I don't know if I have autism or not

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Hey everyone, I just joined this site to find out more about autism/aspergers and if I have it. I've always felt different than others and been a shy person normally. When I was younger I use to be obsessed with GI joes and my mom said I would play with them for hours she also said I would build things with blocks and alot of other things which include making castles out of my mash potatoes. I was held back in kindergarten because I wouldn't talk or play with any of the other students. In middle school I was actually one of the popular kids, high school came and changed everything. Most of the people I knew went to a different school and I was pretty much left alone and I guess without them I felt lost. Anyways, after I graduated high school I isolated myself from society/people for two and a half years and spent most of my time online for 12+ hours a day which obviously isn't going to help matters.

I'm going to try and explain how I feel, when I'm alone my mind is at ease and I can think clearly, but if anyone is around my brain switches to this other mode, here's an example. My sisters had their friends over the other day and when it was time to eat, I was frozen and my mind feels crazy, I can't even function correctly and I think they are judging me (also noticed the time feels a lot slower when I'm in these situations), I couldn't even eat my food...10 minutes later, after they're done/gone, I finally eat and relax my mind. Around certain people I feel "free" which include my mom/brother/grandparents (my mom always asks why can I talk to her like that but not others) and that's about it, yeah I don't talk to my sisters. Mainly because around girls I feel even more subconscious than usual and even though they're family, I still don't.

My dad died three weeks ago and it was sort of a reality check, I can't keep living this way. I'm always depressed and most days I will envision myself getting extremely hurt or dying. I have changed my diet, exercise and do yoga since he died and plan to keep this up for the rest of my life since it helps me feel more confident/energetic. I've always been a really skinny guy because I didn't really care how I looked, but now I'm sick and tired of always being alone. Oh, one more thing, at his funeral I couldn't cry but when we're driving home I put my head down and sob quietly.

I was diagnosed with depression in high school from a school counselor, but I can't help but wonder if that was the wrong diagnosis and if I really have social phobia/autism/aspergers, what do you think? =/

Hi, welcome!

I don't think the information in your post is enough to give a good idea of whether you have autism/Asperger's or not.

You list "social phobia/autism/asperger's" in a way that makes it sound as if they're interchangeable. Social phobia/social anxiety is actually quite different from autism/Asperger's; there are definitely people who have both autism/Asperger's and social anxiety, but there are also people who have autism/Asperger's without social anxiety and people who have social anxiety without autism/Asperger's. Being afraid that people are judging you sounds like social anxiety to me.

It definitely sounds like you have more than just depression going on; I don't think being unable to talk around most people is typical of depression. It's good that you're trying to figure out what that something else is. If you stick around here longer and see how your experience compares to that of other people here, it might help you get an idea about whether autism/Asperger's is part of what's going on with you.

One of the things that really helped me to conclude that I had AS rather than social anxiety was to determine where my social anxiety was coming from. I was told all my life that I was shy and it just never seemed to fit me properly. It explained why I didn't make friends well and didn't want to make friends as much as other people, but I just never felt like a shy person. After all, I could get up on stage in front of an audience and sing and dance. I could stand up in class and give presentations, I could hold debates with people, even when I was on the losing side. That's not what shy people were supposed to be like. I was bookish and I was quiet but the rest of the description didn't fit.

Eventually it occurred to me that I was shy so much as I was reserved. I was never scared in social situation, but I was often confused and unsure of what the "right" thing to do was. Which lead me to AS.

Like someone before me said, AS and social anxiety are very different even though superficially they may seem similar. I've done some research on the subject myself, and though I am by no means an expert on the subject I'd like to tell you what I've learned. (Key text in bold for emphasis because I am wordy as hell.)

First, you should know that people with AS can also suffer from social anxiety, but the root of the problem is distinct. What I mean is that people with AS often have social anxiety BECAUSE of their Asperger's, not alongside it. People with AS have often had a history of social difficulties. They've often been bullied and taken advantage of. This can often lead to those with AS becoming even more socially withdrawn. It's a "once bitten, twice shy" kind of situation. Repeated hurts lead to a fear of all social interaction.

However, people with AS can experience anxiety in social situations in a way that is completely unrelated to social anxiety. (Note: When I use the term "social anxiety" here I mean it in the sense of the same kind of social anxiety that those with social anxiety disorder would have.) Social situations for people with AS are more than just people and conversations. It's sights and sounds and places and situations. On top of the difficulties that people with AS have just in normal conversation, anxiety can be produced by being in an unfamiliar environment or sudden changes in plans or expectations. People with AS like to have a certain amount of control on their environment, so while a day out with friends at restaurant A might not be an issue, if those friends suddenly decide to go to restaurant B or even take another person's car, this can lead to anxiety. Change is very often not well received by a person with AS. They like knowing exactly what the game plan is and exactly what is expected of them before they are required to attend a social situation. Sensory issues can also play a major role in AS anxiety. Things that may be only minor irritations to a normal person can be overwhelming or even painful to a person with AS. Smells can make you physically ill, texture issues can make food inedible or chairs unbearable, lights can be so intense they're painful or cause headaches, background noise that others find easy to filer out can become a massive roaring in the individual's ears that keeps them from being able to keep up with a conversation with people right beside them.

