What Is Wrong with Me?

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Ok, I don't know if I have AS or not. I am really confused so I would just like your guys' input. BTW I'm a female.

Basically I am totally obsessed with "American Idol." This season was underwhelming, to say the least, but I got hooked on one contestant named Siobhan Magnus. My main reason was for her personality. I thought there was something very different about her, then suddenly I realized she seemed VERY AS. My mom teaches autistic kids so I've always known the traits and been interested in ASD. Because of my obsession with Siobhan I started reading more about it (I think she totally has it) and talking about it on Idol boards. Some other people responded to me, some with AS themselves. To make a long story even longer I began discussing some AS traits I have. Well, I never really thought about these things before because I thought it was just my unique personality (I'm INFP/INFJ). Besides this I DO have a bit of OCD. My father does as well. I was diagnosed with Tourette's when I was young (coughing and blinking). This is weird and I don't know how it happened but my mom and her prayer group somehow managed to pray it away. I don't really believe in miracles but my tics went away, so I can't give it another explanation. Anyway I never really gave all of this much concern.

After though I realized I had this huge long list of weird stuff:

- when I was a kid I remember this 1 incident where me and my family was camping. I always wore soft corduroys but, this 1 particular day, my mom tried to make me wear jeans. I threw a total fit because I thought they felt really hard. I couldn't deal with wearing them.

- also when I was a kid I was on a bowling league. I used to wear shorts to bowl in year-round because I was worried about getting hot and messing up my game.

- when I lived with my parents I used to constantly shut all the heat vents in the house cuz the heat would irritate me so much.

- I'm sensitive to fluorescent lights, especially the ones in convenience stores. They make me feel kind of freaked out.

- I can't sleep unless my room is completely dark AND I have an eye mask on.

- I eat the same foods every day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. I worry about not having my special foods so I have a cupboard full of backups.

- I can only eat 1 food at a time, on my plate. For example veggies first then rice and so on. And none of the foods can touch each other.

- I have BIG issues with food texture. I cannot eat mushrooms, eggs or tofu or anything with that kind of texture. I'm very picky about foods being cooked a certain way.

- I like to organize things. I kept a catalog of all of my CDs on a computer disk, down to serial number even.

- when I like something I become totally obsessed with it, to the point where I have to read everything about it from everyone's POV. I know lots of stupid and meaningless trivia, like the year certain movies or songs were released. And I like to memorize medical terms.

- as a kid I had bizarre obsessions, the two biggest being the Holocaust and serial killers.

- in elementary school I remember this 1 time another teacher I really hated came into my classroom to greet our class. All the kids had to stand up and shake her hand and say hello. She really scared me so I didn't take her hand and refused to look in her eye and say hello. She called me out on it in front of the whole class. Basically yelled at me and asked "What's wrong with you?!"

- I'm not sure if this is considered palilalia but if I type something on the computer and I find it funny I have to read it back to myself and laugh about it. If I like a word I read also say it to myself a few times. It's like I need to physically hear it and not just see it.

- I'm obsessed with music. I can hear music played at a low volume from very far away. If I'm talking to someone and music is playing in the distance I automatically focus on that instead of my friend. I want to ID what song is playing. That becomes most important to me.

- as a teen I started wearing a ring on my right finger so I could differentiate between left and right. I still have to think about it sometimes. I like to move the ring up and down on my finger for no real reason at all.

- when I was young I injured myself so many times that I got tons of bruises. My mom actually took me to the hospital for blood tests because she thought I had Leukemia. To this day I constantly trip down stairs, can't for the life of me walk in heels, and cut my fingers chopping vegetables. I can't drive either. I failed the test 5 times. I can't dance at all. I can't coordinate my movements with others. People always make fun of me for this!

- I can't say "I love you" to my mother when she says it to me. It bothers her and she asked me once why I couldn't do it and I told her I didn't know. It just feels uncomfortable to me.

- as a teen my friends would hug me and I'd just stand there. They always made comments about it to me like "Why don't you hug me back? What's wrong with you?" They had to get me used to it. It took a while. I still don't really want to be affectionate with anyone I don't have sexual feelings for.

- I don't get sad when people die. I get sad that the story has ended. Or I think of death in a philosophical way like wondering where they are now etc.

- if people cry in front of me I just stand there and try to make jokes. I know what I'm supposed to do to comfort them but this feels very uncomfortable for me.

- I've always had this general feeling of being an alien. When I'm with other people I feel more alone than when I am by myself. Even with my close friends I still feel like an outsider at times. When I moved to Japan I felt better because I had no idea what was going on and I couldn't understand what people were talking about.

