How did you know you have Asperger/Autism?

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As a child I felt picked on. I grew up to feeling separate from everyone else. It progressed to feeling like I must be different. By the time I was in my 50's I wondered if the difference might be a known, named difference...but I had absolutely no suspicion it was Autism Spectrum.

Sometime in late 2018 my then 88-year old father was visited by my sister, who works as a nanny for special needs children and had one of her charges with her. I was told that several times Dad said the kid was doing the same "weird" things I used to do. When told this I 'm sure I had a confused look on my face as I thought "But I thought that kid was Autistic."

After researching Autism on the Internet I concluded I might be a "High Functioning Autistic". Though I did not know if I was almost on the Spectrum or slightly on the Spectrum.

Then I did the only thing that would let me know for sure, I hired a psychologist to do an assessment.

P.S. I still don't know what "weird" things the kid was doing that Dad remembered I used to do. But I must have really made an impression on Dad--I would have been doing the "weird" things around 1960 and Dad recognized the same behaviors in that kid in 2018!

I didn't think I was till I followed somebody's advice and did the Rdos Aspie-Quiz, which said I was very likely an Aspie. Then I started thinking and gradually began to realise that it was probably correct. I began to study the condition and saw myself in the traits. I saw that an aspect of my job that greatly stressed me out was full of just the kind of demands that would be very hard for an Aspie to cope with. I looked back through my life and saw that a lot of the problems I'd had with people were explicable in terms of ASD theory. The only thing that didn't fit was that I'd been through a phase where I'd had loads of friends and had felt great about them, and I'd hardly ever been partnerless once I'd got over a shaky start. It turned out that the place I'd been living in at the time was full of very friendly, non-judgemental and eccentric people. Other social environments were a different story. The "usually partnered" thing remains a bit of a mystery, but the relationships I'd acquired had always ultimately failed, so it's probably not as strange as it seems at first glance.

Anyway, I got an evaluation and that turned out positive. After that I just carried on studying it, and little by little the remaining doubt gave way to the evidence of my observations. Not that the label matters much to me. It's a handy signpost to considering a set of traits, that I mostly seem to have, as possible reasons for some of my problems, but at the end of the day, I am what I am, whatever you want to call it. The traits I have are more readily recognised and evaluated objectively - for example I can either hear what somebody's saying when there's a lot of background chatter or I can't, I can tell how easy or hard it is for me to resume a task after being interrupted, etc. Those are the things that I find worth my while knowing about, because I can apply that knowledge to my decisions about what I'm going to take on and how I'm going to cope in life, while the label itself doesn't help me with anything specific because each Aspie has the traits in different proportions.

So I still don't know for an absolute fact that I've got ASD. I'm pretty sure I have, but if you believe in the conventional diagnostic criteria, the condition has to be seriously screwing with the client's life before they'll give them a positive diagnosis, and after a lifetime's experience in developing coping strategies for who and what I am, I can't really claim that ASD has wrecked my life. I passed a lot of exams, I'm self-supporting, I'm happily married, and some people seem to like me, so bureaucratically I might not have ASD, though biologically I really think I do.

I always knew I was “different.” I knew I was a late talker. I was thought of as being “ret*d” by many. I was told that I was going to a “brain-injured” nursery school. Then I went to a special school for troubled kids....and I was picked on even by them.

I used to think I had brain surgery when I was 5 that made me talk and have normal intelligence. It turns out I was given EEG’s and thought they were “brain surgery.” I thought a doctor like Ben Casey gave me the brain surgery. He was a TV neurologist in the 1960s in a TV drama that bore his name.

There was another kid I knew who was “autistic.” I learned the word through a TV ad when I was 9. I thought they were talking about “artistic” people at first. I wasn’t like him. He couldn’t talk or play like the other kids. He made funny noises and spun objects all the time. I didn’t think I was “autistic.”

Turns out I was diagnosed with autism when I was about 3. And “brain injury” around the same time. I knew about the “brain injury” as a child, but not the autism. I learned about my diagnosis when I was maybe 30.

Please stop with the rainbow colored text it makes me cringe.

