Things I don't understand.

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So, I'm currently getting assessed for ASD and yesterday the psychologist told me that even though it's too early to say anything for sure, what she's seen and heard from me so far has led her to strongly suspect I have Asperger's. There are a lot of thoughts and questions "flying" around in my head and I can't really stop thinking about the whole situation. I feel like I need to ask someone about some of the things I'm thinking about. So, here are a couple of questions (I hope that's ok):

1. If it turns out I actually have Asperger's, how is it that I've lived for more than 23 years without anyone noticing that I have it? I was the one who suggested that perhaps an assessment would be a good idea (the psychologists agreed) and if I were to tell people about my diagnosis (if I get one) they'd never believe me. I'm often the only one who knows how much I struggle every day.

2. If it turns out I actually have Asperger's, how come I'm not completely useless in social situations? I realise it now sounds as if I think all people with autism are completely socially incompetent but that's really not the case. I know it varies and I know that some people with autism find it very difficult to function well in social settings while others seem pretty "normal" (for lack of a better word). I guess I just don't understand why it varies so much and where I am on that spectrum. And why does it vary for me too? I mean, I really am completely useless in some social situations, while I'm functioning pretty well in others (with people I know well and are comfortable with). Why is that? Why can I look some people in the eye but then have to put an awful lot of energy into keeping eye contact with others? Why do I often feel like I talk too much or not at all? Why does it all vary so much? How well I function often depends on how I'm feeling and who I'm interacting with.

I don't get it.

Hi. I'm also your age and I've just got my diagnosis, two weeks ago.

It's incredibly bizarre. No one would ever believe me. I've tried my best to live my life.. And even today I struggle to accept it. Although constantly trying to fit it I think caused me a significant depression.

I mean, people are very different. And main social rules aren't exactly that difficult.

But the stuff that's going on in my head, it's crazy. And the things that I have troubles with are ridiculous. I keep this to myself and just get on with my life. More or less. I suppose intelligence helps..

Eye contact for me is also down to (strong) anxiety and authority stuff. Now I am trying to use it as best as I can.. It does vary a lot. I used to have mutism which comes out from time to time..

I don't understand diagnostic things too well, but I suppose people are people, if that makes sense.

But I don't get it too I feel a bit bitter that it took that long, if I really do have AS (which my assessor though that I strongly do.. ). Kind of screws with my mind a bit.. Also, what am I supposed to do with.. And how can I really know if that's true.. Some questions to ponder about.

Well, people can live for many years without a diagnosis, many think they are just different or weird, some never consider AS, I have also met a few older people who I have suspected have it. In my case, my parents didn't want both their kids to have it so they never even got me assessed. So there are many reasons why people don't get a diagnosis until they are older.
Yes you're right people will not understand, in fact people are rather under educated when it comes to anything like this. Many people think all Autistic and people with AS must be low-functioning.

And to answer your last part of the question, well your profile says you are female and women present differently than men, they think this is why so many women get missed in AS diagnoses. And to add to that my personal opinion, some people are just easier to socialise with.

That's why they call it "High Functioning," 'cause we can often pass for "nearly normal," at least for short periods of time. I don't know about where you're from, but in the States they didn't even put AS in the diagnostic manual until 1994 and I was born in 1959, so for a lot of years, nobody had any idea that such a thing as Asperger Syndrome even existed. My parents knew from the time I was a small child that my behaviors were not normal, especially socially, but I was intellectually bright, so they never imagined that I might have something wrong with my brain, I was just an odd kid. And that's pretty much how I made my way through life - odd.



Because you know and are comfortable with them. You've pretty much answered your own question. Once you're familiar with a person and you know they accept you as you are, there's less reason for you to feel hesitant about expressing yourself and your brain doesn't have to work overtime trying to make sure you're not committing one faux pas after another as you interact with them.

Most people with AS or HFA can function passably in common social situations, especially as they mature into adulthood, but tend to be mentally and physically exhausted by it afterwards, because our brains have to work so hard to juggle all the little social niceties that the NT brain handles on autopilot.



Precisely. Because you're High Functioning and able to hide it so well.

