How did You find out You had Aspergers, Autism etc.?

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I quit drinking in my late twenty's and discovered all sorts of social problems. I thought they were caused by my drinking and hiding from my problems, but the deeper I dove into recovery and trying to fix myself, the more I discovered was different about me. All the suggestions I was given from councilors and sponsors always backfired and made things worse. It was only recently, after 20 years of sobriety, that I discovered that I was always this way and why. I've spent twenty years looking at myself, not being able to put the puzzle pieces together. When I discovered HFA/AS all those pieces suddenly fell into place.

Just to put a little icing on the cake, my mother had me tested for autism/tourets back in the 60's. Back then, there was no spectrum, and you had to be low functioning in order to be diagnosed.

I've always known i was different. I was bullied badly in school, have issues keeping jobs usually due to "not fitting in with the office culture". Ironically 2 of my favorite songs are apparently unofficial aspie anthoms (welcome to my life and boulevard of broken dreams) and i've liked them and felt they described me long before i even knew what AS was.

Anyway a few years ago a friend of a friend who is a psychiatrist mentioned i sound like i have AS. Like a lot of people here, i did research and self tested and i've taken different tests multiple times and they all said i have it. I started doing counseling but ended up mostly in group sessions for depression and anxiety and they didn't really look for AS. I am actually going this weekend to a psychiatrist who specializes in AS to hopefully finally have an official diagnosis.

Driving home from the jobcentre nearly two years ago ( aged 42 at the time ) listening to a radio phone-in about Autism.

Suddenly I heard a woman describing my characteristics and I was in shock!

Did a bit of online research & realised I almost definitely had Asperger's Syndrome.

Sat on it for a year before deciding to persue a diagnosis, which I am still in the middle of after about ten months.

They have also informed me that I have ADD.

The funny thing about it is my parents have hardly ever brought up the Asperger's once I got to college. I think my mom mentioned it to me once this past summer but that's it.

I first heard of Aspergers when I was 30, and when I read the list of symptoms I just knew it described me. But it took me another 10 years to finally take it seriously, and get diagnosed.

I have always known I was "different" . Up until age 20 or so I had my share of bullying and was miserable. In my 20's I accepted that I was different and would always be that way. Things went fairly well with school, and classmates, then work and colleagues. and as far as I was concerned I had matured and grown out of my painful shyness by learning how to deal with it. I was a computer programmer and deliberately chose that field because it fit my personality. Psychology, looking into myself, that was a female thing(majority of psych major were females). As in an individualist my attitude if you are into that enjoy, but it was not a a fit for me. But now looking back of course there were things that were obvious flags. 1988 Rainman comes out, interesting and different film. Different I liked. Now looking back there there probably were other reasons I liked it.

Over the next couple of decades my career very gradually declined, everybody passed by me. Unlike many Aspies with pure hard work I could keep a job 6,7 or 8 years. My problems were getting a job, advancing once I got there, and being the person to be laid off when a downsizing occurred. But since I was laid off and not fired it allowed me the delusion it was not my fault.

In the 2000's I heard about Aspergers, I figured out certain characters that I liked on TV both described me and what I knew about Aspergers so I probably had it. This was not an epiphany but a mild curiosity to me. Reading a few articles was enough to satisfy that curiosity.

Since about 2005 I have pretty much been unhirable. And this started to become a financial strain on my family. "Daring to Different" was not fun like it had been back in the '80s. My siblings did a soft intervention, researched and found a specialist. When I got a email from the psych and there was all this privacy language is when it really started to hit me. I researched it but I was not all in because I feared I might not be diagnosed. She said "I have no doubt about diagnosing you with Aspergers". That was my epiphany. As in literally feeling like bolts of electricity was running through me. I had intense emotions of joy and relief. This was like nothing I had ever ever felt. I registered here that night

The first inklings started to appear in upper elementary school. I was in PE, off in my own little world on the football field. I liked to play video games in my head, you see, and the video game of the week was Comanche Gold, a combat flight simulator. I was flying a combat mission, and I said something along the lines of "If today America falls, I'm gonna kill some people!"