- I've never been in a relationship with anyone and my friends are all other "weirdos" like me (mot have mental problems of some sort).

- I pretty much view all the people in my life as characters in a movie or TV show and that is how I relate to them. I get really excited when something bad happens cuz it is like a dramatic twist in my TV show. I feel sad for my friends' troubles, but more interest in seeing how these troubles play out.

- when I think of being in a relationship and living with someone else and having to share the same room I think "NO WAY!"

- I apparently can't modulate my voice. My friends tell me I talk too loud but I don't think I am doing so. When I try to speak more quietly they say I am still being too loud.

- I never ever filter my speech. I know I shouldn't be saying half of the things I say but I feel like if I'm not completely honest with people then I am lying. I'm a teacher and, when my students ask me "How are you?" I answer "I'm tired as hell!" or something like that. Some of my friends tell me the things I say to others are rude, but I generally don't notice this. When I was younger my brother used to ask me "Why do you always say everything that you are thinking?" I thought everyone did that! But I guess not.

- in JHS I really didn't know how to dress. I used to wear ridiculous things and do crazy stuff to my hair. In HS one of my friends had to teach me how to dress more like a girl, basically more normally.

All of that sounds REALLY AS, but the thing is I can read people fine and understand social situations. I also love metaphor. I have no problem with that. And I can make eye contact decently enough. But I don't feel like I connect with people and I keep doing socially unacceptable things because that is just me. If I go against me I feel very uncomfortable and like a liar. So I don't know really what is wrong with me. Do I have AS or some other kind of disorder?

I'd like to see a psychiatrist but I live in Japan right now and psychiatry is basically invisible here. Plus the money issue. I'm not so concerned with getting a diagnosis but more so in just understanding who I am. Thanks for reading!

You're really Japanese? *huge grin* Sugoi ne!

Welcome to Wrong Planet, Kiseki. A lot of the traits you describe do fit, and regardless of whether you're actually diagnosable, let me say right now that you'll fit just fine with this group of people and probably achieve some insight.

I share the feeling of being an alien, unwelcome even at home. I always feel kind of sad when I remember that other people see their bedrooms as their territory, because I'm sleeping in enemy territory. The few places I can feel safe aren't officially "my space" and anyway, people keep walking in.

I use and understand metaphor just fine. That was... and I just realized, six years later, that my fifth-grade teacher was insulting me. Hey! That's mean! Don't make that handsign at me!

As I was saying, that was never an issue for me.

Reading people actually doesn't disqualify you from a diagnosis if you have two of (off the top of my head):
Lack of social and emotional reciprocity (I treat you to dinner, and you...?)
Impairment in (the use of) multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye contact
Not sharing your interests

That said, it's possible to have sensory processing disorder all by itself. The pants, the trouble sleeping, the reaction to music, the issues with voice modulation... that's all consistent.

However, the inappropriate emotional response to other people's distress (for what it's worth, when something bad happens, I very often get this big grin and say something like "oh, wow, tell me all about it!"), the difficulty with fashion, the relative ease in befriending outcasts and the tactlessness are all consistent with some sort of Autism Spectrum Disorder. (Really, if you had a speech delay you're probably autistic.)

For what it's worth, I have a satisfying social life, too. I have a lot of interpersonal contact online, and I see people in person at my social skills group and at church. In these settings, I seem relatively normal, exercising minimal restraint on stimming at church and being myself at my social skills group. (I would've said "acting normal" except that to me that has exactly the opposite definition.)

If you care, seek diagnosis. If not, welcome, Broader Autism Phenotypical!

Thanks, Dandelion!

I'm not Japanese. I'm American, just happen to live in Japan. Weird thing is I feel more at home in this opposite world than I do in the States.

I'm apt to believe I do not have full Asperger's but some variation of it. Sorry if you said it, but what was your diagnosis? Are you saying your traits are similar to mine? I discussed all this with my mom a few days ago and she was totally clueless on most of these things I brought up! She didn't even know I'd been bullied in JHS! Anyway, I had no speech delay growing up. Just the opposite really. I picked up language very quickly and I never shut up. My mom said I used to just talk nonstop about myself and my interests and never let my brother butt in

One more question: is understanding emotional reciprocity but not being able to deliver it naturally consistent with AS or just a social awkwardness issue?

Asperger's Syndrome is a collection of symptoms, so, plainly speaking we (those of us with AS) all have some variation of it.