I am exactly like you Rebbieh. The only difference with me is that I actually tend to do much better socially with people that I don't know as well. I think this is from spending my entire life, nearly half a century, (wow that sounds like a really long time ,) having to make myself fit into society in an acceptable way. So I had to learn and figure out by myself, like all of the rest of us who grew up before Autism Spectrum was really known, how to behave and appear a certain way so that I would not get punished for "misbehaving". So I learned to mimic acceptable social behaviors and I became a master at doing that. It became second nature for me to do this and I was always told that I was like a chameleon able to blend in with whatever situation I was in even to the point of learning accents in a matter of minutes and speaking in them as if I had always spoken that way. It got to where I did not even know that I was doing this. And it was not until just recently that Willard, in fact, pointed it out to me. Then looking back on my life experiences I was able to see how much I did this.

This is also something that I have read that Aspergian girls tend to do much better than Aspergian girls. And this is one of the reasons that girls can easily be missed when it comes to diagnosing Asperger's. But when I am with people that I truly trust and that I know I am completely safe with, I tend to show more difficulty in speech and I tend to use less eye contact. I can sustain eye contact and I never thought I had a problem with it but recently I actually noticed that sometimes I prefer to not have eye contact. It sometimes helps me to listen to the person better. There are also times when I might "lock on" to someone's eyes. I have had this happen before when I was very afraid. I was able to lock onto the eyes of someone that I fully trusted completely and this kept me from having to negotiate all the other things that were happening around me.

So yes, symptoms can vary in ways that can be confusing sometimes. But it's not surprising at all that you wrote about what you did.

There's skiing weather in Upstate New York.

OP,
just remember its a spectrum and each trait is experienced differently by every person who has them,no one has all traits and everyone presents autism differently.
upbringing,extroversion or introversion, expectancies placed on the individual, bullying,comorbid conditions, the level of support and specialist input someone has,life experience, whether someone was over parented or the opposite etc all flavour a persons autism,its not a simple thing.

the stereotype of aspergers isnt low functioning,aspies have neurotypicaly high expectations placed on them and are expected to function in a neurotypical way with total lack of care to their difference in functioning they are never considered low functioning, that is why society has had so much trouble understanding both high functioning PDDNOS,classic autism and aspergers because the belief was that autism can only be low functioning and by criteria default aspies cannot be lf, they can be moderately or severely high functioning autistic though which can intefer with a aspies functioning,it doesnt make them lf though.

the female-male thing with autism isnt a absolute ,its just tendencies noticed,lots of us who are female and on the spectrum fit the male presentation and there are males who fit the female presentation,the amount or lack of of testosterone in the mother at the time of pregnancy coud perhaps determine which presentation a female or male fits most.

As others have said, if you're high functioning (which you probably are given your post) that semi-answers both questions. As for the rest of number 1, most people don't know exactly what aspergers is, or have a skewered view of it. This is out of lack of social awareness of it, highly off-base portrayal in pop-culture creating stereotypes, the fact that the disability is invisible, and little to no media coverage from credible sources. Many high functioning aspies are just viewed by their peers as 'that slightly nerdy, weird and awkward kid who's really good at [insert topic of interest here]' and often don't realise there is a condition at play. As for why you are comfortable socially, its simply due to a spectrum condition. If, like has been speculated, you're higher functioning, the condition has only a bit of an effect. Like me, you often say something that creates an awkward moment more often that most people, but are still generally socially acceptable enough to be accepted by peers. Also, by the time adulthood hits, aspies have generally 'learned' the basics of social interactions, and thusly you don't stand out.

Don't tempt me!

I'm 69 and was diagnosed with aspergers when I was 49 in the course of hypno-regression therapy for a nervous breakdown I suffered at work, by a private consultant clinical psychiatrist commissioned by my then employer, as I was involved in very important, urgent, and confidential government tasks.

It was two years after the condition was internationally recognized by the United Nations as a serious mental disease, and the fact that I had been diagnosed with it by a psychiatrist made my competence to appear as an expert professional witness and advocate for the Crown suspect.

I must add that no-one but he cottoned on to it, and he did it by hypno-regression therapy, not direct observation of how I behaved, spoke, socialized, etc.

