Doubting your own Aspieness

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Yeah...being undiagnosed...I can't call myself an Aspie...all I know is that I relate to this boeard an awful lot...have symptoms that run in my family...I do get called a hypochondriac by my boyfriend....
I relate to this board alot more than i do to the ADD forums I belonged to for years, and i am diagnosed with that...

I don't have many rigid routines or dietary restrictions....and a few other things that make me doubt I'm an aspie...but there are alot of other things that make me kind think that if I am not an aspie, then I am pretty close...(i am definitely not NT)....I think....

One thing that really astounded me was there was a mannerism that I was sure I had picked up after knowing about autism. And then I was watching a video of myself at a pre-diagnosis age (the only one that still exists, I think) and the person watching it with me laughed because I did the same mannerism.

It's things like that. Or hearing stories from when I was either too young to remember something or too young to have been told about something, that went very well with being autistic and not well with being anything else. I'd spent a lot of time fitting into roles I thought were expected of me, so I wasn't sure even when I had reasoned down to autism being the most likely label (of the many I'd gotten) that fit, whether I was then just filling a role either.

So the video was one piece.

Hearing stories I'd not heard before about my very early childhood (not all at once, just sprinkled through conversations) were another piece. (Especially when some of them fit better with my memory of the time than with what other evidence I'd found seemed to suggest. For instance, I can remember not knowing how to talk at an age older than the words in my baby book were. But then there were not a lot of words in my baby book, they just stopped, whereas my brothers' baby books had tons of words in them with a progression into sentences and stuff. Then later a family member mentioned in passing that I'd stopped talking after having a few words. Then everything made more sense. I also hadn't known that the preschool had called my parents about the fact that I was fine by myself but shrieked if anyone got near me, or that what comforted me was my mom coming in and repeating the same wiggling motions I was making with my fingers, and that story came up in conversation at some point.)

Then when I later ordered some of my records, they made page after page after page of pretty constant reference to my social deficits as often being even more striking than whatever I'd gone to a particular professional for to begin with (such as shutdowns, depression, etc), that also made things clearer. There were also a bunch of scattered reports of things that could only really be hyperlexia. And even reports of me being inexplicably unable to speak at times but able to write some of those times, assorted mannerisms and motor difficulties, etc. There were even some legal documents that described me as not social. And I was diagnosed before I really knew what autism was (and the word had been used sooner in the evaluation process than I had thought it'd been).

Basically the amount of stuff that was either very obviously autistic or very common in autistic people, that happened before I was aware of autism or even able to form concepts of that nature, made it obvious to me that I couldn't have even subconsciously been filling a role I didn't know existed. Especially when I didn't even understand how hard I found some things (compared to most people), or how other people saw me, until much later. I think really the biggest barrier to my thinking that I was really autistic, were the descriptions of autistic people as lacking in certain areas I was not lacking in, that research by now has shown we're not (as a group) necessarily lacking in, we were just thought to be for other reasons. I identified really strongly with autistic people's descriptions of being autistic, but never with external descriptions, and that (as well as not fully understanding how I appeared through the "normal" set of filters) turned out to be why.

I don't think you should focus too much on the label.

Everyone has some traits of both.

Regardless of whether you're an aspie or not, it won't change who you are so it shouldn't matter.

I recall several occasions from when I was little and was rocking around, being obsessed about things (who else would go on and pick a random species of fish and spend months and hundreds of A4s, designing whole new races for it?), having completely no idea what might be going on inside the heads of the others, spending a whole evening on our school yard with having pulled a large shirt over my head, just sitting there... the list goes on.

And I'm still in complete doubt.

I'm very aware of AS only being a label, but on the other hand it's also a helpful explanation. Not meant to justify all my actions. Rather help me function better.

yes, and it seems to me if your environment is such that your symptoms are moderated, you are unlikely to be diagnosed but have emotional and social difficulty. It seems very unscientific.

I used to doubt I have AS until one day a psychic lady told me if I liked posting on WP, I probably have AS. And what's the difference between mild AS and PDD-NS anyway?

I hardly think many neurotypical children wear their clothes to school backwards, or continue to walk on the balls of their feet into adulthood...um....or many other weird quirks I have displayed.

There is definitely something up with me...maybe it is PDD-NOS...

I often ask myself...if it is not Asperger's then what is it.....complex PTSD?....a system of bad habits I developed that became hard-wired over time?...head injury? It's all in my head?

I know what you mean. I've considered that maybe I just have a combination of AD/HD, Avoidant Personality Disorder, anxiety, social phobia, maybe even mild rapid-cycling bipolar. But that doesn't fit Occam's Razor, and there are good reasons why I'm not most of those things. I may not be classic Asperger's, but nothing else really fits nearly as well.

I am not entertaining the possibility that I might not have AS. It cannot be questioned without questioning what AS is or weather it exists at all.

It has been said that I cannot be an aspie because my social skills are very good and I appear sociable. But I have seen aspies with better.

I can do humour very good, but I never laugh at many jokes and I have never understood why.

I dress and groom well but that is out of desperateness.

Very much everything else is aspie.

I question myself all the time. I don't know if I have AS even though I do have tendencies, I'm just a big mystery to doctors. Sometimes I have very bad days and other days I actually feel somewhat normal.

Sounds like me except replace rapid cycling bi-polar with mild intermittant depression

AND I stim like crazy physicly and vocally...despise eye contact and unexpected physical contact....have the toe walking thing....am quite juvenile for my age....can't drive a car..am prone to obsessions...meltdowns...if I don't take my herbs....and so on...

Whatever it is, it certainly does present it's difficulties...

A wee while ago, someone even asked me if I was on SSI

Definitely. When I spend a lot of time alone, which is most of the time, I start to think "No way I have AS, I'm not acting any different from how anyone else would act, am I?"

But then when I find myself back out in the world of other people I have an "Ohhhhh, I remember" moment.

I wonder myself. I never completely fit the criteria even as a child and I was diagnosed PDD-NOS. I don't think I appear any different than other people in terms of mannerisms or non-verbal communication skills. I'm an extreme introvert though.

Sometimes I wonder if it's OCD or an anxiety disorder more than autism. Life always seems unnecessarily discombobulated and messy to me. I just can't deal with everything coming at me at once. Even things like finding out what store I need to go to find a particular item I need stresses me out. I also have a horrible time motivating myself to try new things. It's so frustrating when I see other people being able to take things in stride.