What am I? To be or not to be aspie

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Hi,

Just joined and read a few post and already I kinda feel like a fraud for joining so let me say that I work with teenagers with all kinds of challenges including Asperger's and I have seen first hand how this can affect them, and I respect them deeply for taking up the challenge of climbing Mount Everest when everyone else seems to be leisurely strolling up a small hill.

For some time now I have had the growing suspission that I might be an aspie myself (no, not the effects of a work hazard. I'm not prone to suddenly feeling sick when reading about medical conditions if you know what I mean.....)
so I have taken the Baron-Cohen test and got the following results:

"AQ 32
EQ 18
SQ 48
Eyes Task Test 32"

Then I went on to take another test, the Aspie-quiz and got these results:

"Aspie-score: 116 out of 200
NT-score: 109 out of 200
You seem to have both aspie and neurotypical traits"

In other words, I seem to be a halfbreed.

I haven't been officially diagnosed and I know that this must be the next step to be sure, and I will, but here's my question:

How many of you certified Aspies seemed to be halfbreeds like me before you got the official diagnosis?

I haven't been officially diagnosed and I know that this must be the next step to be sure

HalfBreed - you haven't described the 'symptoms' which first led you to the idea of taking the tests. And what do you expect to gain from a diagnosis? You seem to think that the 'next step' is little more than a formality.

I'm an uncertified Aspie who had an autistic past. I went from being "classically autistic" to being Aspie-like when I was 5 years old and acquired speech. I have sensory issues--but mild ones. I used to have much trouble in social situations--I've gotten better starting in my 30's, and continuing in my 50's. I would say that I lack the NT-type "restraint" in social situations. I've managed to keep a job for 33 years, despite me being a sort of "court jester" of my office. I could do "chit-chat" to a certain extent--but I don't like it. I avoid large social gatherings like the plague. I am in contact with "popular culture," but I don't indulge much in it. I'd rather watch C-Span than one of today's sitcoms or "reality TV." I'm rather a creature of routine, and don't like change too much (though I don't blatantly "melt down" when change occurs). There are times when I'm overly pedantic in my speech.

I don't seek a diagnosis because it costs too much. I do have an "informal" diagnosis of ADHD. I've had symptoms of that, as well as Aspie-like symptoms, since I was a young child. I wish I also had some other Aspie traits--like proficiency in technology and a photographic memory.

There is a considerable amount of people on this site who are "undiagnosed."

A hearty Welcome to the Forum!

I think there are a lot of people who fall under the category of "broader autism phenotype", who have some autistic traits but not a full combination resulting in disability. Such people can be excellent translators and caretakers for the more profoundly effected people among us, and can also benefit from the coping techniques used by autistics (many of which can be learned about by reading WrongPlanet) without ever being diagnosable themselves.

You might actually be a hypochondriac if you think you get diseases from reading about them. That isn't Aspergers, although I have Aspergers and I am a hypochonJ.

Autism is a spectrum disorder. Commonalities with individual tendencies.

To quote a common expression "if you've met one person on the autism spectrum, you've met one person on the autism spectrum". In other words we can be quite different...

You say you had a "growing suspicion" that you were autistic; what events and/or symptoms led you to this suspicion?

When I was first officially diagnosed I foolishly thought that I was really mild in all ways. I have since learned that this is not the case for me. At first I didn't really think that my social difficulties were "severe enough" to really be a problem for me, or I at least thought that they were far milder than my aspie friends. But I have slowly learned that this is not true. Also, my doctor and my therapist both say that my sensory issues are unusually severe.

When I take that online test I get the same results you get. More than once Ive gotten around a hundred out of 200 for aspie, and around a 100 of 200 for NT, and "you seemed to have both aspie and nt traits". But I took the real exhaustive, and expensive test conducted by a specialist in real life, and I got diagnosed. So its now official that I am indeed an aspie. So despite the online test you could well be an aspie as well.

You have to ask yourself...Is it even worth your time to bother? Traits are just traits and you would need to look more closely at symptomatology. This is not some exclusive club this is a developmental disorder that has a big impact on ones life. Autism has limited me greatly and has effected almost every area of my life.

Often we see hipsters on here with one or two traits who pretend to be autistic because they think it means gifted or it goes along with their thick rimmed glasses and skinny jeans. Haha, you don't want to be that person. Most days it is hard to tell on here who is actually autistic and who is just delusional. People who have "traits" only serve to trivialize the condition and make it hard for people with actual ASD to be understood. The term Aspie and NT are cultural terms, try not to get sucked into that.

Thanks for the replies so far.

I am not a hypochondriac. I enjoy the fact that I am in pretty good health despite the fact that I smoke to much and excercise to little.
I'm not gifted.
I don't want or need to be diagnosed with Asperger's. I want and need to educate myself about myself.