And it should also be noted that while it's not uncommon for people with AS to suffer from social anxiety, most people with social anxiety do not have AS. The root problems are completely difficult. Social anxiety stems from a fear of being judged by others. People with social anxiety feel as if an unwelcome spotlight is always on them when they have even the slightest bit of attention turned their way. A fear of rejection is paramount in their daily life. They often ruminate on recent conversations, wondering what they might have done wrong or what the other person thought about them. I'm not an expert on social anxiety and how it manifests, but this page might be helpful to you: http://www.socialphobia.org/whatis.html#whatis1 I agree with Cassia, what you said about feeling constantly "judged" in social situations does sound like social anxiety would be something worth you looking into. This looks to be a decent self-test for SA as well: http://www.socialanxietysupport.com/disorder/liebowitz/

Also, you should be aware that Asperger's is more than difficulty in making and keeping relationships with others. People on the spectrum face many difficulties in their daily life that go beyond that. This is the DMS diagnostic criteria for AS:

As you can see from this list, it's more than just having trouble with social situations.

These are a couple of questions that helped me determine that I had AS rather than social anxiety:

Do you have difficulty with non-verbal communication? This can be manifest in many different ways. One of the most common areas is lack of eye-contact. NOTE: People with SAD often note having poor eye-contact. The difference is (I believe) that people with social anxiety are afraid to look others in the eye while people with AS find it unnatural to look others in the eye. Both experience anxiety when made to look at someone directly. In order to determine where you fall (if you experience a lack of eye-contact), it might be helpful for you to note where your eyes naturally gravitate when you are watching a television program or a movie. Do you look movie characters in the eye? Many people with AS report that it is more natural for them to focus on a character's mouth or nose when watching television. This is pure speculation on my part, but I would assume that a person with SA would have no difficulty making eye-contact with a TV character. Note your behavior over a period of time, not just in one sitting, and see what is more natural for you.

But non-verbal communication is more than just eye-contact. It's about giving off and receiving non-verbal communication. People with AS often come off as aloof or cold unintentionally. People with AS often have limited facial expressions and frequently appear serious despite the fact that many people with AS have very strong emotions. Body posture is also usually awkward to some degree. On the receiving end, people with AS have a marked difficulty interpreting the facial expressions in others. This is something that many people may not recognize they have a difficulty in, so even if you think you may not have this issue, this test could give you interesting results: http://glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/Faces/EyesTest.aspx Again, I am no expert on the subject, but this is how I took the test. I ignored the answers and focused on the picture. I formed my own opinion of the picture's emotional state, and then I looked at the answer to find the one that best fit my interpretation. Here's where this test gets interesting: I took this test myself and then I made several people in my family take it, including my younger sister and two of her friends. Thanks to my sister's aggravating habit of talking to herself, I stumbled across an interesting find. When I took the test, I got very vague impressions from the pictures. I judged the slant of the eyebrows and determined that "this one might be smiling" or "that one is definitely not smiling." I had an incredibly limited focus, and I found the answers to be ridiculous. When my sister took the test, she saw "a woman who was looking at a hot, shirtless guy across the street." It has been my conclusion from this and from listening to others here that when average people look at these pictures their minds "fill in the blanks." They create stories and substitute personalities in the images, while a person with AS judges the empirical data and focuses on the details to draw a conclusion.

Do you have a special interest? One of the most noticeable elements of AS is that people with AS often have very strong obsessions in limited areas. The common examples you'll see of this if you do any research is kids with AS who are obsessed with batteries or washing machines or train tables, but obsessive interests can also be things like ponies or video games or physics, etc. Many average people have strong interests, but what separates those interests from "special interests" is intensity. Any kid can love Harry Potter, but a kid with AS who loves Harry Potter will read the same seven books over and over. The obsessions are so big they seem to take over the individual's life, to some degree. Intense focus is also commonly associated with this interest. For a person with AS, it's not uncommon to spend several hours at a time devoted to this special interest, often to the exclusion of other activities such as eating, sleeping, and socializing.

Are you resistant to change and prefer routine to spontaneity? People with AS are, as I previously wrote about, resistant to change and persist in routine.

There are also a variety of other symptoms that people with AS may suffer from, including stimming (stereotypic movements such as hand-flapping and a variety of others that people on the spectrum tend to do when excited or anxious), literal interpretation of figurative language or assigned tasks, an atypical adherence to accepted rules of hygiene, difficulty with executive function (starting/finishing tasks, breaking large tasks down into smaller ones), difficulty remembering or recognizing people's faces, a level of androgyny that tends to manifest in males as "gentleness" (you'll have to do you're own research into that one, I know more about the female end of things), difficulty controlling one's temper (especially seen in males), poor motor control, narrow food interests (tend to eat the same foods frequently), difficulty with small-talk (conversation without a clear focus or point), stilted or formal speech, lack of common sense, or difficulty learning in lecture-based classes.

And even that isn't an extensive list. And As is a spectrum disorder, meaning that not everybody has all the same symptoms and not everyone experiences the symptoms to the same intensity. It's diagnosed based on a combination of symptoms that have to exist in a way that is clinically significant. Bottom line, if any of this gets you thinking you need to go out and start doing your own research.