Does this sound like Aspergers or not?

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TheWizardofCalculus – sorry this has taken me a while to post; my original reply draft contained too many embarrassingly long tangential answers so I have cut them down:

B.) The following questions will be somewhat helpful.

-- You mentioned that you do fine in 1-on-1 conversations, although you mentioned some mild eye-gazing problems. How do you do in large groups? Ignoring even the noise issues, how do you feel about social gathering places, like parties, concerts, large restaurants, et cetera?

I do not do well socialising in large groups. Over the years I have pushed myself to try to get better at large groups or even a small group – but I always end up feeling very lonely and can’t seem to say much (unless someone in the group approaches me and starts talking to me one to one about something interesting and other people don’t interrupt – then I am quite talkative). But generally I feel incredibly awkward for hours until I finally let myself go home feeling mentally exhausted and disappointed. I think I am okay at places like parties, concerts etc as long as I go with a friend and we stick together all night – e.g. In the past I have enjoyed clubbing, but only as a pair, not as a group.


-- As a child, did you have problems making friends or understanding the "unwritten rules"/social conventions?

I think this is particularly an area that throws doubt on Aspergers regarding myself, as I think in the criteria it is expected that symptoms show themselves as a child? I don’t remember having any problems making friends or even feeling ‘different’ before I was 11 years old. Before I was 11, I was at a really friendly small school. There I had one best friend who I was pretty inseparable from – we were also part of a bigger group of around 6 friends but whereas the others girls in the group would ‘swap’ best friends frequently, my best friend was stable. However when I was 11 we moved to a big school; my best friend found new friends and didn’t hang out with me anymore, and from then on I struggled to speak or make any new friends. When I did try to speak to people I’d make up lists of things to say in my head, before I opened my mouth, like a script, but of course then it always felt like such hard work to communicate, and would fizzle out quickly as of course my script couldn’t predict their response, so mostly I’d just stay quiet. It’s like I couldn’t think of speech spontaneously when not with somebody I already knew well. However there was an exception to this: one of the 6 girls from my old school still looked out for me, and in breaks we’d go for walks, then I could speak to her fine. But when we were back to the group of new friends she’d made at this school, I’d mainly just stand their awkwardly.

As for ‘understanding “unwritten rules” / social conventions’ – what exactly does that mean? I suspect I have never had problems knowing how to ‘act’ appropriately in social situations as no one has ever pointed out to me that I am acting wrong or that I am accidently causing offence etc. It depends what is meant by ‘understanding’, as many ‘unwritten rules” I may find odd or nonsensical but I know they exist and how to go along with them, whereas I’m guessing some people may not understand enough to know which unwritten rules are there until they are pointed out?

-- Is this exacerbated when there are more people around you or does it not really matter? I don’t think it matters.

-- Do you feel like you have to consciously develop and maintain a sociable appearance? It may have gotten easier to do over time, think back to childhood or adolescence.

Before I was 11, I don’t think so, after I was 11 yes, gradually from around 15 it has got easier over time but it does still exhaust me trying to keep it up.

-- Do you offend people or annoy people by being too blunt, too "to the point", or too honest? No

-- Do you ever zone out, very intensely? Yes to zoning out, although the relative intensity I’m not sure about.

-- Do you find that you regularly engage in repeated motor movements (like pacing, rocking back and forth, rolling back and forth), likely with your hands and could include an object (such as twirling an object, wiggling your fingers, etc), or other sensory input (such as smelling something, touching a blanket, making a repeated or continuous noise), and that these repeated motor movements or sensory inputs help calm you down or make you excited/happy? Alternatively, do they help you zone out very intensely, as if you're going to "your own world"?

I pace a lot, usually when anxious, so I guess that probably helps with calming. I also rock on the floor sometimes with my ears covered if I’m trying to fight off a meltdown/rage/panic.

-- Do you ever have problems determining what emotion someone is displaying? I don’t think so.

-- Do you frequently think "I wish that [the person you're talking to] would start talking about something interesting, like [insert something you find interesting]." while in a conversation with a person? Yes

-- Do you like to systematize things? Does simply ordering things or creating categories for things feel "soothing"? Yes

-- Have people ever told you that you're talking too much about a single subject? Or do you get annoyed when people change the subject and you weren't expecting them to?

