How do i know i have any ASpergers???

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Not even the expensive pros know, and I’ve meet with them atleast 5 times now. They put me on Abilify, to help the introverted obsessive social fears and such. These are the doctors at Diablo Behavioral Healthcare in Danville, CA. Which is also where I live at the moment with my parents.

Is there anyway (aside from the tests, which are pending) to know I’m on the right path here.

I have always felt different. I am an Artist. I have never had a real girlfriend and have IMMENSE trouble making and keeping friendships of any kind. I assume the worst of people, that they don’t want to be friends. I have a field of interests (Halloween is the best way to say it). It dorove me into a career in the ARTS (I’m 37 ). I was a clumsy kid, and have injured my left are several times. I talk to myself out loud a lot. People say I mumble or omit the first few syllables wen I speak up. I am a recovering shyguy.

What else? I don’t talk like a robot, but people make fun of my nasally voice. I have trouble with standing up for myself and get picked on (playfully) even at this age.

Chicken or the Egg?? Maybe I just turned out socially f****d up BECAUSE I have never been “in love”. I feel like a fish watching the other fish from outside the bowl. I never seem to fit in, even among other Artists or Goth people. AM I just Love-shy??

Well, you might be loveshy, but then there's your obsessions and talking out loud.

I think your poll is missing some options. I don't think that never having a girlfriend always means you have AS, but on the other hand, I don't question whether or not I have AS.

You should try to find some doctors who specialize in AS. They'll be more likely to diagnose you properly than just regular psychologists/psychiatrists.

I should probably put that I'm not sure. I haven't been diagnosed but I have started the process. I spoke to a professional today who referred me to someone who specializes. Still, I'm very confident based on what I've read of it that this fits with so many of the problems I've had in life, both with staying focused on a task and with social awkwardness.

The main thing that makes me question it is that I feel like I have made such progress in the social arena. I bet if any of you met me in person right now, you'd say no way-- not AS. But my social development was so late in life (I'm 38) and so labored on my part and it feels to me that I learned it very formulaically. I have a friend that I met in L.A. 8 years ago who has taken me out and given me the courage to go into situations I'd probably just avoid 99% of the time. I ask him questions about how I'm supposed to act. I pay very close attention to my mannerisms, my voice, how long I'm talking, what I'm talking about, whether it's interesting to the other person etc. and I still have occasional major slip-ups that I wouldn't even know were bad except that I see this look on people's faces and get that sinking feeling like "Crap. I just screwed that up." and I immediately know that I just blew it and that person thinks I'm a weirdo. I also can't seem to maintain any sort of intimacy. I can now make lots of shallow friends but that's about it. So in that sense, I feel I made progress and common social situations have been second nature and easier, but they are still definately not intuitive like they are with NTs.

I'm not sure whether people with AS tend to think the worst of people... I personally (diagnosed moderate AS) tend to think the best of them. That's what makes us so vulnerable to bullies, that and our inability to read social signals...

But I suppose if you've been bullied by your own gender and rejected by the opposite gender long enough, you might easily lose your "innocence" and automatically think the worst of people.

Many people who have never had a date do not have AS. One of my very-NT friends has gone on two dates total; at age 20 she is still waiting for "the right guy" and hasn't found him yet. And then there are the asexuals, who either don't date or look for platonic relationships... There are a lot of reasons why people might not be very good at romance; AS is only one of them.

Do you have Asperger's? It's possible; your shyness and obsessive interests point towards it. But there could be other causes, too--best thing to do is make a careful inventory of what's holding you back, and find solutions to those problems... a diagnosis (a word that describes a particular set of personality traits), whether it's AS or something else, may help you because when you have a known problem, there are known ways to help that problem. Naturally a psychiatrist/psychologist/special-ed person will be helpful in finding both the problems and the solution.

BTW--Asperger's, as well as many other non-typical brain configurations, comes with positive characteristics too. Find out what they are for you--they'll be assets in your journey towards a better, happier you.

