One could say I have achieved full stealth in that I have never been diagnosed with AS or had it suggested to me as a possibility by a psychiatrist or mental health worker despite being in the system for a couple of years following a breakdown three years ago.
On the other hand one could say this is because I don't have AS at all.
Or that I have not achieved it because I have displayed a range of symptoms caused either directly by AS or by trying to live all my life with undiagnosed AS.
When I first found out about AS I asked a few people who knew me well to describe me to try to ascertain whether some of my impressions of myself were accurate. Their responses were as follows:
"Very warm and friendly, but a bit formal - probably because you went to a private school"
"Really kind, genuine and a good friend, but very direct, people aren't always used to that like I am"
"You're just like my son, he has AS - you relate to people the same way he does"
NB - I hadn't mentioned AS to any of the above people at all in any way at that stage and apart from the third one none of them knew anything about the symptoms.
With my husband I read him a description of AS, leaving out the actual name AS and just calling it "people with this disorder", and asked him what he thought. I was under the care of mental health services at the time but my only official diagnoses were major depression with psychotic features and anxiety. He thought the description described me and our relationship so well he assumed that it was what I had been diagnosed with. When I told him it was AS he was a bit surprised.
Since then he has backtracked totally and currently swings between telling me I definitely don't have AS and not to obsess about it and telling me that this thing or that thing I do is "so AS". He hasn't read any more about it.
I still don't know for sure if I have AS or not and probably never will, but I do find a lot of common ground with people on this site. It has given me the language to explain some issues I have always had but struggled to get across and it is comforting to know that there are like-minded individuals out there who are encountering similar issues and finding ways to cope with them.
I think most of the time I come across as a slightly eccentric, irritating at times, NT with issues - but then most of the time I have no real idea what people really think of me anyway so I tend to just make something up in the range of neutral-positive until they prove me wrong!
17 Mar 2012, 8:20 am