Nobody has told me I’m talking ‘too much’ about a single subject, however my boyfriend has observed that I often go on and on about a single subject when talking to him, or rather when I’m ‘monologue-ing’ while he’s in the room as it turns into that when understandably he starts doing other things while partly listening. But he doesn’t see it as ‘too much’ as long as he doesn’t have to listen to every single thing I say and can just reply to the gist of it. It’s as though I know that would probably get on people’s nerves in general so I am probably quieter in most situations than I would naturally be if I felt like I wouldn’t come across as weird or annoying if I spoke in my natural way, therefore I don’t think many people would know I have a tendency to do that as generally I am not seen as a person that would ever ‘talk too much’ about anything No to the second question.

-- Do you tend to get annoyed at people when you feel that they aren't being "specific enough"? Yes.

-- When your friends come to you with problems, do you often find yourself attentively listening to them to let them vent or do you find that you are more prone to attempting to help "solve" their problems by creating solutions? Probably more listening to them vent.

-- Are you irritated by small talk or other forms talking that don't strictly relate to relaying information? Yes

-- That one might be harder to answer, so I'll also ask the following: does socialization seem to cause you to lose a lot of energy, even more so than any fellow introvert friends? Yes

-- Do you have dark rings around your eyes, independent of how much sleep that you have? No


-- A "yes" or "no" will be sufficient for each of the following: Have you ever been diagnosed with any ADHD/ADHD-PI/ADD? Have you ever been diagnosed with any GI tract problem (e.g. GERD, IBS, Krohn's disease, Celiac's disease) or have any re-occurring GI tract problems that sometimes require medication (e.g. constipation)? I understand that this is a personal question, but, again, just a "yes" or "no" will suffice. No.


C.) Take the "Aspie Quiz", the AQ quiz, and/or the EQ quiz. The EQ, I would say, is the least important, but it can be diagnostically important.

AQ result was 32
Aspie score on ‘aspie quiz’ was 106
I take it these are very ‘borderline’ scores?

I would note that these are the criteria for the DSM IV, which went out of date last May. The current DSM, number 5, includes traits such as: restricted/repetitive patterns of behaviour (I think your need to be watching the same show every time you eat qualifies, see if you can think of any similar examples of that type of behaviour in your life), stereotyped or repetitive motor movements (do you have any odd gestures/verbalizations that others find strange, such as rocking, flapping, using the quotations you collect in place of your own words, etc.?), insistence on sameness/inflexible need for routines (how structured is your life? Do you have to stick to a behavioural pattern to manage your day to day activities or can you change up your plans on a dime?), highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (do you have a hobby that you are an expert at or something you like to study and discuss with others almost to the exclusion of everything else?), and hyper or hyposensitivity to stimuli (do "normal" sounds like vaccuums, traffic, blenders, etc. bother you or cause you pain, do you have to wear sunglasses in odd places because lights are too bright, do you have a restricted "dress code" due to intolerace to specific types of fabric/clothing etc.?) Note, of the symptoms I described, you only need two to qualify for a DSM V diagnosis, however, the DSM IV traits you mention are all still part of criterion A for the DSM V, and are still required, either presently, or for a considerable period throughout your history (to account for adults having adapted their skills) to qualify for diagnosis. As far as the "sharing enjoyment and pointing out things of interest to other people" aspect, I believe that primarily applies to small children, of whom the neurotypicals frequently point out things of interest to others, while the autistics do not. Older aspie children and adults can be the opposite, bringing up their special, "highly restricted, fixated" interest in conversation very frequently. Ultimately your claim to or rejection of autism is up to you. As you are in the UK, you are going to need to bring your GP strong evidence to back up your AS suspicion, as well as the ways by which it impedes your current functioning, because, as I understand it, the NHS doesn't like handing out evaluations unless they think they're necessary because they are forever low on funding (at least that's what I gathered from a recent poster on a different thread who lives in the UK.)

If you want a better idea, below is a link to one of the most comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date autism tests currently available online, called the Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale - Revised (RAADS-R). And if you're a stickler for where you get your information from like me, below that is a link to the journal article that describes the test and the reason for its accuracy in detail.

http://www.aspietests.org/
http://link.springer.com/article/10.100 ... 010-1133-5

It is important to note that the DSM specifies that "autistic symptoms may not become apparent until social expectations exceed the individual's capacity to engage," so it may be that you were in the ideal environment until the age of 11 to the point where none of your symptoms showed, because all of the social interaction was within the reach of your understanding. Once you got older however, things became more complicated, and your aspie symptoms may have emerged as a result. Just a thought.