Now, keep in mind that this was right after the Columbine shooting. A little girl overheard me, and then mentioned it offhand to her parents (her dad was an MD at the local clinic). They flipped out, and thus began my weekly sessions with the school counselor.

On top of that, my parents took me to the local guidance center, and this is where the Asperger's diagnosis was first tossed around. It bounced back and forth between that, ADHD, manic-depressive disorder, and OCD. Eventually, they just determined that I was "odd," and sent me on my way.

Fast forward four years, and I was going through seventh grade for the second time. My grades had plummeted, I was being bullied, and I was frequently getting into fights. I had no friends, only some teachers who felt sorry for me. I was also medicated at this point. It was about this time Mom finally decided that the Asperger's diagnosis was the one that fit me best, and she took me to a specialist, who confirmed it when I was in eighth grade.

I started largely growing out of it in high school. I got into my last fight my freshman year, I stopped taking my meds as a sophomore, and by the time I graduated, I still didn't have a lot of friends, but I did gain two very close ones. I was also largely accepted by my peers, even if I didn't personally care for most of them.

I do have to admit, though, my worst years were my days in middle school. Being retained in the seventh grade was probably one of the best things that happened to me, since it gave me a chance to start over socially.

I was getting scared that I was going to be useless and miserable for the rest of my life, so I wrote my entire life story on psychforums.com and someone called Chucky told me that I most definitely probably have Asperger's and to get diagnosed.
I think I still need to see a specialist to get it confirmed though.

I have often been asked if I was autistic, and I always saw it as a mean spirited insult, since I only had a mental concept of low functioning autism. I even underwent the preliminary stages of testing when I was very young.

I had to stumble upon a Tony Atwood lecture before the penny finally dropped. I then did a lot of reading on it, and did some tests, and that confirmed it (I think).

Similar to lots of stories here. I always knew I was different and quirky. I had no friends. I was socially awkward. I loved to be by myself and do math problems and listen to Bach (this was when I was in elementary school).

I had a meltdown about a year and a half ago at work and was sent to intensive therapy, which was pure hell. After five months of not responding to traditional psychotherapy, two of the therapists thought I might be high functioning Asperger's, which I thought was crazy.

Then a week later I was at a friend's house and his sister, who worked with disabled kids at an elementary school, was there. I spent the day with both of them, and immediately after I left, the first thing she asked my friend was if I had Asperger's.

My friend told me this a few days later. I said, "You're joking right?" because I told him once about the two therapists who thought I had Asperger's (and how I thought they were off their rocker), and he said, "No, I'm serious." We repeated that exchange about three times because he likes to joke. But when it was clear that he was serious I got freaked out. So I looked on line for one of those "tests" to prove to myself that I didn't have Asperger's and found the AQ test. I got a 44. I took it again, trying to fudge my answers to be more normal, and I got a 40. I just stared at the screen for about a minute, frozen.

Then I began to do more research, and everything just clicked. Apparently I was one of those Aspies who was an "actor" type and who had developed a huge repertoire of compensatory techniques to get by in the NT world.

So I went to get a formal diagnosis. The doctor said I was the best NT actor she had ever seen, but that it was very clear I was an Aspie. It's been a tremendous relief to know why I've never felt comfortable in my own skin, and it's also been helpful as I continue to do therapy to help me cope better. Now I like being an Aspie.

(In fact I even learned how to calculate the day of the week of peoples' birthdays just to freak them out. I probably shouldn't do that but I love it when people say, "Wow, I guess you really do have Asperger's.")

I really like that you like being an Aspie, JSBACHlover. It's a little bit encouraging.

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, those who don't, and those who don't know this joke is in ternary.

For the 2nd time in high school I had a shutdown so the school had to take me to the hospital. I wasn't talking and did not give eye contact to anyone, the doctor looking after me noticed my behavior and suggested to my parents I get checked for any mental disorders. I went to another doctor and they noticed my behavior too, eventually I went to a psychiatrist specialized in High function autism. Then I went to a autism research facility where I positively confirmed to have Asperger's.