Mountain Goat Posted June 22, 2020 Share Posted June 22, 2020 (edited) 5 hours ago, Ian J. said: I have never been able to get my head round long division, it's one of those things that has always just been too difficult for me to absorb. I find that as my inner mind works best in pictures, if it is a visual memory I can retain it well. I can remember my days as a toddler and even before I could walk... My earliest memory that I can think of is when I was just 4 days old. But when it comes to mathematics or other subjects I did in school or collage, especially relating to mathematical formula etc, I would have to start again from scratch. It is strange to say that my last exam I took juat so happened to be GCSE Maths after I left collage and found myself on an Employmwnt Training course, and I had a mark of 100% and got a C. I did want to go for an A paper, but in my area of the country they did not do A paper maths, so I did not get much of a different grade then I had had in school. I always found Maths wierd. I would either get a rather good grade, or I would get a poor grade, and I just could not fathom what I had done different from one maths exam to the other. Edited June 22, 2020 by Mountain Goat 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kickstart Posted June 22, 2020 Share Posted June 22, 2020 5 hours ago, Ian J. said: I have never been able to get my head round long division, it's one of those things that has always just been too difficult for me to absorb. Same here. Long division to me just seems like a horribly complicated way of doing what I can do with normal short division All the best Katy 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
friscopete Posted June 22, 2020 Share Posted June 22, 2020 Not Aspergers but some form of ADHD .My wife came up with this last year .It explains my flipperty gibbit nature ,my ability to get bored mid sentence and wander off .My lack of interest in any useful subject ,my endless list of jobs ,a tendency to lose patience and punch some so called colleague in the mouth if they really piss me off ,insulting or bullying me etc etc .Done it three times kept two of the jobs .I do get on well with most people and make friends easily but just as easily drop them though I would always help some one if they needed help ..My wife is right ,as usual.It explains my disappointing many people who expected more .My disaster of a school career despite going to a good school must have been a huge blow for my mother.I have had an interesting life by following my nose rather than logic and cant complain.Becoming a motorsport journalist for Japanese magazines was one.Based on access I already had by making models .I never got bored with that .The F1 pit lane is addictive. My ability to make and sell models has kept me in good stead since I made plaster garden gnomes back when I was kid. My mothers neighbor had one kept in the dry until she died in her nineties . So when I gave up up a job I just made models and sold them ,racing cars .,trains ,people ,houses,and in the end why bother working at all .It has stopped me making large dioramas and layouts for customers and as I didnt know I had ADHD ,it baffled them as why I turned down some very good work but I knew I wouldn't finish them .it all fits into place and just wish I had known earlier .i have been making little master figures for about 40 years on and off and it doesnt get boring as each one is different and a challenge .Naturally the scanners and printers are out in force but I now 74 so who cares .I survived them .I kept the same wife .not that stupid . Hope you dont mind getting this off my chest ,No official diagnosis but i wish I had known .It explains all and I wasnt the lazy dillitant lotus eater I thought I was. 7 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kickstart Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 A lot of that sounds like me. All the best Katy 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrWolf Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 22 hours ago, Kickstart said: Same here. Long division to me just seems like a horribly complicated way of doing what I can do with normal short division All the best Katy It was pretty much obsolete when I was at school but it was used as an introduction to solving complex equations and applied maths. Calculators have made it a thing of the past. But calculators were banned in exams, it was classed as cheating. Which is fair enough. Just because you could input a machine with the question, doesn't mean that you understood the question and knew how to work out the answer. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrWolf Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 8 hours ago, Kickstart said: A lot of that sounds like me. All the best Katy Likewise. Although I did very well academically and I can be very sociable, I can't tolerate anyone who is sneery, arrogant or just a good old fashioned user. Don't let the b@st@rds grind you down! 