Tag: Aspie
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Comfort Item(s)
Comfort items can be trinkets, clothing, blankets, really anything item that can bring comfort or assurance. My comfort items have changed over the years and I also have comfort items for different scenarios. When I am feeling overwhelmed, lost, and/or alone, I often put on my Dad’s high school football sweater. I also used to…
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Protective Physical Stance/ Body Position
This past summer, while taking a class to learn a new hobby, I was made aware of my body positioning. During this class, each of the participants were working one-on-one with instructors to learn body movements and timing. As I watched my classmates practice the sequence, an instructor asked if I had hit my shoulder…
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Sensory Overload ≠ Meltdown
A couple of weeks ago I had what I would have previously called a meltdown. I was overwhelmed and went into a lower level of functioning where I was having a hard time functioning at all. I would swing between being “okay”, deep crying, and blankly staring into the abyss. When I would try working,…
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Need for explicate language
About a month or so ago, I learned a characteristic about myself that, apparently, everyone else in my life had already known, but never specifically stated. I have a big personality. It blows my mind that I was completely unaware of a defining characteristic of how the outside world perceives me. I learned of this…
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Learning emotions: being excited vs being in an excited state
Until recently, I didn’t have the capacity to differentiate many of my emotions. I’m not sure if it’s the wisdom that comes with age, conversations with my therapist, the settling of many years of reading and listening to researchers dissect and explain emotion, or some combination of the three; but slowly gaining the ability to…
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Breaking through the mask
Once I had finally found a therapist with Asperger’s Syndrome experience (so much so that Asperger’s was the topic of her dissertation), I was beyond excited. At last, I thought, someone who will understand. During the first couple of sessions, Dr. Gia and I worked through my most recent (at the time) relationship that had…
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Friend-assisted self-diagnosis
In January of 2021, I made the decision to go back to therapy. I knew that I needed to work through some childhood trauma, but I also wanted to be assessed for anxiety, ADHD, and perhaps even Autism. I had always felt different and struggled with, maybe even slightly obsessed over, interpersonal relationships, devoting a…
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Hello and Welcome to Asperger Female
My name is Paige, and I am a 28-year-old woman, just recently diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (now part of Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD). After years of feeling different and thinking I might be on the spectrum, I finally found online resources that described my personality and a therapist who recognized my differences. Asperger Female is…