Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

After struggling tremendously with math and social interactions as well as school in general, I spiraled into deep depression. I was bullied, something which I now blame on my lack of normal social defenses. People would say things to me and I would become overwhelmed and shocked and unable to respond. Normal teenagers seem to be quick with comebacks, it literally takes me days to figure out what I should say or how I should react to common scenarios like off comments.

It took me over a decade to get out of it. I recently began reading about the symptoms of aspergers and nearly everything fit.

Extremely high and inappropriate language skills e.g. using words that I really shouldn’t, check. Inability to detect and respond appropriately to emotions. Dyscalculia (inability to do math), something that can be associated with aspergers.

I watched some videos of some people who had been through similar situations and likewise fallen into depression upon hitting the social conditions that occur in teenage years.

It now makes sense why I have to plan my facial expressions before I get Starbucks. If I don’t, I have this horrible death stare and scare the shit out of people.

What really depresses me still to this day is just how sensitive most people in society are to aspergers. Once people detect there is something off about you, you are done. It happens within minutes.

There is nothing I can really do, I can only imagine how many relationships and life experiences Inhave missed due to being rapidly discarded by my peer group due to these kinds of eccentricities.

I have this problem. Most of the time I call it autism for convenience although I know it isn't accurate. Deficient/Immature emotional processing is a better phrase that is more accurate.

I think that development issues in the psyche can lead to delays in areas like emotional processing and theory of mind. Oftentimes I have to simulate emotions because I don't feel them in myself and others. The good thing is that I've become very good at analyzing people and their motivations using knowledge of psychology - it's all conscious. I can understand people better on a rational level because my explanations incorporate negative thoughts people may have about themselves without realizing them (negative unconscious thoughts - mostly fear and anxiety). But I have to allow myself explicitly to feel something because my emotional regulation is very high - I think this stems from fear.

There's a wish to control social situations to feel safe. Maybe individuals who have this problem had negative social experiences because their perceptions were off in such situations and they realized that their assessments were wrong which lead to a deficit in self-esteem. To an untrained eye, this may look like autistic behavior, but it's mostly based on anxiety and a deficit in emotional processing.

It's possible to overcome that, but I have to admit that it has positive effects: I don't get emotional easily, I can control social situations and I don't feel fear or embarrassment. Feeling is a choice and having empathy feels like a tool. Sounds sociopathic to me (autistic people also have sociopathic symptoms), so I don't really wish this to anybody.

When I was a child, it was far worse though. Just like the author, all my life I’ve learned through experience how to talk and I started so many fights as s child and hurt so many friends with my words. The worst part is that those things still haunt me, I regularly lose sleep because I remember somethibg weird I did as a teenager, finally figure out why it was weird, and feel like shit.

This fear of doing or saying something bad still keeps me away from social gatherings. When I feel like I don’t get any feedback on how I’m performing I often bail.