I've been feeling like I'm melting down

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Ever since hearing about asperger's, the symptoms have seemed to be some sort of running theme in my life. Honestly, it's horrible, and I wish I never heard about it. I would've just continued being a socially inept ret*d, and been totally ignorant of it. I also realize that self-diagnosis with asperger's is the latest trend amongst socially inept internet users, too. I hate that I seem to be heading down this path. All my life, I've known I'm very socially bizarre and uptight, but I haven't ever been so self-conscious about it. I've also had strings of obsessions throughout my entire life and feel pointless without some nerdy obsession (programming, progressive rock guitar, cognitive science, etc) consuming my time.

I'm also mind blind to women. I can't even find some sort of common ground with them and talk with them. I just can't small talk at all, it's horrible. Therefore, I usually keep my distance after just getting barely acquainted with a girl out of fear of creating painful awkwardness. I always have to be at some stupid level of seriousness with people and can only talk about my interests with them. I generally don't have such huge problems communicating with other males, but man, with women, it's just ridiculous. I'm heterosexual (being gay would be such a simple solution to this!), so I've got to be able to overcome this. I'm pretty sure it's mainly a social thing, too, since I can make decent short first impressions, but after a longer amount of time elapses, something just clicks off with them.

I just hate the way this disorder seems to be manifesting itself everywhere in my life (it even shows up in the way I learn!! There's a reason I always unconsciously focus on details and the general mechanics of systems). Even my own mother (she's been a school psychologist for at least 10 years and is doing her phd dissertation on self modeling and autism) has told me that I probably have this disorder before, but I thought she was full of s**t, and generally ignored her.

It took a lot for me to finally post here, and I'm pretty embarrassed about it, quite frankly, but it's time that I get a grip on this. I'll be posting here more often, I think.

Thanks for reading this mess!

Well... thanks for opening up!

It's up to you whether you want to live your life with the diagnosis or not.
It is convenient sometimes to be able to explain yourself through a diagnosis, but for the rest of the time, you don't really need it.

You can just admit to yourself that you recognize some of these traits in yourself and learn to deal with them the best you can like other folks around here.

This doesn't have to be all BAD stuff concerning your life. You should spend some time around here reading posts to get an idea of the many ways people accept their life as it is.

For the other stuff that become a constant issue, like female companions/friends, this is something you'll be dealing with for a long time I suppose. Just be aware that there are quite a few folks here who have had, or are having some pretty nice relationships with the opposite sex.
Try to grab some of the advice or personal experiences from here and see if they help you out any.

After learning out about AS I have noticed many more symptoms than I had noticed before. I am not diagnosed officially, but after reading some of the other posters here got me to convince myself to start seeing a psychologist. I found one who deals with people with Aspergers, but we are mainly working on anxiety issues. I am pretty sure it is just being aware that certain behaviors are symptoms makes it more apparent when I am doing one of them. It is kind of distracting, but at the same time it has been incredibly helpful as I have been able to use it as a cue that I am getting anxiety building up and to work on relaxing and identifying what exactly is causing the anxiety.

It has been an interesting journey so far as things in my life are beginning to make more sense. Now that I know what some of my troubles and difficulties are and why I have them it gives me the ability to focus on working through them or finding alternative solutions to them. I find that to be pretty liberating.

So I guess what I am trying to say roadGames is that it isn't all bad and can actually be of use.
Welcome to WrongPlanet!

First of all, stop calling yourself a "socially inept ret*d". I beat myself up mentally like that too but I know it really doesn't do me any good. I bet you've got a lot of the great qualities that a lot of us here have, like being smart, loyal, detailed (yes, it's a good thing), and having a unique sense of humor.

I know it's frustrating feeling like you screw up socially, especially with the opposite sex, but the way I see it, the right girl isn't going to give a s**t if you can do small talk or not. I hate small talk. It's pointless and a complete waste of time. I've trained myself to do it because I work in an office, but I can only maintain it for a very short period of time. Who cares? I don't, I'd much rather have a serious conversation about the meaning of life, physics, evolution, etc. Hell, I throw out psychological advice to people I hardly know because that's who I am. The people that think I'm weird because of that aren't people I want as my friends anyway.

When I first found out about AS, I freaked a bit too. I couldn't get over the label. But you get past that and you realize that it doesn't make you any different than you were before. The only difference is that you have more information about yourself. That's a good thing. Try to accept yourself for who you are and instead of changing yourself, work with yourself to get the things in life you want. Does that make sense? I hope so because I know how you feel.