How Tough It Was For Me Before I Was Diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome

Years before I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, I was in a battlefield whenever I was in a social situation that turned into an argument.  From my point of view, these arguments would erupt out of nowhere, and I would have no clue why someone was furious at me.  "You're supposed to (fill in the blank)!" was a popular phrase I heard during these arguments.  I knew the whole time that my intent in a social situation was to make friends, not cause conflict with others or make them uncomfortable.  Whenever this happened, I automatically assumed that the other person or persons just wanted to make trouble or was just plain crazy.  The truth was that I was an undiagnosed adult with Asperger's Syndrome.

When I was younger, I went into battle on two fronts: home and school.  For many years, I assumed that the angry people just being unfair to me.  The teachers would reinforce that belief to me during that time.  What was more upsetting was that my immediate family would talk to me the same way as the other students did.  It didn't matter to me how many people were ganging up on me in an argument because I knew I wasn't a bad person and didn't believe I was a troublemaker.  People would stick me with the label "Stubborn" because of my defiance.  Was it any wonder that I would get very upset and start crying uncontrollably?  Other times, I was just furious and would scream angrily.

Because of these arguments, I became very frustrated and sometimes would not talk much at all.  Of course, I ended up with a new accusation that I was just being a snob to others.  That wasn't true at all.  It was hard to realize what was okay to talk about with others without setting them off.  I began to wonder if my whole life was just a series of unending conflicts.  When I told someone that I had trouble socializing, the other person would look at me as though I were insane or telling a joke.  In their eyes, I did have social skills despite my efforts of telling them that the opposite was true.  I recall a few would ask me why I wasn't good at socializing, and I would say that I didn't know how.  Then, they would say it was easy and that I needed to practice more.

I practiced at socializing more and got a lot of grief from tons of misunderstandings that led to heated arguments.  There was that cycle again.  It always led up to arguments no matter what I said or did.  How would I know how to react to a social situation correctly while everyone believed that I had social skills?  It was a frustrating dilemma for my whole life.  This dilemma wrecked havoc in my personal and career life.  I couldn't get the jobs I wanted because, unbeknownst to me, social skills was a requirement even though it was never listed in the job position description.

In 1993, I met a man who couldn't read small print and told me why, though I didn't even ask him for an explanation.  He said that there was a neurological imbalance in his brain that made it impossible for him to read small print despite all his efforts.  Growing up in school was hard for him because the teachers and his fellow students thought that he was capable of reading the small print in his textbooks.  How wrong they were!  

His story made me wonder if some sort of disorder in my brain made it difficult for me to socialize with others.  When I presented my hypothesis to the therapist I was seeing at the time, she debunked it and told me once again that I did indeed have the capability to socialize.  She stated that I only had a disorder called Intermittent Explosive Disorder because I couldn't control my temper.  I decided to listen to her advice about being around other people more would improve my social skills.

However, I started thinking again about my hypothesis that I had a disorder that prevented me from socializing when I dumped a guy was dating in 1994.  The guy I had been dating was a terrible excuse of a boyfriend because he had mistreated me badly.  He didn't bother to listen to anything I told him about myself.  I always had to repeat the same things I told him every time I went out with him.  He would promise me to drive me to some place and then turn around and not bother to show up.  In January 1994, I was waiting for him in a very cold place to give me a ride and I had laryngitis.  He didn't bother to leave a message on my answering machine that he wasn't able to show up.  When I dumped him in November 1994, I did it over the phone.  During that conversation, he blamed me for not following the rules of being a girlfriend or even being a friend.  I told him that he wasn't able to communicate with me at all, and he claimed that anything I said to him meant something else to him.  I told him over and over that I meant what I said to him.

I gave him an example of his ineptitude at communicating with me.  In July 1994, I asked him to meet me at a movie theatre that was a few blocks away from my apartment and that he didn't have to drive me to the theatre.  He agreed to meet me at the theatre, not the apartment.  A few days later, I was standing in front of the movie theatre waiting for him to show up.  I decided to see the movie all by myself because he never showed up.  Later that day, he called me and told me he went to my apartment.  He accused me of giving him the wrong message and claimed that I really wanted him to drive me to the movie theatre.  It made me wonder why he left me stranded in the freezing cold six months earlier.  I told him that he always ignored what I was saying to him and that his explanation was lame.

I wanted to dump him in September 1994, but he wasn't able to meet with me for more than two months.  His parents decided to kick him out of their basement so he had to hunt for an apartment, and his car was constantly in the repair shop.  I decided to do it over the phone when he decided to call me in November 1994.  It had been more than two weeks since his last phone call.

While I was dumping him over the phone, he cried and begged me to stay with him.  However, he still accused me of not following the social rules of communicating.  I yelled at him reminding him that I got a college degree from Emerson College, a communications college.  Then, I started thinking about the possibility of me having a disorder at that point of that conversation.

For years after I ended that relationship, I still had difficulty in relationships with everybody and still wondered if I had a mental disorder that made it difficult for me.  I stopped seeing my therapist in 2000 after I quit the job that I hated being stuck in for many years.  I had been seeing her since 1989 when she misdiagnosed me with having Intermittent Explosive Disorder and prescribed Lithium to me because I had been losing my temper that my awful job.  All the things she advised me on never helped me at all.  I was very frustrated.

Almost two years later, a career counselor suggested that I start seeing a doctor again in order to help me find a full time job.  I had been doing temp jobs since leaving my old job and was at my wit's end about why I wasn't able to find full time employment again.  While searching the Internet, I came across a treatment for people with Intermittent Explosive Disorder called Neuro-Therapy (biofeedback treatment).  After locating a doctor who specialized in this, I went to her and told her about that my Intermittent Explosive Disorder ruined my capability for socializing.  I described to her my problems with socializing.

After she did a Brain Map (similar to an EEG), she noticed that my brain waves were identical to her Asperger's Syndrome patients.  She told about Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism.  When I went to another doctor for testing, I got an official diagnosis of having both Asperger's Syndrome and Nonverbal Learning Disorder (a disorder that makes it difficult to read facial expressions and body language) in 2002.

It was easy for me to imagine how that man who was unable to read small print felt when he got his diagnosis.  I felt better and was no longer plagued with that burning frustration in my soul.