How did You find out You had Aspergers, Autism etc.?

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I think you mean "decnary", or is it "binadecimal". I don't know. My brains fried.

The first time I heard the term aspergers in reference to me was during a psych eval in the airforce. It was one of several things that the psych said may be causing my problems. I didn't really think about what that meant at the time. (I just looked back at my military papers, and it turns out I have an "adjustment disorder" diagnosis.)

Several years later, a coworker asked me if I had aspergers. I didn't know what it really was (I had forgotten that it had been mentioned to me before). I asked my best friend, who is an OT and worked with kids on the spectrum, about it and she said "I've thought for years that you may be aspie!" That started 2 years of obsessively reading about autism and coming to the realization that this explains so much of my life. I took all of the common asd quizzes and scored high in the aspie range on all of them.

My friend told me recently that she asked her friend, who works with autistic kids in a special school district, if she thought I was on the spectrum. She said "Oh, he totally is."


I'm currently looking for someone in my area to get an ASD assessment.

A book in my high school's smallish library is the one I remember.

1. those who understand binary

2. those who don't understand binary

3. those who don't know this joke is in ternary

(ternary = groups of 3 .... 3 types of people .... 3 in ternary is like 10 in decimal)

In my first year of High School we had a visiting psychologist. Several teachers reported me noting my odd behavior and one day while in math class I was asked to step outside and have a talk with the psychologist. I saw him for two years.

I was diagnosed before I knew about it but I found out by looking through my parents and tutor's documents about me. Then I did a bit of research about my disorder and then I realised that I was different from others and how it explained some things of my life.

After a spectacular public meltdown I was sent to be evaluated for PTSD due to a previous career I had retired from. Six specialists later, the diagnosis was presented as a high probability of Asperger's Disorder with a recommendation of a voluntary Conservatorship.

I didn't talk at all until I was three either (but I knew a bit of makaton) and it was my speech therapists that first noticed it. My Mum rejected it at first because she didn't want me to have a label at such a young age.

It got pointed out at all of the schools I have been to so far but I only found out last summer when I found a book about autism in my mum's room.

As a child I was sent around the educational phsycologists etc but they never made their minds up. I grew up knowing there was something 'wrong' with me but could not put my finger on what exactly. Unable to explain what was different I burried it all in layers of denial and acting.

This denial was so powerful that, when my mother and I talked about my childhood, her mention of me probably being a little bit autistic was rationalised away and I translated it into 'had a couple of symptoms as a very young child which may be similar to autistic symptoms ...but certainly not actual autism of any kind!". I just refused to process that as a possibility - probably because of my own limited understanding of what the autism spectrum was at the time.

Then, at age 30, I was on holiday in Greece with my wife. I was sitting on the balcony late one night reading a book I had been meaning to pick up for ages - My mum had bought it for me. It was Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet. This man has synaesthesia and I was looking forward to a fascinating personal account of the strange condition. As it happened, most of the book was not actually about his synaesthesia, it was talking about his life growing up with Asperger's/HFA and the difficulties it presented.

I read chapter after chapter transfixed. There were so many similarities between Tammet's account of childhood and adult life and my own. But, the funny thing was that all the similarities seemed to be where he was explaining some, apparently uncommon, aspect of his condition. It hit me like driving into a brick wall at 70mph. You know that scene in the matrix where Neo takes the red pill...basically, that!

A year and a half later I am diagnosed officially and, I hope, past the darkest days of trying to wrap my head around this new information. It's been a rollercoaster but I am glad I finally have an answer to a question I thought would probably go unanswered forever.

Si

I found out by colonoscopy hahaha

I was officially diagnosed at age 17, until that point I had no clue why I was different and had struggled just for the fact that other kids didn't treat me like a human being.

After diagnosis, I slowly realized that there were some things that I might never be able to do as a result of my AS, and that's something I've had to live with since then. It sucks sometimes because I have to rely on other people for the most trivial things like going to the store, or describing how I want my hair cut.

I always suspected there was something wrong with me, especially when I got hold of a health article at age 14 that mentioned Aspergers. I suppressed the thought for years feeling terribly insecure, till a teacher brought up the matter when I was 17. "I think you have Aspergers," she said. I later googled about it and realised I had it. My world has come crashing since finding out I have a disability (and I don't identify as disabled).