Going to the doctors...

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So I'm thinking of seeing my doctor this week to approach the subject of something not being quite right with me, whether it's AS or something else I don't know but alot of things written on here remind me of myself. So I've never done this before the only time I've been to the docs about my mental health was when I was working I just felt so overloaded and I couldn't cope so I said I was depressed, got signed off work for a month and was given some anti-depressants that I didn't take because I knew I just needed time alone to re-cooperate before getting back to the stress.

So my idea is to take print outs of my test results of the online tests, all of which point towards AS as well as this which I've just written about things i can think of that are probably different to a NT person.


As a child I used to obsess over the number 4, I had to do my hand patterns in 4's or I'd have to touch the *light switch*(this could be any object) 4 times, twice with my left twice with my right at just the right angle each time or I'd have to start all over again. I still do this now but not as extreme or perhaps more extreme, there is no set number, it's still typically 4 but I keep going until it feels right, that could be 8, 10, 12 etc. Oh and if something touches the inner corners of my little fingers it really freaks me out and I start doing my hand patterns (touching in certain ways, again in even numbers). As I grew older my hand patterns became less but my verbal problem became worse. I've always had a problem with certain words, words like 'precious' and 'phlem'(sp?) are bad words to me they make me feel like retching and even just saying it in my mind as I typed it then is making my fingers twitch and I want to do a pattern. Then there are other words that I love the sound and feel of as I say them, such as 'systematic', there are no rules as to which words I will automatically like / dislike, some words make me feel ill, others make me feel warm and fuzzy and most are pretty neutral.

So I've always had a strange relationship with words and as I've gotten older I have become verbal with my little patterns, tics whatever you want to call them to the point that I've considered whether I possibly have tourettes but I'm not sure you can just develop tourettes. I make noises, say words, phrases but only when I'm in a relaxed atmosphere, so at home I call out alot, wheras in public I really supress it which has led to my eye twitching. If I get too relaxed in public I can feel it building and I simply have to noise off before I feel I'll explode, thankfully it doesn't happen often because I can usually get away to noise off privately.

Games and play - I used to play very long very in depth pretend games on my own as a child, I was reluctant to play with my brother/cousins because they would not play the game correctly and / or follow the rules I'd set out (I used to hate my brother using my dolls house as an army fort). I'm an adult now but I have a young daughter and I find it so irritating and frustrating that she doesn't play games correctly, it can be simple board games but even things like when she plays with her dolls alot of the time I'm biting my tongue to stop myself saying how stupid the game is and that it makes no sense and THIS is how she should be playing it.

Oh and dolls hair...you would be my sworn enemy as a child if you knotted up my dolls hair and it really irritates me now to see my daughter's dolls with less then perfect out of the box hair and when she changes the clothes so that they are not the clothes that they came with it makes me want to scream. As you can imagine as a child my toys were immaculate and I would flip out if someone screwed them up in some way. Of course I was told alot that this was wrong and I was being selfish etc etc so I had to learn to bite my tongue and stop from screeching at the other kids for screwing up what I was doing, this gave me a great ability to hold on to anger and seek revenge in other more crafty ways. Something as an adult I still do, if you upset me (I mean really badly not an offhand insult or something trivial like that) then I seek out a way to get revenge that will haunt you for years (it hasn't happened often but I have ruined people's lives for what they've done to me).

I would have strange ideas about how I could intergrate into social groups, such as if I had the right shoes, or a certain bag I would automatically be one of the cool kids because in my mind that's how it worked, you had the right attire / equipment / toys and you were an instant social hit. Even now I try to figure out what it is I need to do to become socially acceptable, that one little thing that will make me one of the gang so to speak rather then that weird, moody person who no one speaks to. Even in an online capacity it's like if I say certain things, or post in a certain way, have the right avatar, if everything is just so then people will surely like me? Despite the years of it not being so I still for some stupid reason keep thinking I just need to have a certain persona to fit in.

I would not speak in public as a child, specifically school, I would whisper if forced to respond and that would be barely audiable, I was told off so many times for not speaking. I think that's what led to me seeing this woman who for the life of me I can't remember what it is she was trying to achieve. I think maybe she was assesing me in some way. Just like with anyone else I wouldn't speak to her but then she brought in a book about budgie's (as she'd managed to get it out of me that I had one as a pet) and then it kind of went from there I started talking about all the interesting information about them, our 'sessions' ended soon after that. As an adult when I have to speak I often speak too quietly and people ask me to repeat myself or if I'm at home my husband will tell me I'm shouting so I have to try to remember to keep my voice at the right level.

