[dwr3]

I'm having a very frustrating time in my life right now. Part of this is caused by great underachievement and having a hard time dealing with my sensory issues and anger management. Throughout my life I've been having psychiatric evaluation (since I was 13) and visited psychologist. I always been treated for anxiety, depression, ocd and told I'm just like everyone else (mostly because, even when I was 13, I was very verbally mature and intelligent, I was leading the doctor the way I considered right, therefore no one suspected I could have some delayments and learning problems), but no, I'm not. The ways that work for "normal" people don't usually work for me. I always felt like there's something else. The drugs didn't work for me, SSRIs and Xanax got me just more aggressive and made my impulses even more uncontrollable. The side effects were terrible, I am very sensitive to meds. I quit them few years ago. Some long time ago I started to read about Asperger's, the effects of right brain hemisphere damage, NLD, ADHD etc and found many of the listed issues coherent with the ways "I work". For many years I considered myself defective, permanently broken, crazy even. Still living in fear of psychosis. People who knew I was undergoing psychiatric treatments in the past just were adding to that with their opinions. When I was having a meltdown in high school because I couldn't cope with one subject my "friend" started to make fun of me and then said "What? I didn't said anything wrong, you are mad, mentally ill, aren't you?" and even his abusive father added to that.
These problems started to overwhelm me when I became an adult. I'm 21 now. Despite being gifted in languages and writing (my native lang. is Polish), I kept failing at Maths and still didn't pass my obligatory algrebra final, which is to go to uni. I should go to university three years ago. working with people is a dread. I cannot drive well due to some issues which pains me. I've spent so much time and money and effort on getting my licence. I won't list all of my traits bc I already did that somewhere. People were always considering me rude even when I wasn't intending to. I was told things like "She's so rude" "That's her character" "I cannot imagine you driving" "You're moving in such a funny way" "You're so stiff". I was even physically attacked. I have an excellent long term memory so I can recall many things.
The problem is that I have nowhere to turn at the moment. Many Autism related helping centers are not interested in adults and they're very far away (I live in Poland and things work bit different here than in US). For now, I only have an access to a local psychiatrist and a local therapeutist (not specialised in these things and not much effective I guess, few of my friends were seeing her in the past).
But I have this private neurologist appointment in July. She diagnosed my grandmother with ataxia. One reason I go there is because I had some head injuries in the past and experience terrible headaches since then, yet I never had a scan or anything and I want at least to have a CT to begin with. Also gonna ask about EEG. I cannot afford MRi at the moment and to be honest, I'm bit scared of how much time you have to spend inside it. I also want to ask her about possible dyspraxia and my prosody.
The other thing is that I'm not sure if I can tell a neurologist about my issues that I think are related to possible AS or NLD (okay, NLD is not even a diagnosis, I doubt if she ever heard of it, but still). I'm afraid I'm gonna sound weird talking about my issues with school achievmenents and social interactions and driving. I don't exactly know how much a neurologist is specialized in such things and I'm also afraid she's just gonna send me off to psychiatrist or think I'm schizophrenic.
Can she test such things as visual spatial awareness and bad cognitive tempo?
Should I tell her that she diagnosed my grandmother with cerebellar hypoplasia (I'm not sure but this can be genetic I think)
I always have struggles with how much to say so it's not too much and to get to my point.

[Talthybius]

You talk about brain damage and head injuries and having had the wrong medicine. I can't tell if this is what the doctors concluded or what you suspect.

Your brain is not a static thing. It can be thrown out of balance and behave defectively. But the balance can also be restored, and things will be fine then.
The brain can also go into a feedback loop, both negative and positive.

Many things you say I can relate to. I am 32 now and only a few years ago I managed to get into university and perform at my natural level. I failed very simple math texts in high school, but now I study physics at a top50 university. I have to do complex math. I am taking an MRI/NMR course now.

I have been in an MRI machine myself. It is a scary and intimidating machine and it can create anxiety. But the energy levels involved are very very low. CT is x ray. CT shoots high energy particles through your body.
MRI measures very small energy differences between magnetic atoms in your body by shooting radio waves at exactly that energy difference. The energy difference would be immeasurably small in a weak magnetic field, so a strong magnetic field is used.
X ray/CT has like a billion times more energy per photon.
MRI makes molecules rotate. It just tickles a molecule. It cannot even make molecular bonds vibrate. Too low energy. X ray knocks electrons out of the molecules, breaking the whole bond and destroying the molecule.

Don't become hypochondriac. Yes, a neurologist will have a certain way of thinking and so will a psychiatrist.

