Poll for the self-diagnosed

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Am I the only person who wasn't affected by knowing? I was diagnosed around 20 because my mum was pushing for it. Made no difference to me. I'm only interested now because of how nonautistic people see things differently. I like to understand stuff.

i had a psychologist suggest i might have it but she didnt feel qualified enough to diagnose it. then i did reserch on my own and it fit me. years later after going to a different pycologist who specialized in autism spectrum disorders i got an official diagnosis

I always knew I was different than everyone else, but I could never put my finger on it.
I joined the airforce in December 2006 and was discharged in April 2007. I pretty much had a nervous breakdown half way through tech school. Being around people constantly and having absolutely no privacy was torture! I was sent to see a psychologist and went through a full evaluation. I vaguely remember the psych saying something about ASD, among other things, but at the time I didn't realize what it was and didn't give it a second thought. I wish I had.

A friend who is going to school for psychology recently asked me if I knew what aspergers was because I showed a lot of the signs of AS. She told me what she noticed about my behaviors and how they matched the symptoms of AS.

I immediately texted another friend who probably knows me better than anyone else I know and who did behavioral therapy for autistic kids in local schools to get her opinion. She pretty much said she had thought for years that I may be on the spectrum. She said she would have told me a lot sooner but she didn't know how I'd take it.

After joining this site and reading everyone's posts, I'm stunned at how much we have in common when it comes to how we think and go about things! That has reinforced the belief that I have aspergers more than anything else.

I wouldn't feel comfortable stating that I DO have it because I'm not officially diagnosed, but I have told my mom and a couple close friends that I believe I have it.

I have put myself on the BAP.

I just knew. I lurked here for awhile before ever posting and read lots of threads, basically had the OMG THIS IS WHAT IS WROG WITH ME phase. Wondered if I could be an Aspie for a little while and decided I didn't quite fit.

Years of wondering why the ADHD diagnosis didn't quite fit and why I was the opposite is some ways, years of feeling like I was in a bubble, a lifetime of being the weird (but fortunately likable person). Not just feeling weird, you know? It's different when people tell you so from a young age .

Youtube videos of a few diagnosed women made it clear for me, some men also but most of the women appeared more like me. I also took my family history into account, schizophrenic family members and now I believe my father was an Aspie who became schizophrenic.

Oh and I do score highly on those tests but wanted to do a lot more investigation, I have most of the ASD traits that have nothing to do with socialization like sensory issues and repetitive behavior as well.

At the end of the day I am NT...I would say I feel much more like an Aspie on the inside but the way I've adapted is just NT.

Not sure if anyone's mentioned this or not yet, but you left out an option (not unusual by the way), and that is "Did more research and am professionally diagnosed."

I self diagnosed after years of research (both online and off, and by reading books by people with ASD's, as well as by professionals, including Uta Frith's "Autism and Asperger Syndrome" with the first translation of Hans Asperger's papers, many different online screening tests. Once I was 100% convinced I've had AS all of my life, I sought a professional DX. The results of that are posted in my profile blog. (Sort version, the official DX is PDD-NOS, the reality is AS, and the psychologist agrees.)

Now that I think of it...

Before I discovered AS (Asperger's Syndrome or Autism Spectrum, if you will), I actually did some research on personality disorders. I thought Social Anxiety and then things like Avoidant Personality Disorder were possibilities. Did lots of reading about them and then happened upon Negativistic Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder only to find that it didn't truly fit. the only reason I considered it was because of how my sponsor would talk about how...pessimistic I seemed to be about life in general and because of my interactions with others.

Later, I kept seeing the term Asperger's Syndrome on the main Yahoo! page over the period of a week a couple of years ago, but it wasn't until I heard it talked about on the radio that I actually investigated it. And when I did, I seemed to find a near-perfect fit. I found WrongPlanet and joined a few days later. And I did take quite a few of the tests which seemed to indicate the possibility of a Spectrum Disorder.

I no longer claim to be self-diagnosed, but I am still fairly certain that I fall somewhere on the Spectrum.

I am undiagnosed. A professional noted that I seemed autistic to her and her colleague thought so too. I then thoroughly researched it, the more I have read and the more I understand it the more I think that the professionals I am working with are right. However it is not a professional diagnosis as such, and I have not been 'placed' on the spectrum. Just autistic traits that we are aware of and working with.

I took a test just for fun as a bunch of people were doing it, was not expecting anything unusual as I didn't even know what Asperger's was. So when it said I was probably an aspie, I took another online test, and another, about five in total + one for alexithymia. All strongly aspie.

But I am an adult and have learnt earlier the hard way how to cope, or at least act normal and shut up, so I don't feel like I will benefit from a dignosis any more at this point.

