Newbie Self-Suspected Aspie

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My first introduction to Asperger's system was via a childhood friend's brother, who I had what I guess would be a more "severe" case (that is, very obvious stimming, tendency to act out violently when he didn't know what was going on). So for years, my idea of an Aspie was a hand-flapping crazy kid. (On visits back, he seemed fairly normal - he's had therapy and whatnot - just slightly odd.)

Last year, I took Psych 101, which is a fairly ridiculous way to diagnose oneself, but bear with me!

I've always had a lot of social problems, which I chalked up to my being "weird" as well as a lot of moving. I've always had a sense that I was different from my peers, but it was ages before I could put this feeling into words. I remember very distinctly the time in tenth grade when I wrote down, "It's like there's this secret that everyone else has but I don't. There's some secret code that I don't get." ...And then three years later I discovered that this was an entirely unoriginal thought! There were a whole ton of people who felt like this!

After that psych class, in which my prof went on at some length about how it's often diagnosed in adulthood, and that there could be someone sitting in this room without anyone knowing, I went on an Internet-research binge. I came up with about thirty symptoms that were me. I mentioned this verrrrry briefly to my mother, who promptly mocked me for getting medical-student-syndrome (in which a medical student gets all paranoid and starts diagnosing herself with all manner of ailments). I've been pretty relieved, in my perusing of this forum, to see that this is never the reaction of people here. You all seem great.

I've taken a few of the internet tests, which have been somewhat inconclusive - some say I'm just on the NT side of the borderline, some say I'm very likely an Aspie. So that's a lot of help, haha. I'm not really sure where to go from here, but I thought you guys might have some advice/insights.

Points Towards Being an Aspie: the aforementioned social thing. I do have a desire for relationships, but it's so damn /hard./ I figure out the social rules through logic (and does anyone know what you're supposed to say when you're passing someone on a path and he or she says, "What's up?" I have never been able to figure this one out), like how to respond to good-natured teasing. I hate small talk and parties. They're exhausting. I'm in university and I'm pretty much a loner 'cause I hate having PEOPLE around all the time, when they're so troublesome.

I'm a little physically awkward (I run funny, according to my mother, and I was a pretty clumsy little kid). My handwriting is and always has been horrendous.

I'm wordy, in case you hadn't noticed. I tend to take things literally - even though I often know it's an expression, it still makes me really uncomfortable. The expression "keep your eyeballs peeled," for example. I mean, ew. And when I was younger I got really upset by a store sign that said, "Unattended children will be captured and sold as slaves." I knew, logically, that that couldn't be true, and still.

I like routine. A surprise party would be hell. I like to have my school schedules figured out WAY in advance -- it makes me feel better. The volume on the TV has to be a multiple of 2 or 5, and if I step on a crack or a colored tile with one foot, I have to with the other foot as well.

Sensory sensitivity! I didn't know this was a thing. I can't handle bare hands or feet on carpet (mine or others), the feeling of my garage wall on my palm, or people rubbing their clothes.

(This is going to sound conceited but) I'm very smart.

I have to work really hard not to correct people's grammar. (Especially when it comes to professors, haha.)

Because I have trouble figuring out what people are thinking, I get really paranoid in social situations, figuring that everyone is sending me cues to bug off but I'm just unaware.

Sometimes I get overstimulated -- I didn't know there was a word for it for a long time, but I found especially in high school, sometimes there would just be so much noise and activity that I'd have to grip really hard to my desk or whatever or I felt like I was going to go insane.

If I get super excited I hand-flap. Never if anyone else is around; it's controllable. It just seems like a natural thing to do, like jumping up and down when something thrilling happens.

I've seen people here talk about hating driving -- that's definitely me.

Basically every "weird" habit of mine fits into Aspieland. Which is scary and comforting all at once.

But I have three big doubts:

1. I'm a girl. I'm led to understand that that makes this less likely. I'm also not much of a mathie.

2. I don't have an obsession (unless you count reading). I know you don't have to have every single symptom to be an Aspie, but that seems like a fairly major one.

3. And the biggest...am I just a vaguely awkward person who is overanalyzing to a ridiculous degree?

Holy cow, this was long. Sorry about that. It's the first time I've put all these thoughts in one place. And even if I'm not technically an Aspie, I'm probably so close to the borderline that I'll like hanging around here anyway.

Same here. Trig is the only math I ever understood. Everything else was just plain painful




Reading can be an obsession, and some just posted an article on this site somewhere that said girl aspies tend to focus more on words than numbers, and love readin


Doesn't sound like it.


I initially diagnosed myself, mainly from internet descriptions but I had also seen a lot of myself in the workshop on aspergers I was required to attend when I was student teaching two aspies. I frequently scored so high in the aspie range on internet tests that I began to wonder if they were rigged to produce that result, but my friend who I had take the tests score extremely low in the NT range.
About a year later I went to see a psychologist for emotional problems and I mentioned that I thought I had aspergers. She told me she doubted it, and gave a few reasons (which incidentally were the exact same reasons my bf's dad gave for doubting that I had asperger's when I told him I probably had it). One of which was that I made great eye contact - but I had only known about making eye contact for 1 year prior to that. Anyways at the next visit she utilizes some diagnostic tools and discovered that I was "one standard deviation above the cutoff for aspergers."

You're a girl? Well then, you can't be an aspie. No girls here. No sir.

Welcome,

The test, as I have heard is not very hard, three out of twelve and you are in.

No Grand Slam needed.

You fit here.

Hello madhousefluent,

Welcome to WP

Welcome

Your profile is very similar to mine (except I don't mind driving and I don't hand flap, but rock myself when NO ONE is around, not even my husband...). It is difficult to be politically correct, so forgive me if I'm using the wrong word here, but we're probably "higher functioning", at this point of our lives. It means we have learned to either hide or change the stuff which was most obvious and got pointed out to us, and we also learned to connect things in our brains so that the secrets of society are a bit more known to us.

