new guy here with questions

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A lot of things that present later in life can resemble Autism. This is why you should see your GP and get a physical and any other tests that may be relevant.

Maybe you finally hit puberty at 17

But seriously, you don't have autism or asperger's. A couple people mentioned paranoia, which sounds like it.

Are you exposed to chemicals at all?

I would second what other people on here have said. If it only started in later childhood/adolescence, it can't be autism. I would definitely recommend seeing a doctor- there could be a physical issue (I think someone else mentioned getting your thyroid checked for example), or it could be something like schizophrenia or maybe a personality disorder. Both of these usually present in adolescence/young adulthood. Good luck! Hopefully it will be something easily treated. Please do check it out though. I know that in schizophrenia for instance, early treatment is *critical* to long-term outcomes. But see a regular doctor first because a psychologist/psychiatrist is not going to check for any physical problems and you don't want to be falsely diagnosed with a psychological disorder if your problem is physical/chemical/hormonal, etc. Because that would be very unhelpful.

Here are some links you may want to check out:

Wikipedia entry on schizophrenia
Wikipedia page on personality disorders. Scroll down for links to specific ones (e.g. paranoid, schizoid, etc.).

For contrast, here are the pages on autism and Asperger syndrome.

thanks everyone.

it looks like i can rule out autism then.
paranoia/schizophrenia seems likely, so i'll have to start looking into that; along with getting evaluated i guess.

thanks again!

There's quite a few people who post here who have schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder or some such thing because they often have similar social issues to those with AS/autism.

But you have to understand, people with AS tend to have high verbal IQ's, be very honest, and have processing disorders. I do not think the previous poster intended to upset you. It sounds to me that they just wanted to be clear that they were not able to read your post word for word, likely due to processing issues which arose from your punctuation (I had no problems with it, however) and wanted you to be aware that they were offering advice that may not have been formulated on an entirely accurate understanding of the situation.

Most of the time when people with AS say something that someone has interpreted as offensive, offense was not meant.

Good luck!

It sounds more like social phobia to me. Autism doesn't start at age 17. Social phobia would explain the problems with eye contact, the sense of not being able to break out of your shell, and the nervousness and thinking that people will think the worst of you.

I read your first post carefully and more than once, and I can't find mention of many of the symptoms of autism that buryuntime listed. There's nothing there about not being able to read people properly, adherence to routine and intolerance of change, black and white thinking, sensory issues, repetitive, non-functional motor movements or obsessive interests, except maybe the thing with having to have things just 'so"; but that could be caused by things other than autism.

It is possible to have an ASD and social phobia, but if you were perfectly normal with lots of friends for so long, it's not likely.

you're right, and that's my bad. i guess i left out some details.

what exactly do you mean by 'black&white' thinking? im not sure if this is what you mean, but i intensely believe in keeping things as simple as possible. i hate the government because i feel that it's overcomplicated & hypocritical.
for example, it takes years to change a law or put a new one into effect. and for some reason it costs millions of dollars to do so.
they mandate wearing seatbelts, yet you can buy cigarettes on any street corner. marijuana is less harmful than alcohol, yet it is illegal.
the government will spend $14,000 on a street stoplight, yet i have to pay 2 bucks just to cross a bridge.

anyway, i'm looking into social anxiety disorder and paranoia/schizophrenia.
im just looking for answers. this has just gradually gotten worse and worse until it finally pissed me off enough to start digging into it.

Your examples sound like good sense, not black-and-white thinking. Black-and-white thinking is where you view something as either one way or the other- for example, a thing is either good or bad, without the possibility that it may have good and bad points. Perfectionism would, I think, fall under this- either I get it exactly right, or I've failed. I could think of more examples if I had time, but I have to go to work now.

ohh, i see.
well that one definitely doesnt apply to me, i evaluate the pro's & con's of things very often.

however, i have struggled with perfectionism in the past.
a lot of things, performances, projects of mine had to be executed absolutely flawlessly, or i would consider them complete failures. i used to think those things represented me as a person, and therefore needed to be done to the best of my ability.

i actually, do not have that problem anymore though, and havent for a long time. so i guess there's a silver lining.
now i just do everything to the best of my ability, and accept it when things dont come out quite right, instead of getting all bent out of shape.

Twice now, I'd be there way more if I wasn't broke.

well, to OP's defense, it has been observed that sometimes the traits of the spectrum go totally unnoticed, its as if the child is normal because of coping so effectively, until the bigger changes of either adolescent or post-adolescent life start to stress and aggravate the reliability of usual coping strategies.


the one thing in the original post though, that I think sets it apart from spectrum disorder is the feeling that you are accurately reading someone's personality even if they are doing a bluff.

this to me sounds like you are understanding social cues and sensing emotions easily in others. perhaps better than what you feel would be normal. perhaps an emotional hypersensitivity.

could this be driving some of the feelings that you are being closely watched, the reality is people are often quite judgmental and it could be you are sensing it and beginning to be more bothered by it. my best (only) friend has social anxiety and identifies it coming from a constant pressure of all the emotion and signals she gets from everyone. it is worse the more people, bigger the crowd the greater the shutdown effect on her.

anyway, i think a lot of the other suggestions made so far could be worth checking out too. hope my thoughts add something useful to your process of self-observation.

I'm going to agree with what you are saying eon. I don't really understand why everyone is so definite on bj not being ASD. I was always different but I was never singled out as having psychological issues till I was 12 and even then it took 4 psychologists to find one that didn't think I was just depressed and bipolar (which is one of the last things I could consider myself). As far as his punctuation and stuff goes my brother is way more autistic than I am and if you've seen anything he's written it's pathetic compared to what you'd expect from a smart 14 year old boy, this is where the "processing disorders" come into play.

I did not say you have grammar issues, I said you have punctuation issues. I can't always coherently read a post that big without appropriate punctuation unless it has a lot of line breaks, thus skimming.

I also wouldn't say finding this website was an example of using Google accurately, considering you would have presumably looked into the actual criteria illustrated in the DSM.

The things you just described were not apparent to me in your post. I even seen something that highly contradicted autism, and that was being able to "completely see people's personalities". If you're going to ask if you have something, actually go step by step through the criteria first. We can't just assume that you hate eye contact, etc -- unless this is some failure on all our parts, you know "mindblindness".


Because it is pretty well established that in order to have an ASD it must occur in childhood. I'd find it very difficult to believe someone with an actual ASD could look back on their childhood and not see signs of it, if they are considering it as a diagnosis in adulthood. We're not talking about the incompetence of professionals, we are going by a personal account on the internet.

i'm just asking questions at this point, i'm not flying the autism flag just yet.

i appreciate the responses though.

as for my childhood, i wasnt a perfectly normal kid, but i never had problems like this.
i've always been a little bit quirky, but in a good way.

it's not a good way anymore, it's just hell.

I didn't say that he definitely didn't; I said that based on his report of a perfectly normal childhood with lots of friends, and his description of his current symptoms, that it sounded a lot more like social phobia.

I've seen people here who at first I didn't think had any kind of autism, but, as they posted more, it became more evident that they probably did. This could be one of those cases. I can see how, with the right environment, one might be able to cope with the difficulties until adulthood. However, lots of friends doesn't seem compatible with a severe impairment in social interaction.