Sorry if this is in the wrong location, but I'm interested in learning a bit more about Asperger's Syndrome from some people on here that have experienced it directly or know people who have it. I'm fairly new and learned about this problem on TV while watching some form of documentary about it.
To give a brief description of myself, I am a 20 year old male who goes to college in Pennsylvania as a Pre-Law Major. I've had a lot of hard times in my lifetime and when I was 14 years old, I went to counselors that had wanted to diagnose me with Anti-Social Personality Disorder. The problem is, I was 14 and the client must be 18 to diagnose them, plus you must have a criminal background and I do not.
When I was a child, my mom tells me I was able to read by the age of 2 and able to understand basic mathematics principles by the age of 3, along with able to perfectly replicate a great deal of words that weren't common for children to use and also understand how to use them (mostly because I had a fascination with reading the dictionary as a child). I would take every single toy I owned and line them all up in a single wall in a specific order that only I knew and if any of them were moved, I would instantly know and become very angry to the point of having a meltdown.
As I got older, it was discovered I had a lot of social interaction problems. My teachers would speak with me and discover that I absolutely hated being involved with my classmates and preferred to do all of my work on my own. When my classmates did speak to me, I always thought they were making fun of me (which some of them did) or teasing me all of the time but looking back on it, I think part of that has to do with the fact that I had no sense of humor as a child and no real way to discern literal language from figurative language. I even went as far one time to turn in my kindergarten teacher for calling me "slowpoke" because I went home and cried over it for a couple of days.
The problems became worse as I grew into adolescence, where I dedicated my life to learning to the point that my peers would constantly ridicule and make fun of me for no reason other than the fact that I was different. Eventially, I grew to a point where I didn't allow anyone to touch me anymore or hug me without asking before they could do it, even my own parents. At the age of 14, these problems became so massive that I actually plotted a school shooting and was able to retrieve a weapon to commit the act. My philosophy was that I had a list of people I planned to get rid of and anyone that got in my way would suffer the same fate as well. After going through counselling, I was eventually able to get through that phase of my life but still have a great deal of trouble understanding and actively showing human emotion outside of love for my fiancee, whom I have been with for 5 years and ultimately helped me get through this hard time in my life as well.
To this day, I still make jokes that my friends call "dark" or "very rude/sarcastic" that will oftentimes offend them. I usually apologize each time, but I cannot admit to anyone here that I have ever actually felt sorry for my twisted sense of humor. When it comes to friends, I am capable of dropping any one of them without a second thought and have never shown any form of sadness or remorse for simply abandoning a friend. My philosophy is that friendship is a two-way street, symbiotic and not parasitic, and in the event the relationship changes to parasitic, I terminate it immediately.
I don't take criticism well, I could go my whole life living simply with my fiancee and not interacting with any other person, and I also have a great deal of trouble relating to people about some of my thought processes because either they are incapable of understanding them or they simply think they are so bizarre I must be crazy. For instance, I once did a 1 1/2 lecture with a friend on why I personally believe that love and hate are two of the most selfish human emotions on the planet, even using words like "symbiotic relationship" and "parasitic relationship" with them just as I have here. I'm also blatantly honest about anyone I talk with and I'll tell them exactly what I think, regardless of whether or not they'll like what I have to say. Most of the friends I do still have call me very blunt, but I just call it being an ass XD.
If anyone is curious as to why I haven't seen a psychiatrist or psychologist yet, it's because I'm a college student and my insurance will not cover all of this due to it's source being "possible mental illness". I've gotten interested in this because my fiancee and I plan to have children after college and I'm afraid of the fact that my children could inherit this, since my father is the exact same way I am and it almost seems like I inherited it from him. I want to be able to help them through it and I think before I can do that, I need to know what I have.
Given what I have displayed before you guys, whom have directly seen this disorder yourselves or experienced it firsthand, do these symptoms sound similar to what you have experienced and do you think there is a strong possibility this is what I suffer from?
Thank you to anyone that is willing to help me out.
04 Jul 2009, 11:55 pm
