Slightly depressed

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Hey everyone, this is my first post.
First off, I don't know if I have asperger's or not- However, even if I am NT, I still have many of the problems that aspies commonly have, such as trouble keeping/making friends and susceptibility to "meltdowns". I told both my parents about the possibility of me having asperger's (I am 15) but neither have helped much with finding more about it or with my own social problems. That said, I probably won't get any professional guidance anytime in the near future.

I'm posting because I feel terribly confused, frustrated, and a little depressed. Whenever I talk to my friends at school, I always feel that I'm not a part of the conversation until we talk about something that I know a LOT about. I have about 3 REAL friends, and only one of them I have talked to out of school. This person, a girl, is also my crush. Whenever I'm alone with her I lose my concentration, unless we are having a heated conversation about physics or computers, which we both love. When she fails to reply to my text messages within an acceptable timespan, I get a little upset the next day and regret getting upset when it becomes obvious that I am upset. She has a ton of friends, and even a boyfriend. When she comes late to a class we share, I feel a little upset too, even though there's no reason to be- just that it contradicts her usual routine.

What is frustrating is that I don't know whether my problems are deeply rooted in what could be AS, or just simply a type of social incompetence.
Thanks for reading.

Your situation is not exactly uncommon amongst most adolescent males coming of age, bit harsh to say your socially incompetant.

Rather then try and identify yourself with a diagnostic label out of a psychiatrists handbook it might be more useful to you to diversify your opportunities to socialise with others who you relate too. Also, don't ruin a perfectly good friendship through infatuation, easy mistake to make, perhaps you will have to make it yourself to learn from it who knows.

School is not exactly the greatest social environment for AS. I can't say I enjoyed my time in it, I think if i went through the americain system I would have probably had an even worse time of things.

You could absolutely fall into the spectrum. You seem to fit many of the symptoms required for a diagnosis, or at least falling into the spectrum. One of the problems I find is that many parents are unfortunately hesitant to have their children assessed due to their belief that their child is 'all right', or at least just a little bit 'off' and does not require an assessment. However, I dont want to seem negative towards your parents, but you know your body better than your parents and if you feel you could benefit from an assessment, you should urge them to take you to a psychiatrist or another medical professional. Another important factor is that you could just suffer of social phobia, which is a disorder that causes social anxiety when the sufferer is exposed to a social environment. The fact that you seem to have a deeply set interest in physics and microelectronics could however warrant the suspicion that you may indeed have AS.

The previous user, Laz, mentions that it is not always useful to label yourself with a psychiatric diagnosis, however oftentimes keeping a psychiatric label to yourself can help clear some of the confusion surrounding your different mental states. This can be comforting to some.

Also, nowadays treatment options for either social phobia, AS, or another condition have much more benefit to the user, and some of the medical options have much more mild side effects. For instance, for social anxiety which is a hallmark symptom of AS, SSRIs can be prescribed to ease that anxiety. SSRIs are replacing Tricyclic Antidepressants as their side effects are much more mild and they are seem to be equally as effective. However for some, various psychiatric medications have a minimal healing effect, and some simply want to stay off of any medications. There is also CBT, or psychotherapy which is the non-medication approach tackling the symptoms of AS. When a good psychotherapist attempts CBT on a client, it has been noted that the psychiatric benefit was equal to that of antidepressants in the treatment of OCD. This shows that a non-medication approach also works very well, considering that a disorder such as OCD is hard to treat. Nevertheless, those are 2 of the frequently used methods of alleviating the core symptoms of AS, there are many more out there.

Nevertheless, I recommend you get at least get assessed. Just having a diagnosis can be like having an answer to many of your questions. I wish you all the best in the future, and I hope you find answers to many of questions.