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Do I have Asperger's?




Hey guys! Sit back, and prepare for a long one. So, to start, I want to note that I get confused a lot. I cant tell many times the difference between a tic, and reality, and during my childhood, I would fake illnesses for no good reason. I'm not even sure why I do it now. The symptoms just feel so real TO ME that I have to continue on my way until someone has to officially just say STOP. NO. You DO NOT. IN FACT have this illness. It's not for attention at least as far as I know. That being said. I have three diagnosed autistic family members, and Tourette's syndrome. What does that mean? a. I'm exhibiting signs of Asperger's. b. I have several family members on the spectrum. and c. Tourettes very rarely appears without a comorbidity. Which it has in my case (80-20 chance) One of the listed comorbidtities is the spectrum.

So I 'm not going to go into individual details, as that takes to long, I'm going to cover mostly what this has done to me in my life so far. I feel like there is this huge, overwhelming language barrier given to me since birth. Up to the age of 8, I had my friends made for me, and I didn't notice it. But when I was thrown into huge, new, loud surroundings (i.e. I moved from my childhood home, and went to a new school. Whereas before I was homeschooled.) I noticed that it seemed like everyone had the rulebook of interaction, meanwhile I seemed to not. They seemed to be able to manage everything better than me, and when I talked to them, I seemed to be very exuberant. To the point that I was annoying. But of course, I couldn't tell. Until they just said to my face that I was annoying and to stay away from them. This got me afraid to talk to people. I'm not talking just 'exuberant' I need to talk about certain things, play certain things, and do certain things otherwise I get really unhappy.

The year after I went to school, I quit public schooling, and after losing over 5 friends to my social deficits, I completely quit talking to people. I was so anxious, that i couldn't even manage to initiate a conversation. I had many symptoms of Social Anxiety, but for the wrong reasons, and in the wrong place. I hated ordering food, I hated talking to people on the train, and I HATED being in social situations. It got to a point where I'd never leave my house, just to avoid all this. Eventually I got coping mechanisms for this, but they came much too late. I had no friends, and no ability to make them, I had no want or need to leave the house, and I was hating my life. This consisted ages 9-12.

Now I speak much like a computer prompt, imput words, exput words, repeat. It's how I get through every conversation. There are times where something falls outside my codebook, and that's usally near the end of every conversation. I respond with something like "Woah" or "Cool!" but dealing with it is incredibly frustrating, and tiring. Conversations themselves are very tiring for me. If you were to dare me to do a conversation who's content contained something requiring brain power, I could not do it. If you were to dare me to do a conversation while my hands are busy, I also could not do it. Because conversing with someone, to me, requires so much brain power that I absolutely cannot do anything beside it. Another frustrating part of speech is emotional expression.

I cant express my emotions in a way that feels satisfactory. I feel huge amounts of emotion but I cant let it out, or talk about it because there are physically no words that can describe my emotion I'm feeling. When I'm melting down I can say I'm 'frustrated because...' but it doesn't EXPLAIN what I'm feeling, it doesn't make me feel less frustrated, and I cant give the person I'm talking to the full story of what my frustration is about, and feeling like, and that frustrates me even further. Does that make sense? Also, when someone puts across emotion in speech, I cant react in a way that feels genuine to me. By societal boundaries it probably SOUNDS somewhat genuine, but when I feel bad for a person I cant fully convey how bad I feel, or why, what it feels like because words just cant describe that. And I'm constantly frustrated by this word barrier that keeps me from telling people what I think, and feel. This is much the reason why, if I do have Asperger's, I was not diagnosed up to this point. I cant communicate this kind of thing.

So, next is the reason I think I DONT have Asperger's. I don't have extreme aversion to very many things (other than slimy oven baked chicken legs. Eugh.) but I do 'stim' I guess? I chew on a lot of things, and I lick things with the side of my tongue, and I seem to have this oral fascination. My current obsession is my hands, and my wallet. And I have a fascination for movement. Rocking, spinning, and bouncing are my favorites. Compression is relaxing, and I enjoy going under water and just swimming. It feels really relaxing to me to be underwater. I tend to 'crave' compression, and I did for a while, even to the point of asking my family for random hugs because I wanted the compression.

Another reason I don't believe I have Asperger's, at least outright, is I don't have major issues with meltdowns, or eye contact. With eyes, I notice that my eyes naturally drift towards the floor, and at people's noses and mouths. I've even been caught trying to speak to them while facing a different directions, and getting frustrated when they cant hear me, and I tend to have to repeat myself three times. I never could manage staring contests, or anything. But other than that, eye contact hasn't taken a toll on me.

