I think I can safely say I have AS...

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For starters, my mom is CLEARLY on the spectrum. She rocks *constantly*... I'm talking 24/7. If she's in a chair, she's rocking. If her legs are crossed, her leg is gonna be rocking 90 mph... I'm talking intense rocking here. She has absolutely zero social awareness - she talks way, way, way too much. She constantly doing things like continuing to talk to people when they have already gotten into their cars and actually started the engines, ready to leave our house/the mall/wherever they happened to meet.

The next major pointer has been that I am extremely gifted. Hate to brag, but it's the truth. I went to a rich surburban high school, and there were about 15 people in my graduating class who scored 1500+ on the SAT, and I even in this environment filled with brilliant people, I was considered "that guy so smart it's a little freaky." Math is a cinch, languages both native and foreign, piece of cake... very gifted in music as well. My memory is also ridiculous. I can remember almost word for word conversations from years ago, or facts I memorized about hockey when I was 14.

Exhibit C: obsessions. Throughout my life, I have always been absolutely *obsessed* with something. Video games as a young child, followed by grunge music, followed by ice hockey, followed by track, followed by guitar, followed by LSD (only tripped once, but have read many many books on it), followed by The Beatles... One summer I became hell bent on learning to read Japanese so that I could play import games. I learned 1500 kanji in about a month and a half, but by the time I finished, I realized I wasn't even that into games anymore, so I quit. I also have an extremely addictive personality, which I learned the hard way in college. Sadly, pot because my obsession for a while, but thankfully I no longer depend on it.

Socially, I have made some major mistakes, but luckily I think my alertness/intelligence has compensated in large part for the lack of intuition. I would say I have been plagued more by a general feeling of isolation than by my own social mistakes. Most people just plain bore me. I know more about my seventh interest than they do about anything, and it takes a very smart sense of humor to really tickle me. I do love humor, and most of my friendships, looking back, have revolved around mutually appreciated humor.

Oh, and stimming - I do it, although it could be a lot worse. I pick my hair a lot, wring my hands when I'm nervous (not too often), and rock sometimes in the privacy of my room. I do other random things too, like stroking my chest (don't ask me why). Also I sing to myself a lot, and *always* pace around the room when I'm on the phone. Done that as long as I can remember.

I have been obsessively reading these forums for the past few days in an attempt to really settle my self-diagnosis... I began reading about AS last fall, and I mentioned it to the psychologist I was seeing. She didn't know much about it, but she thought it made a lot of sense. Since then I've kept it in the back of my mind, but I've also had a lot of other stuff going on. Probably for the best - I think this needed to sink in a little bit. It seems obvious AS is the answer to the serious difficulties I experienced living on my own in college (addiction, social isolation), but I am still doubting it a little because the people I've mentioned it to (friends, that is - my dad probably thinks I have it, but like my friends, he seems to think it's bad, and he doesn't want me to dwell on it) have mostly either thought I was crazy or said something like, "Hmm, it's possible, but you know, I really wouldn't worry about it."

Anyway, any response is welcome. Hope everyone's doing well on this fine spring evening, or whatever season/time it is in your neck of the woods

if one more person tells me not to "dwell" on such things... i'll throttle them!

Welcome to WP! Maybe it's that new one they just discovered.


edit: was a wonderful day. made it to the coast

More feedback people, please...

Anyone with any similar experiences? Were any of you reluctant to accept your self-diagnosis at first?

Another thing I'm realizing is that it's going to be very tough for me to get on with my life and stop identifying with this new label. Today I was grocery shopping, all I could think about was how I'm different from the other people in the store and all of the differences between my behavior and theirs. I guess I just have to get that out of my system, and eventually I will stop thinking about.

Welcome to WP! Well guess you know yourself better than any one else. When I first got told I was quite possibly AS ('97) I didn't want to accept the idea, now 10 years later, I welcome it, it explains so much to me as to why somethings are the way they are to me. Have you done any of the tests/quizzes to assist you to bring you to this conclusion?

Yeah, I scored a 36 I believe (it was either 34, 36, or 38, definitely an even number, so I'll go with 36) on the one that's out of fifty - that was a month or two ago, but I don't trust that one too much because I already thought I had AS and it was obvious which was the "AS answer" for each question so I think it might've been a little bit biased.

