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Hi, my name's Catherine and I'm 20. I joined WrongPlanet yesterday: today I'll write a little about myself.

I'm undiagnosed at the moment, but I'm on the waiting list for an assessment. My parents started getting me assessed when I was about 3: after a few months I'd started acting 'normally', however, and my brother was starting to present with strong signs of autism, so my parents stopped my assessment. I got reassessed when I was 9: my school sent a report saying that I was their top student and had friends (this is a complete lie: nobody accepted me into their social group until I was 12), so a psychologist said that if it weren't for that piece of evidence, she'd say that I was Aspie. With my brother's autism affecting our everyday lives so much, no more thought was given to getting me a diagnosis - I just stayed as being 'odd' and 'eccentric' until about three months ago, when I decided to get a diagnosis. When I started university, I made friends with a girl who'd been recently diagnosed. Sometimes when I talk with her, some of my Aspie traits come out (e.g. hand flapping, talking without having to think about whether or not my words and delivery are appropriate, my eyes drifting away from hers). We talked about her diagnosis, and about how I wondered if I was Aspie (it's been on my mind since I was 14). Shortly before the Easter holidays I decided to try again for an assessment, if anything to put my mind at rest a little.

So... that's where I am in terms of diagnosis. I hope that that wasn't too long to read!

Other things about me: I'm a university student, reading psychology. I love the subject, and I have really good friends here who accept me and my oddities. I really like university life, so far I'm coping without any problems. I lived in halls in first year - I didn't get on well with my hallmates, but I enjoyed having my own space and living my own life. This year I'm living in a house with three friends, and next academic year I'll be living in a different house with three other friends. It's nice having them there, although it's also nice to have the house to myself when they're out.

With regard to relationships, I have people that I get on with, a few who I don't, good friends, and really close friends. I did have a brief romantic relationship, but that fell apart (it took me a month to tell him how I felt, he left me for someone else after a week - it took me a long time to get over that). I love my friends dearly, but I can't handle them all at the same time - one-on-one social situations are brilliant, when there are two or more I tend to get flustered and unsure, even if they're both good friends. That said, I like being with groups of friends, although even then I tend to talk to them individually.

I'm fairly noise-sensitive: I can hear things from a fair distance away, and noises nearby hurt my ears - I often have to (or am sorely tempted to) stick my fingers in my ears when I flush the toilet or turn on a hand drier. I bought a new camera the other day, I nearly dropped it when the noise of the lens zooming in and out was too loud for me. I'm fairly touch-sensitive too: if people touch me unexpectedly, it feels intensely unpleasant. My mum used to do massage on me: when I started involuntarily spasming and crying from the 'not-pain', she eventually gave up. That said, I love hugs - the tighter the better.

I think that's all I'll say for now, I hope that that wasn't too boring to read. Thank you for reading!

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Welcome to WrongPlanet

Nah, it wasn't too boring, you had my limited attention the whole time!
Hope you enjoy your time here

Edit: I should have said I have limited concentration at the best of time, you had my full attention!

Omg friends wow that means you don't have autism-sarcasm

That sounds like a pretty good living arrangement. And if you are out of the closet so to speak about being aspie, or if your friends just accept you as quirky, original, uniquely yourself, it removes so much stress from the situation.

Heh, I've had two doctors tell me this. I was in a really low mood when the first doctor told me this, and his comment made me feel worse. When the second doctor said this a few weeks later, I said that if people with Asperger's couldn't make friends, how could my dad befriend my mum, marry her, and have me? He had no response to that!

For me, it's patchy social skills. And that puts some people off. And I need to accept myself in this regard and accept that I make a mistake from time to time. I tell myself, just let a medium mistake be a medium mistake (meaning, don't compound it or make too big a deal out of it) and that helps some.

Sometimes I make seemingly-large mistakes in social situations (large to me: some people later said that they didn't really notice, but I wonder if they say that to be kind to me), and people either stop talking to me or don't talk to me as often afterwards. I think that I over-think these mistakes later: I once carelessly said something to a friend that I think might have hurt her, and every time I see her now I wonder if she thinks about the thing I said, even though she didn't really react much to it at the time. As for the people who don't talk to me later, I don't think that I'd want to be friends with them if they're not going to accept my quirks.

To WrongPlanet!! !

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Welcome to WP.

I can certainly understand the frustration you have with the sort of comments you've received from professionals. Although my condition was picked up when I was much younger than you are, the Asperger label was still met with doubt from one or two professionals and a few family members, largely because my presentation of AS has always been a lot more subtle than you'd expect from somebody of my age.

Anyway, good luck with getting your diagnosis, and I hope you enjoy the forums.

Welcome!

Hello there. Welcome to WP, yam yam.

Welkome to WrongPlanet.

The WP Kink

Welcome!