I would obsess over things that had facts, I'd go through phases with things, I remember at one time it was a programme called the animals of farthing wood (I liked finding out about the different animals). I would get the magazine too and was once almost knocked down by a car because I literally had my face buried in the magazine as I casually walked home from the local shop (I was around 8 at the time). I recall some of my other obsessions were coins, stamps, decoupage, there were more but those are the ones that stick out the most. As an adult I still have these obsessions, they move in phases that can last weeks, months or years. For example I used to obsess over fish, I had several tanks, constantly read fish forums, magazines, would go to fish shops several times a week, started making videos on how to breed them, i even became an undercover journalist for a magazine once but as with all my obsessions I moved on and after 4 years of being 'fish mad' I sold my tanks, fish equipement etc and focused on my latest 'thing' which was a cosmetics company that i would spend every waking moment looking at their products online, joinging in with the community as best I could, spending hundreds on products.

I used to wear the same thing over and over as a child, I didn't like my clothes being washed because then they were all stiff and uncomfortable that made me feel yuk (I'm not as bad now but I still find freshly washed clothes irritating to the point of just feeling wrong). Tags...did and still do irritate me just not as bad, I would like the tags cut out of my clothes as a child wheras now I only cut out the really irritating ones. I also vividly remember not wearing socks for months because they felt wrong and I refused to wear them except at school and I would spend all day scratching and being generally annoyed by them. I still have a problem with socks now, if I don't crunch my toes and then slip them on quickly they feel wrong and I can't get them to feel right no matter what i do so I have to start the little ritual again.

I would eat things in a set way as a child, lets take jelly babies as an example, they had to be eaten in a certain (colour) order, something which I still do now, wheras I can just randomly grab them from the bag as I get towards the end of the pack I revert back to putting them in sequence to eat them. Or a kit kat I would slowly bite off the chocolate before eating the wafer inside, again I still do this but I can force myself to eat 'normally' in public. I also like to eat the same meals again and again, so when we go shopping I always get the same 7 meals for that week, the same dessert, the same drinks and I will have those for months until I change one thing (usually the drink is the first to change) and then I change my whole slection to a different set for a few months.

Routines - I have my routines but I don't get upset if they are changed, annoyed yes but I cope, I've had to, as a child growing up things changed alot so I had to get used to change and again learn to cope, when big changes happen my hand patterns / vocal emissions increase.

Thoughts - Now I often wonder how normal / abnormal my thinking is, like i'll think something and sometimes i wonder if that's what other people would think or if it's just me and i'm weird. Or when riding in the car I will notice people in the street and wonder where they are going, what they are doing, are they happy, why are they carrying / wearing / looking like that. and then I'll wonder if that's normal, do other people think that way?

Symmetry - My old friend symmetry, I like symmetry alot and can feel quite irritated if things are not symmetrical or balanced or even depending on what it is.

Socialising; relationships/friendships - This is a major problem for me and always has been. As a child in primary school (elementary) I had 3 friends all of whom I hated for various reasons, they annoyed me in various ways but it was them or nothing. They would all go home for lunch and I'd sit during my lunch break on a wall lost in thought, it never occured to me to make new friends, it was hard enough with the ones i had, i didn't need more idiots annoying me. Then came secondary school (high school) all 4 of us went to the same one but some BS split us up we ended up hating each other it was me and 1 of the girls against the other 2 for our entire time at the secondary school(name calling, fights etc). So me and my 'best friend' I use that term loosely because she drove me nuts, i hated her mannerisms, her humour and her attitude but I just got on with it again because it was her or nothing. We kind of made friends with 5 other girls, I never 'clicked' with any of them my social skills being zero and I was just the hanger on in the background. We all left school I stayed in touch with my original 'friend' again purely because I didn't want to be completely friendless, she was just as bad as me for lack of friends and our parties consisted of us 2, her mother, her neighbours and any random 'penpals' she could convince to make the long trip to her house. Needless to say my youth sucked, I was depressed, I drank, I cut myself and I spent alot of time on my own in my room doing nothing, sometimes with music on but most of the time I'd sit and stare into space. Then I deiced to give the whole penpal thing a go, got in touch with a few people, ended up dating some of them (of course not at the same time), I had an on off relationship with one for 2 years, he really screwed my head up(but i got him back big time) but that's an even longer story then all of the previous paragraphs.

