Personal doubts

Post Reply New Topic

Every day, at some point, I start to think that I'm fooling myself and that I'm not really autistic. Sometimes any little thing can push me over the edge, and sometimes these things can give me a "suicide attack" type of reaction like Tony Attwood described in The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome. Since I spend most of my time alone, a lot of my more autistic reactions tend to be a bit less obvious. As soon as I'm around people it's pretty apparent to me (and my therapist at this point). But alone it's easy to not think about some of the more stressful things that come up every time I go out.

I went to a party this past Friday night and I feel like on some level I was trying to prove one way or another to myself, and despite my intense fatigue and overload from that, I still have doubts.

But to a large extent, I feel normal to myself, even when I'm getting sensory overload in a brightly lit store and on the edge of meltdown just because I can't find jeans or ranch dip or whatever, this is the only way I know how to be, so it feels normal and I start to question whether this can actually be true, because I don't really understand how someone else can react differently to overloading situations or socialization, even though it's clear that they do from their behavior. And this isn't even getting into starting, stopping, transitions, etc.

Mainly, it's profoundly annoying. I know the moments when I feel strongly that I must be fooling myself are based on counterfactuals, but it seems to come on a daily basis, and is not always easy to dismiss.

I do understand that doubts are normal and to an extent with this I have no problem - questioning my assumptions is not a bad thing. But sometimes it just gets so intense and goes so far beyond this into a deeply emotional reaction that I could really do without.

Wow, yes, I can empathize. Well, originally I was aghast at the idea that I could be autistic. I remember a point four or so years ago when for the first time I considered that I was clinically disabled in some way that other people perceived but had never told me about. Until that point I had considered myself completely able and normal, but for two years had been struggling with daily adult functioning and thus this completely new and scary thought popped into my mind.

And then it turned out the thought had truth to it, and I am clinically different, or at least according to a battery of formal tests and everything else confirming I'm more like the rest of you people on this site than like "normal" people (people I had always seen as definitively normal in a way I was not, even when I didn't think myself abnormal).

And then I got used to the idea and was actually happy being different. But like you I just go about my life shopping at the store in *exactly* the nervous way you describe, and I mean I could not picture myself being more like you as you describe yourself shopping for ranch dip and so on, and it doesn't feel weird, it feels just like life.

Which makes me come back to my original way of thinking, that really there is no "normal" or "abnormal" and there are just a lot of people who shop for ranch dip with varying degrees of franticness, and do other things in varying ways too.

Not to say the francticness and so on isn't functionally disabling for a lot of people. It is for me.

You are not alone in doubting if you are autistic or not. I even question if I am. My little test for this is to go for a walk in town and sure enough my autism will begin to show itself. Though sometimes I can talk to people in the shops a lot easier than other times. But that little walk into town is a test in how I cope in the outside world.
I suppose it's because of all my co-morbid disorders that make me wonder whether I really do have them all or not. But some days are better than others. And I'm usually in a less stressful environment but when I leave that environment I'm probably going to remember just how autistic I am.

Pensieve - yeah, I have the same doubts because of all my comorbid disorders. I don't know what might have led to what and if what results is just something that looks like Asperger's. In fact I was sure I just had social anxiety and that my Asperger's diagnosis was wrong for the longest time. But then how to account for the extreme noise/light/fabric/etc. sensitivities and the remarks people have made on my awkwardness and especially that chart describing girls with Asperger's. I fit almost every criterion on there. Not that it's a scientific reference that I know of.

But yeah, your walk-in-the-town test sounds pretty foolproof. Although some days for me that wouldn't work because I can draft into a hazy state where I'll talk calmly to anyone. But that's more of a depersonalized character and I know it, and it exhausts me to keep it up and eventually leads to a breakdown. So yeah, a venture into the real world is a good test I'd say.

I wish there were better neurological tests, completely objective. The spectrum is wide and it looks different on different people.

