Yes, my parents. Well my parents, I think, they do try, yes, sometimes they’re not always very helpful, but I think my parents don’t always really understand all the time my problems. I mean they know, you know, they know all about my problems. it’s my parents how first, you know, kind of, you know, queried whether I, you know, thought that I might have Asperger’s before I was even diagnosed. So my parents do know a lot about, a lot about my problems and stuff. But, but, yes, okay, I wouldn’t say they’re that clued up on how to deal with them all the time really.

Have you got any brothers or sisters?

Yes. I’ve got a younger brother whose 20, coming on 21 this year. He’s just finished university. He went to the same university as I did doing English. He hasn’t got Asperger’s. He’s got a girlfriend. So he’s different to me in the sense he can relate to people more than I can. I mean I would say we do have similarities and I don’t know. I mean they often say well how is it caused. I do often wonder how is it caused. I think it’s probably genetic. I think more it’s the traits that are inherited and then some people just get them more extreme.

But I think it’s kind of… because Asperger’s for me is, I mean, I’ve, you know, I’ve got all the symptoms of it and everything. It’s very subtle, so people like, you know, if I, people don’t always see that I’ve got it. And that is very, very difficult having to tell people, you know, and people say, ‘Oh you seem very confident’ and I think well may be I look confident, but I’m not actually confident inside. It’s just like a show, because I often have to put on an act. It’s like having to act to script, to like, I think you just kind of learn how to socialise. It’s something that you can learn, but I think in many ways it’s a bit like learning a foreign language, because if you go to a foreign country and you’re learning a language, you can get really, really fluent, but it’s still not like your mother tongue so it’s still difficult.

I had one friend in my peer group but that friendship only, only lasted, well I mean it kept on, it kept on stopping and starting, so we were friends for you know, like a few, you know, a few weeks and we would break up and then get back together again. And I also was very possessive and quite sort of clingy because I didn’t like it when anyone else would start talking to her. That really irritated me. So I think it’s more me, then her, who actually broke it up. So… and often when I wasn’t friends with her, then I’d play with a girl a few years younger than me, or I’d just basically be really annoying because I was just fed up with not having any friends or anything. So I just I think I annoyed quite a few people. Just was quite childish; kind of running around, just being really stupid. I didn’t really have much self awareness, because I used to go up to people and just tap them on their backs and stuff and ask them really silly questions and just run off. And I think I’ve matured quite a lot since then.

I’m not interested in that any more. That sort of withered away. But that was all through adolescence was particularly extreme, and I mean, when I started secondary school, I actually made a friend on the first day. And I was really pleased, really happy, but that friendship didn’t last long at all. The girl told me that I was too clingy, you know, that followed her around too much. She said, I don’t want to be friends with you anymore. And I was really upset about that because I remember, you know, I saw her walking off with another girl. This was before she told me she didn’t want to be friends with me anymore, and I saw her walking with another girl and I was actually, and this was on a like residential in year seven, and I was actually, you know, I mean I remember actually sort of crying seeing her walk off with this other girl because I just didn’t want her talking to anyone else. If she was my friend I didn’t want her talking to anyone talking to anyone else at all. Then I just got very possessed with people, like obsessed with them.

So yes, and then I had another friendship, a brief friendship, with a girl who said, who offered to be best friends with me, but then that one also ended. She told me I didn’t speak enough. So then I thought okay so to make friends with people I have to speak a lot. So I started to speak all the time, and, just you know, I mean I made, there was another girl who I briefly had a friendship with, but then she started to move out into a group, and I couldn’t deal with groups. And sometimes she said, You know you can come and, you can come and join the group, you know, come and join us. And I did. But they were all talking and I didn’t know what to do, because they all were friends with one another.

You said you think it’s easier to make friends or be with people who are older or younger. It’s more difficult with your peer group?

Yes.

Why do you think that is?

I think, maybe because peer group are kind of more focussed on… it’s very difficult to say really, but I think, how can I put it? It’s like people who are older than me are, they’re kind of more, I find it easier to relate to them, maybe because I’m very old and young at the same time [laughs]. I mean I do lots of, I don’t really do things that people my own age group really do. I’m not really that interested in fashion or kind of I don’t know, just like what’s fashionable, what’s in the, what’s the latest, you know, things like music. I mean I like music, but I tend to choose more my own type of music. So, I’m not really that interested in people my own age, and what they’re interested in. So that’s when I say, like I feel old in that level. People who are older than me, you know, are just kind of just maybe they don’t talk so much about, maybe it’s more like small talk, maybe people my age are more small talk based. I don’t know, more gossiping which I don’t get. People younger than me, I can relate to more, because they’re, because they’re, on the hand I think I’m quite immature in other respects as well. So people younger than me I can relate to as well in that sense, their sense of humour and stuff like that.

