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I was probably 17ish when I knew I had a problem. It’s basically social anxiety and being on the razor’s edge of being on the spectrum.
What have I done about it? Not much. I’ve gotten a lot from lessons on how to meet girls - posture, body language - even though I’m married.
Hasn’t meant much to me since as a truck driver, I’m essentially alone anyway.
Being a truck driver means you are capable of keeping focused and being able to fend for yourself out in the open. A person with severe mental illness does not have those capabilities. That's why I think most people who do suffer with lesser disorders still cannot relate to the severely mentally ill. It's same as the difference between someone with slight Asperger's and someone who is severely Down Syndrome with extreme disfigurements. Severely mentally ill people almost never get along with anyone else, including other mentally ill people, and never anyone such as drug and alcoholics or homeless people or criminals. It's a true lifestyle of a loner.
I was always academically gifted but disheveled, messy and forgetful. I’d zone out on the regular, and I couldn’t understand why I was so awkward and socially inept. I was nearly 30 when I got the ADD diagnosis. More than a decade later, I realized my mother was an emotionally abusive lunatic who is incapable of functional love. 18 months of therapy, some research and a lot of soul searching, and I feel like a new person at 43.
I was always academically gifted but disheveled, messy and forgetful. I’d zone out on the regular, and I couldn’t understand why I was so awkward and socially inept. I was nearly 30 when I got the ADD diagnosis. More than a decade later, I realized my mother was an emotionally abusive lunatic who is incapable of functional love. 18 months of therapy, some research and a lot of soul searching, and I feel like a new person at 43.
Both my mother and father were emotionally abusive lunatics, drank, never spoke to each other unless they were cussing it, and rarely spoke to me unless they were telling me that I did and said everything wrong.
But the thing is, when I went out into the world, just about everyone else treated me that way as well. I've always been too slow, too short, too odd looking, too nervous. I became tired of dealing with people when I was in my teens and my thoughts about people in general have been proven right throughout time, including now.
I have wasted a large chunk of time on some other boards in this forum and realize that almost all people are just like my mom and dad were. I've wasted my entire life trying to get along with people but I can't.
I simply do not like anyone else. I do not want to go out with people, shop with people, work with people. That's why this virus has been a great savior to me. I am getting personal work done that I have not been able to do since I was very young. I prefer it this way, especially since it keeps me from harmful thoughts or actions.
I can think back to my early years when never quite able to make a connection with any of my classmates other than them being assigned by the teacher for projects and what not. I was always the last one chosen to team up in sports and quickly eliminated from the competition as I would be the first one to get hit by the dodge ball or strike out at bat. Rarely was I invited to hang out with others, and when I was, they would find some reason to go off without me - leave me sitting alone at the table for most of the night as they would always see someone else more interesting to talk to. This has continued into adulthood. The handful of times that I've been invited out to restaurants other people, they will leave the table for an extended period of time and then seem not very happy to return.
Thinking back a bit more, I must have been a real burden on my teachers. It's probably obvious by my often poor level of written and verbal communication that I was no good in school. I could not retain most of what was being taught. This is a huge daily challenge for me even today. You can show me how to do something and I'll forget how to do it right away. For me, practice does not make perfect, it makes me inconsistent. My brain simply forgets what to do from one minute to the next. Much of the time, I get by on luck alone.
It was around ten or eleven years old when I realized being different than everyone else, and I mean everyone. Even the kids labeled "special ed" had a better grasp of social interaction than I did. I was usually bored when talking to other people, and certainly I was boring to them.
Something was wrong and I knew it. That was the toughest part of being me. Not that I could be myself, because I've been never quite capable of that. I can't be my naturally slogging self in a fast-paced, real world, and that has always been my reason for withdrawing into my own imagination.
This is the best I can describe it for now since today is one of the "down days."
Maybe you have beliefs you don't keep private that repel people?
I knew as soon as it came upon me. I was about six and a half, and in my mind time divided into the time before and the time after what I perceived as a glass wall came down and surrounded me and disconnected me from everything. There was a layer of something between me and everyone else. I learned to hide it and to not let anyone know what was going on inside my head. That changed when I was in my early 40s and sought a therapist when my marriage broke up and during the course of the therapy, I did let someone know what was going on inside my head, and I found out what was wrong with me.
Funny, because I haven't thought about the glass in years, but this thread brought back that memory.
I knew as soon as it came upon me. I was about six and a half, and in my mind time divided into the time before and the time after what I perceived as a glass wall came down and surrounded me and disconnected me from everything. There was a layer of something between me and everyone else. I learned to hide it and to not let anyone know what was going on inside my head. That changed when I was in my early 40s and sought a therapist when my marriage broke up and during the course of the therapy, I did let someone know what was going on inside my head, and I found out what was wrong with me.
Funny, because I haven't thought about the glass in years, but this thread brought back that memory.
Hmm. I have not encountered anything similar to that. I just don't have any interests that line up with other people. Something was wrong early on, or perhaps I thought so, but now I doubt there is anything 'wrong' with my personality, it just isn't a likable one for anyone else. I do also believe I have psychotic tendencies, just not the kind of psychotic who hates others to the point of random violence.
I was always academically gifted but disheveled, messy and forgetful. I’d zone out on the regular, and I couldn’t understand why I was so awkward and socially inept. I was nearly 30 when I got the ADD diagnosis. More than a decade later, I realized my mother was an emotionally abusive lunatic who is incapable of functional love. 18 months of therapy, some research and a lot of soul searching, and I feel like a new person at 43.
I could be ADD but as of lately it all the medical experts seem to have given up on any diagnosis for me. Everyone else says I'm tough to figure out.
I did have a horrible childhood as well as adulthood though. The men were not perverted with me but with women outside the family. My mother didn't care about much, including me, other than material things - beauty magazines and tv shows, and all the other stuff that she was forced to move into a 900 sq foot house in a poor neighborhood (because dad kept us like slaves. We were basically an embarrassment to him because we were both 'too dark' as his mother once put it). I can't really blame my mother. She was treated like dirt by just about everyone because of her looks. They thought of her as the ugly duckling throughout her life and my dad's carousing with other women only made things worse. She didn't have a good disposition since everyone treated her like dirt. Neither of them had any true friends.
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