Thanks for your comments. I agree with you about celebrating my strengths and not dwelling on my weaknesses. My goal is to find the balance point. I need to honor my feelings of sadness and frustration when they arise while nurturing my strengths and my sense of purpose.

I should say (since I haven’t made it clear in my posts yet!) that my husband is very supportive and has been with me every step of the way. He was in the office for the assessment, and he celebrated along with me when I got the diagnosis. My close friends are also very supportive.

I’ve done some good work with therapists and have found therapy to be useful. I’d like to continue with that, but only if the therapist knows something about AS. Otherwise, I’ll be doing *way* too much explaining.

Sure, as aspies we have to work sooo much harder at conversation – and often we decide that it’s all too much.

That’s ok.

I’ve found that lots of people are very accepting of my condition and its limitations.

At the same time though, it’s better to celebrate the strengths of your condition than to dwell in its weaknesses.

I understand your need for emotional support. It’s a difficult thing to convince an NT partner of. Going to see a therapist is probably good but I still can’t shake the feeling that I’d be paying someone to give me emotional support when a good friend should (by definition) be doing the job.

Perhaps getting your husband to read a little bit out of an emotional support book (like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) would help. If he won’t read the whole book, maybe get it and photocopy just a couple of pages. (photocopying is better than giving him a book and saying just read these pages)

I took yesterday off to recharge and went back to the store today. I had a great time with the people, and felt much like my usual self there. It’s good for me to see that when I give myself the space I need one day, I can go back into the world the next and enjoy myself.

By the way…Very nice empathizing going on here, don’t you think?

Learn to be happy without being around people. Even NTs need to do this. It’s good to rely on ourselves for entertainment, nurturing, etc. When we can do this for ourselves, doing it for others is easier and less draining on us.

Understanding your low energy ebbs is good, too. Trying to push oneself past the point of being able to function “just because” isn’t good. We find, in our AS family that often after going out to a movie, or shopping, we all tend to come home and sequester ourselves for awhile to recharge our batteries. It’s AS and no sense fighting it.

Don’t mourn for social skills you’ll never had. Inventory what you can do and expound on it.

The time of year doesn’t help – for me, Christmas is always exhausting and I have to hibernate for a while to recover! Good on you for getting some support