To me, most things that you say seem to be anxiety and hypochondriac, except for the headaches.
Failing your math text or not being able to get into university, that is frustrating, I know. It took me 12 years. You can still fail for three more years and graduate before I even got in, if we compare times.
If I believed I could do it, I would have gotten in earlier. If I had sought out help rather than being stubborn and refusing help, I would have gotten in earlier. Now that I am in, I thrive academically. Something nothing in my past suggested I was actually capable of. Only the arrogant minority of my brain actually believed I belonged there.
Not saying the same is true for you, but just because you have been failing doesn't mean you can't do it.

Now you can be honestly anxious and frustrated for many reasons and of course you have a mental health history. But it doesn't seem things are really as seriously wrong as maybe you make it out to be. You talk about very serious things, but reading this post and a very shallow glance of your post history, it seems that right now in your life, there is more the fear and anxiety about something being neurologically wrong with you.

I used to have panic attacks. I knew 100% that it was irrational. And getting them was not befitting of my character. I am very macho, stoic, outwardly though, fearless. Still, they happened. I don't have them any more.

[dwr3]

By talking of a head injury I mean that in the past I had a few accidents and never had a scan. Once my friend pushed me off a wall accidentaly and I grabbed him along with me and he fell on my head with his heavy body, breaking my nose and then my headaches started. Two times I fell to the floor later in life and hit my head hard. Once I lost my conscience for a bit but then returned to normal and forgot about it. That's why I want to have a brain image taken. My headaches are really bad and I suffer from tinitius too and often lose balance. I just want to check.

But the thing with neurodevelopmental disorder is a completely different story. As I said, I just gave two small examples from my recent experience, but there's a bigger picture behind this. I just didn't want this post to be about my AS traits.

I'm sometimes not using the right words because I tend to write posts very quickly and English is not my first language.

[dwr3]

Talthybius, i'm going through your story and we do share some similarities. Like ,,If I was going to compete, I would want to be top 20%. But it was too late for that, as my life had been going to wrong way all my youth to be among the 20% successful. I wasn't going to spend any energy in trying to not be the bottom 50%." I also cannot put my effort into something I'm either not interested in or the chances for being really good/best at it are lost. I've heard a lot of "You must try harder because you're slower than the rest" thing and it always pissed me off. I also isolated myself from society because I feel like I have nothing to look for there (I had years of severe bullying) and that I cannot "meet their standards". I was obsessive and almost abusive in my love life, never successful. My sexuality is also messed up. Although I don't get involved in any sexual behaviour anymore.

I deal with panic attacks since I was a child and know it doesn't bother me that much.

Have you had your appointment with the counselor?

If I had to list my traits quickly, I'd mention being an extrelemy weird, tantrum-tempered- little-professor-child who hated other children and lived in their fantasy world. My family hated me for that because, for example, I despised my mother's brother kid. I was severely bullied for years and years, both physically and verbally. Never managed to keep a friend due to my weird behaviours. People were also telling my mother that I'm vicious and phony because I couldn't keep and eye contact and was extremely defensive. I was terrible at sports and any physical activity. Learning to catch a ball took me three years. I was making fun of because of that. I cannot dance, swim, drive. I'm extremely slow and have a terrible working memory, they almost fired me from my last job because I was making so many mistakes after months of working there. I still have huge meltdowns over irrelevant matters and anger tantrums. My long term memory and verbal memorization are better than average. My reaction to things is longer than other people's. I need a lot of time to understand what's going on a get a grip. This sometimes lead me to being taken advantage of and even sexually harassed. I didn't understand other's personal zones, I clinged to guys and got irrational like to the point of looking really weird and mad. I don't notice people and their faces right away. I have problems with speech, I speak too quietly, mumble, don't finish words, I sound aggressively when I want to sound nice and stuff. I'm mimicking others when stressed. People don't like to interact with me because I seem grumpy and overwhelmed all the time. My gestures are all messed up. Seem to be flirting when I don't want to. I'm too honest and speak everything right away, even if the questions are too private or intimidating (for example I had this abusive driving instructor and he took his friend and they kept asking me if I had sex before my exam. They shouldn't do that, I should tell them to back the hell off. But just kept smiling nervously and answered them truly, then thought about it). I make wrong accusations sometimes and judge people harshly etc etc. Ofc this is just like 5% of my whole life story.

It's all painful anyway. I'm intelligent and had ambitions, was pretty gifted and now the guys who missed 80% of school, passed it just by chance and always needed my help to write simple Polish tasks, they're sitting and laughing at me. Everyone went to uni, even those who had like 30-40% in their exams (30 is what u need to pass). I had 90% from Polish, 100% from basic English, 95% from extended English, 100% from oral English and 40% from extended Philosophy... 22% from Maths. So embarassing. It wouldn't bother me so much if it wouldn't matter to me and I wouldn't mind working at a cash register my whole life...But I do mind that. I don't want my life to look like this. I have my next results (I take this exam twice a year) on 5th of July.

