My possible Aspergers? And getting a diagnosis.

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I am looking at getting a diagnosis soon and as I'm not a very good verbal communicator I thought I would write a list of why I think it could be me...

Is this a good idea and would this help in that kind of situation? And can anyone relate? Or have you done this yourself?

This is quite long so I apologise in advance....



I have always been labeled shy/quiet.

I have and have always had lots of sensory issues... Very sensitive to touch, can't wear certain fabrics, dislike loud noises, startle quite easily, quite sensitive to smells, very sensitive to pain. Examples: Always wear the same clothes; fish, oats, BO, farm smells all make me nauseous and have a strong gag reflex; dislike being touched/hugged by strangers etc.

I was apparently very "sensitive" when I was younger. My mum feared I would be bullied so made me go to Judo to "toughen me up".

My brother has a lot of very autistic traits but has not sought a diagnosis... Very much a train spotter type.

My father had delayed/speech difficulties growing up and had a slight stutter as an adult I (don't know if that relates).

Waving to people does not come naturally to me and the only reason I will do it is purely out of politeness. Example... The courier driver at work who is very nice always waves to me in passing on my way to work but I always find it very uncomfortable to reciprocate.

People often take me the wrong way when I say something jokingly, I have always struggled with making eye contact but a few years ago I taught myself to so I'd be better at job interviews (read/skimmed a book on how to be good at interviews).

I do pick up on jokes but often a few minutes after everyone one else.

I do not naturally know/read body language it is something that I have learned by reading a book but still have difficulty in picking it up.

I get affected by other peoples emotions quite strongly, I can just tell if someone is in bad mood around me by how I feel.. very weird. This leads me to be less empathetic to people in lots of ways because being around someone in an emotional state disturbs me greatly and effects my own mood.

I get disorientated in a supermarket and generally dislike shopping malls etc for the same reason. I cope with this by avoiding supermarkets and malls (visual & sensory overload).

I am a visual thinker which works well for my profession as a graphic designer but it also means that I can get overloaded by visual stimulation quite often and end up walking around in a daze (i.e. supermarkets).

I have been called apathetic, arrogant, snobby etc in the past but at the time never understood where they got that idea from because I didn't know/feel that I came across like that.

I can't/don't do small talk, I find it very irritating and pointless... I even dislike overhearing it.

I had lots of friends growing up but often found that I couldn't maintain the relationships... I would often say the wrong thing by mistake and fall out with people. Often not knowing what I had said wrong and sometimes I ended up in fights because of it. I also never really felt that close to anyone, even my best friends were somewhat of an annoyance and mystery to me a lot of the time.

Have always had anger problems and do not generally deal with confrontation or criticism well.

I often take what people say literally and am sometimes too trusting.

I'm honest to a fault which is good but has often gotten me into trouble. Example.. At uni being asked to crit someone's work to which I gave my honest opinion, it didn't go down well and felt like I was ostrasised by my peers because of it.

I get obsessed when I'm doing something and find it very hard to stop, get very annoyed when I am interrupted. I do not multi task very well and have a tendency to get caught up in the details of things. An art teacher once told me that "I can't see the wood for the trees". Had no idea at the time what she meant but when I figured it out I agreed with her.

I dislike group/party situations and can get quite anxious (especially if others are anxious around me). I cannot follow lots of people talking at once and tend to get overwhelmed and switch off. I often avoid these situations unless I'm under the influence of alcohol which helps. I clam up and often barely say anything.

I have trouble making/keeping friends to the point where I have no desire to even try. If people try to befriend me I often push them away in some way or just never "catch up" with them. I find most relationships more difficult, annoying and draining than rewarding.

I often lose track of what people are saying to me or have a delayed reaction to things.. i.e. by the time a conversation has registered with me and I have some input it has long since past and am left saying nothing, trying to catch up with what people are now talking about.

I didn't do overly well at school but was acknowledged as being bright but more often than not I was considered lazy. I often lost track in class of what the teacher was saying; often missed the full instructions for homework so when I got home I usually couldn't complete the assignment and therefore was considered lazy because I had to give an excuse like "the dog ate it". I would also get too caught up in my interests at night and forget about what I needed to do.

I went up a set in maths after doing very well with a teacher who talked quite slowly but got completely lost in the class up. I think this was due to the fact that the teacher spoke a lot faster, I just couldn't keep up because of it. It felt like she was speaking a different language. I ended up passing maths after having to re-take because a friend tutored me (to prove a point I got 94% on a test I had previously failed the year before).

I tend to over analyse everything, I enjoy learning how things work, I have self taught a lot.

When stressed I will pace up and down a lot to calm myself. At times throughout my life I have hit myself but only when very very stressed or upset (I don't think that's normal).

I struggle at work to a certain degree because I have to deal with people every day. I'm not a huge fan of the telephone or client meetings and much like school I tend to miss some of the information given to me which can cause problems on occasion. I also struggle with the social aspects of working for all the above reasons.

I find it much easier to write down how I feel than to speak about it, hence this letter.

I am also seeking a professional diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome and so I printed up a couple of charts of what it looks like in women so I'd have something to start with whenever I make it to a specialist. On the back, I've started making a more personal list like yours, as well as an explanation of what I'm hoping to gain by making the diagnosis official. I read somewhere that some doctors may give more weight to a single good example for each of the diagnostic criteria rather than long lists, however. I suppose once I'm done with my lists, I should go over them to find the most demonstrative examples. (In retrospect, I really should have just typed my lists up separately, since even I have difficulty reading my own handwriting.)

I'm also very bad at verbal communication, generally. I frequently have difficulty deciphering just what kind of answer a person is looking for when they ask me a question. When there are many possible answers, how am I supposed to know which one they are looking for? I typically just end up guessing, picking an answer at random, and it's usually not the one they were after. Best to write all this stuff up and prioritize it ahead of time!

