Personal Narrative: Aspergers, Anxiety, Depression

My heart would palpitate while my skin flushed. I could feel myself getting hotter and more nervous as thoughts raced through my head. They weren’t connected, but they felt tied together, stuck. I felt as if my life was on a video reel but the sounds were distorted, and the film was held together by a shaky hand. My teacher looked at me, saying something but all I heard was unintelligible speech, the other students were staring at me while I prayed silently for a sinkhole to open up and remove me from the situation entirely. This was the day I had my first anxiety attack.

Occupational therapy can help a person with Asperger’s thrive physically, emotionally, and socially. As previously stated, if these symptoms were to be left alone, these children and adults would be subjected to bullying, ridiculed, and social isolation due to them being naïve and having concrete views of the world resulting in being vulnerable. Through occupational therapy intervention, this cycle can be interrupted by helping the patient adjust their sensory system. This means, “gaining the physical abilities needed to succeed, acquire valuable social, prevocational, and play skills, and improve their overall ability to function.” Through this intervention, one can not only learn to succeed in the classroom but when the time comes, uphold employment.

Human beings with autism have said that the world, to them, appears to be a mass of events, people and places which they contend to make sense of, and which can cause them considerable anxiety. To be specific relating and understanding to other people, and taking part in everyday social life and family may be a bit challenging for them. Other people appear to know, intuitively, how to communicate and interact with each other, and some people with autism may wonder why they are different. People with autism have challenges with both non-verbal and verbal language. Many of them have a literal understanding of language, and think people always mean exactly what they say.

Autism is a brain development disorder characterized by continuous problems in social communication and interaction, besides with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests or activities. ASD stands for Autism Spectrum Disorder and can sometimes be referred to as Autistic Spectrum Disorder. As stated by the Medical News Today (2015), Autism Spectrum Disorder is a wide-spectrum disorder. This means that there will be no same people who will have the exact and same symptoms. And as well as experiencing altering combinations of symptoms, because some people will have mild symptoms while others will have severe ones.

My lungs were burning, my knees stung, and my legs screamed with every step. I knew I had to keep on running. The crowd was roaring, but my breathing was loud enough to drown out the noise. Suddenly out of nowhere there was a girl at my side, I remembered her, and she played dirty. Keeping my temper in check I tried to push on, but she didn’t give up and sent me crashing to the ground.

According to the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders (fifth edition). It states that an individual with Autistic Spectrum Disorder has persistent defects in the social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts. They have restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests, or activities. For a diagnosis to be made, symptoms must be present in the early developmental period. Symptoms can cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning.

Some characteristics of Asperger’s syndrome are social impairments, high anxiety, and difficulty with communication. Unfortunately, the combination of those mental health struggles resulted in his limited ability to participate in his education while in high school and for him to function effectively in our society as an adult. He lacked empathy, avoided eye contact, could not stand to be touched and displayed rigid thought processes. Programs were developed and medications were advised, yet Adam refused to participate in those therapies and he refused to take the recommended

Asperger’s Syndrome: Stages of Life Asperger’s has many names but only one meaning: “a severe developmental disorder characterized by major difficulties in social interaction, and restricted and unusual patterns of interest and behavior.” Asperger’s was first brought into light in the 1940’s by an Austrian pediatrician named Hans Asperger. Hans Asperger was best known for his studies on early child mental disorders. Hans Asperger conducted research on four boys that appeared to have autism.

The 3rd grade to the 7th grade was one of the most dreadful times of my life. It all started when my 3rd grade teacher took me to a room where my parents were sitting in. She started talking to them about how I was always looking distracted or confused during test’s and assignments. She suggested that we go see a doctor about me having ADD or ADHD but at the time I had no idea what ADD was or if it would affect my life in the slightest.

Thoughts of fear and excitement paraded through my body as I sat Twitching to tell somebody about what I had just experienced but then I remembered that the only friend I really have at school is a boy named Joe and our friendship doesn 't seem to extend outside of lunch boundaries but I could wait a few more hours to tell him about this unbelievable news. Three hours go by and it 's time for lunch, as I 'm as I 'm walking out of my English 11 language arts class to lunch I noticed that everyone was looking my way in didn 't break EYE contact til they were behind me, soon I reached lunch and I sat to my regular lunch table and waited for Joe to come but he never came, soon soon as I figured he was not going to come I began to dig into my lunchbox picking at my

I decided to talk to my mom about it, and afterwards I was glad I did. My mom told me that she also dealt with anxiety for a long time when she was younger. She gave me advice and really helped me out. And although my mom was very helpful about everything; my anxiety just got worse over time. I continued having anxiety attacks and they were escalating quickly. Almost anything would trigger me. It would start with shortness of breath, shaking hands, a painfully beating heart. My limbs would fall asleep from hyperventilating. These attacks would almost always happen late at night, when I was alone just worrying about every little thing. And I mostly kept them to myself. At one point I just decided I couldn’t handle it anymore. I knew I needed

Asperger 's Syndrome is difficult to live with. It affects me in all aspects of life. In school, I have great difficulty communicating in groups (for example, Socratic Seminars); I either fail to speak up, misunderstand what someone is talking about, or ignore the entire discussion. This failure to follow through has drastically affected my grade and I immediately knew I needed to change my behavior, and fast. As I entered high school, with the help of my parents and prior experience, my social skills have steadily improved, and I began to work as a group.

To say growing up with anxiety is hard would be quite the understatement. It is undeniably one of the hardest challenges to be faced and what feels to be unconquerable nine times out of ten. The one good thing about it is, is that it gave and still gives me something to fight for; happiness. The big, yet simple thing I remember when the going gets tough, is that the battle is in my mind, and I have to choose to be stronger than my emotions to take the struggle away.

But that suspicion was too late; overcome by alcohol, I fell unconscious. Being so immature, I had no idea how to cope with the event and concealed it from every person possible, even family. The students who knew about it and even parents harassed me; I tolerated endless derogatory remarks. Ashamed and humiliated, I skipped class and isolated myself from others. Later, I sought counseling and discovered that I had been suffering from depression.

As nurses, we should aim to provide quality, and equal care and treatment for all of our patients. Positive interactions with people-nurses included- is what they need to help learn social norms and behaviors. Check-ups, physicals, school nurses need to work together to best provide positive care for Asperger patients. Parents and extended families should know what Asperger syndrome is and how it affects a person, so to be sensitive to this vulnerable population. There needs to be more awareness of programs so people know they are there.