities. The way we afraid to blew all our chances and be in shame. Thats okay. All people feel that (atleast should! In the other end of this spectrum has egomaniacs, who even dont care what other people think of them, but they dont even know it themselvs).

I engourage you to write this thread, it helps. I feel much better now. I don't want to turn this thread to pathetic "watch-me-i-am-special-feel-sorry-for-me" but rather "look-how-far-we-can-get-even-though-we-have-problems". What always helps is the actual acknowledge that there are similar people doing similar things, e.g. Resident Evil as hobby.

I was in shame for a few years of this, but then I thought, whata heck. I am who I am. And I can stand up against this. That does not mean I am willing to wear a t-shirt witha "Hay! I am an asberger. How are you?" text on it. But... you got the point.

[MeganGrass]

"Sometimes it's reassuring knowing I'm not the only one pretending to be normal."

[J0shuaKane]

im sorry if i offended you in the other thread mark. that was not my intention. now maybe i can explain myself a little better.

hi, im josh. i've been struggling with mental illness since i was young. i had an extremely abusive childhood growing up. constant, everyday. i was fine with it back then, it wasn't until i became older did i notice anything "wrong". straight A student until high school when the abuse stopped. i started noticing my thoughts weren't being straight forward. i couldn't really make decisions about anything. arguing with myself in my head. i mean full blown discussions. i wasn't sure what was going on at the time. smoking bud helped calm things down, but i was still struggling to make it through the day normally. after suicide attempts and time in mental wards, i was diagnosed bipolar manic depressive with repressed memory, multiple personality disorder and mild schizophrenia. not much of what they were telling me helped, and all the pills did was make me fat.

it was at this time i started studying bruce lee. through meditation i was able to discern the four people inside my head. and with his teachings i was able to make peace between us. i can now live life normally. im not going to get into his teachings specifically here, but don't get trapped by what is popularly known about him. he was a philosopher first, a martial artist second. and all of his work as both were dedicated to eliminating unnecessary suffering, and trying to teach others how to do the same.

[Marvin]

J0shuaKane, congrats on putting things in order. About Lee: "Water can flow and water can crash. Put the water into a vase , it becomes the vase, put the water into a teapot, it becomes the teapot... be like water, my friends" ?huh?

[The_15th]

im sorry if i offended you in the other thread mark. that was not my intention. now maybe i can explain myself a little better.

You don't have to be embarrassed, I'm sure most of us understood what you meant.

[MeganGrass]

im sorry if i offended you in the other thread mark. that was not my intention.

None taken, and likewise, if that was ever the case. I don't always express myself best with my words...

If anyone wonders why I delete my previous post, well, I just got too personal with it... and for those who read it, well, now ya know.

[The_15th]

aww so there's no drama then?

[MeganGrass]

No, not tonight... not from me, at least.

I'm way too fucking sick for that crap, right now. besides, I'm really starting to realize exactly how petty these 'arguments' are getting; I'm also way to old for this stuff.

I just want to read and talk about bio hazard, before it gets to be too pathetic for someone my age.

[DONNIemo]

Type 1 Diabeties, there are worse things but its still a pain in the ass no-one understands how it messes with your mind. Crazy chemicals in the brain.

[J0shuaKane]

J0shuaKane, congrats on putting things in order. About Lee: "Water can flow and water can crash. Put the water into a vase , it becomes the vase, put the water into a teapot, it becomes the teapot... be like water, my friends" ?huh?

Thanks man
i mean, its still not easy. it frustrates alot of people because sometimes it takes me a long time to respond to things. or i will just be standing there and people will always be like "hey, are you ok?"
"yeah why?" "you were just standing there...?" and look at me all weird. or sometimes my girlfriend will ask me a question and i will tell her to give me a couple weeks. otherwise i would be constantly changing my mind. she is pretty understanding now though. its still a struggle just trying to do whats best through-out the day without giving in. having a son also helped me focus and get my shit together. but, i am not really bothered or stressed by anything anyone else does. i have a dragon growling at me inside my own head, i don't have time to swat at flies. and anger is no longer an issue like it used to be. i always have too much shit on my mind. from the time i wake up to when i sleep. i can't turn it off and i can NEVER relax. i never sit down, even in other peoples houses and that also bothers alot of people. i have a stand-up cabinet for my computer even.

and i can relate to what alot of you have about social problems. mine shifted from never saying anything to anyone, to never being able to keep my mouth shut. to anyone ever. i always try to keep it somewhat respectful, but if i am not honest all the time with everyone else i find it hard to be honest with myself and it causes me to lose sleep.

and yes, good quote, here is my single personal favorite - "Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make."

thanks for the support and reassurance in this thread, it was good to read these.

@mark: thanks for explaining, a post you made a long time ago had me confused for a while. but it worries me that you seem to want to be like everyone else. it makes me kind of sad when anyone feels that way. we all can use some change, but i don't think that is ever a good direction.

@DONNIemo: messing with your hormones like that must be fuckey man. my diet is a big part part of how i control my brain. i can not imagine not being able to rely on that.

[MeganGrass]

@mark: thanks for explaining, a post you made a long time ago had me confused for a while. but it worries me that you seem to want to be like everyone else. it makes me kind of sad when anyone feels that way. we all can use some change, but i don't think that is ever a good direction.

Heh... I'm curious as to what that post was, maybe not.

Anyhow, you've identified my downfall. 'Normalcy' just completely eludes me; I have no idea what that feels like. For the longest time, though, I considered 'normal' to be nothing more than a setting on a dishwasher.

I don't want to be like everyone else, really, I don't. A small part of myself prides upon being a completely twisted individual... but there's so much in life I've missed out on, all because of it. It's not a pleasant feeling to be called 'freak' and 'psycho' on a normal basis, especially when trying to genuinely reach out. I could elaborate, but you'll just have to take my word for it.