Last edited by alone on 22 Feb 2011, 8:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah, I do things partially to see if the autistic stuff comes out. Going to stores, parties, visiting people. I've had these problems my entire life but I'm only just experiencing them in the context of the idea that I am autistic.

One of the reasons I come here is that no matter what I write, no matter how off the wall it feels to me to say such things out loud or write them on a forum with hundreds of people potentially reading at any given time, someone always says:

Or something similar, which helps a lot.

Also, my mother is pretty clearly aware of my social issues (she knows I need days warning before someone visits or I won't be able to cope, she knows that I have a lot of trouble at weddings, funerals, family reunions, and other events likely populated by a lot of people, she knows my sister has significantly fewer difficulties - if any - around people), despite the fact that she is certain I'm not autistic... I really really need to talk to her about this in depth, but I'm not sure I want to.

My personal issues about this are really: It's the only thing that has ever made sense of my life. ADHD made 1/3 sense, but this clears everything up. If I'm not autistic, then I have no idea about anything. It'd be losing a sense of newfound stability.

A lot of people's parents seem to have issues believing that their adult child is autistic. Perhaps they have a misunderstanding of the condition and make it out to be something extremely horrible and don't want that for their child?

I have a bizarre story about this. My parents don't want the adult me to be autistic in any way and are constantly telling me to try to act normal and fit in, BUT throughout my life, they have responded to my weirdness by asking, "Can you stop behaving like an autistic child?" or saying "When you were little, you were truly an autistic child." I don't even know how to respond to stuff like this. "Autistic" is a word I have heard out of their mouths all my life, and I didn't know any of the details about it for most of that time. I always thought I was totally normal, just really really really socially inept.

Yeah, wow, that's really odd.

My mother likes to tell stories about things that are to me, obviously autistic, but she sees them as cute, signs of my intellect, or signs that I was well-behaved (she doesn't talk about my meltdowns, but my sister was far more temperamental than I ever was even with meltdowns, and that probably influences her perceptions).

I may just hand her Tony Attwood's book. He described my childhood entirely too well.

I have the same doubts. I can just forget the evidence at times and think, "what is this nonsense about anyway?". At those times Ill approach my gf and ask her if she thinks I'm fooling myself at which point she'll say something like, "if you don't have this, nobody does". Which makes me chuckle but doesnt really convince me of anything. It's only when I sit down and reflect on details and read about it that I return to near certainty.

I bought a copy of the Complete Guide and sent it to my father. I'm planning to do the same for my mom this week. What I really want in the latter case is more detail. Things she might remember that I no longer recall.

I often don't feel aspie and I feel very normal. I don't ask about it anymore because I don't need to be reminded. Last time I was reminded of having it was when I went to my childbirth class and then afterwards when we went grocery shopping, he told me I kept taking things literal there and cutting the teacher off and saying things people wouldn't say so that's why people were laughing. Wait, it was this weekend when I got reminded of it. My husband made an abrupt plan and I got stressed out over it and he came up with a plan then, a compromise, so he can still go out and see his family and I can do my thing and then come home and he will head out there and I can come get him the next day. It took me about an hour to adjust.

Here is a big part of my problem:

I wasn't really aware that most of my problems made me different from other people. I assumed other people dealt with the same stuff and were just better at it than I was, or that I was more successful on some occasions than perhaps I thought I was. I did not perceive myself as different in these particular ways.

It's only in the past few months that I've really taken a look at things and seen some of what is different about me, that is like other autistic people and not like NTs. Because of that, I have a lifetime of feeling like I was "normal" and feeling like the things I did were normal.

It's not that I didn't realize I was different, but I think the ways in which I perceived my difference were focused on things more obvious to me, which sometimes including autistic things (such as my interests and talking about them), but sometimes did not.

So now I have all these things that I either a) didn't realize I was doing in the first place or b) did realize, but didn't think it was odd and I keep falling into this thing where, how can I be autistic if I didn't notice? I don't feel any different, so how can any of this be true?

