Some weekends are long, even when they technically aren’t that bad. They just seem to pass slowly, while I get nothing accomplished. We have a bathroom to finish. It’s tiled, almost. It is usable. But unfinished. I don’t know why I am so exhausted by the weekends, but I am.…
Category: Health
From diagnoses to “treatments” and everything in between, posts about health and autistic life.
The line between anxiety disorder and whatever it is I am is often too blurred to matter. Since my first semester at the university fell apart, the second and now the third bring nothing but dread. A lot of dread. I wish it were different, but there’s so many other…
“Did you know Bill Gates and Tim Burton are probably on the spectrum?” Only a mental health professional has the right to “diagnose” somebody else — and only when that person is a patient. Of course, a doctor would have to adhere to confidentiality standards. Can we please stop such…
I don’t sleep well at night. I end up sitting in front of the TV, reading, or writing until I’m too exhausted to keep my eyes open… but I never seem to just go to bed and sleep like I think other people must do. My wife goes to bed…
Thursday I was fortunate enough to attend a Minnesota Public Radio forum on autism with Prof. Roy Richard Grinker, one of America’s leading anthropologists and the grandson of one of our greatest psychiatric minds. I won’t pitch Grinker’s book Unstrange Minds, beyond writing that anyone interested in autism and the…
I was reading LiveJournal today, the Asperger’s Syndrome community, and encountered the recurring topic: “I’m an Aspie, but my therapist denies it.” Okay, I’m not a therapist, but I’m about to play one online. (That’s sarcasm.) Self-diagnoses can be valid. They can be necessary when you need to start on…
Though the autistic label is fairly new, I have been labeled many things in the past. As I think about the past and present experiences, I realize that including bits and pieces from my evaluation in the book I’m completing will help others with similar experiences. I know I am…
Many of the postings to blogs, bulletin boards, forums, and other forms of online expression I have read seem to reflect serious depression. Leaving aside the question of does online use cause depression or reflect it, I sense the postings do reveal a problem experienced by many HFA/AS (High-Functioning /…
There are people I consider mental health hypochondriacs. They read a list of symptoms or personality traits and self-diagnose themselves with everything from attention deficits to autism disorders. If there’s a way to excuse a lack of success, self-control, organization, healthy relationships, and general contentment, these people will find it…