The only time I met a guy in a normal fashion was when one of my penpals who was a girl and lived not far form me invited me out with her and her boyfriend, we went to a metal club I got seriously wasted and drunk me = more sociable out of control me and I ended up all over this one guy. Luckily for me he was a decent person and rather then me ending up with a one night stand he put me in a taxi and sent me home and we actually ended up dating for a few months before he ended it because I was 'too depressed and weird'.

Few more random boyfriends met via the internet, some nice some really really bad and then i got talking to someone when I was 19, someone who I instantly 'clicked' with. We would literally talk online for hours, then he started calling me and we would talk on the phone for hours and then we met 3 months after first talking online and after that he came to visit me every weekend despite living a 4 hour train journey away. Then I moved in with him we got married the following year, our daughter was born the year after and that brings me up to the present relationship wise. I've been very lucky in that I found someone who I have alot in common with but also understands when i get in moods about things, is not irritated by the way i have to have things done, he likes all my little quirks but that might be because he's not NT himself (he's bipolar).

Friendships are pretty much non existent, I chat on forums, I even send emails to some people but i don't know if they are my friends or not, one woman has reffered to me as her friend but she lives in another country and lately we barely speak. Another 'friend' is someone I buy things from and we ended up talking about other stuff and again i don't know if that's a friendship or not, she herself hasn't got any real life friends but that's because she's always so busy with her business. I had a friend a few years ago who lived just up the road, she was 'alternative' like me, she had a kid a little younger then me, she was painfully shy...like me, so again with my stupid thoughts I believed we would just naturally be best friends. Didn't happen, when we met up it was always so awkward, she tried small talk but I just didn't know how to respond to it, she obviously didn't find me as interesting and engaging as her other friends(who lived hundreds of miles away in a town she used to live in) we drifted more and more apart, not that we were close in the first place but she moved away and that was that.

Conversations - I have this thing were i have to go over every last detail of a conversation, possible outcomes, scenarios etc before I will say anything. so someone might say 'hi how are you' and I will go through several responses in my head and what they would then lead to before deciding on one. By which time several seconds have elapsed and the questioner is staring at me like I'm crazy as i 'uhm' and 'ah' before rushing out with either a socially acceptable 'I'm fine thanks' or the more typical "I'm okish, freaking out a little" followed by a nervous smile which then gives them the impresison that I am 100% lunatic.

And the palpatations and shortness of breath and general panic attackness of social interactions makes me avoid them as much as possible. Even little things like seeing my daughter's teacher at school has me on edge before going and I'll run through what I need to ask, what she will say in return what I'll say to that, every possible scenario until I'm sure I can cope and I'm ready for any possibility. I'm not as bad as I was before having my daughter, having to take he rplaces has force dme to interact more.

The eyes - I'm sometimes confident enough to look at someone's eye's and if I'm feeling a little off I can always look at their forehead coupled with looking around the room, at myself, my daughter anything but the eyes. In every job I've had i've always started off by keeping myself huddled down at a desk, looking lost in work so that i didn't have to look at people, my supervisor / boss / collegue would loom over me asking me something and I'd nervously answer whilst playing around with documents / the computer as to look busy and that's why i don't face them as I respond. For the first 4 months of working at a solicitors(lawyers) I didn't even know what my collegue really looked like, I knew she had long blonde hair, was slim but i had no idea about her face because i couldn't look at her. I find myself doing it now even with people I've know for years such as my mother in law, if i'm having a particularly bad day, i can't look at her for more then a few seconds, I'll look around the room or play with my hands and look at them.

Talking on the phone - I used to hate talking on the phone but in some of my jobs I HAD to be on the phone(covering reception) so this lessened the problem for me, probably because i was so focused on connecting them to the right person that the fact it was a person didn't come into it if that makes sense. so someone would call ask for Mr.Jones, i'd take their name, push the hold button, dial 145 for Mr.Jones, tell him Mr. Smith is on line 3 and hang up. There was no real conversation it was just line 4 mr.X, line 6 Mrs.Y, Mr. P you have MrsF waiting on line 2. My heart still skips a beat when the phone rings to this day and I have to take a few seconds to compose myself and put on my phone persona.