I mean, obviously my anxieties aren't unique at all, and I am glad to hear that they are not, although no one should have to have them at all, ever.

I sometimes doubt my self-diagnosis, but ultimately, my feeling is that I have enough in common with people with AS, that it really makes very little difference. It would be different if there were an actual treatment for AS, but right now there are only coping mechanisms, and those mechanisms really do not care if you actually have AS or if you just have a collection of symptoms that resemble AS.

I do not have the more clear-cut symptoms, such as meltdowns and sensory overload, and there really is nothing that I can do to make myself more clearly autistic, but the symptoms that I do have are very clear cut. I cannot get through a day at work without noticing how odd I am. Every day at lunch, I am reminded how much of an outsider I am. Everybody has their own lunch groups, and I am left alone. I constantly have to fight my current obsessions and interests in order to do my work, even if it is something that I enjoy. Once I do get started on something, it is really difficult to stop. If I do have to talk to someone (and this is a rare occasion), I have to work to make normal eye contact, otherwise my eyes will drift to some random object. I find that certain sounds just make me want to scream. I have repetitive habits that I simply cannot break, and if I try to break them, I am unable to work. It just goes on and on, the little things that separate me from my more normal coworkers.

The other day, my usual bakery was out of something that I wanted. I ended up driving to 4 or 5 bakeries, because I just had to have it. I believe that is not normal behavior. If I do not have AS, I have some combination of symptoms that is so close to AS that the difference is irrelevant.

My sister sometimes talks about me when I was young, and she has some stories about how bright or quirky I was. Many of those stories clearly clearly show autistic traits, but she does not see them. My nephew clearly shows autistic tendencies. I believe that he is an NT, but very borderline. My sister does not see them. Our mother probably has AS. My sister does not see this at all.

Well if I had any doubt it was cast aside by the fact that a minor disturbance in my routine completely made me stop. Not shut down, just stop. I mean I did have a seizure but I was fine until I decided to not watch that TV show that I've been watching for weeks if not months at the same time every day.

I've also noticed by old autistics habits are coming back. My interests are more intense and they really are all I can think about. I suppose it has something to do with being on a lower stimulant dosage.

That's how I felt during and after the party last friday, as well as on the bus ride to Seattle and back again. And today when my niece and sister were trying to talk to me about my other niece's wedding and I couldn't cope with the sound of their voices.

Although, admittedly, at no point did I just stop. That'd probably hold things at bay for a while.

As for the stimulants, I've come across a handful of accounts of medicated autistic ADHDers (children) who apparently showed more autistic traits once medicated, like the ADHD somewhat conceals the autism otherwise. This was all reported by parents, though, so take that for what it's worth.

I wonder if the term autism is a block in your acceptance of it? For my self this is the case because I've been conditioned to think nonverbal and language delays- meltdowns and sensory overloads. Even Aspergers doesn't do it completley for me, though.

I wrestle with this end of it and say to my self, "sure there is something askew here, but I say then it's at least ADD with a mix of hard introversion."
Then I say " well look at the criteria in AS for eye contact( non verbal) and the narrow interests and the' huge amount of time' these thoughts occupy on narrow intersest, hence the isolation from people." Then it shifts to PDD/NOS--it's a chronic tug of war.

I have some objective evidence with this :

But this is still not enough to fully convince me of a suspicion of an ASD.

I never knew autism was popularly seen as nonverbal and language delays until the past few years. The first autistic blog I ever read was by a woman who is nonverbal and until then I didn't know it was possible. Now I keep finding out that so many other people see autism as defined by this and other traits.

The term autism isn't a block for me. It's more like a worry that I'm totally wrong and I'm making excuses even though it really fits me so well. I use autistic to describe myself far more often than I use Asperger's or Aspie or whatever. I just do not like the name "Asperger's," but even that's not a problem either.