Do you ever wonder if you DON'T have AS?

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I wonder all of the time if whether or not I have AS. I don't have an official diagnosis, so I suspect that if I did I might not obsess about it nearly as much. I just wish that I had the means to obtain an evaluation so then I'd know for sure.

I have an official diagnosis. But there have been moments, especially last year, when I wondered if I really had it or not. I kept thinking "but I've got plenty of friends" and stuff like that, and for a while I was denying it but after a bit of extra research I realised that it all fits me very well, just a bit less than others.
I sometimes wonder about other conditions as I have traits in them, but alot of them feature in AS aswell, for example people with ADD are usually disorganised or poor conecntration, but it is also common in aspies aswell, so I'm not sure.

I've been told "you must be very mild" by most professionals on first notice. I suppose it's because I use appropriate body language and have decent "give and take" in a one-on-one conversation. I suppose don't appear odd right off the bat like some other aspies I've met but I also don't have that great an idea on how I come across to people. Professionals just tell me I must be mild.

It's disconcerting because even if I'm mild in terms of communication skills I still feel like there's a massive chasm separating me from the 99% majority of humanity. I've always been an extreme perfectionist about everything. Someone who can't easily handle a single fly in the ointment without feeling like an emotional wreck. I also have this unfortunate combo of needing an excessive amount of comfort and familiarity to function well in life while at the same time I get bored easily and need a lot of stimulation to keep from becoming depressed. It's a nasty catch-22 situation. Also, all my life I've been baffled as to why some types of tasks are so difficult or next to impossible for me while other things I can breeze through miles ahead of everyone else. Sometimes I feel like a genious and other times a I feel like complete idiot around everyone else.

I know literally hundreds of people. And i seem to almost "collect" people and then move on. People often feel incredibly ccloes with me and connected, and i feel very little by comparison.
I have always been a big energy and popular and people often "want" to know me. But i have little connection with most. I can connect one on one and people - i believe - mistake my rambling intensities with intimacy. It is strange.

i was contacted by an old school mate from 30 years ago recently. Very enlightening. as for my diagnosis - she said "why of course." SHe said people always wanted to know me but for me there was an internal world that was my own and impenetrable to her and others...that it was impossible to reach me or even help me in any way.

i know this chasm exists between me and other people. Less so in text format.
I am a chameleon and can function to some degree in the world. But I spend most days alone and like a hermit, painting and private, secluded and pinned into the kinds of rigidities and routines others make mention of.
Every day is the same more or less. Every week is virtually the same unless i have some real world thing connected with my work or something i need to do for my son. I find respite from the sameness by way of a retreat intot eh detailed musings and practises of my work. that is all that matters to me.

so...my point is - i have always been a strange kind of popular eccentric and weirdo, which at times has led me to about a dx. But in my heart I know what i am and how it has always been. As Inventor says - it is not the label one has, but the course of the life that makes one autistic. and my life reeks of autism through and through....Rigid, routined, special interests, obsessive, unflinching commitment to own goals, disconnected from others in an emotional sense and social sense. There is not an aspect of it that is not drenched in an autistic way of being, thinking, seeing, living and doing. And I can truly spot another weirdo autistic here on WP...one of "the out there ones" who pursues his or her own world and meanings, and does it simply because there is no other way to live or be. It is not a choice. It goes right to the heart of identity and a sense of who one is. I just never knew the name for it before 2008, and it did not help that my family is extremely autistic in its tendencies and traits and that my mother is most likely an undiagnosed ASD woman in her 70's who is amazing and has not had the benefit of any of what we have here - by way of connection and identification and a few answers and explanations. (what she could have been and could have done......)

I spend nearly every waking moment fixated on my special interests. I cannot imagine a life without this kind of obsessive drive and doing and being.
yes, i was bullied at times and have been even recently in the art scene, but i carry on. I polarise people. I think man of us do.

so in the end i am what i am and that is that.

Hi Cap -

I'm a very high-functioning kind of AS. I'm pretty sure I'm officially diagnosed (I assume an "official diagnosis" takes the form of a piece of paper, and I don't know where such a thing might be, but I remember talking to the so-called experts and being told I have AS).

I lurk around WP and sometimes, reading about other people's difficulties, I feel like a total impostor. Other times people here say the things that are in my head and that I never thought anyone else would understand.

I've wondered whether my Aspie traits might be largely explained by my high intelligence and low social motivation. (Apparently not wanting friends is not an AS symptom.) When I was in college, living with lots of smart people in an environment with low barriers to socialization, I had many friends.

Then again, what NT would describe anything short of total isolation as a barrier to socialization?

Ultimately, I don't think it matters much whether you and I choose to label ourselves as AS, since there are hardly any services for AS adults that a label would allow us to access. Regardless of whether you call it a diagnosable disorder or just a collection of quirks, it's part of who you are.

Welcome to WP.

Yes.

Seeing as many have claimed that I don't "have it" in the past.

I've doubt my condition off and on. Sometimes I don't think I have it because I am doing so well and I am not impaired. I can drive, hold down a job, live on my own so just where am I effected at?

Even though I have been diagnosed with AS there have been times when I've doubted I have it. For example, last month I went to a social group for teens/young people with AS. The whole time I was there I was thinking to myself..."I don't think I have as many problems as the other people here, maybe I really don't have AS". However when I brought this up with a psychiatrist she told me that I most definitely fit the criteria, but I still don't see how.

I tried the whole friends thing - it didn't work for me. People think just because I do things with people that I find it easy. I still don't know what to say or how to act.