Hello.
I'd like to start by saying I do not qualify myself as "self-diagnosed" as yet. I guess I'm here to get some counsel from some of you who are more knowledgeable and experienced and can add some human perspective to this for me, because I'm having a hard time sorting out all this information.
I'm 20 years old, and recently a friend of mine (one of the very few close ones I have) who was diagnosed with Aspergers when we were younger encouraged me to look into the syndrome, adding that his own diagnoses was very liberating for him.
Not knowing really anything about it, I took the Autism Spectrum Quotient test and scored a 40. I guess this wouldn't have made an impact on me, but the questions themselves seemed so deeply personal and familiar that the seemingly high score jarred me.
After reading up on some common traits of folks with Asperger's here are some things that I have always thought have made me seem odd and alienating to other people that are relevant:
-I'm constantly overstimulated in public. In class, I have to sit in the back and close my eyes or stare at the floor and even then I find it impossible to speak until class is over. I can usually focus if I keep my hands moving, rubbing my face etc... Thankfully, I can usually memorize a lot of the information without taking notes if I can actually listen.
-I have a very hard time making eye contact and I currently and historically have always been reprimanded for saying and doing inappropriate things in public. Because of this, I try to calculate my conversations with people. I spend a lot of time alone, talking to myself and envisioning upcoming social scenarios so I feel prepared. Even then though, I get a lot of negative reactions.
-I have a fixation with anagrams. When people talk to me, I don't look at them, but visualize the letters and often rearrange them if the intuition strikes me. Sometimes this happens with single words, but often I find I have to excuse myself so I can work out resorting one or more sentences. Sometimes I feel euphoric when I do this
-If I am talking to someone and someone else nearby starts talking and I can hear them, I find I can no longer speak or really understand what the other person is saying. I totally shut down. Sometimes this happens when I'm frustrated, too.
-I've never been able to really empathize with other people. Since I was little, I've never been able to comfort someone who needed support or felt any kind of profound sympathy. This has always made me feel a little bit impotent. In fact, I am criticized pretty constantly even by people I consider to be my friends for being cold and uncaring, but it's always seemed that there's just a discrepancy between the way we judge any given emotional situation.
-I've never been friends with other girls. Never wore make-up. Can't seem to get on board, try as I have, with being friends with girls (when I was younger) and women (now, if you believe 20 years makes you so)
-I've never been in a relationship. While this doesn't bother me at all in a practical sense (I really do prefer being on my own), I'm vaguely ashamed because this seems to be such a crucial part of everyone else's life. In fact, a lot of just the concept of a person being physically attractive is kind of lost on me, at least when I hear other people talking about the folks they're attracted to.
-I have been wearing the exact same outfit for 9 years. It has never seriously occurred to me to buy other clothes. When people ask about this (and boy, do they...), I am equally baffled that they can go into a clothing store (horrifying to me) and pick out clothes (VERY confusing) and then find it within themselves to choose EVERYDAY which of those clothes to wear.
-I have a VERY irregular sleep schedule. Sometimes I only sleep 3 or 4 hours. Some other sleep problems, too.
- I was constantly ostracized as a child. I learned to talk when I was around 8 months (not sure if that's irregular). I never made or kept friends as a child, and kids in class usually found reasons to refer to me as some kind of weirdo. I would sometimes chalk this up to the fact that all teachers I had up until middle school seemed to LOVE me, even though I tried to shirk them. I had a tight-knit group of friends in high school that I remain fairly close with, though it has always been apparent to me that they are all "closer" with each other than they are with me. This doesn't bother me so much, though I have a hard time directly pin-pointing why.
-If someone is explaining something to me directly (ie, giving me directions or instructions for some task) I look at them, but I know I'm missing most of what they're saying because my mind is waaay off somewhere else. There's a kind of desperate frustration there. I suspect this is the reason I've been fired from a couple seemingly low-level jobs.
- If I'm doing something where I'm focused, whether I'm active or just very deeply mentally invested, and someone interrupts me or even unknowingly does something to distract me, I get very, very upset. Everyone I know, even my family members are not receptive to this at all, and always insist that I'm overreacting, but it's an incredibly strong emotional trigger for me.
So I guess my question is... based your experiences as diagnosed "Aspies" is this enough to go on to get a diagnosis..or am I just overblowing some relatively benign personality traits?
I know that on paper that list LOOKS like a lot of stuff, but these are the things that I feel comprise my social persona and I'm just having a tough time sorting out which aspects here are really relevant to seeking some kind of therapy and which are just me whining about not "fitting in."
Did any of you feel this way before seeking help? Did you find that a diagnosis and therapy were helpful to you?
Thanks for your help!
