TENDANCY vs ASD... how do you tell?

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Someone please clarify this for me!

I'm having a rough time lately in my neuro program... I just up and switched from marine biology to neuroscience and so everyone (here in my new program) @ one time or another asks me WHY i switched.

And though I try my best to NOT say, "because i found out I may have AS and can't think of researching anything else now"... some people have pressed me hard enough to where i do allude to my self-considerations and inspiration for it....

And it pisses me off cause they keep CORNERING me into admitting that (even though I am NOT putting out any signals that i care to discuss this with them...)

And what do they do whenever I do say something suggesting i may have AS? "Oh you don't have THAT!.... pft!"

I just wanna throttle someone.....................


But, since I have been having a crappy time in general... I tried my best to put this energy to something positive....


So, PLZ PLZ PLZ tell me.... what is the difference between having TENDANCIES vs even being mild AS


Im so friggin tired of this crap i can't take it.... The only mildly amusing thing out of this whole type of situation is when i think back to telling people from my last program, that i thought i had AS....

from people who had interacted with me for multiple years... they all seemed to say, "oh well, that's not surprising!" (i was in a neuro department there too....)



BUR STUPID PEOPLE GET OUTTA MY FACE SIGHT!

Here's a site with the diagnostic critera of AS:

http://web.syr.edu/~rjkopp/data/as_diag_list.html

I know what you mean, I don't know if I'm an Aspie or not either. All I know is that I have tendencies, and I tend to score more on the Aspie side than the NT side in quizzes such as this one:

http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

Most importantly (I think anyway) is that even though I meet a lot of the criteria, my AS symptoms don't affect me in such a negative way that I can't function, that I'm depressed, that I feel I need help, etc. AS describes my personality well and the most problematic components of my nature are explained by AS, so for now, I'm saying I have AS tendencies and that's enough for me.

Anyway, see if you fit the diagnostic criteria.

If it helps, some of the AS tendences I have are:
- social anxiety
- special interests (maybe the best part of being an Aspie!)
- some tics that could be considered stims
- unusual sense of humor
- social naivety
- sensory sensitivities (especially to smells)
- problems voicing my opinions without offending people
- logical nature (rather than emotional)
- don't know what to do with my emotions (I usually bottle them up and then have a meltdown)
- talking to myself!
- adherence to routine (nothing TOO extreme, but if there's not a plan, I tend to be very nervous, and if I go out with friends and they change the plan on me, saying, "Let's not go to dinner, let's go dancing instead," or something, I freak out)

But on the other hand, I think I have good Theory of Mind, maybe from reading a lot of books. And I can read people's expressions well enough. Problems with these things are so vital to an AS diagnosis, I'm pretty sure I don't have full-blown AS, but AS explains so much of who I am, I relate to it. That's what's important, I think.

Good luck figuring this! Just be honest with yourself and make sure you're not reaching. But please, don't listen to anybody who tells you, "Oh you don't have that!" because you know yourself best.

Ho!! !! !! !

How it manifests in women can be very different from how it manifests in men, and the diagnostic criteria are mainly based on male traits.

So if the people in your program think they know everything about AS symptoms, they're probably wrong, unless they know specifically how it manifests itself in women (much less from one individual to the next).

The fact that they're "cornering" you doesn't show much social grace on their parts...It's really none of their business, and their bullying doesn't require you to divulge anything.

In any case, you could simply respond that neuroscience is "a fascinating topic," and leave it at that. Unless you've already told them.

Yes, just say something simple like that and don't elaborate further. Evasion is practical.

Once you said that to the first person, it went into the general gossip, and now I guess lots of people push you exactly so that they can hear you say you are/might be an aspie. It's too late to say you know someone who is likely an aspie, and that got you iterested.

A possible reply to those you can afford to fob off with obvious nonsense is to generate a list of increasingly outrageous reasons and go through them:
Because I want to understand my ex boyfriend.
Because I always get lost.
Because my granny told me to.
Because it will annoy my little sister.
Because I want to find out what produces my outbreaks of sudden and excessive violence.

Fill in lots more. Never give the same reason twice to the same person.

If someone asks whom you can't afford to annoy, say because you wanted to find out what produces behaviour. Generic, vague, and true. If they want something more specific, you could say you looked around and got hooked on this programme. Butter them up by going into full obsessive aspie mode. Back them into a corner and keep going on about all the interesting things you have learned so far.