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kickstart Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 22 minutes ago, MrWolf said: It was pretty much obsolete when I was at school but it was used as an introduction to solving complex equations and applied maths. Calculators have made it a thing of the past. But calculators were banned in exams, it was classed as cheating. Which is fair enough. Just because you could input a machine with the question, doesn't mean that you understood the question and knew how to work out the answer. We were just about allowed calculators for exams, but to be honest I only got a calculator 2 weeks before my O level maths. I got pretty good at mental arithmetic. But even for pretty complex division I just did simple division. Then in the A level maths exam we had to prove something with differentiation. Which turned out to be impossible due to a mistake in the paper All the best Katy 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrWolf Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 I dodged A level maths. Because of the university course I was headed for I did Art and Theatre design. But you were expected to do two academic subjects. I ended up with English language (which I wanted to do) and Geography (which I didn't) 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mountain Goat Posted June 28, 2020 Share Posted June 28, 2020 (edited) Does anyone get the "Fragile" feeling during and after burnout? I still have it now and then and the last burnout I had was in September. I have it now as I type which is whh I thought I would mention it. Edited June 28, 2020 by Mountain Goat 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mountain Goat Posted July 1, 2020 Share Posted July 1, 2020 (edited) I am also experiencing an issue lately. When I am stressed, I am getting issues with my hands. Issues trying to pick up small objects like trying to take a coin out of my wallet or things like that. I am also prone to dropping things when I am like this.Uhmmm. Trying to fit handrails to a loco.. I ended up breaking two of those little handrail pins included in the kit. Also my eyesight sharpness goes at the same time when stressed which does not help. It is difficult to know if it is the start of a partial shutdown or stress as I can only tell either event by the results. Anxiety, stress etc are somehow things I will only feel when they are at serious levels BUT others can tell and tell me. Well, I do have feelings but sometimes I tend to not notice them unless they become extreme? Sometimes I can only really know that I am stressed when I find myself shutting down, or I only realize I have had an overload of anxiety when I find I can't get up and walk and I have to sit still to calm down before my body works again. Uhmm. Feelings do not always compute. Other times they do? But anyway. Back to the point. The last few years my hands and my eyesight have both started having issues. Also I have had my throat closing up (So that I have difficulties breathing), and it has been so far traced to excess heartburn which is another issue I have had in recent years. I am on tablets to deal with this several times and have been on them recently for a few months. My doctor wants to see me as I am still needing them. I hope I don't get mindblank again! So annoying when I need to say things and I clam up with mindblank, and need to talk about a different topic to get my mind to work again! It is why I talk or even type round the world ans back to reach the point I was trying to make! Edited July 1, 2020 by Mountain Goat 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mountain Goat Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 I have managed to have a few days break from the internet and used it to help get a garden railway ready for use. I am achy from bending over but less stressed which made a difference. It gave me a couple of ideas I can use in the future for my little railway as I would like a permanent railway. We shall see! 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mountain Goat Posted October 25, 2020 Share Posted October 25, 2020 (edited) Question regarding autistic burnout. The last time I hit burnout was september 2019 and it hit hard. I have been in and out of the fragile stage since. Anyone else experienced this? I want to get back to modelling. I am not right yet, but I am becoming impatient. Edited October 25, 2020 by Mountain Goat 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kickstart Posted November 21, 2020 Share Posted November 21, 2020 How are you doing now? For me, not sure on burn out. I know I cope poorly with stress now, and current times are stressful (going in to supermarkets yesterday, having to wear a mask, put me bordering on an anxiety attack) Currently procrastinating over handing the forms in to the docs for a referral (form is just the normal AQ50 test). All the best Katy 1 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcD Posted November 21, 2020 Share Posted November 21, 2020 Katy Hand in the forms it will change your life. It did for me. At the age of 41 I started to live. I have never looked back. That was 5 years ago. Marc 2 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrWolf Posted November 21, 2020 Share Posted November 21, 2020 I have asked about having an official test. The response I got was: "You're nearly fifty, what difference would it make to the way you cope with life already?" 1 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcD Posted November 21, 2020 Share Posted November 21, 2020 Push push push. It will cost your go there for they are reluctant to put people forward. Remind them that you have 20 years before you give up on work. Marc 3 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kickstart Posted November 21, 2020 Share Posted November 21, 2020 2 hours ago, MrWolf said: I have asked about having an official test. The response I got was: "You're nearly fifty, what difference would it make to the way you cope with life already?" I am over 50. And honestly coping less as I age. All the best Katy 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
