Life with Aspergers

I was reading an article on author Tobias Buckell's views on eBook piracy a couple of days ago and was struck by a couple of key paragraphs where he refers to compulsive collectors who have the urge to collect but not necessarily read. "Consider hoarders. These are pirates who literally attempt to find every single book online that they can. These pirates are well documented. They’re obsessive collectors, list makers, compelled by something other than a love of literature." I could really relate to that paragraph and I started to think about how some aspies with OCD comorbids like myself and people with general obsessive compulsive disorders could get themselves into a lot of trouble over internet piracy - for the wrong reasons. Some time ago I bought a CD from Corel. It was called World's Greatest Classic Books and it had "over 3,500" books in Envoy (.EVY) format which was at one time being positioned as a competitor to PDF. I never actually read any of t...

I've just finished reading the novel " 600 hours of Edward " by Craig Lancaster. I loved it. It was unexpectedly good (because normally I read in a different genre). It was really engaging and very difficult to put down. My only complaint is that there weren't 700 or 800 hours. I was enjoying it so much that I was sad when it ended. Craig... I think we need a sequel. 600 Hours of Edward features an Aspie protagonist (Edward). It's the first novel I've read which does so. At first, I wasn't sure exactly how well I'd be able to identify with Edward. After all, he's a fiercely OCD aspie with a fixation on weather and Dragnet. His social issues are also so severe that he's generally unemployable. Since I've never been unemployed, I didn't think that I'd relate all that well. I was surprised. It's true that in the beginning, I didn't identify with him much at all but as I got further and further into his character, I ...

I don't know if it's just me, just aspies or everyone but it seems that most of the deep one-on-one social and philosophical conversations I have these days are about living with excess emotional baggage. It's perhaps an "age" thing because I really don't remember my friends talking about these issues when we were younger. Strangely enough though, even my conversations with today's youth are picking up these angsty traits. There are two good reasons why I'm beginning to suspect that its a trait that is stronger in aspies than in NTs. The first is that my "meaningful" conversations are increasingly being held with other aspies and the concept of emotional baggage seems to be increasing proportionately. My other reason is that when I examine my life and my present day actions, I'm relying on some aspie traits which I know aren't as strong in the average NT. Chief amongst these is the vivid long term memory, The Influence of the Past Th...

I've been thinking long and hard about my own change resistance. After all, I've never really considered myself to be change resistant. I'm usually happy to test out new versions of software I'll ocasionally find new music that I like I'll generally take to a new car quite happily What could I be change resistant about? The funny thing is, that the more I try to find things that I'm not resistant to, the more I discover that I am actually very resistant. It turns out that change resistance isn't some giant misstep at all but rather a series of smaller resistances which build up over time. The Big Examples It's easy to find big examples of change resistance in my life because they're the things I feel strongly about. What is interesting though is that they're not all "sensible" things. In fact, often my change resistance overrules the sensible alternatives. House Change Recently we "moved house", actually since we did a knoc...

I found this article today. It's on ADHD but is equally applicable to Aspergers. In fact, personally, I think it suits Aspergers better than ADHD. The article gives tips on travelling to family gatherings and helps you to avoid a common problem... Relatives trying to pin the condition on your parenting flaws. If you've ever been told; “You really let her get away with a lot” or “If I had him for a week, he’d learn to obey.” , then this one is for you. "You Just Need to be Firmer with Him" by Carol Brady Ph.D. The article comes from additudemag.com . If you find it interesting, you can subscribe (it's free) and receive daily/weekly emailed articles from them.

I've already discussed perfection in a previous post . This post is intended to provide a bit more background. We already know that aspies can be obsessed with patterns. In many cases, particularly school work, patterns only make sense when something is perfect and/or complete. It therefore follows that aspies often have major hang-ups about perfection and completeness at school and at work. This obsession with impossible levels of perfection and completion can cause a lot of stress, particularly in young aspies at school and particularly where other factors, such as learning difficulties, writing problems or other forms of work-impairment are present. For example; An aspie with poor writing skills may find that he is constantly crossing out and redoing entire paragraphs of work because it doesn't meet his or her standards. Often they will tear out a page in their exercise books rather than leave imperfect work on the page. This isn't limited to writing and can happen d...

Comorbid conditions are "extra problems" that go hand in hand with Aspergers. There is still a bit of debate over whether these conditions exist separately or whether they are actually just facets or side-effects of Aspergers. Personally, I tend to favor the latter explanation for the most part although I'd agree that some of the stronger comorbids probably are stand-alone. Comorbids can include a host of mental, adaptive and emotive disorders such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Schizophrenia, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD and ADD), Depression, Anxiety, aggression, Learning disabilities and several other disorders, phobias and conditions. Some comorbid conditions don't show themselves until adulthood and every aspie has a different combination of comorbid conditions various strengths. This is a problem which makes Aspergers difficult to diagnose. Often, one or more of the comorbid conditions is more noticeable than the others and will be pic...

Please note: This post has some deeper adult concepts in it and may be unsuitable for children. Continuing the discussion on depression (how depressing)... Difficulty reading other people's body language expressions and tone I think that I have already covered this one in other posts but I'll just go over a few important points to be sure. Conversation is a lot more than words. It includes hand gestures, body movements and facial expressions. It includes a variety of different vocal tones and it includes a lot of metaphors, colloquialisms, polite rephrasing and nonsense words and phrases. To interpret the full meaning of somebody's conversation you need to be able to read and process all of these cues at the same time. You also need to be able to understand how these cues inter-relate with each other. Aspies are well known for being very "single process" orientated in conversation. It seems that although we do take everything in, we are unable to process it all...

Continuing the discussion about how Asperger's traits can directly cause depression, I'll be working through the list from the end of my last post. Very good long Term Memory How can a having a good long-term memory be responsible for depression? The key to understanding this is to approach it from the point of view of an NT. Most of the time, it seems to me that detailed memories just aren't available for NTs without external assistance. By external assistance, I mean the use of video cameras or photo albums. In the movie One Hour Photo , Robin William's character says, while looking at birthday snaps, " Nobody takes a picture of something they want to forget ". I think that this is particularly relevant to the issue because it means that NT's tend only to remember the good things in any detail. The Aspie however, with their long term memory often has perfect recall of past events and conversations. They will spend hours analyzing a conversation that ...