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I got to work today and straight away two things ruined the day ahead.

Firstly someone had used my chair in my absence on Friday and had adjusted the height and pitch. I spend a lot of time setting up a comfortable position and some selfish colleague had come along and messed all of that up.

Secondly someone had taken my company issued headset. I love to listen to music as I work. It was 6am and whoever took it would probably not be in the office for another 3 hours. This meant that my routine was now all over the place.

I appreciate that these are small things, but they caused me great anxiety, and I know that I’ll be on edge for the entirety of the day now.

I just don’t understand why someone would come to your desk and mess around with the setting of your chair, or think that it’s ok to take your headset and not return it.

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About a year ago my daughter started to suffer with anxiety and depression, so recently I’ve been attending some of the excellent free course provided by Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust Recovery Academy so as to gain a better understanding of mental health conditions. Going on those courses made me consider whether I have any comorbid MH conditions.

It’s well known that MH conditions go hand in hand with Aspergers, particularly anxiety and depression. Research suggests that 1 in 15 people with Aspergers suffer with depression, compared to around 3 in 100 of the Neurotypical population. I’ve never really thought that I myself have suffered depression. Anxiety yes, low mood yes, but never depression.

In the general population there’s no single cause of depression. It can occur for a variety of reasons and it has many different triggers.

  • Upsetting or stressful life events
    • bereavement
    • divorce
    • illness
    • redundancy
    • job or money worries
  • Illness
  • Traumatic events
  • Socio-economic standing
  • Genetics
  • Personality traits
    • low self-esteem
  • PTSD
  • Giving Birth
  • Loneliness
  • Substance abuse
  • Anxiety Disorders

Of course all of these triggers will also be triggers for someone with Aspergers, but our condition also brings additional challenges.

  • Communication difficulties
    • difficulty reading body language
    • tone of voice
    • word usage
  • Excellent, often photographic, long term memory
  • Resistance to change
  • Different world paradigm
  • Obsessions

I’ll give my take on these in my next post.

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Throughout my life the phrases “You’re not stupid, work it out” , “You’re an intelligent guy, work it out”, “You have no common sense” or variants there-of seem to have been directed at me constantly from all directions. At work, at play, at home. But mostly at home in personal relationships.

Both Maria, and her successor Nathalie, were very fond of this phrase.

It’s mostly used during disagreements and I’ve come to recognise it now as a clue that I’ve done something wrong, and it makes me feel really stupid. It also frustrates, as the person saying it will often then tell me that I’m playing games.

I don’t play games. Life is hard enough trying to decipher other people; game playing makes it even harder.

Yes I am a very intelligent guy, but I do lack common sense and sometimes I really don’t understand what is going on in a conversation, or what it is that I’ve done or said that is wrong, and that I need to “work out”.

But “common sense” has nothing to do with intelligence.

I have difficulties with communication, social understanding and judgement. I miss cues, make inappropriate comments, and cross boundaries. These are all part of “common sense”.

The people in my life, friends, family and colleagues all know of my condition, so I guess that I have the expectation that they will give me some leeway and explain to me what it is that I’ve done, rather than expecting me to “work it out”, because if I do “work it out” the chance is that I’ll still get it wrong.

But I guess that the neurotypicals have their off days too, and it must be frustrating to have to deal with me.

But it hurts on two levels when it’s your partner saying it because of all people you expect them to have the most understanding, but you also know that you’ve upset or frustrated them, and that makes the anxiety levels go through the roof. There must be a finite number of times their patience will run low before they decide to leave.