Irregular profile of autistic traits?

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Hey, this is my first time posting on these forums so before I go off on my rant I'll introduce myself a bit. I've been recently diagnosed with NVLD but basically none of my friends could tell there was anything different about me, even the ones who had siblings or relatives with AS. Only one of my best friends who'd worked with autistic children told me a few years back that I was autistic, and not knowing what it was at all, I kept denying it until a girl with Asperger's at my new school said she could tell, as she'd been diagnosed herself - she said I was the socially awkward type of autistic and probably had either AS or HFA. When I asked both my older sis and my doc about it they said I'm not autistic at all, but that's another thing.

Oh and if you don't have the attention span to read for a few minutes then ignore this post.

After the diagnosis of NVLD, which was based on my Verbal IQ being significantly higher than my Performance IQ, I asked why I didn't get AS and the guy said because I seem too socially able in comparison to the ones he's seen. He even said that my form of NVLD was mild. As well as that, but when I asked my mum and read up on autism I found that I didn't show a lot of signs of AS, but I'll list some of the things that I considered:

1) I'm not hypersensitive to any sensory stimuli in particular, apart from gloves which sometimes make my hands feel a bit funny if I don't try and ignore the feeling (though NTs might feel that too).

2) I don't remember having any sensory overload at all, I even enjoy loud and bright places as long as people don't look at me.

3) I hate people looking at me in public and being around other people in public unless I know them well and they don't hate me or anything (probably unrelated to autism).

4) I generally don't empathize when talking to people, although I scored 29, i.e. above average on the eyes' test online, and when I do empathize it feels like I'm in a completely different alien world. (It made me laugh when I tried to do it once ) I also certainly don't have significant difficulty telling people's emotions (could tell when my parents were mad for as long as I can remember back). As for eye contact, I do it most of the time because it's a social norm (I look at eyes like they're just another part of the scene) but prefer not to make it as it feels slightly awkward.

5) I do have a select few special interests although I don't know if they're severe enough to interrupt with my daily life. I love talking to people who'll listen to them and can go on for ages if they're willing to listen, plus I'm generally very talkative (a feature of NVLD).

6) I only just saw myself today on a video recording rocking back and forth in a somewhat steady rhythm when playing piano (was somewhat unnerving).

7) I picked up on sarcasm a bit late and wasn't always aware of people trying to make fun of me, esp. in the more subtle ways.

8] Apparently I didn't show any childhood signs of Asperger's/Autism, I did demonstrate imaginary play and shared attention, dreamed a LOT (including slightly surreal dreams) and I did play enough with other young kids. I also started talking at the right age with normal first words and ran before I walked , but at the right age as well.

9) I've never been particularly clumsy though people have said I sprint sort of zig-zagged and I feel like I walk zig-zagged. Otherwise my PE teacher even said I moved really well when playing basketball. I also didn't have trouble learning to ride a bike. I have heard of an aspie in MENSA who was the captain of his school hockey team however (yay ).

So that's all I'll list for now, but in a follow up appointment with the psychologist who diagnosed me, he also said that he gave me NVLD instead of AS because of some of my fluid reasoning difficulties typical of children with NVLD. Still, I was never bad at Maths, Arithmetic or Physics, though I suck at non-objective or abstract thinking subjects such as English Literature and Philosophy.

Can someone please help explain whether or not my diagnosis was right, if I might have Asperger's anyway and why I might have such an irregular profile of traits (other than me having an apparent 'mild' form of NVLD)? Just to add, I do know that NVLD and AS aren't necessarily the same thing and I've read a bit on how they're different, though sometimes NVLD co-occurs with AS.

AS geniuses or intelligent ones are somehow associated with proficiency at math and physics but difficulty in grasping literature, philosophy and humanitic abstraction.

Probably you have mild AS or could be at the borderline. How are your interactions with people on the whole? Do you get along well eaily, make friends easily and have no trouble with small tlk and making people enjoy your company?