The idea of taking a test to see if I might be an Aspie came to me after meeting one particular student of mine. He is, not surprisingly, diagnosed with Asperger's. I have had other Aspie students before but this one was a bit different. He was different because the things he described about himself and things I noticed about him suddenly seemed very familiar.
It was a bit unsettling. Not because I have a problem with being an aspie if that is what I am, in fact I imagine it would be a relief if I could put a name to what I experience, have a box to put it in.
No, it was unsettling because I have always considered myself to be "normal". I am a teacher and have been working with teenagers with special needs for some years now. These special needs are caused by many things, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, Asperger's to name a few. Now, if I am able to help these teenagers I work with (and sometimes I am), work that involves social training among other things, it must mean that I must be on the "normal" side if I am to know what it is these students are trying to build a bridge to, connect to, reach, navigate in, and to be able help them succesfully...... right? Meeting this particular student made me reconsider though, made me feel I needed to try to shine a new light on what I know about myself.

As a child my parents sometimes said to me that I was odd. They loved me I am sure (my mom is still here and she still does). I believe they sometimes called me odd out of frustration with some of the things I did like taking things very litterally and getting so interested in some thing that I lost sight of everything else. And for lack of a better word.

In school I was often called Doc. I try to imagine that my classmates did it to acknowledge that I knew a lot of things they didn't or at least they got the impression that I did. I did learn to read and write faster than any of them (if I spell something wrong here it's because I am not a native english speaker. I am from Denmark). I can also see how it must have been really annoying to be corrected by me when I heard them pronounce something wrong or make grammar mistakes when they neither asked me or wanted me to.

I've always felt in some way that I was on the outskirts of things, social things. Like I was never able to crack the code that enabled the others to be on the inside.

My current colleagues know me as the guy who knows almost everything. I certainly don't know everything but I do find everything interesting and worth knowing. Astronomy, knitting (I am terrible at knitting), cooking, medicin, sailing, biology, grammar, religion...... everything is interesting. I can live without knowing everything, but the desire is always there somewhere. Many interests only last for short periods of time but keep returning. Underneath all this I have a latent but strong desire to be able to deal with any situation, to be completely selfreliant.

My marriage has been on or near the rocks for a few years following a huge crisis we went through with my wife becoming so disabled by pregnancy induced osteoporosis that she couldn't take care of herself let alone our newborn son and me thusly becoming a de facto single dad almost over night. I handled it terribly. Not with regards to our son, thank God!
Pregnancy induced osteoporosis is a reversible condition and luckily she is alright now. But she had to deal with her situation herself. Her fear, worries, pain. I wasn't there. Not only that, I blamed her. I blamed the hell out of her, blamed her for being afraid, blamed her for needing me. Absorbed in my own situation. I had countless "meltdowns" right in face in her darkest time.
Sure it would have been tough on anybody to go through what we went through, so I've been told, but it was the way I handled it that left huge tears in our relationship.
This is not selfloathing, this is just stating facts.

I love my wife and she loves me but she says "you don't forget that you want to play guitar, but you forget to notice and be aware of me. You need to participate in talking care of and nurturing our relationship. You need to help fix things between us". For a long time she has been saying similar things to me and also that she feels lonely with me. And for an equally long time I've heard her say those words but not been able to understand what they meant in terms of what I should do to take of our relationship. I came to the conclusion that this is because I haven't been able to create in my mind a formula for talking care of relationships, this particular relationship, to be precise. This led me to gradually conciously realize what I have always known or felt on some unconcious level, that I make formulas for navigating among people in all kinds of situations. Small children do this all the time when they do things and see their parents' or other people's reactions. At some point they stop doing this though as they gradually internalize what they experience. I feel I haven't really come to the internalisation part, but I have instead become really good at playing by memory.

When my wife gets "touchy feely" about our relationship and needs to "feel" me I frequently get upset with frustration over not understanding, not being able decipher what she says she needs and feeling incapable of expressing my views and feelings. I can be really pedantic about how she says something and her facial expression and tone of voice when she says it and I often feel accused. It doesn't take much to get me started shouting in defence of myself and accusing her back. Many times have I broken things in anger. And very seldom can I remember what I got so upset about, only a few minutes later. This makes me feel really stupid and embarrased.

Maybe what I've written here could apply to others who are not Aspies, but this and a lot of other things that I don't even know how to explain a this point let me to take the tests. And the results, well, they are what they are. Hence the nick Halfbreed. But I'm not sure what to make of it in terms of where to go from here. My goal is not to be diagnosed with Asperger's as such, my goal is to get to know myself better so that others may also know me better in the hope that some things may get a bit easier from there and that I can lay some long lived speculations and worries to rest.

I forgot to mention that I find it very fascinating how things work. Things and people. What they are made of, what makes them tic. Surfing sites like howstuffworks or wikipedia is a singular delight and would take up a lot more of my time if I let it. I don't let it because I've learned that there are many benefits to also be in charge of other aspects of your life. It can be a tough challenge sometimes. I'ts gotten easier with practice.