But you said you go to the support group with other people with Asperger’s.

Yes.

And do you enjoy that?

Yes. I really enjoy it. I go to that one in [town name] and that’s, that’s every week. And that’s for two hours on Monday. I really enjoy there. I mean it was a very small group, there’s eight people there and mainly we just sit round a table. It’s very structured and we just discuss like things we’ve been doing the last week. What we’ve been doing the last week and how we’ve been feeling and we do like exercises about emotions and things which are quite helpful. And then we play a game in the second half and sometimes we go out on outings, which is nice. So I don’t have any like friends. I have not made any, single friends, as in people you see regularly, I just.. well I’ve got I guess they’re sort of acquaintances because I see them very regularly but I just don’t see them outside of the group. So they’re not friends in that sense.

Well [laughs] just before I got diagnosed, I was incredibly obsessed with Asperger’s Syndrome. I read all the books, and I was just a kind of, because I knew I had it, I mean that was just confirmation, just reading about it. You know, made me more and more yes, yes, that’s me, that’s me. There’s no doubt about it. But it’s just also you know, you trying, there was still that sort of nagging doubt in mind that well I could have a personality disorder because some of the symptoms are quite similar to some personality disorders [laughs] and they have actually done research on this and they’ve shown that many people whove been diagnosed with some personality disorders like schizoid personality disorder, which has got nothing to do with schizophrenia but it’s just a personality disorder schizoid which kind of makes you, kind of socially, a bit socially aloof. Many people, and I think it was first, I can’t remember. It was some, it was a Russian person at the beginning of the 20th, 1920s I think, who first coined it, but it’s, because the symptoms are really similar to Asperger’s so it’s possible that people whove been diagnosed with that in the past actually have Asperger’s.

I would like to have a paid job. I don’t have a job, I did have a temporary job in February at the County Council. That came to an end and it’s difficult finding a job that appropriate for me, because I know I can’t deal with the public and I can’t do practical things and I get very stressed very easily, because it’s mainly the OCD. I would say the OCD in many ways is more debilitating in a sort of way, because although I find it hard to relate to people, the OCD has got, I mean it’s all the obsessions and you know, about dirt and stuff. I get very obsessed and have to wash hands all the time. It’s quite So I am more under control.

But it wasn’t easy to get onto benefits. And then obviously we had a problem when I got the job, you know, the temporary job at the County Council, because I actually it was because I worked too many hours and got too much you know, got paid too much. So you see we had a problem with the benefits then, and we had to go through the whole process again, and that’s very stressful.

And we were told that wouldn’t be a problem at the start so we were kind of, we felt a little bit cheated. We don’t want to go through that again because obviously I want to get off benefits and I want to get a proper job. But it goes, it’s a very difficulty, it’s a really difficult problem which that all the problems in relation to OCD and people and practical skills and extreme anxiety means that I’m very unpredictable and I often like, you know, I mean I know in voluntary work I often can’t go in because on some days I’m just too extreme. You can’t do that in a paid job, you would be just be a liability. You’d let people down, and obviously it’s just very, very difficult really. You know, you just, conflict that you’re really wanting to have a job and then having to work through all these barriers. So it’s quite hard. I think I’d just like to get in sort of gradually. I would hate to have a, I mean I wish I was in a sort of situation where you could actually have a job and your benefits were taken away gradually instead of suddenly taken away and then if you can’t deal with a job, you have to apply all over again and it’s just a stress, just

I mean when I was at primary school I did receive a statement, what is called a Statement of Special Educational Needs in year 6. But that was mainly listing things like discrepancies with verbal and performance IQ. So they did an IQ test, and the verbal one was high but the performance one was low. And they couldn’t work out why that was. So they called me an enigma, because they just didn’t know what it was, you know, what the reasons were, or the reasons why I was good in certain subjects and then not so good in others.

So I mean I was good, you know, in certain areas of English, like spelling and that sort of thing, and writing. But then with comprehension I wasn’t so good, I mean fiction. And I was really poor at maths as well. And also things like practical skills, visual, spatial skills were very low. I mean my ability in that area was very low. But I didn’t, as I say they didn’t actually diagnose me with anything then. So I was quite, I mean I’ve read the statement since, and I’m quite surprised why they didn’t, but I don’t think much was known about Asperger’s backs then.