A second one is Meltdowns. Due to my previously mentioned fact that I'm not very avoidant of many senses, I don't tend to have sensory meltdowns. On top of this, I cant control my emotions very well, but I usually do stop before the point of meltdown by getting the hell out of dodge, or stimming, or whatever else makes me feel better. The times I have real 'meltdowns' would be when I get REALLY REALLY frustrated at a series of events and cant express it in a way that makes sense. This happens very rarely, but it does happen, and I constantly have to be aware of my emotions while in public. These two things, to me, just don't feel severe enough. Like I don't deserve to be an aspie because I have not many problems around eye contact, and meltdowns. Is that just me?

The last thing I want to go into is a question. Is it normal to not be able to think at the capacity of others? I cant organize things completely in my head, mental math is impossible, or takes a very long time, making a step-by-step idea takes a long time too, or a piece of paper. I cant retrace my steps, and I get frustrated when writing by hand. I get stressed out when writing something because I never can follow it to it's completion, and when I do, its very sloppy, or has letters mixed up, and scribbled over. Same goes for reading a document aloud, or in print. The use of computers, and typing has made this much easier for me, but I'm afraid I won't be able to do that in a lot of cases.

Why do I bring this up? Because I'm going into highschool. I admit, I've flubbed on my age many, many (two) times. But when I go into highschool, it's sink or swim, do or die. I cant take notes easily because I cant organize what the teacher is saying in a way that makes sense, unless I'm really really focused, and by the time I've got it down on the page, s/he's moved on. I also want to be able to communicate to people in a way that is socially acceptable, as I have not done in the past. I want to be a good student, popular, have friends, ect. But in general, I just want to be normal, and if a diagnosis, IEP, therapy, whatever can help me with that, I'm all in.

Please, if you guys can, I really, really want a reply onto what your theories are in what's happening with me. I tried to be really detailed so that I didn't mislead anyone. I just want to be able to go into highschool, and function like a normal human being. That's literally all I want. With Tourette's it's bad enough, but to just get into class, not be overwhelmed, anxious, or freaked out, and take notes normally, study normally, ect. Please, tell me someone has an idea. <3

Based on what you wrote you should thinking about Factitous Disorders and Autism and should get proffessional help.
An Overview of factitous disorders

You wanted to hear theories. You may be unknowingly sensitive (and I mean that in the sense of unknowingly-psychic such that your thoughts are interpolated with a lot of discarnate-entities which contributes to extreme emotions, distracting you from being able to mentally concentrate, and even making you feel an illness that may originate from one of those entities). You might be wondering what the basis might be for this particular theory. Well, read this book for yourself (click here), then it might make sense that not all of your thoughts are necessarily that of your own.

For the record, effective memory requires attention, and in most cases people are not necessarily forgetting information that went into their head, but rather, the information never even entered the mind to begin with due to some other distraction (i.e. : not paying attention), such as from wandering thoughts (due to not paying attention). You said so yourself that you find your eyes drifting as someone is talking to you, and if your thoughts are focused on paying attention to their feet, then you will certainly not be processing what they are saying to you very well, due to the attention being shifted away from what they are saying to you. The troubles with your mathematics could be for the same or a similar reason.

Hi VixenDraws

I'm not completely sure what you mean by 'faking' illnesses, do you really believe you have them?

When I was younger I used to fake illnesses to get out of school, once I ended up staying in hospital after faking stomach pains, they were considering taking my appendix out. Luckily they didn't but even if they had I don't think I would have been able to tell them I was lying and probably would have gone through with it.

Throughout my late teens and twenties I became somewhat of a hypochondriac, I'm extremely sensitive and would feel every little thing in my body and some of those things would freak me out. I'd then decide that I had some awful illness and would get paranoid and panic and these would make the symptoms a lot worse. I saw a lot of doctors and ended up in A&E (emergency room) many times because of this, and it always turned out I was fine. Not that I believed the doctors as I don't particularly trust them. But I didn't die or end up very ill like I was convinced I would.

It sounds to me that you do have issues with eye contact (you avoid it) and you could be prone to meltdowns but you carefully avoid getting to the stage of meltdown so it's not an issue.

Otherwise I would say Aspergers is a real possibility and women do present differently to men. I'd suggest finding someone with experience of diagnosing women and see if you can get a diagnostic assessment.

Good luck