Before your DX or knowledge of autism....

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what did you think of yourself... about how your are?

I guess this only applies to people who grew up w/o DX or some sort of clue...

If you've always known about your DX, feel free to add any disagreements or misconceptions you had about your condtition while growing up with your DX.

I'll go soon; I'm still at work and running around while i support my WP addiciton

I thought I was just 'different'.

I always knew I was very different. I was totally clueless as to why, and I spent much energy and time trying to be like everyone else, to little avail.

Others called me things like ret*d, palsey, spaz, geek, freak, moron, and other things that are no longer politically correct. Funny, they always knew there was something "wrong" with me. Now that it is diagnosed, many friends and relatives are in denial that I have any challenges.

Shy, Gifted, a bit strange. I mean a recluse male that is always doing things like being on the internet, working with electronics, computers, that tends to be altruistic, pacifistic, reluctant to lie even to avoid trouble, Not interested in sports, skewed senses, etc....? So I came up with theories...

Shy? No siblings, lack of common interests, moving, dumb luck. Turns out this started even before grade 1, so that theory is TOAST!
Gifted? Just lucky, and perhaps because of seclusion. Turns out this started before I was even 2, so THAT theory is out the window!
Skewed senses? Well LUCKILY that doesn't rear its head THAT much. I DID once go out of my way to go to a seminar, and ended up being one of few out of several thousand that ran out because of the sound. I'm the only one plugging my ears in PAIN during a fire alarm, etc.... I was ALSO the only one in my company that worked for several years and only started wearing coats in the winter like last year.
I had theories for the other stuff, but they were even less likely.

Steve

Well, I've had many years to "smooth" out some quirks, but I'm still pretty damn odd in the eyes of most...I was a strange kid, was told day in and day out that I was weird, and I KNEW I was different, but could never understand why. I spent most of my life embarrassed, confused, and pissed off. It's only been during the last three years or so that I've embraced who I am, and for that I thank my darling twelve-year-old girl, who has AS. If she'd not been born, I would likely have never researched AS, thus finding myself.

I now tell stories to my kids about how I was as a kid and young adult, and it's wonderful to be able to laugh now instead of cringe...or cry...at those memories. Tonight, for instance, I was telling them how, when I was in 7th grade, I would stare at an older boy whom I'd found attractive -- just sit sideways in my bus seat and openly stare...Me with my thick glasses, owl jewelry and owl T-shirts and stupid hair, just sitting there staring, like it was a perfectly normal thing to do.

I said to my kids, "No wonder I had no friends!" But I was laughing as I said that.

I thought I was mean because I couldn't remember who people were when I saw them (facial recognition) and was embarrased about it, and I can never remember people's names, so I told myself that I must really not like them if i can't remember easy stuff like that about them so I beat myself up for being mean like that. Same with birtdays.

I also that everyone else had the problem, not me. I was normal in my eyes, it was the rest of the world, every other person that I knew, that was screwed up and had everything wrong.

[quote="jnet"]I thought I was mean because I couldn't remember who people were when I saw them (facial recognition) and was embarrased about it, and I can never remember people's names, so I told myself that I must really not like them if i can't remember easy stuff like that about them so I beat myself up for being mean like that. Same with birtdays.[quote]

omg that's me there...

I have trouble recognising faces and remembering names too! It is very frustrating..
I am new to the whole Aspergers thing..i discovered what ADD was when I was a teenager and was on ADD message boards for years...then somebody told me to look into Aspergers..and shore enuff..I have an eerie amount in common...moreso than just ADD..there is even a possiblity I might have both.
My parents are not exactly 'NTs'...and they are very distrustful of the medical industry so even though I really suffered and did poorly in school..even at one point begging to be sent to a special school with kids more like me...because it was daily torture...I never got diagnosed or anything like that..till i was 31...with ADD...but the doc was not that through..

Hmmm Well, I never thought I was like the other kids, that's for certain. I thought much of it had to do with the fact that I had all brothers and was never around girls until I went to kindergarten. People thought I was intelligent, but shy and withdrawn. I was quiet, so no one said very much. I suspect my teachers knew because they did things to challenge me and didn't stop me from writing non-stop. Fortunately, I didn't get the teasing because my brothers were there and they would have beaten those kids up.

I knew I was different about how people made me feel. They exhausted me. I couldn't stand them touching me. I didn't even like them looking at me because I had no idea what their looks meant. They were actually nice to me though because they always wanted to read what I had written that day.

In college my differences really showed up because I moved away from home (I came from an extremely small town). There everyone stared at my eating habits, my self-imposed solitude, my inability to socialize, my reaction to touch or even someone talking to me. That's when I started to become aware of flourescent lights, smells, sounds. That's when I had to date strangers. Even more problems there.

But, then I got married and things settled down. My husband knew I was very different, but he just approached it like anything he wanted to analyze. So there were no problems there. No matter how bizarre I was sometimes, he dealt with it calmly and figured it out.

At work I write. When I manage it's more apparent, but I'm a good problem solver so I suspect they mainly thought I was overly serious and shy or private. I've had some issues there with passive/aggressive types, but they clash with my personality type as well. I really had no clue until I was basing two characters on me and they were Aspies. As I did my research and looked at the way I wrote them, it was very apparent. I guess I needed to look at it from the outside to really see it.

I just learned about Aspergers tonight by chance on a Wikipedia adventure.

I always thought I was normal, seeing as I never really had alot of trouble socializing (girls are another story), but I usually find I'm uninterested in any social activities, and I really only take part when my friends drag me out of the house.

I always knew I was different, as did the kids in elementary school who called me ret*d and every other childhood insult in the book. When I finally got the diagnosis in my late 20's, it was a relief as I finally learned why I was different.

I *always* thought my brain was different from every single other person's in the world. During my early childhood I was rarely bothered by this, and felt vaguely superior most of the time.

During elementary school there were occasions when a teacher would give a set of directions which I found ambiguous, and I'd be mortified that I was the only kid in a class of 20 or 30 that didn't immediately understand what was going on. I'd try to analyze those situations in hindsight, but I still had no idea what I'd missed that everyone else had picked up on. I also became increasingly aware that even though my classmates all thought I was smart, they'd sometimes talk down to me when explaining things they considered common sense.

I used to wonder how other people filled their time, since most of them didn't seem to have any strong interests. My parents were afraid I was being consumed by my obsessions, and told me I should try to be a more well-rounded person. I was adamant that that was the last thing I ever wanted to be.

I was aware that I was conspicuously a loner. For a long time I didn't find this troubling, but I started thinking of myself as lacking in some basic set of instincts or brain function that everyone else had, and it eventually led to severe anxiety.

As my dad once put it in my late teen years (when he wasn't aware I was listening), I seemed to do well at the "big" things in life -- the major milestones that could be handled logically -- but struggled awkwardly at the "small" things that most people took for granted. I thought he was exactly right.

Thats a massive question. I spent 50 years thinking there was something wrong with me, and doing everything I could to find a reality that worked. Almost pulled it off except for one nagging fact. Theres only one reality. Thank god I found it had a name and others with similar traits. And now I realize that its just a different operating system at work in our brains. We can handle large chunks of info at a time, but screw up on the little bundles of data that NTs process so well. Different strokes.

I thought they hated my face; that it was all because they thought I was stupid-looking, and that if I only had a different one: things would be okay.

I spent my boyhood/young adulthood wishing that I was somebody else.