But, you see, I was pleased and because I did well at GCSEs, I decided to stay on at school to do A levels. But yes, and I mean I did well in A levels as well and I enjoyed A levels, because I actually discovered when I started to do A levels that because I chose the subjects and the only subjects I was doing actually learning was fun. So beforeI mean I do like learning and stuff. it’s just I prefer doing it on my own. I don’t like being told what to learn because if I’m not interested in it, I don’t want to do it. So but yes, A levels I did English, history and theology, and I did well in those. I got two As and a B. So then I went to university, at [town name] university, and I did history and that went really well. I mean I got a 21 in that, so I was pleased with that.

But I think, I mean since then I mean I’ve just discovered that I really enjoy learning. it’s just at school I wasn’tI think it’s just different at school because you have to work in groups, and there was really low expectations about what I could do. I just wasn’tschool just didn’t suit me. It wasn’t till I got into A levels that I started to actually find learning fun.

And I read about, I did, because my mum has a friend whose son has Asperger’s Syndrome and he was diagnosed as a child. So I was aware of this syndrome being related to autism, I had heard of it. But I wasn’t really, I didn’t really know much about it. So I did, again I typed it into Google and looked on the internet because I just wanted to find out what, more about what it was. And I read about it and I was like yeah, that’s kind of what I have. Because it’s like I’ve never been able to make friends, socialise properly, with people my own age group. Always been very, very it was mainly the obsessional interest that really stood out, like you know, Kate Winslett was just so extreme. Just not like a normal interest. It was just like 100%. So yes, I immediately thought, yes, that’s what I’ve got. So I went and told my mum and she said, Yes, we’ve always known you’ve had that. You know we’ve always known that. And I said, Well why didn’t you get me diagnosed? And we had this like discussion about how she didn’t want worrying about future life chances, and how she was waiting for the school to do something, and the school never did beyond giving me that statement.

So, so, yes, and then we had to try and get a diagnosis, which was not easy. We got it on the NHS. We did at one point consider going private because you know, you do have to wait such a long time, but it’s very, very expensive to do it private and also you know, we wanted it to be done properly. It’s more official if it’s done on the NHS, than if it’s done privately, because not all private diagnoses are accepted, so we wanted to do it the proper way.

So but it was a very, very long process. It last like, you know, about a year. First of all we had to convince the psychiatrist to actually refer, refer me. So I saw a psychiatrist, a consultant psychiatrist and she actually, she actually said, you know, she didn’t think I did have it because I was interacting so well. And I remember getting home and so, so annoyed. You know, I was like really, really upset, because I knew that, I know that I can. And I think this is a problem with something like quite subtle with something like Asperger’s. I think particularly if you’re female in many ways, because people expect you to be social and maybe you do. You’ve learnt perhaps social conditioning or something, to be more social or something. So I think sometimes there are many like different manifestations. And I think some psychiatrists still don’t expect girls to have it, so may be that, and also I can, on a one to one basis, particularly with someone whose older than me, I, sort of in a professional situation I think I can come across as not different to anyone, without Asperger’s which is not that obvious.

So I know that, and I think that’s the hardest thing; people don’t understand what it’s like inside. Or, your day to day life’s not being able to make friends properly. You know, I was thinking to myself, okay if I didn’t have it why, why can’t I make friends then, or why can’t I socialise? Why have I got all these problems? And I knew I had it. It’s just I, you know, I thought well I’ve either got that or I’ve got a personality disorder. So I came back, and I was really, really, really upset, because I was kind of in turmoil thinking well what do I have then? So that psychiatrist really wasn’t good.

But yes, then so we got a second opinion and the other psychiatrist was way more sympathetic. He was a younger psychiatrist, than the other one, I think the other one was you know, just quite an old psychiatrist. She was about t

Well I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome last year in 2009, March 2009. Basically I already suspected there was something different about me, because I grew up without really being able to make friends or properly socialise with people in the usual way.

So although I was at university the, and I could go to university I think, because it was kind of familiar, so I wasn’t scared about going to university or anything. It was just other things I was really scared of soSo my parents told me I must get, you know, must see a psychologist to get that counselling and I kind of reluctantly agreed, because I didn’t originally want to, because I didn’t want to be seen as, I just didn’t want to be seen as different. I wanted to fit in. I didn’t think I had anything wrong with me, and I was really very much on the defensive of anyone who suggested that. So it was kind of gradually that I realised that yes, there is something, that’s kind of different about me, and my parents are right. So then I eventually agreed to go and see a psychologist and get, you know, counselling. And then, originally I was diagnosed with OCD which wasn’t really much of surprise because I knew what that was, but then I knew that that wasn’t really the whole story.