So, you're just the same as you were the day before you "knew", but what is nice is to actually be able to pinpoint things that you do/think and be able to either accept or improve them, in order to have a more happy and connected life.

Oh, and as you probably can see, I'm a girl. Lots of girls here. We seem to have girl stuff in our brains that apparently help with the social skills more than the boy aspies, so less of us get diagnosed (self or otherwise).

Welcome to WrongPlanet

Welcome to WP!

Tim

Nice to meet you, madhousefluent.

Hi, and I'd like to send you a very sincere welcome!

Being new here myself, I'm not sure if I'm really fit to give you a welcome, but what the hey...welcome to wrongplanet!!

Greetings!

From reading your post, you might very well be an Aspie. Of course, I myself rarely get beyond the first word on my keyboard when I make a post here. Always very brief. But I'm a diagnosed Aspie, and we all know that Aspies do tend to be more into math than language. The thing is, though, I'm not really into math. AND, I'm not even a girl! Then again, I suppose it's possible that some Aspies might like to use lots of words. Even boys. And also, I've met Aspie women who are into math. But, maybe I'm just overanalyzing. I do tend to do that to a ridiculous degree. And maybe I'm doing it awkwardly too, just stumbling along, going on and on and on, per usual. Double drat with cow patties on top! Well, I may not know much, but at least I do know that I was an Aspie for a long, long time before I got diagnosed. And lots of Aspies never get professionally diagnosed, and they're still Aspies. So, you might be an Aspie.

Then again, you might not be an Aspie. It is a rather rare condition, after all. And because it's so unusual, and because it's all about such fundamental things as how one perceives, conceives of and relates to reality, too many people who aren't Aspies have difficulty accepting or relating to Aspies. And I can understand that. Well, I won't speak for anybody else here, but sometimes I think I might be just a little bit weird and a tiny bit different. Well, OK, really a lot weird and way different. And, maybe that's why I've found it so difficult to fit in anywhere. I'm not sure. But at least I know that when someone who isn't an Aspie is patient and accepting and kind to me and other Aspies, takes the time to learn about us as individuals and not a set of diagnostric traits, and interacts with me and other Aspies as if we really are real human beings, that's really a most wonderful experience. So, maybe you aren't an Aspie, just attuned to or accepting of Aspies.

Therefore, in case you ARE an Aspie: Welcome! I hope you find good information, inspiration, companionship and comfort here. And a little good humor wouldn't hurt.

And in case you AREN'T an Aspie: Welcome! I hope you find good information, inspiration, companionship and comfort here. And a little good humor wouldn't hurt.

Explore.

This is from another self-diagnosed aspie, it looks like you have many Aspergers attribues, and that you would like to feel you belong even if the "planet is wrong".

Welcome! From another newbie (not a newbie altogether having been online for 6 years, and a webmaster for 2 years).

Considering the "little professor" thing, I suspect that not all aspies are little professors, but you might score well on one or more of the geeky subjects like maths or chemistry, or (nowadays) IT. Also do you might prefer to read non-fiction and not read fiction?

When I was a child (that was in the 1960s) AS and autism was virtually unknown despite its discovery in the 1940s. I had a bad temper, which was blamed on my main disability of deafness. No, it can't be deafness as other deaf children didn't blow up like I did. Also I was good at maths and science, partly from reading non-fiction, and very rarely read the childhood classic (such as Enid Blyton).

Aw, thank you everyone for your welcoming-ness. Why can't that ever happen in real life?

I hadn't actually found the DSM-IV stuff until just now! That seems like an obvious place to start, but that's the danger of internet research...you miss the important stuff.

So I've got:

I B and C
III Nothing really strongly, but partly A, B, and C
III I don't know...what makes it significant? I've got no real friends at my school after having been there a year, which feels fairly significant to me.
IV Yep
V Yep
VI Well, I don't really know, but I'm assuming.

So that pretty much makes me an Aspie, best I can tell. But I'm still not super-confident in my self-diagnosis, mostly because this all feels like normal to me, so it's hard to think of it as being a condition, you know? Can anyone recommend any good online tests?

Hey! This is real. And I'm alive.

But, I agree, it would be absolutely wonderful if more people were tolerant and accepting of one another's differenet ways of being.



Under the General Discussion section in WP (Wrong Planet), open the Members Only section, then pan down until you find "how much do you score on the Aspie quiz ?"

There is a quiz there, and some posters have noted other on-line tests. I'm not recommending any of them to you, and don't know if they can be considered accurate at all.

Then again, I always test moderately to very high on Aspie tests, but had gone through many diagnostic tests with a wide range of results, including some done by "specialists" in the autism specturm. Then, an "Aspie specialist" who also had extensive EXPERIENCE WORKING WITH Aspies, interviewed me and told me within 1 hour that I had it. I found that comforting, but frankly hard to believe that I could suddenly "fit" somewhere after 50 years of not fitting into any category without several asterisks. So I went to two other "Aspie specialists" who also had long EXPERIENCE WORKING WITH Aspies. Within 2 hours for one and 3 hours for the other, I got two confirmations.

So, as you can read, my bias is toward experience, and expecially toward people who demonstrate sensitivity to, tolerance of, and appreciation for Aspergerish people.

But take the test if you want.

Thanks! I figured it should be somewhere on this forum, but I didn't know where to look.

I'm not looking for an Official Diagnosis or anything -- just a better idea of where I am. If I do end up deciding to go for the Official Diagnosis, I'll definitely try to find someone with enough experience with AS.