were you aware of your aspergers symptoms before diagnosis?

Post Reply New Topic

I knew I was a sucky communicator.

I knew I liked to have a routine.

I knew I was overly sensitive to light.

I knew I was introverted.

I knew I had a very logical and literal mind.

I knew I was obsessed with certain topics.

I knew I was different from most people.

All AS does is explain why.

I find that whole "one isn't aware that they have Aspergers" to be bull crap.

I was aware I was different from the other kids when I was 7. I often wondered why my whole class hated me, and why it was so difficult to do simple chit chat. I wasn't aware I had this specific disorder due to lack of information. Information about AS/HFA was far and few before the mid 1990s. It's not like you could look things up on the internet like you can today.

I guess the whole "one isn't aware that they have Aspergers" could be explained by if you do something so many times it becomes normal to you. It's like you become desensitized by it. For example I didn't think sitting alone at the lunch table was abnormal. I became used to it after so many times of being rejected by the other kids.

As I've said before - I was a classic example of an autistic child...

I was mute until the age of 7, and even then I had learning difficulties for a long time after. I was totally unaware of normal social rules and was often told-off for being rude without understanding why. I was never able to communicate with other people, particularly my peers, and I would often bark or sing silly songs rather than talk. I was totally unable/unwilling/unaware of bathing myself or using the toilet correctly. I was unable to go anywhere without my mother. I was always sensitive to touch, even as a baby I had issues with certain textures, and as a child I had very particular clothing preferences. I was highly obsessed with certain subjects, had a tendency to collect things and played in very complex 'grown-up' ways and had a good imagination but it was still grounded in reality in many ways. I had very strong OCD tendencies and need for routine. I was very smart and worked better on my own, actually hiding work from others and I remember always thinking because everyone else took so long to understand something that if I had understood it straight away that I mustn't have actually understood at all. I was always resourceful, I always did strange things that made sense to me but that I was never able to explain to others, I was able to pick things up very quickly, and I was also unusually good at art. I would have meltdowns constantly, and I was an outcast throughout school life.

There are a million examples from my childhood...

In my teens I saw a film about a child with Autism - I saw so much of myself in that child, I thought 'maybe I'm autistic' and had that little glimmer of belonging, however as the child in the film was mute and I was no longer mute I thought I couldn't have been autistic because I wasn't 'autistic enough'. On looking for information on autism I found Asperger's.

There are very few traits or characteristics of Asperger's that I do not have. As an adult I have functioned as an NT for the most part, I still had social issues but this had always been put down to social anxiety as a result of childhood abuse, getting older 'social anxiety' no longer fitted as I had advanced so far but there were still areas from childhood that were not improving. Many of my aspie traits these days are muted somewhat, only now I know about AS have I realised how very AS I actually act, I had always just been considered weird, passionate or guilty of over-thinking things. I'm awaiting diagnosis, but everyone so far both personally and professionally (mental health team and GP's) have agreed...it's very unlikely that I'm not AS.

Differences in how our brains work makes us so different that we can tell we're not quite like other people, I think it is possible on a rare occasion for a person not to know...but then in these cases I think ignorance has a part to play because people don't realise that 'normal' people can be autistic too, so the idea of autism doesn't even cross their mind and maybe some professionals are of the idea that it is so subtle compared to lower-functioning autism that we don't realise the difference.

Last edited by Bloodheart on 09 Jun 2011, 7:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

thanks for the great responses

it seems that most have known they were different before they knew about aspergers or were diagnosed. im really bugging out that this guy told me i cant be aware of having aspergers. what does he think an aspergers person sees when they read about the syndrome?

I also knew that I was different, and the feeling of difference increased as I got older. I don't think I knew when I was little. Prior to hearing about ASD, I called my difference "Arrested Development Disorder".

Your shrink seems to be making the mistake of a lot of shrinks, thinking that ASD people can't know that they're different or figure out that they have ASD once they research it. I also wonder what they think we think when we read about it.

Some people have ridiculous ideas. One persistent ridiculous idea is that autistic people are incapable of being aware of our differences. I am not sure where this came from, but it's pretty clearly wrong. Even if we didn't know before, reading about it can make it fairly obvious.

I had absolutly no idea, when i read about aspergers, it quickly became an obsession for a year straight, it was like learning i had something in my nightmares had come true, traumatic

I knew of some things, Most notably eye contact and reading eyes.

I was aware of "just being different" all my life, but never knew I might be Autistic before my own diagnosis.
I was never really aware that I "stimmed" before my wife told me I did. My mother had sometimes imitated my "stimming" and accused me of doing it "just to make her mad". Mom didn't realize it was from Autism; and STILL doesn't believe it! (I think she's somewhat mentally ill, herself...)
Anyway, I had Autistic symptoms, but never really was aware of it until my marriage. Hope this might help to answer your questions.
And a welcome for both of you newcomers!