Hmm well yeah, if you don't think a lack of the classic childhood symptoms matters, then you're probably right about mild AS, but I'm probably just above average in maths. The thing is, I hate memorizing things if there's an explanation behind them and the maths I learnt was mostly just like memorizing formulas and not understanding them, such as with differentiation. If maths was one of my interests then perhaps I'd have read up all those derivations but yeah I don't know about my natural proficiency with it. I do however like to visualize explanations in Maths and Physics, which a lot of aspies and maybe some NTs prefer to do.

About my interactions with people, I had difficulty when I first came to England 2 years ago because the people who picked on me did it in a much more subtle way (pretending to be interested in what I could do), which they got a kick out of until someone told me 'I think he's trying to take the piss'. After he told me that, I asked my friend who'd been here and he explained how they were taking the piss and everything, and it was kinda partly because of that that my understanding of the more subtle aspects to communication quickly improved.

So back to the main point, I have difficulties with the sort of highest level of communication; I occasionally don't get jokes until I look through all the stuff that they're founded on. For example, I went to the pub a few days back to meet up with Friend A and I was wearing contacts. Another friend, Friend B, had asked me to go out to the pub with him and his friend and I jokingly said I couldn't cos I was going with a girlfriend (I wanted to see his reaction for fun, please don't judge me ._. ). So when me and Friend A happened to bump into Friend B and his friend in a pub, Friend B who hadn't seen me in contacts before was like 'you could've pulled better than that', and laughing with his friend while I was wondering what he meant until he told me it was about how I'd previously joked about going to the pub with a girl.

Also I'm kinda crap at comforting people even when I clearly know they're sad - I rarely know what to say. I don't make much of an effort with small talk because I know I naturally talk way too often about my interests or about myself, and it's like I'd have to follow guidelines to be able to socialize (e.g. if someone tells me where they're from, I'd have to think about asking them about where they're from). Sometimes in the middle of my long rants, a person might talk about something unrelated and I'll talk to them about it for a bit (or sometimes accidentally ignore it ), then go back to my rant. But as of yet, my biggest problems are with asking people about themselves and knowing how to build on their responses, and not always knowing if they're bored of what I'm talking about from looking at their body language (a feature of nonverbal learning disorder) and eyes. It's partly because of my lack of empathy that I sort of don't care about how they feel, as I can't feel it.

All in all, I'm don't really to engage in small talk anymore because I'm not good at it, and the friends I make are ones who understand how I am and tolerate me for it. I don't really offend many people, but I probably strike a few of them as slightly odd. With my friends, sometimes I'll say something that I find funny and sometimes they find funny, but I keep on saying it over and over even though they're clearly bored of it. And to finish off, I'm not that good at starting small talk convos.

IDK, you sound like an average guy to me, but then I don't really know you and I'm not a psychiatrist. You're welcome to hang around anyway.

Could you please explain why I sound like an average guy? I know my psychologist can't be an idiot because he's been in the job for 30 years and like he said, my form of NVLD is very mild (I was a unique case), but are there any things I said that are just part of NT behaviour anyway?

What is so unnerving about #6? It's really normal to move around when playing a musical instrument.

Well it's just because I was rocking back and forth in a steady rhythm like a pendulum instead of freely like I see a lot of pianists doing. Also because I'd seen this on Wikipedia before about Glenn Gould possibly being autistic (although the psychologists may have been purposely trying to find traits which in reality NTs show as well):

'He had an aversion to being touched, had a different sense of hot or cold than most, and would rock back and forth while playing music. He is speculated to have had Asperger syndrome.'

But anyway does anyone know if it's possible to be mild AS or NVLD if you don't show the classic childhood autism symptoms? I'm just a bit confused about it all, with my lack of some common traits; it's not because I think my psychologist made a mistake but because he said other psychologists might've given me AS as a dx.