Yes, if someone had just been diagnosed with Asperger’s I think I would try and tell them that it’s actually not a bad thing to have, because obviously have Asperger’s does mean you do have certain challenges and life can be a bit difficult in certain areas. It’s not, you know, it’s not ideal, but it’s not the worst thing in life to have. It’s not like a disease. It’s not going to kill you. It can give you quite great, great, I mean it can, in many ways, it can make your life quite it can actually enrich your life in quite a few ways. Like I mean if I didn’t have Asperger’s I wouldn’t be so, I wouldn’t develop so extreme interests. It can make you see things in a very orderly way. I mean I don’t know how many other with Asperger’s have this, but for me, I have like a sort of layout in my mind, like quite visual kind of thing, colour, for like days of the week and things, months of the year, it’s kind of quite synaesthetic in a sort of way. I’ve always had that, and I’ve always been quite pleased about having that. I like seeing things in order.

And I think well I’d say if I didn’t have Asperger’s I probably wouldn’t be quite so obsessive. But the obsessions are kind of not all bad, because okay there’s the OCD side I think it all kind of mingles in with the extreme interests which can be a problem but at the same time they bring enjoyment as well. So it’s not like my life is really bad. I mean it could be a lot worse. So I don’t think having Asperger’s is a really bad thing. I don’t like it when people say you suffer for something, say suffering from Asperger’s that implies it’s a disease, that implies that your problems rooted within you when often you place barriers because that’s because the way people see you, because they don’t understand. So it’s more for another people than yourself, who can make your life bad, but I don’t see it really as a bad thing. It’s not like you’re in pain, it’s not like you have to take drugs or you’re going to die. You know. So I don’t think it’s that bad.

Then again it moved onto the human body, and then the biggest obsession was the Titanic and that arose when I was 10, 10 and 11 and I learnt everything about the historical event, Titanic. All the details and the statistics about it, and then came the Titanic film and that turned into a massive obsession and I ended up seeing it, you know, over thirty times and I also became really obsessed with the actress Kate Winslett in it. So again I stopped being obsessed with the Titanic and became really obsessed with Kate Winslett and that obsession took over and I saw all her films. I knew every single detail about her life. I could think about nothing else, apart from Kate Winslett. I looked at all her pictures. She was my life, nothing else mattered, apart from Kate Winslett. I used to think that if Kate Winslett were to disappear I would have nothing left in my life, my life would be just be, my life would just end, because there’s nothing in my life that was more important than Kate Winslett. So that, that was probably the most extreme obsession I’ve ever had, and that lasted eight years.

And simultaneous with that was an obsession with child development and babies, and children, and I was so obsessed about it, I used to read parenting magazines from cover to cover. And that arose because Kate Winslett had a child, so I got really obsessed with children because, through Kate Winslett. I wanted to understand her experiences, and almost be like Kate Winslett. So, you know, I used to take notes in a notebook, every time I saw a pram with a child in it, I would take a note, saying what was the make of the pram, what was the child doing, what did it look like, I was just so obsessed with it [laughs]. So that was quite extreme.

SoI just became more and more isolated really. But I played a few times with some girls a year younger than me again. I tend to relate to people younger than me or older than me more than peer group. I don’t know why that is, I think it’s because I don’t know there’s something different about peer group, it’s just that I can’t deal with that well. But I mean, and that was also, that was when Kate Winslett obsession, just got more extreme. So I just retreated into that and that’s all that mattered, sonbsp;

I was also, I was very obsessive, like I’ve been obsessive since about the age of three or four. Like just worrying about lots of different things, like getting, as a child, getting dirty, and wash my hands a lot, and that’s, as I still do, but it kind of comes and goes, but I’ve never been, because I’ve always had it and it’s so much part of me, it’s just something I’ve had to live with, so from a very, very young age. So it’s not something I’ve ever, it’s just something I know I have, almost like I was born with it. It’s not something, some people who have like obsessional problems they develop. But for me I’ve always had it so I don’t know any different. They just, I just accept it as something I’m always going to have, but try and keep it under control. But it does get quite a lot sometimes it gets a lot more severe than at other times.

But also I have like very strong, I’ve always had very, very strong interests but as a child, it was really being interested in food, like cooking and nutrition and I would also, I’d learn what, I would watch what people had in their lunch box and then memorise it, and learn it off by heart. And I just like tell my parents about whatever, every single detail of what people had for the lunch at school and what people look like and their birthdays, and just really obsessed with it. So that’s my main obsession as a child was food, and I could talk about nothing else.

Can you say a bit more about it about it being synaesthetic?