Last night I scored 121 for aspie, and 84 for NT on the other test, the aspie quiz or whatever. That test seemed a lot more thorough, less predictable, etc., and I took care to err to the side of NT answers, and I still came out quite aspie.

oh, and thanks for the welcomes

Socially, I have made some major mistakes, but luckily I think my alertness/intelligence has compensated in large part for the lack of intuition. The same thing is with me. Could ANYONE explain me the meaning of Rocking in detail. I just don't understand it. I believe it is moving you head To and Fro as if banging in the air. Am i right?

Rocking can be rocking your head or, more commonly, your entire body, forwards and backwards. Picture someone on a bench, arms probably crossed, leaning forward to about a 40 degree angle and then back up to say, a 10 degree angle, and repeating this over and over in a smooth, rhythmic fashion.

I'm very intuitive and I'm still AS to infinity.

Anyhoo, welcome.


Though.. shouldn't this be more in the.. Getting to Know Each other, section?

Perhaps, but actually I already posted in the getting to know you section a few months ago, plus I really want some tips on diagnosis/self-diagnosis, which seems more appropriate here.

True.
You sound pretty AS to me.

The basic tip would be to exercise your resources and memories really and in which case you have stated that you have an incredible memory so apply some of those memories to symptoms which it seems you've also really done. I'd say research symptoms and behavioral patterns and find the one's that connect to you. If you can't remember, ask an old teacher or something. Parents can supply this information but parents can also be influenced by how they feel their child was acting or if the case was bad enough in their perspective they could have morphed what you did into something a little more dramatic.

All of this above you've pretty much done so I'm not going to waste going into length on all the things you could do if you've already concluded this all. I don't see where you're asking us to help since you've figured it out already, it looks more like you're just posting it all out so your conclusion is solidified which is fine, I do the same too. If there's something you're looking for specifically in a certain field of your self diagnosis you should state this. Otherwise it looks like you have a good handle on it.


Some accept it, some don't. I wasn't diagnosed but the same thing happened to me as did in your case just in different context. I strayed from the idea, it was preposterous to think that it was ME who was "ill". THEY were the obvious idiots who were holding me back and couldn't understand me, it wasn't MY fault. It just recently sunk in for me as well. I never thought Austism as a disease either, it was just impossible that I was thinking differently - everyone else were the one's who were just far too simple to understand anything. Ha ha ha.

Last edited by agentcyclosarin on 01 May 2007, 4:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hi ButchCoolidge. Yes, I was reluctant to accept my diagnosis. My shrink started talking about it but I was a bit angry at the time. So she left for about 6 months on my last session. I don't blame her. I would have done the same. She knows me well

I wouldn't really say reluctant but I did play devils advocate against myself and rule out such things as Munchausen syndrome, Munchausen by proxy, Hypochondria, and various other Somatoform and factitious disorders first.

Agent, thanks for the info/tips. I suppose I am just looking for confirmation... someone to say, "I agree you are almost certainly AS" or "It can be tricky and obviously you're biased, maybe you should consider getting a professional opinion."

All of these comments have helped... thanks. Keep em coming

No problem,
Not many people who are AS would tell you that you are obviously biased and are not a good judge of such a thing if you bring forth sound reasoning or analytical logic since we're.. logical. In which you have. AS can be tricky yes but than AS people are smart and tricky themselves so all in all you'll usually find truth here and being honest with yourself will bring forth this as well.

Its the professional opinions that are dodgey for many reasons. Usually it costs a lot of money to find someone who will for with an Autistic and it's hard to find good one's. Also, they will use the law of deduction and thus unless you overwhelm them with all of the fact and go to them with your own nicely perfected analysis and self-diagnosis they will always try to fit you to a different disorder because AS is a spectrum and is indeed complex.

A good amount of people here from what I've seen would agree that most AS are more than capable of diagnosing themselves.

one thing to keep in mind when lookin for lots of feedback... is that long posts make the eyes bleed

and yea it's hard... i found out that this is prolly what i got just by taking my lunch out in my neuroscience department lounge room and reading some lit they had laying about.

at the end of the day... it doesn't change anything about who you are or what you have to do...

it's hard to say if you have AS specifically from what you posted (i already forget specifics, so maybe im wrong here lol)... but check out other options, as there are several similar conditons. like, i think i may at least have a NVLD as i almost flunked out of school for particular reasons... yet upon going for a formal IQ testing ect... landed myself in magnet school. however, due to some other specific phenotypes i have... i am leaning towards AS more.

just keep surfing here and see what crops up that you identify with... that's what's gotten me through this last year, after finding my planet