Life with Aspergers

People with Asperger’s syndrome need “alone-time".  It's critical to their continued functioning.  Without a chance to calm down people with Asperger’s suffer from sensory overload which can make them very irritable and prone to meltdowns.  "Alone-time" helps them to recover, particularly if they have been engaged in a lot of social activity. You could be forgiven for thinking that alone time means time spent in a room by yourself with no distractions. This is certainly a great way to achieve it however alone time can be obtained in a variety of other ways not all of which are silent. This is particularly important if the person with Aspergers is at school or work and cannot easily find a room to themselves. Removing Stimuli Since one of the main reasons alone time is to reduce stimuli, the best ways to get the same effect depend upon removing one or more stimuli from your senses. For example, wearing darker glasses or a hoodie will reduce the amount of...

One of the more interesting realisations I've reached in the last couple of years is that negative emotions, such as depression are actually transferable feelings. If you spend a lot of time with very depressed people, watch a lot of depressing news stories, or read a lot of depressing attention-seeking posts on Facebook, you'll eventually start feeling depressed yourself. It's subtle because the spread of negativity occurs slowly over time but it's there and the changes in you can be detected by neutral people around you -- especially if they’ve not had a lot of recent contact. Unfortunately for you, being on the “inside” means that you’re probably going to be the last person to realise. This is really important for us, as carers and parents of children with differences and/or as people with differences ourselves. It's a great thing to be empathetic but we have to remember to protect ourselves too. You’re not going to be as much use to those under your car...