Well months of the year in colour, you’re not in, it’s kind of, it’s always been a case, and it kind of goes down like that, and, I can actually visual all the months of the year. Say May being black for example, and June being orange, it just stretches out. And also numbers as well, going upwards, in a sort of time line. But it depends on which way I look at it. If I look backwards they have different colours to if I look forwards. But it helped in history, learning history and dates and stuff. I mean it’s not just that, but I also just have things in a visual way in my mind. So, good for learning things like learning for exams and stuff because I mean when I’m in an exam how I learnt it was still in my mind and it’s all very visual way. Just kind of images. Like when I’m thinking like when I was doing the Second World War, and stuff and Germany and France and stuff I have a sort of particular map in my mind. It goes not like a normal map, like a map that you’d see, you know, like a sort of globe type map, it’s kind of just a completely different map, which probably has nothing. No relation to reality whatsoever. But it just kind of helps. So I like that.

The school never, I mean in spite of the fact that I didn’t have any friends, despite the fact that I was disruptive in class, I had all these issues. I don’t think the school really knew the extent of them. The school didn’t know about the OCD problems, and so that was very much kept secret. And the school didn’t know about my extreme interests, because that was kept secret so Maybe the school just saw me as kind of quite aI mean I was often called shy. Although I’m not shy, which is kind of rather strange because I’m not shy at all. I think it’s more the anxiety but it’s not related to shyness. it’s a different type of anxiety. Because I think many people with Asperger’s might come across as shy, and some of them are shy, but that’s like a personality trait that is independent of whether someone has Asperger’s or not, then all people with Asperger’s are shy, but they might come across as shy.

So it’s really once I left school and when I was at university, and the OCD, it was OCD an obsession kind of thing, but it’s kind of more washing hands and because I get very extreme if there’s something on the news, and I immediately apply it to me, and I won’t, all these phobias started to develop so I stopped travelling, you know, after the London terrorist attacks. I stopped travelling because I thought, well if there’s a bomb on a train, sorry on a bus, it could happen on a train. So I just got really scared and just And because I’m just phobic anyway, and when I was at school like with things like food technology, I took that very literally as well. So, just be, you know, obsessed with food hygiene to a kind of extreme extent, and just get it out of control. I think that just got more extreme.

And also when I started school I was really scared of the fire alarm, because I thought it meant the school was going to burn down. So I was screaming and screaming and refused to go to school for a while. So, and as I say I got really obsessed about the age of ten with washing my hands all the time, but yes, and when I started secondary school that actually disappeared strangely enough. And I don’t know why it was, maybe because when I first had a friend I felt more secure. I don’t know why.

When I received the diagnosis I was very, very happy. Because it… I was really relieved. It was just so good to know that I wasn’t, I was not a psychopath [laughs], no I was, because, you know, I know I’m not but it’s kind of like, what other thing could I have if it wasn’t Asperger’s? You know, because I was reading on the internet, I was kind of obsessing about any, you know; what could I have? I mean did I have a personality disorder? I mean like personality disorders. Like was I histrionic? Or something like that [laughs]. I don’t know. Just these personality disorders that make people very, you know, I was, I was scared that I might have a personality disorder. I didn’t want anyone to tell me that there was anything wrong with my personality. That would have been the most offensive thing ever, and I was really worried that people might think I had a personality disorder. I was worried I had a personality disorder. So I was going, really obsessing about what was wrong with me. And to have Asperger’s Syndrome, because I don’t think for me, that’s not a problem at all because I, know you could say there’s a stigma attached to it, but I think it’s kind of it’s not a personality disorder. So I was relieved. You see but it’s just kind of something you’re born with and it’s not like you’re mad or anything. It just, can make you a little bit different.

Well to have, to be diagnosed and have a label of Asperger’s, it just, well, if I didn’t have, if I didn’t, if I wasn’t diagnosed with Asperger’s I wouldn’t be seeing a support worker who actually understands Asperger’s. So, you know, just to be with people who understand you, I think is very important. And, I mean Asperger’s syndrome is a sort of recognised disability, because obviously people with Asperger’s are very, very, very different, like incredibly different. But it does have these kind of, it is basically a social disability, it means you find it hard to basically get on with people in a sort of, yes, to sort of relate to people. Just to kind of, I think having Asperger’s can make you quite self absorbed and quite pre-occupied, quite introverted, which I don’t think is the same thing as shy. Just kind of thinking about yourself quite a lot of the time, kind of just obsessing, maybe that’s where all the obsessions come from. That’s why it’s sometimes hard to reach out to other people.