Hi.
Today I'd like to write about a different type of blog. I'd like to talk to you about Asperges Syndrome. Asperges Syndrome is not a learning disability. It has features of: Autistic, Spectrum Disorder, Non verbal learning disabilities and AD/HD.
I'd like to talk you through Asperges Syndrome in the context within the domains of which some of those characteristics occur.
In regards to social interaction, those with Asperges Syndrome tend to have limited and sometimes inappropriate kinds of behaviours when socially interacting with others. Such as difficulties with non verbal communication so they have a hard time reading gestures or facial expressions and sometimes their gestures and facial expressions don't communicate what it is that they're thinking and feeling. Often misunderstand emotional cues so they miscue when listening to someone or watching somebody they may then say something which is inappropriate or repeat something which is inappropriate to the situation because they're misreading the social aspect of the situation or the emotional aspect of the situation.
Individuals with Asperges are often seen to have low eye contact, either not making good eye contact or sustaining good eye contact. And in the social interaction area, those with Asperges tend to be at risk for not having many friends. They tend to be socially isolated.
In the language area, people with Asperges are extremely verbal, highly verbal. And their language can be very sophisticated at times. What they do, when they're talking is they tend to discuss themselves and their interests and not focus on the interests of others. It can be a one sided conversation and there the person with Asperges is at risk of progressing of the reciprocal flow between the conversation of one person and another and that can be awkward. They tend to be literal in the ways in which they understand language and in some cases pedantic. They ways in which they use there voice. The tone, pitch and ways they moderate the volume of their voice can prove problematic.
They also tend to have quirky kinds of behaviours. Such as bizarre fascinations or crazy obsessions with objects or subjects or interests that they have. So they may memorise, the map of the underground trains or they might be fascinated by something which they then feel they've got to learn all about, they focus on that one subject and they run with it and they become quite expert at it.
They exhibit, often, awkward body language - posture and movement, they sometimes don't know what to do with their hands. They have posture difficulties or present posture difficulties or present differently in social situations that are awkward. People with Asperges can be bothered by bright lights or by noise or tastes which feel strange to them. They tend to have difficulties often in their co-ordination. They have problems with routines or change in routines, they don't often like change. Transitions in activity so moving on from one thing to another, and they are known to have physical difficulties with writing/ hand writing.
Asperges people tend to have an average amount of intelligence and they can in some cases show signs or characteristics of giftedness.
Asperges Syndrome often manifests itself with features of attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), anxiety and in some cases depression. And may also be referred to at times as high functioning autistics.
I was diagnosed at the age of five with Asperges Syndrome, and have some of things which I have described to you just now.
I've often felt like I was never been normal, there were the other kids at school who didn't have what I've got and weren't like me who were normal and then there was me, who stood out amongst the rest as being the special one. I've always found social interactions with people my own age hard to maintain for a long period of time. I would get a group of friends and then fall out with them very quickly. The social interaction domain was a hard one for me to understand and sustain throughout my childhood and even now.
Others around me always tended to misunderstand me. Call me weird or made up jokes, rumours or stories about me which weren't true or nice. I was bullied at school and picked on for being different and that was all because the other kids in my year group at school apart from the select few who were genuinly nice would rather make up a cruel joke at my expense than actually talk to me and get to know me so that they would understand me better.
I have often felt like a fuck up. I often felt like a faliure when I was at school. To this day, I still feel like a fuck up. I feel like I just keep making stupid mistakes which in some cases would backfire on me very badly or would get me into trouble. I have a lot of time to myself, there are so many days were I'm just in my room looking at the same four walls. It leads back to the point I made earlier about asperges people being socially isolated. I can make friends, that's fine, but keeping them, that's the issue. To me, it works in such a way that something will happen where I will do something to fuck it up and I'm back to square one again.
Having explained Asperges Syndrome to you and going into a little bit of my background behind my experience with it on social basis, the understanding is at hand, it's there for me to talk about events which occurred last night when I went out to the pub to meet a few friends.
There's this one friend who I have who I won't name who is a girl and is very pretty. Now, I find it hard to talk to girls anyway, apart from the women in my family I find it very hard to approach women, especially if they're pretty. Because there are too many things going in my head for me to handle at one time. I want her to like me without thinking I am a total weirdo and I want the conversation to flow well so she'll think of me as an easy going, sophisticated young guy who has his heart in the right place and comes across as a good genuine person. But often with aspergers what I actually mean and what comes across are two very different things.
I felt like when I was talking to her, I noticed that I tended to revert back to myself and what I was doing and not really concentrating on her interests or what she was up to, or if I did it wasn't for a very long time. To me that was sign telling me that that was bad. I then left it at that, we had our conversation and then I blissfully went back to my seat. Then again at the bar where we both went up to get a drink I then felt that I needed to feel the need to explain to her a bit about my asperges and how it affects me and how it can sometimes cause me to submit certain behaviours such as this and then I suggested going into an in depth conversation with her about it as an option for her to understand me better at a more convenient time. Her answer to that was that she seemed to be fine with it, and that she didn't feel that we needed to have such a conversation because she had had an introduction to Aspergers Syndrome, she knew what it was, and therefore felt she understood it enough for her not to want to do that with me. The problem there is, if someone tells me they are fine, I assume the opposite of what they have said. That's when the anxiety at the back of mind makes me feel paranoid and then starts making me worry over a thousand other possibilities she could be thinking of me. Which is not good, but unavoidable to think about.
I often felt at times, I was recognising the problems with me as the night went on. I felt like I kinda knew I was misreading the social aspect of the situation of being amongst a group of people I was with and indeed people my own age, and that wasn't good either. Not to mention, the things we talked in conversation were very personal to me, and which made me feel awkward and made it very awkward for me to comply or join in with the conversation that was happening. To me it was a very peculiar evening of which I felt, I responded to very poorly.
I don't think I responded to the social aspect of the situation very well at all. I left feeling very tired and very awkward about the whole thing, and I felt like an idiot, basically is what I'm trying to say in a nutshell. That doesn't mean to say that anything was wrong with my friends. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is or talking about is the problems I felt were wrong with me, and how I felt the evening went for me in regards to my behaviour and how I handled things.
It's times like these I wish that I didn't have asperges or at least wish I could understand the signs more clearly so I could at least know how to avoid them, with that knowledge at hand, I may feel there wasn't something there holding me back.