laurenceb Posted November 21, 2020 Share Posted November 21, 2020 Agree. Keep pushing. I was 58 when I was diagnosed. It starts the prosess of answering questions you have been asking all your life 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mountain Goat Posted November 25, 2020 Share Posted November 25, 2020 On 21/11/2020 at 12:23, Kickstart said: How are you doing now? For me, not sure on burn out. I know I cope poorly with stress now, and current times are stressful (going in to supermarkets yesterday, having to wear a mask, put me bordering on an anxiety attack) Currently procrastinating over handing the forms in to the docs for a referral (form is just the normal AQ50 test). All the best Katy Well. It has been over a year and I am just starting to get my abilities back so I am now modelling again and going for longer walks etc. Yes, it is a little at a time. I had good days and bad days over this year and stress kept sending me back into the "Fragile" stage, but I am on the mend though I am not right yet as I want to get back to how I was before the last three burnouts. The problem I had was that each time I thought I was fully recovered, I was offered another part time job which I had to take for financial reasons, as in the past I could not claim benefits (I was stuck not being ready to look for work so after each burnout I had long periods of time without an income, but I did not know what was happening to me because I knew nothing about autism and I was not able to put what I was going through into words, especially not to doctors who had many patients to get through... I am on benefits now with the help of my local autism team, a family friend who is a charity worker and helped with the forms, and with the help of my local benefit office who without their staff intervening, I would be back to having no income after a benefits assessment said I needed to look for work, and I knew I was not ready). But I am ok. I am not right yet because I am only able to go into smaller quieter shops at the moment. I panic in queues (Shutdown risk) and feeling trapped in one way systems. What I find strange are two things. One is that outwardly no one seems to know what I have been going through, and the other thing is that I have found out that I am not really in touch with all the feelings of my body, which is why for so many years I did not even know what the shutdowns were or how to describe them to doctors or anyone else, and neither did I know what caused them apart from having what I call "Subtle hints". Hints like my Mother saying "No wonder you had a shutdown. You were stressed" and I dis not really know until I looked back and thought to myself "Oh yes. You are right!", and other things like somehow, I would get partial shutdowns when in hospitals just trying to walk down corridors due to rhe hospital smells so by the time I would have a blood test I would completely shut down (Worse case scinario as it means multiples of shutdowns one after the next after the next because hospital staff assume I have gone into a faint, and they go through the usuall proceedure of asking me "What is my name? Where do I live? What is my date of birth? What is the date?" etc. Why does this matter? It matters because when I am in a shutdown, think of it as your train controllers overload cut out going off, but instead it is ones brain. Now think of my brain slowly coming back online and is immediately bombarded with a loud voice demanding one to have to think? This takes me straight back into repeated shutdowns! (I was once in hospital for six hours due to this ad it took me a few hours of multiple shutdowns to get the nurse to stop asking me questions so I could have time for my brain to recover. I was telling er one word at a time inbetween shutdowns... "STOP...... ASKING.....ME.....QUESTIONS!" and it took several repeats of this message before she was able to put the words together and get the hint! It took me until about a year ago to work out that it was not my body but it was my brain which was causing these shutdowns, and since joining the Wrong Planet autiam site, I have found out so much about myself. I now know most of the triggers of shutdowns. I ad a few partialshutdowns today due to one trigger. Smells. Certain smells I am sensitive to. One is perfumes and soaps. Another is hospital smells. Another is certain spray oils and paints. (I have to have the window open when I paint one of my trains and shut the curtains with the trains left on the windowsill... I can't go in a freshly painted room without starting to shut down. Also fresh new carpet or new clothes smells also cause me to have shutdowns so I have to avoid carpet and clothes shops especially if they have "Still air" in them). But anyway, today I went into town and though I was aalking outside, and though I was keeping my distance from other people and was outside in the streets, three times I started to shut down as women passed me who had way overdone the perfume! If they smelled of sweaty armpits I would be fine, but perfume and I am in trouble! (Can you imagine me on a date and me ending up in her arms (Whoever her is (I am single) due to having a shutdown when we kiss! Haha!) Anyway... Sorry. I write too much! 