Do you think I could have Asperger's?

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Hey everyone, I'm new around here. Sorry for the wall of text that is coming up but I feel I can't accurately assess myself as having possible Asperger's, as I have poor knowledge of what is considered normal? I'm not sure if I'm implementing things into my personality, so when I go for my private assessment I can appear to have it "more" to explain why I feel and say the things I do.

I'll start by saying I am 22 years old and live with both my parents, I am not very happy with my life as I feel I'm expected to have friends and go out but this is something I've never really done except for with a very few specific people. I'm told that I often say things that are considered rude or "inconsiderate" but too me, I'm just being honest and truthful of how I feel at the time. This has led me to be very anxious about what I say to the point I feel I'm now wearing a mask and it completely dominates who I am. You will notice above I said I have very little knowledge of my emotions, this does not mean I don't know when I'm happy or when I'm sad. It just means that I have trouble explaining the physical sensation that goes along with it. If I'm asked how I'm feeling sometimes I just can't describe it, almost like I've taught myself that anxiety is what I'm feeling....but is it? I'm also very routine based. I have to get a shower in the morning and then make myself a drink or I feel very strange, the rest of the day I play video games by myself with my friend Steve on the internet, who I feel and my mum agrees is very much like me. I don't like being around alot of people I don't know and I struggle to understand what I am supposed to say after I apply my small talk.

When I was a child I have come to learn I did alot of what is known as stimming, which to me was just a way of expressing myself? I'm not sure. If I was excited I would make an almost "lisping" sound while inhaling, I would talk to myself alot almost "planning" my routine..."Okay so James and Will are downstairs with Adam and I'm going to go play Die-hard with them" which felt good. Another thing I was doing was when I was in bed, I would rub my feet together all the time almost like massaging them. As I got too around age 7, these stims manifested in specific words and sentances I would make up and feel an urge to say. When I was in nursery as a younger child I would sit on a rocking horse all day by myself and constantly ask if my mum was here yet or when is she getting here. I'm not sure if this was after or before but I was at a different nursery and I can remember getting my private parts out and a girl saw and reported me to the person in charge but I can remember specifically feeling like I'd done nothing wrong? very strange I know. I was always an exceptional reader for my age, as I was told I had the reading and writing ability of a 16 year old when I was 6.

My earliest memory of school is walking around the playground by myself in a circle around it, hoping people would feel sorry for me so they would play with me. Anyway, flash-forward to high school, it was very rough for me and it began the isolation. I started to realise I was "different" to the people around me and more emotionally sensitive, I was often bullied because I said things that I now understand are innapropriate to say to someone. An example would be that I knew my friends mum was very ill but I said "So, how's your mum then?" and everyone got very angry with me but I didn't know why? This specific issue has plagued my life as I'm not sure when it's "okay" to say something in certain situations. Just recently I found myself using swear words in a hairdresser then realising it wasn't okay. If my dad shouted at me I would find it very very funny and would have to run upstairs under my quilt to let all the laughter out, almost like it's a game.

From a young age I was obsessed with the game "Street Fighter". I knew everything about it, it was all I talked about and all I wanted to do was play it all the time, I was also very interested in other games but this was the major thing for me. Anyway I feel I should bring this too a close so I don't bore you all, I'll say a couple last things. My cat recently went missing for a week and I didn't even notice until my brother told me, and even then I didnt "feel" bad about it. I know I'm supposed to feel bad, but it's just not there. Like I have to lie about feeling bad because I KNOW that's what I'm supposed to do. I have trouble understanding sarcasm in the workplace and I tend to have extreme outbursts roughly at least once a month that involve running away from the situation and crying alot on my own for about 10 minutes, then I feel very shameful and guilty. These outburtsts would happen virtually every morning before school as I tried to figure out ways to get the day off school so I didn't have to be around other people. Also when my grandad passed away I cried at the funeral as it felt uncontrolable, but after that it just sort of didn't bother me that much but my mum would say "why aren't you upset about it?". I've discussed this with my family and how I feel I may have "slipped through the cracks" and gone unnoticed because of my ability to camoflauge myself and learn social cues and they agree that I may have Asperger's.

Thanks for your time reading this - Mike

First of all, hello and welcome to Wrong Planet!

It does sound like you could be somewhere on the spectrum.
You mentioned that you have had (or still have?) a special interest, that you have had troubles connecting with peers, issues with understanding social rules and showed some unusual behaviour, one which might be a form of a meltdown (the running away you described).

What I wondered though is:
How do you deal with interpreting non-verbal language/bodylanguage and do you show it yourself?
How good are you at expressing emotions? Do people have a hard time telling how you are feeling or do they misinterpret it?
Were there any issues of that kind in the past?
Do you have or had any sensory issues like not liking to get touched, being sensitive to bright light or sound, or do you have issues with the consistency of certain foods?
Do you have an unusually monotonous voice?
How about sports? Were your gross or fine motor skills problematic or were you otherwise clumsy?

To get a more concrete idea of whether it's really Aspergers/autism, it would be good to know these as well. Mind you that even when you don't fullfill all symptoms or don't fullfill the common symptoms of autism, it doesn't mean you don't have it. It's a spectrum, which means that no two of us are really the same.