He discovered that it had been diagnosed as autistic psychopathy by hypnosis and my memory of it suppressed by hypnosis when I was 15-16, under the official secrets act of my state, because I was in possession of official secrets.

It took me two years of examinations by professional peers and the other professions we networked with for them to declare me fit to act as an expert professional witness and advocate on behalf of the Crown, despite having an internationally classified mental illness.

It was then, as now, regarded as inherent in families, therefore genetically transmitted, and therefore life-long and incurable, though manageable with the right kind of cognitive behavioural therapy and neuro-linguistic programming exploiting the neuroplasticity of the brain.

The physical problem, then as now, was seen as being one of chaotic wiring of the brain compared with those of neurotypicals, and the disease manifested in me as severe learning difficulties, severe relating difficulties and severe communicating difficulties, caused by my obsessive compulsive traits and my attention deficit traits playing silly buggers with hypersensitive signals travelling neuro-synaptic pathways into, through, and out of my brain.

The result was about one in eight of such chains of signals - exchanges, I call them, with the outside world, were perfect, but the other seven in eight were complete crap - they needed eight repetitions to ensure that the perfect one got an airing, but there was no way of telling which one it would be, so I had prepare my work the night before the day I had to present it, and I therefore suffered with sleep deprivation a lot

But I had an IQ of well over 200, and been violently treated by my peers at school when I was little, so I had developed secret strategies for cloaking the fact that I was 'different', and was such a genius that when employers realised I was different they afforded me special protection from harm and even exposure - all my work was subject to the state official secrets act - even before I left grammar school as I qualified by articled pupillages in which I was engaged in government work as the articled pupil to professional consultants in my fields and qualified professionally at age fifteen and a half, to the same standard as George Washington did at age seventeen to become the Real Estate Surveyor of the Crown for the County of Culpeper.

I had my sights set on developing self-sustainable religious missionary settlements throughout the former colonies of the Crown of England and Wales, including the USA and other former colonies that had gained their independence, as Anglo-Norman real estate law applied as much in them as in former colonies that had not yet gained their independence.

This ambition was ingrained in me by family from the moment I arrived 'home' from maternity as baby: my birth country however had other ideas and I was retrained for 15 years by the County Surveyors Society of the UK to work here, so had a fabulous 50 year work career here in the UK.

I retired at age 65 and have published as much of all this as the law will allow me to. I'm currently revising my books as the Official Secrets Act 1989 set the year 2014 as the year that I am permitted to reveal a few minor details that I couldn't before.

I have told the story of my life of autism and aspergers syndrome as a trilogy and compendium. I completed my revision of the first book in the trilogy early last week and it has already gone viral - hitting the #1 slot in the UK by the weekend and the #1 slot world-wide yesterday. It deals with the first seven and a half years of my life - the era of my childhood autism and aspergers syndrome - which is the niche in which it has taken the #1 slot.

If you wish to read it please email me at [email protected] so that I can tell you its internet URL address as I don't want to spam Wrongplanet - they have been to good to me over the years for me to wish to take advantage of them in that way.

Wow, Adrientesq, what an amazing story. I would love to read your book. Congratulations on its success.

By the way, what does "cottoned on to it" mean?

That is a skill you should make use of. I think it could be financially lucrative for you.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 16 Apr 2014, 11:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

I guess I just have a hard time understanding all of this. I don't really know what to think. Also, I'm terrified of the psychologist somehow getting the wrong picture of me. That she'll see me in a different way than how other people see me. Sure, I'm more honest and open about my difficulties with her than I am with any of my friends but I wish she could she me when I'm having a good social interaction, just to be sure she's seen that too. If I actually have Asperger's I definitely want to know about it, but I keep worrying that I'll get a diagnosis even though I shouldn't or that I won't get a diagnosis even though I should. Do you know what I mean?

But yes, I'm probably high functioning (though not exactly well functioning).

I wish I'd stop worrying about things all the time.

By the way, do you find that people you've told about your diagnosis treat you differently than they did before? At university I often need to tell my teachers about my social anxiety disorder since I pretty much panic when I need to talk in front of people etc, so I need them to not pressure me. I'm a bit worried that if I told people I have Asperger's (if I get the diagnosis that is) they'd think I'm stupid or not capable of doing things etc. What are your experiences?