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mountain Goat Posted November 26, 2020 Share Posted November 26, 2020 (edited) Ooh. I just saw a pattern of "g's" lining up in what I wrote in the post above. Can anyone else se them? It is eye catching! I hope I am not writing too much? It seems to come out as "Me, me, me!" Today I had where I used to work wanting me back again but I just can't as though I am just starting to get right again, I know if I did risk it I would end up even worse then before. It is nice to know I am appreciated though. They say I was the best bike mechanic to assemble new bikes they had. I am not really up to getting my own bicycles sorted though I need to as at the moment they all need things sorting on them. Easy jobs but I have not felt up to doing them. I have to be honest that I do not think I could go back to doing that job again because of both the sensory issues and the inability to cope with the background stress, even though the guys are nice ad accomodating. Somehow when I work with bikes I get anxiety kicking in when I have no reason to get stressed, but past events at another place I worked at get triggered and I hit major strings of partial shutdowns which is not helped through the triggers of sensitivity to the smell of spray oils and certain paints and though it does not seem to be a stressful enviroment, somehow for me it is. I think it starts with the trauma of past memories and then the triggers come on top of it? I don't know. Anyway. I had to say no even though I like the people and don't want to dissapoint them, as to me, they are my friends. Edited November 26, 2020 by Mountain Goat 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold grandadbob Posted November 28, 2020 RMweb Gold Share Posted November 28, 2020 (edited) I must confess that up until a couple of years ago I knew very little about autism. However I've just read a new book on the subject and would like to bring it to your attention. I must declare a personal interest here as the author is a family friend and in fact my son's partner. When I first met him several years ago I found him very hard to talk to and thought that he was quite difficult, in fact sometimes bl##dy awkward to deal with. It was quite a long time before my son told me some of his life story and I then came to understand him more. All I can now say is that having read the book, which certainly won't be everybody's cup of tea (I couldn't put it down) I now have the utmost admiration for him. The book is basically an autobiography about his struggles with autism from an early age, being permanently excluded from school at the age of 12 but eventually obtaining 5 degrees and becoming a researcher and writer. It is available on Amazon and he is donating all profits to the Anna Kennedy Online Autism charity. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mickeypedia-autistic-savant-Mickey-Mayhew-ebook/dp/B08LVZSDNX/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=mickeypedia&qid=1606567187&sr=8-2 https://www.annakennedyonline.com/ Bob. P.S. I have asked AndyY if it was OK to plug the book. Edited November 28, 2020 by grandadbob 1 1 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mountain Goat Posted November 29, 2020 Share Posted November 29, 2020 (edited) Thank you. I don't have high achievements in my life partly because the collage enviroment was stressful and partly because I have a visual mind so I tend to do maths differently. (I did not know I did until recently). I was also never able to copy down dictation fast enough or copy what is written on boards fast enough, and teachers were a bit fed up with waiting for me so they would carry on and tell me to copy of someone else... But through school and collage, I rarely ever was able to be popular enough to be offeres someone elses books to copy from, so I ended up with big gaps in all my notes, so when it came to revising for exams I had big chunks of work missing. I never said anything as I soon learned from a young age to keep quiet and not draw attention to myself. But since school in the work enviroment I actually worked my way up and somehow was for a while in charge of a department of a store. (Somehow... Well. I actually went for the job of a bicycle mechanic/sales assistant but was soon promoted when the previous head was promoted. The strange thing is that the manager of the store who was a very tallented man (People skills) and very hard working too in the hours he put in... Well. He kept saying he could not work me out. I was puzzled why he kept saying he could not work me out. This had been going on for a while. (I get it now because his job was to understand people so he could manage them well). Then one day not too many months before I left the store he said "I have found out what you are. I get you now. You are autistic!" I said "I don't think so" (But I said it not knowing what autism is). Now that was around 1997 to 1998 as I started working there in 1996. But looking back now I realize how tallented that man actually was to notice that when I did not know. (I still do not know for sure, but it has reached the point where I will be surprized and puzzled if I am not). But that job was one that when I left the store I could not switch off from. Continually my mind was switched on and not able to break away from it. My evenings at home and trying to sleep at night my mind was involved in it. My holidays were involved in thought hoping all was running right when I got back! Now often I was like that with most jobs, but not quite to the extent I was in that job. But looking back I do not know how I was able to do what I did in the various jobs that I did. Here is a puzzling one for you. I have prosopragnosia which is faceblindness. I do not know when I have it or when I don't because I only find out when others tell someone else that I have not recognized them and ignored them and the other person has told me. I do however sometimes (Not always) get a feeling that I have seen them somewhere before and I think