Take the Aspie Quiz and see how you rate http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

Welcome to WrongPlanet.

To above poster, I took the Aspie Quiz last week and scored 154 AS/76 NT. Is that test very accurate?

There are some good threads about Aspie women in the Women's area below. You might find that you feel you do fit some of those descriptions better than the general literature which is mostly based on men. Women tend to get more help and support to be social and Aspie women tend to be more social and can often be undiagnosed or mis-diagnosed depending on their collection of symptoms. I think they are grossly underdiagnosed.

There is nothing wrong with not bothering with a formal diagnosis, but I always take self-diagnosis with a grain of salt, especially if it's me doing it. I do diagnose my friends and aquaintences a lot, but rarely share my opinion because I think there is too much chance for error as I don't know enough about higher level psychology and could easily miss the correct dx. I've thought about getting more training because I do have a knack for it and a deep interest in it.

Me too, but I don't believe I have AS. I could be wrong but I took those self tests and came out very unspectrummy. I've mentioned it to my psychiatrist who treats my ADHD. There are other things, like ADHD, which can appear ASish. I'm NOT saying that's the case for you. If you really want to know have a psychologist do a thorough workup on you as soon as you can. They should administer several tests including an in depth IQ test. Aspies/Auties don't have reduced intelligence (that isn't to say they are all geniuses, they just have something like you'd expect their parents to produce). They can have one or two areas of relative weakness compared to one or two areas of relative strenght...maybe more than one or two on both counts. For instance my two Aspies both have relatively low scores in the Cognitive Processing Speed area, but both have extremely high scores in Visual/Spatial Reasoning. Aspie1 has an ultra high score in VS Reasoning and an ultra low, well below normal score in the Cog. Speed area. His other scores are all clustered around above avg, with an overall IQ of @120. That's on the low side for our family, but it's not the lowest so it fits right in. Aspie2 has a much higher overall IQ, more like 140. His Cognive Speed is in the Avg/low avg range, right on the border so it's normal. He Very Superior Scores in a couple of areas including Visual Spatial Reasoning and Very Above Avg in an area or two. IQ scores for an Aspie could come out just about anywhere, just like anybody else, but there will be a big point spread between at least two of the scores. They may have an area of impairment or genious but they may not. It's that spread that counts. There are also questionaires for you to fill out and people who know you well (teachers, family members...). Those will show if you have Aspie like behavior. When you do those self tests you only get your opinion of your behavior. You might find others see you differently. You could ask someone you know and trust to do a self test online but do it about you. See what they score you.

I don't know if that helps.

Kiley, I've read that women are much harder to diagnose.

I'm just quite confused cuz it seems like I have many AS traits but other things which don't fit. My mom really never noticed anything different about me as a child.[/quote]


I filled out questionairs for my Middle Son. I thought it was just his ADHD which is profound. I am actually pretty good at spotting Aspies as I've been learning about it since my eldest was diagnosed with it a few years ago. As I filled out the questionaire I realized that Middle Son really did have a lot of Aspie traits that I don't really think about because I'm just so used to it and it doesn't bother me at all. He's also more open with me. He makes good eye contact and talks more freely to me than anybody else. It's good to be the momma.

Even with me thinking there was nothing "wrong" (I still don't. His AS isn't wrong or a problem) with him my scores came out really high on both AS inventories we did. His teachers came out slightly higher because she sees a side of him I don't see much of. She sees him in a crowded classroom and he doesn't make that much eye contact with anybody but me and immediate family. Your mom might score you high too, it's just that she loves you the way you are and doesn't see it as a problem, and it isn't.

Kiley, very interesting. As I said earlier my dad has OCD- it's the really obvious light-flicking and twisting jar lids over and over again kind of OCD- so I'm sure neuro issues run in my family. My mom says she never thought I was odd or different growing up, just that I had a personality different from my brothers. That we were all different, I guess.

As for that test your sons took I'm not sure how I would score. I don't feel I am above average in any area. I have serious issues with math and spacial concepts. I can't read maps at all. That's like a foreign language to me.

If I had my friends or someone do a test about me I don't think it would turn out well! I don't really know anyone that KNOWS me KNOWS me (if you get what I mean).

Yes, I've been diagnosed AS, and I really love reading about something I am interested in and will read as much as I can and think about it, constantly. There's just something that's so cool about it, like being in love or something, The times I have obsessed and been really interested in something enough to gather all the information I can have been the happiest times in my life. I like certain movies and historical eras. If I am not intensely interested in a subject, it's really difficult to study it at all.