Many times I feel that, when interacting with other people, I mimic. Not them directly. I feel that I mimic what I think are the appropriate things to do or say in a given situation or setting. It gets easier with time and experience and I think I get right most of the time. Often I don't mind interacting socially and I don't mind meeting new people in general, so long as I don't have to get involved. Smaller groups are better than larger ones. Sometimes large groups are better because it's easier to stay anonymous or "invisible" in a large group. It depends.
I believe everybody mimics to some extend when trying to learn and adapt to a new culture or group or person. I also believe that the mimicking stops at some point when the gestures, language, social rules become internalized and indistinguishable from what the person was or how s/he used to act to begin with. I have the feeling that I've never really gotten to that point. I'm not sure whether or not I'm still just mimicking.

I frequently talk to myself. Sometimes these "conversations" are a bit like rehearsals for future situations. I imagine what I would do or say in some situation. I sometimes find it difficult to "hold on to myself" and not get emotionally or intellectually disoriented or "lost" if I haven't prepared for the anticipated situation beforehand.
Sometimes it's a way of letting go of or working through a situation that may have bugged me or stayed with me for some reason. Mostly, if not always, situations to do with social interacting in one way or another.

Sometimes I recite quotes from movies over and over again when I'm alone. Not out loud, but whispering or just thinking it. It's soothing and gives me a sense of mental balance and calmness. Like a mantra that helps me stay focused and block out unwanted stimuli (I especially like Morgan Freeman's monologue at Red's final parole hearing in the movie The Shawshank Redemption. Could be interesting to figure out why). Usually I don't mind being interrupted in this. At least not too much
...that I'm aware of at this point....I think...

Well it sounds like you have some traits - having difficulty making connections with people, especially romantically and/or within the family - is like, THE defining trait that got everyone all interested in autism in the first place (that horrible "refrigerator mother" theory). But I will always stick to my story: that everyone, even NTs, have some autistic traits, and no one, no matter "how" autistic they are, has every single trait. So what really makes a person autistic vs. not autistic (sometimes called "allistic"), to me, is whether or not your autistic traits are numerous and/or severe enough to make life more difficult for you than it is for your peers.

On the one hand, you have outlined here some relationship problems that really seem to stem from this trait of "disconnect" (i don't know what else to call that). It seems to be disruptive, hurt her feelings and leave you feeling frustrated and still not understanding. You also mention breaking things in anger, and then not even remembering being angry. That could be what I sometimes describe as an autistic meltdown - when stressors build up, and then you need to get away from them, or you shut down, lose control, etc. So those are real problems that may be due to autism and need to be addressed.

On the other hand, you are an adult with a family and a career, and no autistic past except being called "odd" by your parents. That is the sort of life an allistic person would have. I mean, I'm sort of medium-high functioning autistic (if I have to use functioning labels), and my childhood was a hell of abuse, neglect, ostracization, and gradually slipping behind my peers, socially and by missing "milestones." I was very sure, by the age of 14, that there was something wrong with me. It was obvious to me even though I had not found any kind of mental condition that described my problems. I had thought I was different from the age of 5, but by 14 I vehemently insisted that it was so, despite my inability to be diagnosed. I live in an area where there just aren't any autistic specialists, and it was actually my mom who learned about autism online and recognized my symptoms. She found the one specialist in the state and I finally got diagnosed. Now I know a lot more about autism, and myself, and I am doing much better. But I still don't want to get married, and never want to have kids (I was assigned female gender at birth, but I identify as genderqueer). I finally finished my bachelor's degree after 12 semesters of barely being able to keep up with 12 credits at a time, being kicked out of one major, and finally receiving disability accommodations from some sympathetic professors. So, it sounds like your traits haven't really given you that much trouble, and I wonder what difference it would make now whether you were autistic, or just had some traits? If you don't need social security disability, why would you need a diagnosis? There is, after all, no drug or treatment that will take away autistic traits.

I guess what I'm wondering is, what does it matter? Will your wife suddenly accept you for the way you are if you have a doctor's diagnosis? Is that the only area of your life that suffers on account of your autistic traits, and if not, in what way can an official diagnosis help?

People on the Autism Spectrum do have successful careers and relationships. Is is a minority yes? but if you get a person at the mildest severity, much will power, and good luck to be in the right place and the right time to interact with people who are somewhat accepting it can and does happen.

Artistic,

Thank you for your answer. It helps put things in perspective. Whether I'm Asperger or "normal" or whatever doesn't really matter and it won't make much difference, that I can think of, to be formally diagnosed with anything either. What I'm after is the best way to go about working and coping with my particular challenges whatever they are caused by. In that regard it has been eyeopening to research autism because I find that some techniques that are helpful for people on the spectrum are also helpful for me. I've come to believe that I have traits, but I also believe that to call myself autistic would be an insult to people who really are.

I'm glad to be of any help, Half. For me, just knowing that I have a "thing" that others also have, and that there is a "normal" (sort of) even for me, was very helpful and improved my self esteem. I've found a lot of great advice about coping mechanisms and NT relations on wrongplanet; I hope you do too.