I also had a long chat with my mother about my childhood. I should take some notes on that as well.

Anyway--I'm doing the same things you are, unsure if it will end up helping but I can't see how it could possibly hurt.

Good luck!

Yes, it's a very good idea. If or when I eventually get around to seeking diagnosis, I will probably do the same. You probably don't want to just present the whole thing to your doctor, but use it more to back yourself up.

Also seeking diagnosis - Its really frustrating for me because of money and time restraints.
Your list seems to match up with mine precisely...
When I found out about Aspergers Syndrome I was very relieved because it was as though I could stop blaming myself and seek help from others who share these traits.
Hope all goes well.

Even though I am only a kid, I understand how you are feeling because I too am seeking a diagnosis. What has helped me to learn more about Asperger's and NLD were plenty of books. Even though you are an adult and these books are mainly for teens, I thought I should list them anyway.

Take Control of Asperger Syndrome
By Janet Price & Jennifer Engel Fisher

Freaks Geeks and Asperger Syndrome: A user guide to adolescence
By Luke Jackson

Asperger's... What Does It Mean to Me?: A Workbook Explaining Self Awareness and Life Lessons to the Child or Youth with High Functioning Autism or Asperger's
By Catherine Faherty

I also read up on it online. Google books can show you free snippets of books about Asperger's and NLD and PDD-NOS. I have been previewing books and plenty of them have helped me to better understand myself from other people's perspectives. You should really read the article by Tony Attwood about girls and woman with AS. You should also test your AQ (Autistic Quotient). My AQ was a 31 whereas my mom's was a 7 (we are so different! )

The book I read waiting for my diagnosis was The Autistic Spectrum by Lorna Wing. It helped a lot, I even learned about Kanner's autism, which I don't have. But it was still good to learn about it.
My mum read Asperger's From the Inside Out to understand me more.

Here's the list of female traits, but as far as I can tell it's not from a Ph.D. or a psychiatrist, so if you get a real stickler not sure how accepted it'll be:

http://www.help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58 ... 83e339.JPG

My therapist says I have "presentations of Asperger's," I have I think every trait on there but maybe one, and I scored very much aspie-like on a couple of the online quizzes. I'm debating now if I want to go through the trouble and time off from work to get official diagnosis, but I would like to pursue occupational therapy for the sensory integration stuff (which I didn't even know was a abnormal either until my therapist told me).

Wow, I didn't even get to my list--the fat Freud-loving slob of a psychiatrist didn't listen to me one bit. Serves me right for not doing my research and making sure I found someone experienced with evaluation of AS in adults!

I'm preparing to be assessed as well and am working on a similar list. Everyone recommended that I be prepared when I go with something written. One person suggested that I use the requirements for diagnosis and look for/list symptoms from each category. All the advice was super helpful. I went through the diagnostic requirements and wrote every possible thing about myself in each regard. Now, I'm going back and clarifying, simplifying and trying to make it succinct enough to be able to address with the doctor in a reasonable amount of time. I mean I think he'll probably have his own list of things to ask me, tests, etc. and I think I'll only have an hour per visit, so I'm thinking I really need to make it efficient.

Yikes. Apparently you got one of the bad ones. I hope you find somebody who knows what he's doing. I could see if a psychiatrist had said, "Actually, you're mistaken; you don't have autism," but completely ignoring your self-evaluation is something no psychiatrist should do. He probably does still use Freud, if he's that out of touch.

Not only did he completely ignore my self-evaluation, but he didn't even let me get through my prepared "this is why I want an official diagnosis" spiel before derailing me with questions that had nothing to do with Asperger's. Ironically, the more I tried to end a line of questioning so we could get to something I felt important, the more he seemed to become sure that I had obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (aka Freud's anal retentive disorder), which is what he ultimately "diagnosed" me with! (From what I've read, this is a fairly common misdiagnosis for people with ASD, but to anyone who knows me this is a laughably bad misdiagnosis as the only criteria I meet can be better explained by Asperger's.) Amazingly, he even shushed me when I tried to discuss my childhood and he declined to look at my primary school records. The entire session consisted of him asking what I felt were vague questions, me asking for clarification, him rephrasing it as a leading question and me answering in a noncommittal way (I guess so, kinda, I don't know maybe) and wondering what the hell it had to do with Asperger's. "Are you a perfectionist?" "I don't know, I guess I hold myself to high standards on things that are important to me." How the hell am I supposed to know if I am a perfectionist compared to the general public when the general public is an alien species?!?

When he finally announced that I had OCPD, I asked him to show me the DSM criteria and explain why he felt I met them (I hadn't read up on OCPD yet and was surprised but curious, still unaware of just how wrong he was). This seemed to make him angry and he replied, "I don't have time to debate this with you. If you want to make the next step, make another appointment and we can discuss putting you on an SSRI." His justification for why I didn't have Asperger's was that I am married (we pretty much fell in love via the internet, though I didn't tell him this because he never asked).

Now, I'm not sure just how incompetent this guy was (completely? moderately? grossly?), but as far as evaluation for ASD goes, incompetent he surely was.

Once the sting of blowing money I don't have subsides, the irony of it will be quite amusing!

But don't make the same mistake I did--find someone who really is competent.

I read the chart and pretty much everything on a that chart matches up with my traits. I need a diagnosis so I can get some therapy. I am horrible at interviews and everyday socialising. Trouble is. I don't have a doctor and I am having trouble finding information on how to find a GP that can refer me to someone who can give me an official diagnosis for Aspergers. I live in Los Angeles.

I think that you're doing all the right things.