StarTrekker – Thankyou for your feedback and information, especially regarding the clarification that DSM IV is the old criteria (I think I had got confused and thought the roman numeral IV meant 5, but I have looked up now that V means 5 and found the new criteria ). Oh also thanks for the (RAADS-R) link and article explaining it - I shall look into that.

restricted/repetitive patterns of behaviour (I think your need to be watching the same show every time you eat qualifies, see if you can think of any similar examples of that type of behaviour in your life),

Hmm, I think this one is hard because the only restricted/repetitive patterns of behaviour I can think of in my life are to do with food, so could be explained by my eating disorder. Although I have read that some people with Asperger’s do develop restricted/repetitive eating patterns for the very reason that it feels safely restrictive/repetitive/rule-bound At the moment my eating isn’t as rigid and structured as it was in the past, however I think this is only because I’ve always been pushed by my parents and professionals to get rid of the rigidity. I understand why – to make living and socialising more flexible so it doesn’t have to revolve around my eating rituals. However the result of me letting go of this is my anxiety around food is now pretty horrendous, much worse than it was when I was rigid, and without sticking to my rules there is chaos. I also struggle to keep my weight healthy when I am not eating the exact same thing every day, because sticking to my food plan ensured that I wouldn’t under-eat too dramatically. Ah, anyway, examples in addition to the TV programme one:

1. When I was younger I had developed a way around my fear of food; I had a ritual before every meal where first someone had to tell me it was time for a meal, then I had to run up and down the hall and leap so many times, then I had to do some jumps. Then I would stand there unable to initiate eating until the person caring for me told me to sit down. Then I would have to go through the verbal exchange of ‘do I have to?’, ‘yes, you have to’. I would repeat this several times, more times if I was extra scared that day. However when I was 13 I was inpatient in a unit for quite a while so during that time, the people caring for me would of course change every few hours, and if a nurse came on who didn’t know my rules, or even the rules of my care plan, Bedlam would occur. So if they messed up the ‘do I have to’ exchange, and said something like ‘well, I guess you don’t have to, I can’t make you eat’ – I would panic and ‘meltdown’ ending up in restraint. I also would meltdown if a nurse didn’t go along with my care plan and say tried to replace semi-skimmed milk with full fat milk, when the agreement was that I only had to have semi-skimmed milk as long as I ate everything on my care plan. I know the ED fear of fat was partly to do with that, however I think there was more to it than that; that the very act of changing the rules of what I had to eat, I couldn’t deal with, because I had developed a way of battling the ED voice by the way of rules. For example if the diet they gave me was higher fat yet they stuck to all the rules, I would probably have found that easier to eat than a lower fat diet where they kept changing the rules.

2. When I came out of hospital, I slowly replaced my rituals with more socially acceptable ‘discreet’ rituals. For example, instead of running and leaping before every meal, when I was called for a meal I would have to do a bridge? with my body (like bending my body backwards into a gymnastics move – also sometimes referred to as a crab? haha) to make me feel calmer to face the meal. I could do this in private so no one could see or hear, but if I was in a situation where I couldn’t do it without people seeing, I would get extremely distressed again.

3. Oh one that isn’t always food-related that I’d forgotten I still do now (I think a lot of things I do I have begun to see as ‘normal’ as they are normal to me or rather, just a normal every day struggle to me). But I have massive anxiety problems when buying things from shops and with every item will go through the ritual of checking each one on the shelf for the ‘right one’ even though they are ‘identical’. Well they’re not identical, but I guess normal people would think they are and shake their heads in despair. My boyfriend helps me see the funny side and one day when he had seen me so painstakingly pick out ‘the right apple’ from the shop, when we got home he offered my apple to someone else for a joke. My first instinct was panic, but then I saw he was joking and wasn’t actually going to give away my apple (he knew the person he asked wouldn’t want the apple), I managed to see the funny side too – that he knew how ‘my apple’ couldn’t just be replaced with another apple, and that it was important that no one took my apple

stereotyped or repetitive motor movements (do you have any odd gestures/verbalizations that others find strange, such as rocking, flapping, using the quotations you collect in place of your own words