[Talthybius]

If you have headaches that have no clear cause then I sympathize because that is besides painful, probably very annoying and frustrating and can get in the way of a lot of things, making you function below your natural level.
I know people who had had terrible headaches, and they went away at some point. And they don't have psychological problems, as far as I am aware of.

Don't feel psychologically broken because you have headaches and once had a concussion. Yes, they can be connected, but in your case don't know that they are. And even if it is true, you can still function. There's people with only one hemisphere/half a brain, and no one suspected that because they are able to act normally.
There is no reason to believe something is physically wrong with your brain that causes all these problems and frustrations you now have and will make it impossible to move forward in life.

I sometimes fantasized that I had a tumor and that they would discover it one day, remove it, and my whole personality would chance. That all the things that I self-limit, self-sabotage, restrict myself in, or for some reason I can't explain don't work out, would suddenly automatically proceed. And that all my special talent, and the thing that makes me feel me, would also be gone.
But that's just fantasy.

You keep focusing on what you cannot do. Even when they are unimportant. No one that has the potential to be a friend will care if you are a poor driver, or that you have odd gestures.
People will react badly if you throw temper tantrums or act needlessly defensive. So you aren't all wrong. But the point is, you list things about yourself, but you list only negative things. There are positive things. You know them better than anyone.
And if you do have friends and are a poor driver, at some point they will make fun of it because to them it is not a big deal. And you should be able to handle it and know they will still be your friend.

Your life has the potential to change a lot in a few years, and likely it will. For good or for bad. A tiny event today can make your life be completely different in 10 years. Yes, it is scary. But it is also an opportunity. How many years did you lose? One? Two? That's nothing. Or you only lost 6 months, not really sure.
I lost more than a decade. And I have to go on. I lost 1/3rd of my life, 80% of my adult life so far. And I still have to salvage my life. I could be a professor running my own lab, have a wife and children, and have a 1 in 10,000 chance to win a Nobel Prize in physics. Yet I am a bachelor student who has a 1 in 20 odds of getting tenure at age 55-60.

If you think you have brain damage that will prevent yourself from passing the math test, you will probably fail again.

I failed basic algebra in the lowest level of high school. I aced multivariate calculus in university. I cannot explain the difference in my ability then and my ability now. By all accounts, my brain should be much poorer at learning new abstract things. But if I had to try to explain it, I would point to a "can-do vs cannot-do" mentality. If you think you are stupid, cannot possibly do math, I believe you self-block yourself. I guess it is a viscous cycle and I don't know tricks to break it. What I did is quit for years, forget how bad I was, then relearn everything myself, then ace the tests. That's not an option for you, I guess.
Second thing is sitting down and practicing over and over. I used to make terrible mistakes when writing one equation going to the next one. I understood the problem, but I would always switch around a plus or minus sign, copy an equation wrongly, and I would get the wrong answer. In fact, in a single problem I would make two copying mistakes, and an algebra mistake, while I was unsure if I was solving the problem correctly. Then I checked the answer and it was completely different and I wasn't even sure what I was doing wrong, or why.
I remember having a notebook and doing the same problem 20 times, getting stuck at the same point several times.

In fact, I still did that in uni for tests I aced. We would learn new methods to solve problems. I wouldn't do the exercises, or not enough of them. And then when practicing for the exam, I wouldn't be able to solve something simple and I had to do it 10 times. So 10 times 4 pages of equations to fix something I should already be able to do.
But it does help me ace tests. I can get the abstract idea, but I need to practice crazy amounts to not fumble on writing through problems.
If I don't do it and get lazy, I lose points.

I have to sit down hours and do problems I already did in the past, just to make sure I don't lose math ability. It is frustrating. I know for sure there are others who just learn it once, never have any troubles, go party, and pass the test.
But I can ace it, if I try hard enough.

I see you tried tutors and it is a basic algebra test. I cannot help you with details.

I did go to a psychologist. She said it sounded like 'giftedness with streaks of autism'. Now I believe a psychologist has no idea what they are doing. They make it up as they go along. Yet I wanted to tell my story and I wanted to have someone who would make sure I wouldn't weave myself into bizarre thoughts. I brood and ponder a lot. A lot. I always do it. Every night for 1 hour before I get to sleep. Always when I do endurance exercise. I am alone a lot. I always think, worry.

Sometimes I feel like a superhero, in my own fantasy world. In fact, I have my own fantasy world where I am a hero, or maybe rather a tragic anti-hero. Sometimes, I feel crazy and broken. I know I must be somewhere in between, regardless of how I feel. The way I worry/brood/ponder probably determines how I feel at that point. It is kind of like there are two 'me's', one that lives in the internal world, one that lives in the external. One that is who I think I am. One who is what others think I am. To me it is clear those are two very different personalities.

Anyway, I am digressing.