T
Sorry about the poll. I guess I'm showing my neubieness..ess. AS for the docs, they are VERY specialized(Diablo Behavioural Healthcare). That's my whole point. They still can't say for sure yet. I need to take the tests, and they're expensive. It's all expensive. I don't know if i have it but I feel like I must after reading so much online about it. And I'm just desperate for help.

Ofcourse loveshyness does not equal AS, but many loveshys are AS. Callista has some great points, but I don't think a 20 year old girl who has only dated twice is so unusual. Life is long and 20 is YOUNG. Also, there's WAY too many double standards between men and women regarding dating and love for that to be a fair comparison. Men are supposed to do the pursuing! I've always DEEPLY resented that. But i digress... How long should I see these docs before I expect a real diagnoses??

I am with you on all this. I HAVE made great progress socially over the years, and this is all long before I ever heard of AS. BUt making and keeping friends still illudes me, as does a girlfriend, ofcourse. You don't know how lucky you are to have met a freind who would help you out like that. Most guys I've known never seems to come close to getting why I'm so socially afraid. My greatest wish has been for a long time to meet a regular guy who has his mojo working on women and is willing to help me. I can barely make ANY f*****g friends.

Bingo. Same here. It's endlessly frustrating that I somehow seem to manage to sabotage my friendships beyond just that very shallow level. Sometimes I've done it conciously and I suspect that stems from me being paranoid about people because I don't understand their motivations and I end up ascribing my own paranoidal motivations to them.

A few years ago, I wrote a letter to some of my most long-term friends and said that a recent falling out was my fault because I had too high expectations of them as friends. It was a really insulting letter that basically said I valued their friendship more than they valued mine and that I was lowering my expectations (and their status in my book). *sigh* The falling out had to do with me not understanding their actions and a friend had a long and frustrating discussion with me trying to get me to express how I feel and I just kept saying things like I was baffled or confused and that I was hurting because I didn't understand what they were doing. He said "No, how do you FEEL?!" I was so confused and he was never happy with my answers and his frustration just kept escalating. Finally he asked me "Aren't you ANGRY?!" and I said "no". That just seemed to really bother him. He's a psychologist and I think he started off thinking he knew exactly what my problem was. But then I started re-analyzing everything that happened in the context that I was supposed to be angry and then I DID finally start to feel angry and I wrote that nasty letter to my friends.

Woh, I just realized I've done something similar many times to "so called friends". Hell yeah. I wrote dark emails that were probably more confusing to them than insulting, but the goal was the same: To prove my paranoid delusions that they valued me less than I valued them. This is something that happens alot (the feeling). But I'm kinda negative sometimes and when i make a close friend (I tend to trust easily and will dump alot of deep, personal stuff fairly quickly), they're alway previe to the worst of my thoughts, namely fears of women and social success. Nobody likes a nego.

Then again, I probably make up alot of the malcontentness in my own mind. I just think if someone wants to be your friend they should call you from time to time, right? Just to say, "Let's go see a movie or whatever" ALot of these people who I "insulted" with depressing emails didn't do that often at all. "Confused to thier intentions" is not what I'd call my feeling, or even angry, just needing a friendship to look like something I can call a friendship. Perhaps I always expected too much from these people. I expect even more from women I date, becasue they always mean SO MUCH to me.

So then, does this mean I have AS, or am I just f@@king paranoid?! This confusion between NTs and Aspies seeems to be an earmark of the diagnosis. Don't it??

I did practically the same thing to one of my friends after I was super disappointed that she failed to be there for me on several occasions. She had a lot of other friends and I had very few, and they seemed to mean more to me than most people's friends do to them. I was like, I had all these high expectations and now I realize that you aren't goign to fufill them and so I am adjusting my expectations, I'm not goign to expect you to come up to this level anymore, or something like that. I realized later that I probably totally insulted her. I was really hurt and she couldnt really understand why I would be so hurt, or should wouldnt admit it if she did. I think I lose a lot of friends by demanding to know why they are acting the way they are, and for sure I'm told I have too high expectations... I would feel like I was putting so much more effort and value on the relationship than they were. My expectations don't seem that high to me... how can you trust somebody to be friends if they aren't honest with you and you can't rely on them? . I still wish I hadn't been so demanding though... maybe we'd still be friends.