I don’t think I have odd gestures that I know of, except rocking but that is only sometimes, when I am fighting off a meltdown. Nope I don’t use my quotations in place of my own words verbally. I think I more so use my quotations when writing my thoughts down, like further illustrating what I mean with a quote. I usually can’t remember the quotes word for word but know where each one is on my computer so dig it out to copy and paste, and analyse it in relation to my more recent thought, but that I keep quite private. However regarding ‘odd verbalizations’, I thought it was just a quirk of mine but people often seem to find how I word things amusing, as they say it is an ‘odd but interesting way of putting it’ or they have to question what I say as at first it sounds random and nonsensical to them – but on asking me to explain it they can then sometimes understand that it actually wasn’t random and can see where it came from. I used to get embarrassed about that but now I have realised that if I am unintentionally being entertaining, maybe it’s a good thing – at least it isn’t boring people

insistence on sameness/inflexible need for routines (how structured is your life? Do you have to stick to a behavioural pattern to manage your day to day activities or can you change up your plans on a dime?),

This is a bit hard to answer because there is a.) what I feel comfortable with and what reduces my anxiety and b.) what the rest of the world around me seems to want and therefore I try to conform to and as a result my mental health seems to have got even worse. So my life is nowhere near as structured as it used to be, or as structured as I would like it to be. If someone changes plans or my day plan goes ‘wrong’, my first reaction is pure panic and wanting to smash my head on the wall. However I tend to take a deep breath and talk myself through the change and reassure myself that it’s ‘okay’. I also analyse to try to see the ‘good’ in the change – I realise that say ‘this conversation I liked’ wouldn’t have happened if my day hadn’t been in my mind ‘screwed up’. So I try to turn the screw up I perceive, into goodness, but it takes a lot of exhausting hard work in my mind to do this.

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (do you have a hobby that you are an expert at or something you like to study and discuss with others almost to the exclusion of everything else?),

I think I have two hobbies: one is dancing, doing dancing, looking it up, watching videos of it for technique inspiration – I think the intensity of this hobby is normal. The other of course would be my quotation recording of mainly psychology-type books and thought book writing, if this is one hobby or two, I’m not sure. I suspect this second hobby ‘could’ be abnormal in intensity or focus. However as I mentioned above, I tend to keep it private; therefore I do not tend to ‘discuss it with others almost to the exclusion of everything else’. Reasons for me keeping it private are 1. I get the feeling people might think it was a bit ‘weird’. And 2. I don’t like verbal conflict, especially in an area I have researched A LOT, because I can’t formulate arguments or explain my ideas very well in verbal conversation. So if I tried to discuss my ‘special interest’ with someone and they stated their opinions and tried to challenge me on any of it, I would get very wound up and possibly meltdown because I am frustrated at not being able to explain myself verbally. Whereas if I could have the debate via writing, I would be much less likely to get distressed. I also have problems with the way a lot of people seem to argue – if someone disagrees with me I want them to explain exactly why they think my idea/opinion is wrong. However instead they tend to avoid explaining that and use the force of their voice to keep making vague statements, getting drastically unrelated to the original point, with the insistence that I’m ‘just wrong’, which makes me feel intellectually trapped unable to get my point across because when they respond they don’t seemed to have listened properly to what I said. So, I tend to avoid any of that by just keeping quiet, even if a topic I am interested in comes up in conversation, unless I can monologue

and hyper or hyposensitivity to stimuli (do "normal" sounds like vaccuums, traffic, blenders, etc. bother you or cause you pain, do you have to wear sunglasses in odd places because lights are too bright, do you have a restricted "dress code" due to intolerace to specific types of fabric/clothing etc.?)

Yes ‘normal’ sounds do seem to cause me abnormal distress, especially hoovers; anything loud and kind of out of my direct control it seems. However also quieter sounds can curiously distress me – e.g. if I go to a library to study and I can hear a pen repetitively tapping or someone’s music playing distantly through their ear phones, it can get to the point I am so distressed, feeling about to explode, so have to leave. I think it is the persistence of the sound then that gets to me, rather than the volume. I don’t think I have problems with lights being too bright. I don’t think my dress code is noticeably that restrictive at first glance, however for as long as I can remember I have had a problem with sleeves, even short sleeves – I tend to always wear a strappy vest top. I am okay with jumpers lose on top of my strappy top, but the tightness around my arms from a sleeve directly on my skin I can’t handle. I also used to get very upset about the school uniform when I went to high school as the rules about having a tie tight around my neck; being told to tie it tighter every time I loosened it, and not being able to take my blazer off without permission, I couldn’t stand.

Last edited by Gizalba on 15 Jan 2014, 1:07 pm, edited 5 times in total.

Thankyou for pointing that out! - I will make note to specifically mention the wording "autistic symptoms may not become apparent until social expectations exceed the individual's capacity to engage," if a professional tries to dismiss looking into ASD due to it not having been obvious in childhood.