Hello and thankyou for the reply!!

Yes my special interest at the moment is mental health and all types of personality disorders and the autistic spectrum. It interests me alot and when I'm not playing games or watching documentaries, I'm looking on the internet and reading about them. My mum says that it is all I ever talk about to her. I can understand body language and non verbal language but it feels like I have a hard time understanding how I'm supposed to actually react to them. Some are very obvious to me like if someone is standing forward and stretching their arms out it means they're aggressive and if someone is twidling their thumbs it means they aren't interested in talking. However some of them I have only recently learned what they mean, like I was told crossing your arms means you're defensive and I was surprised at this.

I'm not very good at expressing emotions, I tend to bottle them all up until they explode and I have what you called a meltdown, which for me is very distressing and I feel like it's all my fault, because my family tell me to control it and that I can stop anytime, but to me it feels like the whole world is against me. I get very confused at my emotions and sometimes I'm not sure what I'm feeling, so I kind of shutdown inside and go very quiet and silent. I have no problem laughing or smiling but sometimes that's not how I actually feel, and it can come across as "fake".

I was sexually abused when I was around 7 years old so that is something that I've had to learn to deal with, it doesn't really bother me now but it's something that happened to me and I have come to learn to accept it wasn't my fault. When I was around 7-13 years old I didn't like sauces of any kind at all, hotdogs would make me "wretch" and feel uncomfortable. I couldn't wear jeans since if the seam under the zipper touched my leg I hated it, I also still to this day cannot have tags in my t-shirts or upperware as it makes me itch alot and feel almost disgusting and frustrated. In bed sometimes it feels like I'm spinning around or that I'm "rocking" back and forth, this can be very uncomfortable but has gotten better as I'm older in a sense that it doesn't happen so much now. I can remember when I was younger if I was kissed by someone I would have to wipe the kiss off? not sure if that is something but I remember it felt like I could still feel it.

If I'm faking my voice I can alter the pitch and tone but when I hear my voice when I speak it does sound very monotone, to me anyway. I dislike sports and I was told that I "run funny" but I don't understand that I do. I just run like every other person but apparentely I don't. I have asthma aswell if that has any correlation? And yes not so much as a child I don't think but as I've gotten older I've found that I am quite clumsy. When I was working one worker said to another "he's a one to watch out for is that lad!". This was apparent when I was trying to line up a big piece of wood whilst putting up a fence and could only look at 1 end at a time to slot it in, I had trouble balancing the wood and how to do that, this resulted in me trapping my coworkers finger and I felt awful. I've been diagnosed with Depression and Generalised anxiety disorder, but I feel these are simply bi-products of having to adapt to a world where I constantly feel I don't fit in. Sometimes sounds I hear can "replay" in my head quite loudly, but this has become less of an issue as I got older.

One major thing that made me start questioning that I function differentely is my ability to follow instructions, if someone tells me to pick something up and move it 90 degrees, I understand the statement quite clearly but making an image in my head and trying to actually comprehend what I'm supposed to do can be difficult. This causes me alot of distress and I start to "overload" and then my emotions start getting very out of control. I couldn't tell you the emotion I'm feeling at that time, I could guess and say it's frustration or anger but I don't feel like I'm supposed to get frustrated and flustered that easily. Once again thankyou for taking the time to reply, I was anxious I wouldn't get one lol.

It definitely sounds to me like you fit somewhere on the spectrum. Are you going to try for an official diagnosis?

Hi there!

I went to my local GP and he basically fobbed me off and said my symtpoms sounded more like "manic depression" which straight away made me feel like he didn't know what he was quite talking about, as I have studied it quite thoroughly and I do not experience manic symptoms and the politcally correct term is now Bipolar disorder in either 1 or 2, with milder symptoms being called cyclothymia. I explained I was seeking a diagnosis so I could finally understand why I am the way I am so I could stop blaming myself so much and instead try to understand myself and improve. He told me that I shouldn't do that and he wouldn't refer me so I've decided to get a private diagnosis! I'm very scared about the idea of being told I have it, but I'm also equally scared about being told I don't have it.

You're welcome! Sometimes, it may take a bit to spot new threads after spambots roamed this section - once again. They're truly a plague!

I have doubts that manic depression fits at all as well.
For me, after what you have described in addition, it seems very clear now that you are somewhere on the autistic spectrum.

However, since you said you were sexually abused (especially at that young age), I would suggest to check into PTSD as well as that might be a consequence of it, which might not always be obvious. It's better to make sure it's ruled out or taken care of at least. While the probability of developing it (at least in the classic version) is generally lower if the traumatic event happened before one was ten years of age, it is of course by far not excluding that possibility.

You may want to search for a psychiatrist with a specialisation in autism. They're more likely to tell you if the suspicion is indeed justified and probably won't just shrug you off, it's more likely you'll get an accurate diagnosis that way. You wouldn't want to be misdiagnosed after all.
If you don't know where to start, you could search for an autism organisation and ask for some help in your search, or get some recommendations for competent psychiatrists in your area.
Maybe some people on Wrong Planet can suggest someone they've been to to you?