Did you recongizes symptoms?

Post Reply New Topic

No, I was pointed in the right direction by someone who did recognize them.

I wasn't able to recognize them because I didn't know what they were.. and you don't know what you don't know.

So, unless someone happens to know, in detail, what the traits and symptoms and behaviours of Autism are I think there's a pretty slim chance people are going to be able to self diagnose themselves.. and I'd think that if someone was learning the traits that they'd figure it out about themselves as they were learning about it and realizing they do all of these things, so I'm not sure how someone would be able to know the details required for a self diagnosis and then at some point later in time than when they learned all about Autism that they end up diagnosing themselves.

I always knew I was different, I assumed It meant I needed to try harder and not good enough without an explanation why.

On a different forum a few years ago I wanted to get my post count higher so did quizzes where you post your results in the random section. One of those quizes was the wired AQ quiz. This was the first time I was able have an explanation which was very appealing.

A little research latter I scoffed at he idea of being autistic, think Rain Man, (ignorant I know) and the typical traits all seemed so extreme, but it stuck with me and over time and I began realise this fit me so well.

I recognized some but others (like my voice or my obliviousness to social cues) I had no idea until someone else pointed them out to me. My brother also used to tell me I had what is referred to as echoalia but nobody else told me that and I still to this day am unaware of ever doing it. I always knew there was something 'off' about me but never in a million years would have thought Aspergers until I accidentally stumbled upon it when doing unrelated research.

My road to discovering I have Aspergers started with a friend asking me if my ex-husband might have it after I explained to her what had been going on in my marriage and why I got a divorce. I had never heard of Aspergers and wrote it down so I could google it later. Yes, it did sound like him and I told him but he really didn't want to listen to anything I had to say (probably still wouldn't) so I let it go...he wasn't my problem anymore and I had enough on my plate with re-establishing myself and my kid in a new location. (Not to mention dealing with being "outed" by him to everyone, including my parents.)

A couple years later after seeing a few women casually I noticed a pattern of them expecting me to be more intuitive. I didn't realize until later that I have mind-blindness. I just don't "get" subtle hints, body language, etc. One woman's mother was diagnosed with cancer while I was seeing her. She said she didn't want to dwell on her mom's cancer so I focused on other subjects when we spoke. Later, it became evident that she really didn't mean what she said and thought I was being insensitive. We then took a particularly disappointing trip where she, we later found, tore her Achilles tendon. Being simple and oblivious I bent over backwards to assist her. Apparently, she didn't want my assistance and tried to give me non-verbal cues to back off. I totally missed all of that until she was livid and for the umpteenth time in my life I was stunned by what to me seemed to come out of the blue. She stopped seeing me after that.

That event sent me into a tailspin because it was then that I realized that most my relationships, whether personal or professional, wind up with people very upset at me and I'm clueless to what I did wrong. When I starting doing so serious reflection the pieces started to fall in place. When I told my mother and a couple friends that I thought I had Aspergers they all were like "That makes SO much sense!"

Yes I recognised the traits in me without anyone telling me I'm Autistic.

About 4 years ago my friend with aspergers explained to me that she had it and what it was, I remember at the time I thought, wow that reminds me a lot of me, although I never looked into it. Then a year ago I was procrastinating one day, just surfing the internet when I started reading about aspergers and it just really hit home with me and described so many of the things I hated about myself and explained a lot of my characteristics. Also the more I thought back on my childhood the more I could link in aspergers with events in my childhood.

Over the last year I've improved a lot socially because I've been able to identify and change things that I were doing wrong. At the moment I'm still not sure whether I should go and get a diagnosis (whether it turns out I'm on the spectrum or not), because I still have a few issues which are hindering me. Last year my mum took me to a psychologist because I had a drop in my grades but it was so terrifying that I could barely manage to answer the psychologist with one work answers and she just stared at me not like people normally do in conversations, it was this big eyed stare and it was so intimidating that I don't know if I could stand going to a psychologist again.

I realized it myself when I read a book.
But it took me a long time persuading doctors because they thought I looked very normal in appearance ... until my parents told a female doctor that they had trouble understanding me because I was often overly specific and technical.
Then they started asking me to do tests and asked my opinion towards many questions.