I'd like to start by saying I do not qualify myself as "self-diagnosed" as yet. I guess I'm here to get some counsel from some of you who are more knowledgeable and experienced and can add some human perspective to this for me, because I'm having a hard time sorting out all this information.
I'm 20 years old, and recently a friend of mine (one of the very few close ones I have) who was diagnosed with Aspergers when we were younger encouraged me to look into the syndrome, adding that his own diagnoses was very liberating for him.
Not knowing really anything about it, I took the Autism Spectrum Quotient test and scored a 40. I guess this wouldn't have made an impact on me, but the questions themselves seemed so deeply personal and familiar that the seemingly high score jarred me.
After reading up on some common traits of folks with Asperger's here are some things that I have always thought have made me seem odd and alienating to other people that are relevant:
-I'm constantly overstimulated in public. In class, I have to sit in the back and close my eyes or stare at the floor and even then I find it impossible to speak until class is over. I can usually focus if I keep my hands moving, rubbing my face etc... Thankfully, I can usually memorize a lot of the information without taking notes if I can actually listen.
-I have a very hard time making eye contact and I currently and historically have always been reprimanded for saying and doing inappropriate things in public. Because of this, I try to calculate my conversations with people. I spend a lot of time alone, talking to myself and envisioning upcoming social scenarios so I feel prepared. Even then though, I get a lot of negative reactions.
-I have a fixation with anagrams. When people talk to me, I don't look at them, but visualize the letters and often rearrange them if the intuition strikes me. Sometimes this happens with single words, but often I find I have to excuse myself so I can work out resorting one or more sentences. Sometimes I feel euphoric when I do this
-If I am talking to someone and someone else nearby starts talking and I can hear them, I find I can no longer speak or really understand what the other person is saying. I totally shut down. Sometimes this happens when I'm frustrated, too.
-I've never been able to really empathize with other people. Since I was little, I've never been able to comfort someone who needed support or felt any kind of profound sympathy. This has always made me feel a little bit impotent. In fact, I am criticized pretty constantly even by people I consider to be my friends for being cold and uncaring, but it's always seemed that there's just a discrepancy between the way we judge any given emotional situation.
-I've never been friends with other girls. Never wore make-up. Can't seem to get on board, try as I have, with being friends with girls (when I was younger) and women (now, if you believe 20 years makes you so)
-I've never been in a relationship. While this doesn't bother me at all in a practical sense (I really do prefer being on my own), I'm vaguely ashamed because this seems to be such a crucial part of everyone else's life. In fact, a lot of just the concept of a person being physically attractive is kind of lost on me, at least when I hear other people talking about the folks they're attracted to.
-I have been wearing the exact same outfit for 9 years. It has never seriously occurred to me to buy other clothes. When people ask about this (and boy, do they...), I am equally baffled that they can go into a clothing store (horrifying to me) and pick out clothes (VERY confusing) and then find it within themselves to choose EVERYDAY which of those clothes to wear.
-I have a VERY irregular sleep schedule. Sometimes I only sleep 3 or 4 hours. Some other sleep problems, too.
- I was constantly ostracized as a child. I learned to talk when I was around 8 months (not sure if that's irregular). I never made or kept friends as a child, and kids in class usually found reasons to refer to me as some kind of weirdo. I would sometimes chalk this up to the fact that all teachers I had up until middle school seemed to LOVE me, even though I tried to shirk them. I had a tight-knit group of friends in high school that I remain fairly close with, though it has always been apparent to me that they are all "closer" with each other than they are with me. This doesn't bother me so much, though I have a hard time directly pin-pointing why.
-If someone is explaining something to me directly (ie, giving me directions or instructions for some task) I look at them, but I know I'm missing most of what they're saying because my mind is waaay off somewhere else. There's a kind of desperate frustration there. I suspect this is the reason I've been fired from a couple seemingly low-level jobs.
- If I'm doing something where I'm focused, whether I'm active or just very deeply mentally invested, and someone interrupts me or even unknowingly does something to distract me, I get very, very upset. Everyone I know, even my family members are not receptive to this at all, and always insist that I'm overreacting, but it's an incredibly strong emotional trigger for me.
So I guess my question is... based your experiences as diagnosed "Aspies" is this enough to go on to get a diagnosis..or am I just overblowing some relatively benign personality traits?
I know that on paper that list LOOKS like a lot of stuff, but these are the things that I feel comprise my social persona and I'm just having a tough time sorting out which aspects here are really relevant to seeking some kind of therapy and which are just me whining about not "fitting in."
Did any of you feel this way before seeking help? Did you find that a diagnosis and therapy were helpful to you?
Thanks for your help!
