Quote:
Originally Posted by seesaw
Just an FYI, the University of Washington has a lot of resources on self diagnosis and is validating resources for self diagnosis for Autism (particularly since adult assessment is so inaccessible). Also embrace-autism.org is a nonprofit in Canada that is studying and helps with self diagnosis resources for Autism, and it's run by Autistic researchers.
As CANDC mentioned, you cannot diagnose her, but self diagnosis is widely accepted by the Autism community due to the lack of accessible resources. Looking at some of the self assessments and screeners may help your wife if SHE is interested in learning more about it. But again, they are self assessments, not for a 3rd party to fill out for her.
And, in terms of the relationship, addressing the actual problems might be the way to go versus pinning those issues on one thing or another. If there is a communication issue then it's about understanding the issue and how you each communicate individually and learning to communicate with each other. Now if one of you is Autistic and one is Allistic, that can impact the communication, but the solution is still the same - talk about how you communicate differently and accommodate each other so you can understand each other.
Hope this helps.
|
Thanks for the resources, I'll check them out.
The approaches you mention re: communication are along the lines of what I've doing, but I think the lack of diagnosis is a major barrier to effectiveness of the discussion. I do approach problems one by one, and some have improved, but ultimately she doesn't understand where some of these characteristics and conversations are coming from.
She's gotten better with our kids after three years, because the results of poor communication skills are glaringly obvious when you're making your children upset. But with me it's more challenging because those skills are a little more subtle.
For example, a few months ago I sent her an article on how to look for and understand the cues of one's partner. But ultimately I don't think she really understood it, and after a few weeks forgot that she had read it. Had she known that some of these problems were coming from Autistic traits, the article might have registered.
I'm really doing the best I can to communicate and improve our relationship, but at times I think there's an issue with intrinsic ability. We can talk about this or that, but a lot of the time the habits just don't change. And some of these problems are typically things that people learn from subtext, not explicit conversation.
The approach I've taken since my last post is to do further reading to understand
her better, and accept that her communication skills and traits are just something I need to adapt to.
I think if she recognized that she has Aspergers things could improve dramatically, but it's just not something I'm going to put on her, because that's a dramatic change in self-concept.