Yes, people do that. Do not ask me why. I think it means they are just thinking maybe. I just try to ignore starring.

Same here.

For most of my adult life, I have been trying to better understand who I was. I attribute this to the fact that I wasn’t happy and felt that something was “off”.

Late last year, I took an Intro to Psychology course offered online by Yale. During a lecture, the professor mentioned Autism and Aspergers.

I started reading up on Aspergers and had one of those “Aha” moments. I seemed to have a number of symptoms mentioned. So, I began reading everything I could about Asperger’s. I also took several online tests. Eventually, I was diagnosed. Now, I recognize the symptoms almost too much. LOL.

I had never suspected, or even heard of Asperger's before my mom brought it up. For a long time I just thought I was highly sensitive, but looking back, that doesn't explain my traits as well or completely as AS does. I had vaguely heard of autism by watching Criminal Minds and hearing it used to describe Spencer Reid, but I didn't know what it was, nor did I see any similarity in our behaviour. Now that I know what to look for, I realise we're a lot more alike than I first thought.

I had never heard about AS before my mother told me I had been diagnosed with it.

I had noticed that my behaviours were different from other people's ones since I couldn't understand the reason why people did certain things and because of other reasons, but I've never been interested in knowing why I was different (I've always thought that anyone is different, so I didn't really care about it), and I think that I could have lived my life in the same way I'm living it at the moment even if my mother hadn't told me I had AS.
I'm not the type of person who ruminates on such things.

Last edited by chlov on 22 May 2013, 5:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Since I was diagnosed at an early age, I did not know what autism was until I was about 8 years old. I did, however, suspect it when in kindergarten and first grade, I was being taken out of class repeatedly for isolation purposes.

I knew something was "different" about me my entire life. About a year or two ago I figured that it's something rather than just personality quirks. I did a lot of digging through different mental conditions trying to figure it out. I found quite a bit that are similar, but none quite seemed to match. On my college campus I learned more about autism (I was one of those ignorant people ) and decided to look it up. Found out it matched me quite well. And here I am.

Funny thing.

Was dx'd late in life with aspergers.

But when I was around 11 or 12 back in the sixties (long before aspergers was heard of outside of Austria) was when autism was first discovered in the public mind in the USA (like the disease of the month). I got hooked on a radio show about autism-parents comparing notes on their strange kids-and experts commenting. It got me thinking about my own earlier childhood- I had behaviors that were less severe versions of the same behaviors being described by the people on the radio show. So it got me wondering if there wasnt some watered down mild version of autism -and that maybe I had it.

But then I didnt think about it again for fourty years.
Then my mom and sister brought up the idea that i might have it. I finnally got the official test.

Although years ago my mother had mentioned the likelyhood of me being on the spectrum as an explaination of issues I had as a young child I told myself that, even if I did sit on the spectrum, it was negligable and was something I had completely grown out of if I ever was even on it. Denial basically - no way was I at all autistic ...I didn't see myself as anything like the examples of autism you see in the media so I could not be.

I only connected how I am now with Asperger's when reading Daniel Tammet's book about growing up and living with AS. I noticed that all the paragraphs I related strongly to were those in which he was clearly trying to describe unusual differences specific to ASDs. I had always thought of these traits as either something everyone does to a degree or isolated personality quirks with no relation to one-another. At first I was in shock and thought I must be imagining things or have some form of self-deluding hypochondria but, as I researched it more, I realised that the condition answered questions I had about myself all my life. I read about and watched videos of aspies explaining what it's like and it was as if they were talking about me.

I am still awaiting diagnosis (the NHS is sloooowwww) but I am as certain as I can be that this fits. I expect that the clinical assesment will boil down to whether or not I am hindered enough in my everyday life or have found enough day-to-day workarounds to class me as functionally unimpaired. Now that I better understand how much more I struggle with specific areas of life compared to NTs (I had always suspected I have more difficulty but felt unable to quantify such subjective things) I would feel a bit short-changed if I am denied diagnosis on the grounds that I eventually improved my ability to act NT when essential.