There are lots and lots of little things in which I wonder how normal / unusual they are, like when I wash the dishes, I have to clean the bowl first, then I have to have the hot tap running to remove most of the dirt. I have to wash the dishes in a set order, glasses / cups first, then cutlery, then bowls, then plates, then anything else. I don't like drying them straight away either, I have to leave them for an hour or so otherwise they are too wet and the tea towel gets far too wet and annoys me. How many people have a routine such as this and finds it annoying if it's not done that way? I have lots of things like that which I don't know if it's completely normal, quirky or outright weird.

Do you think that's enough to take to a doctor? Or is it too much?

You wrote too much. Nobody is going to read this.

Too much, but I think your overall idea is fine if you can be brief and then let the doctor decide how much time s/he wants to spend considering possibilities.

In the past, I have given carefully-selected lists of AS/HFA traits and characteristics -- lists that seemed to fit me best -- to an employer, to doctors and to various other people where I thought that might be helpful. For my employer, that was a simple, single-page list ... and then he took a look and went and did his own research. While applying for SSDI several months ago, I printed out a couple of pages directly from a particular discussion here on WP and then gave that to a doctor doing an exam ordered by the SSA, and his report ultimately proved very helpful. He did not try to diagnose me or anything, but he evidently recognized *something* about me in all of that and then made sure the SSA had some more-detailed information about people with AS/HFA to consider while reviewing my case.

Overall, be very cautious about even just *appearing* to be trying to persuade a doctor about anything. They like to decide things for themselves!

Thank you both for your answers. I kind of thought maybe it was too long, I'm like that I either say way too much and don't know when to stop or say too little and don't get my point across.

I'll print some of the tests off and take my above essay as a reference because otherwise I'll forget things and mentally kick myself afterwards for not telling them about something or being unable to answer questions properly. I'll be taking my husband too because he can get across what I need to say alot better then I would.

I'm just really nervous and based on previous dealings with doctors and problems (physical) I tend to undermine the situation and can't get across what I need to tell them fully.

You could take it with you. I would suggest concentrating on the social aspect the bit about not really having friends onwards. If you go to the national autistic society website there is probably some advice there and it goes over the triad of impairment. If you had a brief example for each of the 3 that might help. He/she would want to know how it affected you - i.e. why is it a problem and why are you there? Does it make you depressed, are you having trouble with employment? If you could come up with one or two sentences in summary it may help. If you have one or two convincing examples it would probably have more weight and be easier to take in.

Thanks for the suggestion abc, I've printed off some info from that site to take with me too. The social aspect is the biggest problem for me (as well as the depression/anxiety and overwhelming feelings I get in everyday life) but I'm also concerned for my daughter as she's displaying similar behaviour to how I was as a child. If I can get a diagnosis for whatever is wrong with me then perhaps she can too, it would make certain situations for the both of us much easier.

For example last week her school phoned up to say she was crying hysterically, they couldn't calm her down and she wanted her daddy (this is not the first incident). When he spoke to her on the phone he found out she'd got it into her mind that we would not be picking her up from school and no matter how much they reassured her we would she could not get over it. When we got her home it turns out it started over a dinner assistant forcing her to eat beef, she didn't like the taste / texture and well it went from there. I guess it would help if they knew she had certain things that had to be done / things to avoid doing to prevent a 'situation'. At the moment they probably think she's just awkward / spoilt / a pain in the butt wheras if she was diagnosed with something then perhaps they'd be more sympathetic, particularly when it comes to sensory things. Like last xmas the teacher forced her to wear a cape in the school play despite me asking them not to and despite her cries of it feeling horrible and making her sad, but the teacher wouldn't listen and after school she came home and cried for the rest of the day and wouldn't eat or sleep because she was so upset and worried about wearing the cape again. She also finds it difficult to focus in class sometimes, being easily distracted by the things around her, something which the teacher has mentioned to me, she also has a problem with listening to verbal instructions, often they have to be repeated again due to her distraction with her surroundings.

I guess I'm just worried about her going through the same crap I did as a kid and I don't want her to end up like me, as currently she's very good at socialising (on her terms of course) but I don't know if that will change or not.