What did you think was wrong before you heard about AS?

Post Reply New Topic

I thought it was anxiety. I also thought I lacked friends because I was annoying. I didn't realize that I was isolating myself from others.

Oops, double post!

(we really need an "erase post" button. admins?)

I had no idea what it was. I knew I was different from others and they constantly reminded me everywhere I went. I was extremely shy but apart from that, I knew, from almost being placed in a special school in kindergarten and being in a pull-out resource program in early primary, something was up. The name-calling and bullying were things I attributed to other's ignorance until I reached middle school where it seemed the whole school turned against me.

I thought I would magically outgrow it and be the brash, worldly woman who had a great job, car and success I saw my less qualified peers receive as they grew up. But no matter how much I tried to act like everyone else, it would never meet their standards of what "normal" was.

People still think I'm "slow", even though I have a bachelor's degree. Others, even close family members, are incredulous whenever they see something I've written, though my degree was in journalism. How the heck would I have graduated if I couldn't write a legible, coherent sentence? The idiots!

I thought I lacked at being assertive so I tried to peptalk myself and felt I was a failing idiot in anything but intelligence.

I had no idea realy. I got told by a friend who worked with severly autistic adolestents that I had plenty of AS traits, but even then I could relate to what she said. 10 years later, I had to deal with something that made me analyze all the things about me that don't fit in with preconceptions of 'normal' social behaviour. I just thought I was shy, gullible, gifted in some things, ret*d in others, sometimes pedantic, and overall, considered mildy eccentric by everyone else. It used to make me so depressed before I found out what it is what makes me, me

I had no idea. I found the odd syndrome or disorder or whatever, here and there, for which some of it fit and some of it was way off the mark. Eg., ADD/ADHD, Schizoid Personality Disorder. Asperger's Syndrome is the first and only one I've encountered in which everything makes sense.

I knew something was wrong or that I felt alien from everybody at a young age. I actually didn't start researching what could be wrong until I was in high school. So, on the net I came across social anxiety disorder. It fit for me at the time, and went along with that for a while. I kept getting the feeling though, that this isn't the only thing wrong. It was in fact on a social anxiety forum that Asperger's was mentioned. I read up on it and realized it sounded like me and fits even better than social anxiety. I still have some social anxiety though. Before all that I was thinking I was maybe an alien or something. Even told my friend that, which freaked her out. I was a people-phobic alien that didn't understand people around me.

I really didn't think anything was wrong with me. I didn't even know that people thought I was weird.

I straddled a weird line in high school... I was a part of the Nerd group for sure.. But my strange way of acting got me attention from other people.

It was kind of condescending attention... but not completely... I think many thought I was genuinely funny in the way I acted. It wasn't the same sort of ridicule as the handicapped people got.

Of course I never really hanged out with these people... they just thought I was amusing.

I started to really analyze myself at my last job, which I had for a good 6 years. I was a good employee and appreciated... but something about how everyone treated me was strange.

They knew I was intelligent... especially my boss... but they didn't always assign jobs to me. I also made more mistakes than seemed "normal"... something always seemed different about me compared to others.

Social anxiety, which I don't have. I just like my time to myself, and apparantly thats no good for NTs. I'm glad my counselor was able to tell the difference and recomended me to my current psychologist to confirm that I fit the description for AS to the book.

I thought that there must have been horrible stories made up about me behind my back that I didn't know about because nothing else seemed to explain why people always avoid me even though I thought I was being friendly and polite. I couldn't understand why my husband is not shunned and he isn't even as nice as me.

I was DX'ed with HFA in 1986-87 when I was 4-5. My parents did not tell me about it until I was 11. I was mainstreamed around this time, and my parents were not about talking about it anylonger, they assumed i think that I had been 'cured'.

I had social problems for the rest of my school years, but never really thought about my HFA, did not know much about it, nor did i think i was any different, just strange, many beleive I was a very intelligent person (teachers said this, kids my own age) and figured this had something to do with it.

It was not until just this year that I came to terms with my HFA, learned about it, even asked my parents what I was like when I was younger, my mom answered my questions, my dad avoided them (i beleive he has AS).

Had I been DX'ed years later then I was, im sure they woulda said AS, and not HFA. I know the differences but back then AS was not accepted as a DX at that time.

Interesting answers from everyone.

I used to think I had emotional problems. People have always called me spoiled. I have even been acused of being unremorseful and too literal. People always getting mad at me for taking things too much to the letter. I thought I was plain crazy or somehow too lazy to fix myself. Yet unable to understand what i was doing "wrong" and how to change it. I lost friends, family, ect. And then I started having sensory overloads so bad that I didn't know what to do. My rocking and stimming got worse i started getting stress seizures. i started reading books on depression thinking this had to be my problem and then my gf told me i was acting like a boy she knew was autistic, after she got a movie out of the library for us to watch. Autism is a World. "the only difference is you talk" she said. so I looked it up, and the accuracy of the symptoms and the like made me want cry.

I thought I was insane, I thought I was schizophrenic, I thought I was lazy, evil, bad at making friends, mortally shy (and I WAS all those things, except maybe insane and schizo ).