Hi everyone, I've been breezing over these forums and reading a lot of people's post and threads over the past two days, and feel like I've finally found a place with people who reciprocate the way I think and function. I'm a 20 year old male, with undiagnosed AS.
I've always felt like I was inadequate and not as intelligent as my friends and peers growing up, even though I almost effortlessly outperform them in school on test and whatnot, which I could never figure out. I almost feel like doing well in school and somehow making friends always masked to other people the fact that I was different, because since I could never get close to anyone, I only had acquantainces, but to these acquantainces all they were able to view was that I always had people who talked or called me, even though I was no closer to those people then any other particular acquantaince.
I just started seeing a psychologist through temple university student health services, and she is arranging test for inattentive add, as well as a larger scale personality and behavior test. She seems to think that I have undiagnosed aspergers, and because of my concentration complaints, is keeping an open mind towards adhd-inattentive as well. I have looked at symptom list and find I have almost every single symptom under the sun, from big ones like not being able to detect body language, facial expressions, tones of voice (I hate when I get hit on for this reason), monotone voice (every speech i give in toastmasters critiques me on this), and speaking fastly but thinking of words slowly, if that makes sense, to the minute symptoms like daydreaming all the time and having trouble with long term memory / keeping skills that I previously learned.
I've sort of hit a rough patch in my life now, because even though I am achieving every career-type milestone ive set, like being on track to graduate early and securing a good internship, my ability to communicate, concentrate fully, and my social life are all in what is perhaps my biggest rut. The only friend I have is my twin brother, who is also likely AS, and none of the friends I had in high school ever try to connect back with me, because there was never really a connection in the first place. Its my fault that they don't since I never know how to maintain relationships or emphasize with other people, but I don't know how to fix it. I just come off as awkward to them now.
Oh, and did I mention I go on monologues?
can't wait to talk to some of you guys!