I know them and sometimes I do and other times I don't and have made errors in this way when it turns out to be a complete stranger. Life can be frightening with prosopragnosia, especially as a child. But why mention this? Somehow I worked for nine years on the railways as a guard (Conductor was my official job title though we did passenger guards duties so I sometimes (Not often) worked engine and coaches which involved working ground frames, uncoupling and coupling etc.), but why mention this? Well. I would say a typical day I could see anything from a few hundred to a few thousand people in my shift, yet I struggled to remember faces. I did my job through my "Pattern recognition" ability. Every coach I worked, I would memorize the seats. Which seats were occupied and which were not. This changed every stop, so I would count who got off and how many got on, and looked at the colour clothes the ones got on wore. I was rarely wrong when I came to check tickets. What did throw me were if someone got up, went to the toilet but then sat back down somewhere else. I would end up asking for their ticket a second time and people were not amused. But my ability to see patterns went beyond seeing the seats of the trains I worked. As part of the job interview process we had to be tested for colour blindness. I went to this office (We were tested individually in seperate appointments), and the man had this big book. It was the book he used to check us to see if we were colourblind. Now he started me on the first page and we worked through the book. I had to find the letters or numbers which were on each page. Well. I could see that something was up by the mans reactions but I did not know if that was a bad thing or a good thing. Some of these pages I was shifting my eyes slightly out of focus to see the characters. I started to relax and concent4ate eager to answer each page while he was turing them one at a time when I saw the correct charcter for each page. Then when I was halfway through the book where one could see where the book was bound, he was about to stop me but I had already answered the next one and he seemed intregued, and he said "Carry on", so I did. I worked my way through the whole book and finished answering every page in the book, which I thought we were meant to do. The guy then said "I don't know what to say. I don't know if you have passed or failed". He said "Do you know in all my years of working doing this job you are the first I have seen answer the whole book correctly. How did you do it?" (I think he expected me to say I had seen the book before but I hadn't). He said he had done that job for 47 years and was retiring soon! And no one ever has done that!" He then had to have a think. He said that the first half of the book only colour blind people were supposed to see, and he was going to stop me and fail me but I answered the next page which colour blind people are not supposed to see.... And he said "And then you carried on and answered the whole book!" He then reasoned "It has to be a pass because if you were colour blind, no way would you have got the second half of the book right". (He also mentioned how the book worked and no one is colour blind in all colours and yet I answered them all correctly... He was really taken aback how I did it and at the time I could not tell him how I did it. All I could say was "I don't know!" I know now because it is how my mind sees patterns and how I am able to see things off focus and then shift back into focus when I need to. (Did make my eyes strained a bit doing it!) But anyway. I left being puzzled myself because I was puzzled why he thought it was such an unusual thing. He said that he tested thousands of people a year so probably over a million people. The strange thing was that he seemed to view me as the highlite of his career! Not been one of them before! Edited November 29, 2020 by Mountain Goat 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LNWR18901910 Posted November 29, 2020 Share Posted November 29, 2020 The more I read this thread, the more I feel sorry for those who have spent their lives undiagnosed. Not all kids in their early years are diagnosed right on the spot. 2 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrWolf Posted November 29, 2020 Share Posted November 29, 2020 It becomes more of a pain in the ##£e when you don't display the stereotypical traits, because then there's nobody fighting your corner or making excuses for your weird behaviour. You just become an outsider. Branded as highly intelligent but lazy, or disruptive, or antisocial. Trouble is there are plenty of kids who are like that for other reasons, or because they know that they can get away with it. This is going to sound wrong, but when I hear about some kid in the US walking into school with an assault rifle, my immediate thought has nothing to do with gun control. I tend to think: I bet I know why he did it. I felt like that almost every day for about ten years. 2 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mountain Goat Posted November 29, 2020 Share Posted November 29, 2020 (edited) 13 hours ago, LNWR18901910 said: The more I read this thread, the more I feel sorry for those who have spent their lives undiagnosed. Not all kids in their early years are diagnosed right on the spot. While there were good times, in general both school and college were the most stressful times in my life, though some of the jobs I have done came close. I am one who should have been home schooled. Edited November 29, 2020 by Mountain Goat 1 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now