How I found wrong planet.

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So, for some reason I've been wanting to talk about this for awhile. On other forums I see a lot of 'How did you find this forum?' but I haven't seen that here so far (excuse me if I'm wrong).

That's why I thought I should make one of those threads, and plus I wanted to share my story.

I found out about this place because of Internet theories actually, one on Sherlock and the other on Fluttershy. When I like a show, I tend to research into fan theories on certain characters.

I find that most cartoon characters have some kind of personality disorder or condition since they tend have such overly- exaggerated personalities that if anyone acted like that in real life they would probably be diagnosed with something.

There was a lot of debate on one website over whether Sherlock had autism or was a psychopath.

When I started getting into the mlp fandom, I noticed a lot of discussion over Fluttershy. Some theorised she was autistic, but others just pointed to the shy bit in her name and put her behaviour down to shyness.

I found out about this forum at the same time that I found out that autism was a thing. All thanks to fan theories.

Out of interest, I decided to look into autism a bit more. At the time it turned out I had three classmates that were autistic. One Aspergers, another high functioning, and another slightly less.

One of the higher functioning students made fun of a kid who wasn't as well adapted. He did this to try and not be compared to him so much, and to fit in with the others that were mocking the lower functioning kid.

This got me curious about how different points on the autistic spectrum vary, so I looked into that.

I never really suspected myself of having autism, and I probably don't have it. But it still grew as an interest of mine, especially since I joined another forum and a lot of the members there are autistic, in fact I even saw a couple threads titled 'Why do we have so many autistic members here?'.

But then, I had online therapy. This was suggested to me by that forum when people showed concern for my decreasing happiness levels.

I will continue the rest of this thread later, I have to go now but I will finish the rest of the story soon.

I'm up for a good story

So, to continue where I left this thread...

The therapy seemed to help and I felt happier, but something unexpected happened. I was explaining to one of the therapists there about my sensory issues and how I didn't like crowds or noisy events because of it.

She suggested autism. I had always put my sensory issues down to possible dyscalculia, (something many of my friends and family suspect I have, and apparently some of you in that thread I made here about it) because I had read that sensory issues are common in people with dyscalculia.

Awhile ago, there used to be a dyscalculia forum. It's shut down now, and has been demoted to a subsection of a dyslexia forum these days. But anyway, I used to view that forum a bit and some of the threads stood out. I remember one about someone diagnosed with autism, who suspected she was also dyscalculic, but was often told that her weakness in maths was due to it not being one of her special interests.

A common theme on that forum was that there seemed to be a lot of overlap with other potential co existing conditions, so there was some confusion on what was caused by dyscalculia, and what was a different issue.

Unfortunately, this therapist had never even heard of dyscalculia. So she couldn't help me in that department. Now, as it's been mentioned in other threads, making such a call about autism isn't really possible in an environment like that, so I would probably have to get some kind of face to face conversation to actually get some kind of testing done or whatever, and besides you can't really tell something from one symptom.

But something she wrote got me thinking. 'Here's some information on autism, although I suspect that you' ve already thoroughly researched it!'. I started to wonder why she suspected that. I mean yes, I had researched it, but why bring this up? Was it something I said that made her think I was knowledgeable on the subject? Did I just come off as someone who likes to research things? It just seemed like an odd thing to say. Was she praising my presumed knowledge? Did she think I already suspected autism and that's why I have probably looked into it?

To add to this, I also found that quite a few people on that other forum were commenting on my threads about my behaviour who were autistic or had relatives that were, and they were saying stuff like 'My autistic son is a bit like you' and 'I have autism and I relate to that post you did about sarcasm'.

So it got me thinking about my behaviour. In particular, someone sent me a link to a quiz here that considers your behaviour from when you were under 16, and I knew from the moment I clicked on that quiz that I would score high on that quiz on autistic traits when considering my behavior before 16 because I often look back at my behaviour then and how socially inept I was compared to now. It's almost weird to think about.

Compared to another quiz where I scored similarly in NT and ND traits (higher in NT traits though) that only considered more recent behaviour.

I still think about why I was the way I was, and I mean I've always put it down to the stutter I used to have that caused me to give up speaking at school for three academic years. (I decided that there wasn't much point in talking if no one understood me).

Due to this I went through three speech therapists and two counsellors. Since before then I wasn't even communicating to others through writing, I just didn't seem to want to communicate.

After this, I was still fairly reclusive but I was starting to speak a bit more, although some people still doubted if I could or not. I talked with my friends anyway.

But the problem was, there were still some miscommunications occurring, particularly regarding body language. Sometimes I lashed out at people because I thought they were trying to hurt me and with them reaching into my personal space I felt threatened, but they were just trying to be friendly. I lashed out at teachers and students alike, and was labelled as a 'bad kid'.

Over time I learnt to be less paranoid. But once I got speech and body language right, there was another problem. I was bad at conveying my thoughts. My brain made connections that I thought were obvious, so I never stopped to explain them. I ended up in therapy, and here's where my two counsellors fit in.

Those that knew me well understood that there was logic behind my connections, as long as I sat down with people and explained them, but what took me way longer to explain to others, came almost immediately to me in my head, so at the time it was easy to forget that people might not get where I was coming from at first.

The therapy was to try and make me make more obvious connections, rather than about teaching me how to explain things to others in an effective manner.

FYI, I had two counsellors because one had a mental breakdown, not because of me though.

Even in secondary I was having issues, particularly with being overly literal, such as when someone asked me out and I asked them where they wanted me to go out to. I was also not great at telling when people were bored, and there were some teachers that I couldn't make eye contact with, my art teacher used to yell at me because of this.

These days I'm a lot less inept, but I am still fairly literal at times and sometimes I don't realise that I am yelling or whispering. But, I can make eye contact these days, and I can tell when people are bored. And writing all of this has gotten me to start questioning my life. I'm probably just slightly inept these days because my problems are way less severe than they used to be. I understand body language better than I did.

So yeah, that's my story so far.

I think the first time I found WP was when I went on Aspergian Pride and Aspergian Island, two very ill-frequented offshoots of Aspergia... they directed me here, because I asked if there were any forums more popular than them for Aspies.