I always knew I was different from most people in lots of ways, but didn't have a label for it.

The idea that I might have something called "high functioning autism" was first suggested to me by someone on a message board I participated on back around the year 2000 or so, in the wake of some quarrels I had gotten into with various people on the message board. I completely dismissed it at the time, because the person who suggested it to me didn't know me and had no real basis for making a psychological evaluation of me. Also, back then, I had no idea what HFA was. I had heard of "autism," but only the more severe kind.

Later, in late 2008, I met the man who later became my current partner. He had been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome back in 2001. When I looked up AS on the web, I found that the list of diagnostic criterial sounded a lot like me too. One of my initial reactions was anger that the psychiatric establishment seemed to be pathologizing what I considered to be one of my good traits, namely my tendency to have unusually intense interests. I wondered: How on Earth did the authors of the DSM manage to get through grad school without this trait?

I didn't seek a diagnosis until 2018 and finally got it in early 2019. What motivated me to seek the diagnosis was my desire to build a support network of fellow freaks.

So did you get a diagnosis?

In 2011 when I joined WP I also had thoughts I could also be autistic after my daughter's diagnosis the year before. Why? because I'm basically introverted and my wife is uber-NT and extroverted. So it must be me!!

I tried to self-diagnose myself but admitted to myself I was being biased by overlooking the fact I really had none of symptoms/aetiology. Eventually I did speak to my daughter's psychologist who knew me for a year and she said that it wasn't even necessary because she guaranteed that I show none of the characteristics.

Introversion (liking being myself) hides the fact that I am completely comfortable in social settings and am easily able to pick up social cues and am able to converse for hours (often talking crap) with nearly anybody. I have held jobs that have been client centred and even now work with a variety of stakeholders.

But what about never having sex before getting married? wasn't that typical of autism? well...no..because I dated over a hundred girls of various backgrounds, Infact I had no problem getting female friends. My lack of sexual experience had nothing to do with my imagined autism but more to do with having conservative christian parents whom I subconsciously wanted to please and internalised their values about sexuality. Infact I got past first base on many occasions and chickened out because the old bearded man in the sky was saying "tisk tisk"

But I digress, my reaction was that my daughter inherited autism from me but I was completely wrong. I accept I am a bloody NT (please don't judge me folks).

You have to be officially diagnosed (it takes an involved and expensive battery of tests) to "know" that you are on the autism spectrum.

Lower functioning autistics get taken to specialists by their parents and get diagnosed early in life.

Higher functioning autistics and aspies may take until later in life. And aspergers was not even recognized as a thing in America until 1994. So older folks on the high end of the spectrum typically didnt even suspect they were on the spectrum until middle age. I was in that category and didnt get diagnosed until about three years ago well into middle age.

Family members suggested that I might be aspergers- and thats part of what prompted me to get the test. When I was like 8 I was the textbook version of Hans Asperger's "little professor".

I think even then there's that lingering suspicion from childhood something is different.

A friend of mine actually told me. That is how I found out at first and then I did a lot of research for almost two years and then I got an official diagnosis. I fit the diagnostic criteria pretty well. The characteristics I have are too many to list here but if you look at the DSM 5 criteria, I have pretty much everything in it. I was officially diagnosed exactly six years ago. I did the testing on October 14 of 2014 and got the results a couple of weeks later. I was 47 years old.

NT, here...During my courtship to my now beloved (Aspie) husband, i noticed his autistic traits from the very beginning...But, it was one year and eight months after, when we were finally living together as husband and wife, that all the pieces of the puzzle came together...Initially, when i suggested said possibility to my husband, he seemed to resent me...But soon after, he congratulated me for 'diagnosing' him...I said, "AMOR, please don't take my word as i didn't go to medical school...How would i know???"...An official diagnosis is really not important to me...In my view, self-acceptance is what truly matters...At present-time, he is possibly still processing all that such possibility entails...At least, he knows that he counts with my support...I read somewhere that unconditional love makes all the difference...Only then can one, NT or Aspie, develop resilience...And how much more important in the case of an Aspie???! !!...Best wishes to you all...