I knew I was different, I knew that no one liked me for who I was, I knew that I was a social reject, I knew that I was sensitive to textures, and I knew that my interests were obsessive to the point it affected the way I spoke to other people.

I hated being different, I hated being someone that couldn't fit in, and then I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and it all made sense to me. But, being diagnosed with it didn't stop me from making the mistakes I wanted to avoid; those mistakes were made before my diagnosis and before I even knew what Asperger's was, hence why it didn't help me.

When I was diagnosed, I wasn't talked about it either, just given the diagnosis and after that I spent years knowing that I have it but not understanding what that meant. This year, I lost my best friend and immediately decided to research the diagnosis.

It tells you why you're different and how to find others similar to you. That's all.

As far as stimming goes, I think my stimming involves tics and banging on the keyboard. No, I'm serious. I bang on the keys repeatedly and it's so loud my dad has started to imitate it, which irritates me. I cannot help that I do it, just that it seems to calm me down. It started out of nowhere, and it doesn't sound like any time of stimming I've ever heard of. It just randomly started around March this year.

I was aware of my aspergers long before I knew what it was. I definitely think people are aware of it. They just usually aren't aware that others don't have it too. I became aware that I was different when I entered the school system and had other kids to compare myself with. The institutional setting itself was difficult for me, and the social dynamic as well. I was really intelligent too so school was always an exercise in boredom and I would daydream, could easily have been diagnosed with ADD but never was diagnosed with anything while I was still in school. I wasn't diagnosed until just recently at the age of 45. It all made so much sense all of a sudden.

On the other hand, I finally had an explanation for so many things in my life that had gone wrong. I understood what was holding me back. Since I had it all along, being upset about it struck me as a waste of time.

I said early in this thread that I always knew that I was 'freakishly different' but after further reflection, this is more accurate. When I was younger, I really had no clue that I was different. I had no sense at all of this. But, over many years, the sense of difference grew to the point that I look back and see that I have always been different and that the sense of this difference actually peaked about the time I discovered Asperger's and autism. It was this profound realization of difference, finally fully formed at the age of 52, that pushed me to searching for an explanation.

And now you all have me to contend with ....

Bwhahahaha ...

I know I posted here already. But some of the more recent posts got me thinking back to my early childhood days. Things were just starting to go south for me socially I was 4 or maybe 5 at the time. I guess I didn't realize that my behavior was odd to my peers or anyone else for that matter. I was fairly isolated anyway growing up as my parents were not the most social people unless they were around other adults. Mom did not like kids, which had a lot to do with social isolation. I didn't spend much time with peer groups as a young girl. It wasn't until I was repeatedly bullied & shunned at public school that I started to pick up on vibes that I was different. So early on, I would say I was blissfully unaware of my differences. Even when my parents were using abusive punishment to correct my odd behaviors. I did not change anything. I'm sure in their eyes they just thought I was being stubborn. While my intelligence was at least average on the IQ scale, it didn't take long of constantly hearing I was a freak, a weirdo, ret*d (no offense to people who hate this word-this is one of the labels I was called growing up), & other hurtful derogatory words, I got the message loud & clear that I was obviously different, nor was I socially acceptable. I would say that by the time I was 8 or maybe 9, I knew full well that I was not like the majority.

I was fairly outgoing & friendly until I was continuously beaten down by bullies. So I may not have completely seemed odd during my early years. But I was a stimmer, & I had obsessions even early on.

I knew I was different, but I liked being different. Didn't really bother me much, especially at Primary school. Starting Secondary school, it was really obvious I was different, and was bullied- but that was what upset me rather than my differences. At Uni, I was just weird, and had weird-ish friends, and wasn't at all bothered about usual student things.
Then, when I started teaching, I met a girl with AS, and said "that's me exactly". Started thinking and researching, then got diagnosed by first doctor I saw about it.
Since then, I've identified thousands of times where I was showing strong AS traits all through life, and it now explains almost everything.

The strange thing is, it doesn't bother me that I have AS (as I now have a word for how I'm different).
It bothers me that I struggled for 25 years without knowing, and people I met thought I was rude, stupid or just useless: I'm none of those things, but that's how I come across when the AS starts to show, and the selective mutism is at its worst.
It bothers me that noone realised what my differences were and couldn't help me.
It bothers me that, when I look back on things that happened, it's always AS at the centre of it, and yet noone noticed, noone cared and noone helped.

I've known that I was different my entire life but I'd attributed it to just being weird, or a hormonal imbalance, or something else. About a month ago, I was on a different board entirely when there was a thread comparing Aspie test results. When I took the test, I scored much higher than anyone else in the thread(it had like 200 replies) and I decided it might be something worth researching. I read every book I could find about Asperger's in my local bookstore and I realized that there was a reason why I see the world the way I do. So I came to WP and here I am. I haven't been formally diagnosed because I don't have insurance and there are things I need much more than a $1500 checkmark on a piece of paper.