Do I seem like I have aspergers (female)?

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Alicia_Mei
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Joined: 23 Jan 2016
Age: 26
Posts: 1

23 Jan 2016, 10:35 pm

I've always been a very shy person. Starting in middle school, I started to feel uncomfortable around people. I began to realize that I had shallow friendships and I was always faking being interested. By eight grade it much worse. I became extremely awkward and didn't have any friends by the end of the year. This has pretty much been the case for the past 5 years now.

I've put in a lot of effort effort to socialize with people, but it seems to yield few positive results. No ever seems to like me. I don't know if it's because I seem boring or what. I just put people off. I think many who don't know me personally would regard me as monotone, emotionless, and cold. Actually, even those who do know me say the same thing. I find myself faking empathy a lot (not ALL the time, but a lot) and faking interest in most topics. I have an extremely difficult time talking about my emotions.

I never naturally made eye contact with people. I didn't even know that was a social rule until I read it somewhere online. When I try to make eye contact with people, it feels very unnatural and I'm not sure what to do. I am not sure if I am staring at their eyes too long or if I should look away. I often make body language "mistakes", too, as others have pointed out. For instance, after my sister and I were done talking to some strangers, she said, "Wow. You must have really wanted to get out of there." I didn't actually "want to get out of there" super badly, but I'm assuming it was my body language indicated otherwise.

I often take what people say on a literal level. Many times I don't understand a joke as quickly as other people. I'll laugh when I notice everyone else is laughing, but it takes me a bit to get the joke myself. Many have called me awkward. I make awkward social mistakes all the time and I am quite clumsy. I can be very blunt if I wanted to, but I have learned to filter this. I've felt very lonely and isolated as a result of all of this. I even struggle to connect with my family members, but I try and try. I feel like I'm missing out on life because of my social ineptness, which does not seem to be getting any better despite my efforts.

Thank you to anyone who reads this.



Yigeren
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Joined: 20 Dec 2015
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,606
Location: United States

23 Jan 2016, 10:44 pm

It's really hard to say whether you have Asperger's or not. You could possibly have something called social communication disorder. It involves the social symptoms that are similar to that of Asperger's without the other symptoms.

I suggest you look up the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-V for Autism Spectrum Disorder and also try some of the aspie tests that are online to see if you have other symptoms besides just the social ones.