I was dating a young woman (who actually happened to be two years my senior). Unfortunately, in most cases, the girls have been rejecting me. This case, however, was different: she wasn't rejecting me at all and looking forward to a relationship with me. But I didn't feel any chemistry to her whatsoever. Based on her stories, I wasn't alone: she had been experiencing as much troubles with men as I was with women. A short while after I said my 'no' to her, I took a look at her blog: she wrote how puzzled she was yet again about lack of chemistry to her on the guys' part (myself included). After a few months, I took another look at her blog. Now she had written that she figured out the answer to her questoin: she has aspergers (although not officially diagnosed). Following up on the girl's self-discovery, I started my own research about this phenomenon (starting with Wikipedia but not limiting myself to it) and it occured to me that I might very well be affected by this phenomenon as well.

Like Ravenclawgurl, I had a psychologist tell me "you most likely have Asperger's, but this is not an official diagnosis". So I'm somewhere between self-diagnosed and professionally diagnosed.

I read Wikipedia and some other sites, but dismissed it at first, because the symptoms are described there in very general terms and my symptoms are relatively mild. So while it did sort of fit, I thought it could fit many people who are just nerdy.

What finally convinced me I have AS is this forum. So even though I'm new here I already feel I owe a lot to WP! There are just too many small, highly specific things that fit for it to be a coincidence and there is so much about my life that I now realise could be explained by AS. I think the "Social rules" thread in particular was the tipping point. So many posts there made me go "yes, yes, YES! Why the hell do they do that?!" As I read more I remembered things from my childhood that were an even better fit and realised that I've been compensating for aspie traits for so long that it's become second nature now and sometimes I can't even be sure of what's "natural" to me anymore.

I've always had sensory, social, co-ordination and concentration issues, etc. But, I never even knew they were in any way connected, let alone that they were signs/symptoms of something that could actually be diagnosed. It was only when my daughter came along and I was trying to figure out her behaviour issues (I'm the complete opposite to her in that respect only) that I started reading about ASDs. At first we thought she had very mld ADHD, then the more obvious ASD traits started to emerge. At the moment, she doesn't have a diagnosis. We've been told that she's unlikely to meet the Aspergers criteria and I agree with this. Its more likely that she'll get a diagnosis of HFA, coupled with giftedness, maybe SPD. As for myself, I doubt I would meet the criteria for Aspergers either. I'd meet the criteria for inattentive ADHD, without a doubt, alongside some Aspergers traits and SPD. I haven't diagnosed myself, I just suspect it. The online tests concur. It's so confusing that I tend to see us both as BAP, for now anyway.

My nephew is autistic, but his father is adopted so my cousin was researching who else in the family might have autism of some form or another. Did the online quiz: aspie score = 153/200 and NT = 6/200

I am lucky enough to be doing an MSc with a 50% psychology component so have used the university library extensively. Reading about women with Asperger's is like reading about myself, and the revelations are like having a key to unlock a previously locked door. I understand and can make sense of the episodes in my life now, and am much happier in myself.
But I still think that it's me that's normal and the NTs just cannot see the obvious in life!

I don't call myself self-diagnosed, but anyway - my knowledge didn't come from Wikipedia, and I definitely researched beyond Wikipedia. I didn't even know about quizzes etc. until recently, and it's definitely not something I rely on. I just tend to read a lot about the things I'm interested in, double entendre intended.

I'm not certain that anyone can truly be considered "self-diagnosed" - however, after taking the long AS quiz, then the shorter one, and subsequently reading everything I could get my hands on about AS (nothing on Wikipedia, BTW), it's the only explanation I've ever found for all of the weird things I've done throughout my life. I've looked into many other options previously and this is the only solution that has explained all of my difficulties perfectly.

I'm managing to muddle through pretty well on my own and don't really plan to seek out any professional services so I don't see the point in paying (self pay) a ton of money that I don't have for a professional dx when I can study and learn so much beneficial information on my own practically for free. I'm extremely self-taught about most subjects that I'm interested in and I don't see why this subject should be different.

I used to be self-diagnosed - I was self-diagnosed about a year before I got my official diagnosis.

In my case there was a period of about 2 years between first developing an interest in autism and finally concluding I was on the spectrum.

First, I started reading everything I could find on autism.

Then I stumbled across Temple Grandin's stuff, and she sounded like me. So, I started looking for stuff written by autistic people. (At this point I thought I had trauma-induced pseudoautistic traits, then I shifted to thinking I was BAP, and lastly I decided I was probably autistic.)

Online AS tests, by the way, played very little part in this. I have taken most of them, and scored autistic on them, but what really convinced me was hearing autistic people describe experiences that I resonated with.

I was homeschooled when I self-diagnosed, so all I had to do was convince my parents I was autistic to get what I needed. Once I went back to school for grade 10, that's when I got my official diagnosis. I was having an intake exam for counseling because my PTSD was flaring up, and I started chatting about why I thought I was autistic, and I got a diagnosis of PDD NOS. (Also, at one point they were asking me some questions about my mood, and I realized they were basically reading out the DSM-IV criteria for depression, and told them so. I also told them that I wasn't currently depressed, though I'd been so in the past.)