ASD or schizophrenia?

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Is it possible to be thought to have an ASD but have it be something like paranoid schizophrenia? Can you be a mild paranoid schizo? My family is full of all sorts of things. I have a sociopathic uncle, a schizophrenic aunt, who knows what my grandma was, and a bunch of people on the spectrum, including my brother. My family is all around considered eccentric and weird.
I saw a psychologist back in April/May to see about getting a possible ASD diagnosis, but life happened and we left it with that I have ASD tendencies. The way she described me sounded like the DSM5. I get by in social situations, but they drain me and I can't always figure people out. But I also have obsessive intrusive psychotic thoughts, anxiety and paranoia. I don't really hear things that aren't there, though if I'm alone and it's quiet I feel like I do and it makes the paranoia much worse.
When I was maybe 10, I felt like there were these two guys out to get me. Imaginary people, and I knew that, but it still caused me fear/anxiety. If I feel like something/someone is following me, I freak out. I have nightmares about being found and caught, and it's the most terrifying feeling ever.
I'm sure it's possible to have ASD and paranoia too, but I'm wondering what other people's experiences are with this.

I pretty sure you can have both, but I recently read an article by a psychiatrist hypothesizing that the autistic brain protects one from psychosis.

I think that depends on the features of the ASD. If you have a kind of atypical ASD, one often accompanied by a speech delay in which the child did try to make up for the lack of speech through gestures, etc., in which affect and anxiety dysregulation and problems with thought processes are also significantly present from an early age, then you actually have a much greater risk for psychosis.

This article touches on it and mentions a study in which a majority of children with that type of ASD develop psychosis by adulthood.

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/autism/ ... izophrenia

This goes into the characteristics of the speech delay nearly always present in this type of ASD:

http://media.wix.com/ugd/e11630_4e16d77 ... ee0a16.pdf

My psychotic thoughts have been with me for as long as I can remember. The earliest dream I can remember was one when I was about 4, and in the dream I had just killed a girl and dragged her body through a forest to a restroom so I could wash up. When I looked up into the mirror, I saw her face staring back at me.
My dreams are possibly a cause of my anxiety/paranoia, as they're always full of fear and death, and trying not to get caught.

As far as I've been told, I didn't have any speech delays.

My immediate family wasn't loaded with psychological illness, as far as I know. I'd say my mother had Narcissistic or Histrionic PD, and there was substance abuse on both sides, but nothing like schizophrenia, sociopathy or BPD. That's probably why I'm not accepted as being on the spectrum. There are no other examples and I'm the only one.

When I went to be re-diagnosed as an adult, the neuropsychologist was wavering back and forth between Aspergers and Disorganized Schizophrenia while all of the tests were still going on and being scored (it was a long process). She ended up confidently saying Aspergers.

I was previously diagnosed with severe ADHD as a young child and a host of other things along the way. As a child, I was slightly speech delayed (began speaking at age 2, but only with echolalia) and had what I believe were lucid hallucinations (I tested as having an eidetic memory at age 4 which I have since outgrown, I believe the two "abilities" were connected). I am interested in reading those links the other poster has posted.

Anyway, I brought up my experience being diagnosed to say there can be a lot of crossover between schizophrenia and Aspergers, *particularly* with the negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

Good luck.

As a young child, I had aberrant speech development and did not put two words together until I was 3 or 4. Even into Kindergarten, the aberrant speech development was still prominent and the impression I got from others is that when I was like 4, I would point at things and utter nonsense sounds. Apparently, in Kindergarten I would jabber a lot and would often stick all the words in the wrong places and stuff. I seemed to have normal body language and eye contact development, though other aspects of my non-verbal communication, such as lack of intonation and lack of modulation seemed impaired. I was noted to be of normal intelligence, but to have problems processing information and with my thought processes, such as becoming easily confused, and controlling my emotions and anxiety. My behavior tended to be very disruptive, but I also engaged in internalizing behaviors like self-loathing and severe anxiety.

I did well in school at first, but as I moved into middle school, I found the coursework increasingly difficult and I'd often get burned out by it, feeling better when I did something else. During this period my behavior grew increasingly disrupted, probably partly due to wanting to fit in with the "cool kids" and partly due to frustration from my coursework. At 14, I developed what we now recognize was severe psychosis, and talking with my psychiatrist, it seems he considered whether I had actually developed schizophrenia, but he wasn't sure if I had crossed the line yet, so he diagnosed me with schizotypal personality disorder, comorbid with Asperger syndrome--which technically shouldn't have been diagnosed because of the speech delay. After a 6-month hospitalization and receiving a lot of treatment and support I made a major rebound and was able to go a normal school about a year after the psychotic break and was able to function actually. My functioning massively improved. I've had psychotic-like symptoms since then, but they were not enough to count as full-blown psychosis.

when I was a schoolkid, the school shrinks had me pegged variously as schizoid and schizotypal, and I didn't get the AS dx until adulthood. but even without that, the schizo stuff explains a lot of why I am the way I am.

Poor social skills can be part of schizophrenia, or they can be part of AS. Having AS does not exclude you from being psychotic.

how well I know that.

We still have a ways to go in understanding mental conditions. I've sorely confused the psychologist, the psychiatrist doesn't bother with me and so I just get to talk to the therapist, who doesn't really know what's going on either. I'm apparently an enigma. The psychologist says that I confuse her because I am both logical and creative, and I somehow made no sense on the intelligence test, so we don't even know what my IQ is. I feel like I need to find new doctors.