When and how did you hear about Aspergers syndrome?

[Kit]

I've always known I was different since age three. I just thought it was other people that made me be different. I also thought I had bad luck.

 

[poodlepiglet]

deleted

 

[rikk]

I heard about it just a couple of years ago,I never fit in as a child and was told by several educators

that I didn't belong in public school.

Actually,people who knew me mentioned that I might have asperger's so I read up on it and concluded that I probably

do.

 

[umbrellabeach]

This past February my mom diagnosed me with it. I'd heard of autism before but I hadn't heard of Asperger's. After she talked to me about it I looked it up on WikiPedia and was surprised to see how much of the description fit me. For a little while afterward I was slightly worried about the diagnosis because I was thinking, Does this mean that all those weird ways I act and things I do aren't unique to me, but are because of Asperger Syndrome? I quickly got over that feeling, however, as I learned more about Asperger's, and now I feel I'm unique and aspergic at the same time, which of course is true for all Aspies and probably the way I should feel.

Before discovering you had Aspergers did you realize you were different?

Yes, definitely. Shortly before my mom diagnosed me, I started a new diary and in one of the early entries I wrote that "everyone is different in their own way, but I am drastically different." I've always been happy and proud to stand out, though.

 

[spastigirl]

This year. I'd known what it was for a long time, and tended to [like/identify with] geeks, but never applied it to myself because I don't fit the profile for interest in maths, space and engineering, poor vocal prosody (although an Aspie friend of mine says I have distinctive vocal prosody. Am still trying to figure that one out), no trouble with non-literal language or metaphor, excellent understanding of literature, etc. So I put a message on a forum saying, "Is it possible to grow out of AS", by which I meant that if the diagnosis had been around in my childhood it could well have described my very visible social differences, but when I went to college I met male geeks and engineers who fully met the male profile, and could see a distinction.

They said, "Is it not possible you have been learning to pass?"

The penny dropped, with a clang. I'm not quite the same as the typical Aspie Boy Geek. I 'get' (and can create) fiction. I'm an auditory learner. My Special Interest is probably words. Yet I have (and have had) various non-obvious Aspie-style problems. Over-formality. Lack of social intuition. Answering rhetorical questions. Bluntness. Over-rigid and logical mental style. Poor practical imagination. Problems with executive function. Weakness in empathy and emotional understanding. An unusual strength in seeing how words fit together. Motor clumsiness (masked by a mild physical disability).

Could also be described with NVLD if it wasn't such a bloody awful phrase. It doesn't strike me as a separate condition, but it seems to describe 'the very verbal end of AS, with an auditory learning style and a weakness in the parts of life not to do with words'.

 

[chinaberry]

God! From when I was little I was absolutely obsessed by being normal. I can't explain how strong this feeling was. I could write a lot on it, but I won't. I had friends, but I was always apart from them and although I've never been really bullied, I've always been the weird one. I read a couple of books on autism when I was little, and they didn't strike a chord with me because they were about Kanner's autism, and then I read the Curious Incident and that didn't ring any bells either (I think Christopher is more HFA than AS, thoughts?). But I was on a forum and in someone's signature it said "High Functioning Autistic Individual" with a link, so I clicked on the link and got really interested in autism and then Aspergers. The more I read about it the more clicked. Everything suddenly had a reason! Also dyspraxia and hyperlexia I recognised, and so it was taken from there. When I found it, I was relieved, but also freaked out.

 

[Ana54]

My mom was fed up with me being a failure at life in 8th grade. She looked up autism stuff on the internet. She never shut up about it. She was really miserable about it too. Worse attitude than many curebies.