Understanding facial expressions...

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I am awaiting assessment and am very condused about something regarding a diagnosis and the common traits of Asperger's.

Something that makes me doubt that I may be is that I see patterns in everything, including human behaviour and I have always been obsessed with how people's minds work... This has made me apparently untypical in that, after years of observation, I have learnt to read facial expressions VERY well. I also have a tendency to collect information regarding psychology so I consider myself pretty well-versed in the human psyche... And I don't know if it makes sense, but my AQ score was 33 and my RAADS-R score was 143...

Has anyone else experienced this as a "symptom" of Asperger's?

"This has made me apparently untypical in that, after years of observation, I have learnt to read facial expressions VERY well."
This is quite a telling statement, it implies that you have consciously learned how to do it, as oppose to it being a naturally developed skill.
Most of us know what a stereotypical happy face looks like, what a smile means or a frown etc, some of us are very good at understanding things like facial expressions some of us aren't as good. I, for example, am very good at reading facial expressions and body language for the most part, but can struggle in situations where the body language is less obvious or intentionally misleading, such as if somebody is trying to mask their emotions, pretending to be happy, flirting, etc.

Thank you for your reply.

That's another thing I find hard to understand; how anyone understands facial expressions without learning them...?! I can't understand how they could develop these skills any other way!

But I totally understand what you mean what you say about the misleading body-language etc... - I don't realise it when someone is flirting with me or pretending to be happy either. I can get really frustrated when someone has been unhappy and pretended to be fine to later get annoyed with me for not realising... They expect me to have intuited that something was wrong - which I may have to an extent but it's so vague and I haven't the first idea what to do... So, invariably I do nothing which they find offensive and when they explain I just beg them to be straight with me. It's all so exhausting!

I know it's not their fault or mine particularly but it's just tiring!