[dwr3]

The tests are mostly trygonometry, analitical geometry, algebra...My last test looked like this: https://www.cke.edu.pl/images/_EGZAM...-P1_1P-162.pdf

Yeah, it's not in English, but perhaps you'll get some idea when looking at the numbers and pictures. Geometry is the biggest problem for me, I'm quite okay with basic equations, statistics and stuff like that, although - just like you - I often switch the minus and plus signs or something like that and miss half of the points. The man who's creating these tests now (they're all the same for the whole country and are created in an organization that has not much to do with teachers and ways we were taught) is some freaking geometry lover because there was never so much of it in the past years. He's also trying to make the tests tricky and requiring "creativity", so it's not that basic as it should be, but I cannot do anything about that, so. Each year there are completely different levels of difficulty, these tests vary very much.

Well, there are positive things about me of course, but right now I have no use in them. I know life is not just black-white. Even when I was the worst possible version of myself in high school, the world didn't end. And I was an extremely shocking person with widely known, bad reputation. I'm not like that anymore. They could expell me for my behaviour, yet they didn't, because - as a student - I also had something to offer.

I'm very defensive, because I had to protect myself a lot as a child. I still do, because my father never stopped bringing me down. He's extremely verbally aggressive and stressing people out. My family is full of nasty people, who loved bringing others down. Just like a Pavlov's dog I was taught that the smallest thing done not-the-right-way will end with screams and flow of criticism. I also know that I will never have any support and that's why achievement is so important to me. I was never let to have fun, to relax. I was the scapegoat, often at the point of "it's me vs. the world". Simple example is driving. My friends passed their exams, everyone was happy, their got their cars or borrowed parent's cars, they learned and practiced and now they're driving freely. I passed my exams, was told that I'm probably awful and no, I won't be able to borrow a car, my grandfather said that he'll buy me one but it happened to be just a joke because I don't deserve such things, finally my father let me drive with him but once started shouting at me so badly while I was trying to figure out a situation on the road, my legs strarted shaking, I got all panicked, that I almost collapsed from stress and got out of the car and never started driving again. Few months later I hear his complains that shame on me for not driving, he always has to do it. I wasn't good at driving in the first place, it took my much longer to get through this, but he just added to that. I think it would be much different if I felt I have the freedom to make mistakes like other people. It was like that all the time. When I was young I heard everyone is stupid, each person I was hanging out with. The camps I wanted to go to were considered just a waste of money, etc.I was never rewarded for my accomplishments, so I've lost motivation. Because doing things all the time and seeing no positive outcome is nothing but exhausting.

[Talthybius]

Imagine for a second you pass the math exam, you arrange so you can move out of your parent's home and live in the university city.

How will you think you will feel about your life then? How do you imagine you develop when there's people with similar goals, interests and talents around you, who are eager to be around and meet new people?

You see no positive outcome? I'd probably trade my life for yours.

If you don't study 2 hours a day to pass the math test because your parent's don't support you and you don't want to arrange things so you can go to university without your parent's support because you won't pass the math test anyway, you put yourself into a bind based on faulty logic.

I can understand, but not fully, how your parent's not reflecting on your accomplishments can be frustrating and demotivating. But if they aren't willing or able to give you the support you'd like, and kind of need, you need to do it alone anyway. It's your life.

When you are away from the negative influences of your family and growing as a person and overcoming your own challenges, you can always mend the relationship you have with your family. It will be easier for them as well, I'd presume, when they know you don't depend on them any longer, but you still come to visit them and have a good family time.
And maybe then your father can show his true feelings.

[dwr3]

I'm actually not gonna move out of the house and live in another city, at least not until I'm gonna have any proper savings and a stable job. I live very near my university city. I chose studying online, where you only actually go there to write exams, so I won't have to drive those 50km each day. That's the plan for the beginning.

I was actually studying, I've already taken the test in May and now I'm awaiting the results under pressure. I'm just scared I won't pass it again. So it's not like I can say much for now.

I'd probably trade my life for yours.

I honestly doubt you would trade your life for living in Poland Just kidding with the country. However, I doubt you'd trade yours for my life history and the place where I grew up in. Yet, fine, let's say it was about my current situation, not my past.

Coming back to neurologist evaluation - I finally decided to take MRi instead of CT because I luckily found a place where they do it for a cheaper price than usually, yet it's not worse or anything. I've read they put a blanket on you and give you headphones with radio station played on, so it's not that bad. CT scan seems a bit like a waste of money and health, and with MRi, I can easily not take the contrast medium, because the pictures are clear enough without it.

[Talthybius]

You live in Poland. You can go anywhere within Europe.

I understand the financial issues, but I would recommend everyone to live in their uni town, always. It is a very healthy influence. You should do it much earlier than you think you should. Do it before you truly feel ready for it. You won't regret it.

Success awaiting the result.

[dwr3]

I can, I've already been living abroad (England), but then, still, I first want to have some consistent education and a profession, because I have nothing to offer right now.