Question for people diagnosed as teens or adults

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How did you come to know you had autism / Asperger's Syndrome?

Did someone, maybe at school, tell you they thought you had it? Did you recognise it in yourself from reading a magazine article or book, or do you have a friend with the condition?

I'm asking because i think i might have it, but i'm not sure. I have an online friend who has it & she seems similar to me in some ways. I have read some stuff about AS, but it's mostly about boys & I'm female.

I was diagnosed at 13. My mother was outraged and I never saw the shrink again. She hid this diagnosis from me and I never knew about it until I was 20 and browsing wikipedia.

First, I had read some articles about it. Then I asked my medical practitioner. Then I visited a specialist (several times). then I received the diagnosis.

How I found out:
- boyfriend suggested there was something odd about my behaviour in general but neither of us could put a finger on it
- go to doctor, he suggested something like social anxiety disorder
-go back for my 2nd appointment after reading about it, tell him that it is sort of describing the end result alright but the reasons given for it are completely wrong, in some cases they are complete opposites, so it can't be right, so he suggests to go over to see the counsellors/psychologists (I was doing this at my university)
-go over to them, she suggests autism/AS is a distinct possibility in about 5 minutes
-read about it, EVERYTHING FITS! it explains *everything*!

-then 2 months later learn I was diagnosed with PDD-NOS when I was 4


If you've read a lot about it and you're not sure you have it, then you might not have it but show some of the traits. For me when I was learning about it, it was like someone else was describing me exactly as if I might as well have written it. When you've spent 19 years without meeting anyone like you, and just thinking there is something deficient about you, it is such a life changing discovery to see everything written so perfectly. It'd still be useful to learn about it either way I reckon, if it helps you understand the world and other people than by all means go for it.

just read a review of Dan Akroyd, in which he mentioned he had it, and what the symptoms were, and then...'uhoh'...a little research on the web, and here I am.

I got diagnosed when I was 18 1/2. My old CBT therapist realized that there was something going on besides my OCD, and she recognized the AS symptoms. I was then sent to an AS specialist, where I received the official diagnosis. Between the time my CBT therapist suggested it and the time when I got the official diagnosis, I read a lot about AS, and the books made me see just how "me" AS was. Plus, a good friend of mine has a family member with AS, and they recognized the symptoms in me before I heard about it from my CBT therapist.
-OddDuckNash99-

I was diagnosed not long after I started highschool. My guidance councillor/IEP councillor knew about AS and he thought I had it so he told my mom and I got diagnosed about two months later.

Sorry Happypuff- mistook you for me for a second and thought I'd gone insane

(I'm either going have to stop jumping everytime I see someone with the same avatar as me, or start uploading my own...)

See here for my story.

I basically self-diagnosed but found out that my therapist had made the diagnosis years earlier but never said anything because he didn't think it was important.

I had some pretty bad depression and so started brushing up against mental health people, and they kind of threw the diagnosis in with everything else.
Totalling up this page, apparently the best way of getting a diagnosis is be in contact with a shrink for something else. Maybe you could orchestrate a psychotic episode?

I've never been evaluated, so I don't have a dx. I learned about AS about six years ago when trying to find answers about my son's odd behavior.

The more I learned about it, the more I began to realize that it explains so many things about me, like why I've always had such a hard time in job situations, and never understood what I was meant to be doing or how to do it. Why I have always felt like everyone around me has been told some great secret that I have not been told. Why popular TV shows about people in social situations make so little sense to me (who the heck has a life like THAT?) Why I feel so incredibly drained after a party. Why I've only had a couple of friends in my life, and they have always been people who protect me in social situations, and who say things like "you're so cute and funny" when I do something that doesn't match what all the nts are doing, and when I didn't intend to be cute and/or funny. Why I get so caught up in my knitting or Lego movie making that I don't realize it's gone dark and I haven't made dinner yet. Why I have so much trouble making a meal. Why I can't stand inane small talk. Why I sometimes accidentally will go from saying nothing to suddenly spewing out my entire life story to someone I hardly know, and scaring them away. Why it takes me so long to do any task, because I get stuck or I'm daydreaming. Why I used to get so nervous around people that I would shake, and sometimes still do. Why I despise the telephone. Why I can feel really strongly about something, or enthusiastic about something, but not be able to explain it to another person. Why I'm totally invisible to strangers, except for on the occasions when they come up to me and say, "smile, it's not so bad" when I was just daydreaming. Why I am so uncomfortable in shopping malls. Why I'm susceptible to depression. Why I nearly flunked out of high school despite the fact that, at some point, I was told I had a genius IQ. (Not sure when or how that was determined, or if that's true. If it is, fat lot of good it's done me).

So, there's nothing really major, or that would be super obvious to people, but I can't think of any better explanation for all that stuff.

I got diagnosed Nov 3 at age 50. I'd researched AS for years, on and off, because it seemed so much to describe my father, with whom I did not have a good relationship. I was trying to understand him better. Then I recently had some contact with someone online who told me out of the blue that he has AS, and everything started to click in about myself. I read up on AS voraciously and everything fit. Within a month, I had a dx.

I was diagnosed at age 15, in May of '06. I went in for a blood test to be sure that my thyroid was working properly, but the doctor kept asking my mom a bunch of questions that seemed really off-topic, such as: "Did Alex have trouble making friends at school?" and "Does Alex have a topic that she is really focused on?" etc. Finally, she said; "I think Alex has Asperger's Syndrome." She gave my mom and me a bunch of papers to fill out. After looking at the results, she said I had it. We told my psychiatrist, who said that he felt I had it all along, and gave my mom and me tests that confirmed it yet again. Finally, we were referred to Dr. Level, the leading autistic spectrum specialist in Idaho, and he officially confirmed the diagnosis.

My best friend started to suspect that she had it and at the time I had never even heard of it, but we would be talking on the phone and she would read me bits of a book she had purchased by Tony Atwood, and the more she started describing it to me, the more i realized that it also described me. Which probably explains why we always got a long the way we have. I tried to go to a psychiatrist last week to see about getting a diagnosis, but the doctor through me off by saying "we don't treat diagnosis, we treat symptom groups" at which point I promptly forgot everything i had planned on saying...lol.....I didn't really go there seeking treatment, but just wanted to run it by a doctor to see if made sense. I'm already confident that my self dx is correct, but mostly wanted to know for sure so I would stop doubting myself. He also said "when self-dxing, we often pick the diagnosis we LIKE". Which irritated me a little, because i don't really know anyone who dreams of being autistic. At my age, an actual diagnosis doesn't really matter, because it's not going to help in any way because my problems aren't really with AS itself, but just anxiety/depression. I've learned that my anxiety comes from supressing all of those things about myself that make me different and that i always feared would make people not like me. Basically i've surpressed all of my 'weirdness'. The best thing you can do is read up on AS as much as you can. The more you read about it, the more you will know wether or not it fits you.

i knew i had it because my aunt my cousins and my mom said i was autistic i had alot of the signs since i was 2 years old and when my 4 year old cousin was down my aunt said i was no way like him he was socializing and interacting with people and talking too..