New here - do I have Asperger's? pretty sure I do...

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Hello,

I'm new to the board here - been suspecting more and more for the past month or so that I've got Asperger's, and I'm feeling the need to share some of these suspicions and see if my experience aligns with those of other people. I've always avoided talking about anything personal with other people, so it feels kind of odd to be spilling my guts to a bunch of strangers (although the anonymity aspect helps a bit) I haven't been officially diagnosed, but I've reached a point in researching it that I feel pretty confident that it's me (maybe 90-95 percent), and being all excited and impatient as I tend to be, I'm eager to jump in and see what other people think. Any thoughts or feedback would be much appreciated. (let me just give a preemptive thanks to anyone who gets all the way through this - I just finished and I realize it's pretty long

So I've been doing this whole health overhaul thing lately - getting in shape, eating better, seeing an MD for the first time in many years, etc, and part of what I deemed necessary is to try to develop some deeper friendships, and become more at ease socializing with others (the past couple years in particular, I've fallen into a social funk - I'm pretty much totally isolated socially other than going to work (at a pizza shop where I am a cashier and delivery driver) - I'll spend a few hours with some co-workers outside of work every now and again, but I hardly ever enjoy it much, most of the time just feeling out of place with nothing to say) I spend my time surfing the internet, watching TV and movies, playing video games, playing and listening to music, and hiking in the amazing mountains around Seattle where I live. I can't really recall what got me interested in Asperger's as a possible explanation for my woes a month ago, but I've definitely been in obsessive learning mode - spending endless hours reading about it and other similar things, searching out every bit of information I can find. I've gone through this before in trying to understand myself - most notably, in college seven or eight years ago, I went through a similar flurry of interest in Avoidant Personality Disorder as a possible explanation, but gradually over the course of a couple years decided it didn't really fit me. I've often thought in the past that I might be a touch autistic, but I've sort of dismissed the notion that I might fully have Asperger's, in part because I have a cousin who has it, whose life has been profoundly affected by it to a degree far beyond my own.

After reading about Asperger's for a couple weeks, I made an appointment with a psychologist who had been referred to me a year before when I was struggling with some OCD stuff (specifically "hit and run" OCD, as it's called - being afraid that I hit someone while driving without realizing it, compelling me to go around the block and check out the "scene of the crime," the process of which would of course involve more driving and more obsessing - you can see how this would be difficult for someone who makes a living from driving, often needing to go quickly, and on busy streets, confined residential areas, in the rain, etc. It got to a point where I had a couple meltdowns at work, once with an accompanying panic attack, and completely stopped driving for two or three weeks until the anxiety had subsided to some degree, learning about OCD during that period, and then quickly banishing those demons nearly completely over the course of a couple months after I realized what I had been doing (the funny thing is that I had been driving circles around blocks and so forth for many years before I identified the behavior, but once I knew what it was, it was almost ridiculously easy to eliminate - I had always just thought of it as a quirk, liking to be careful and sure of things - never really realized how much stress it was causing me - it still bothers me a bit here and there, but for the most part I've completely gotten rid of it)) Anyway, moving on from that tangent... so I see this psychologist, and try to explain things to him, just coming right out and saying that I suspect I have Asperger's. This was the first time I've seen a counselor since my interest in Avoidant Personality Disorder seven or eight years ago - at that time, I figured I should take the approach of describing the things that were bothering me without mentioning my specific suspicions about a diagnosis, but that contributed to a lot of misunderstanding about my problems, in part due to my difficulty describing my emotions and pinpointing what was bothering me, and in part due to the fact that this guy wasn't really a very good counselor - didn't really listen to me, and tried to focus on things that weren't really the problem - anyway, I stopped seeing him after about a month, at which point I offered up some bs and he decided I was cured - this whole experience has kind of soured me on the whole therapy thing for a long time. Anyway, so after talking to this new psychologist (who I really liked) for an hour (costing over $4 a minute - yikes...), he told me that his first impression was that I was somewhere in the social anxiety/avoidant area, and gave me some resources to look into. I took his professional opinion to heart, made another appointment, and went back to read about some of the things with APD and social anxiety I had read years ago. Now (as opposed to years ago in college), Avoidant Personality Disorder really doesn't sound like me at all - I'm not particularly shy, I more often feel superior to others rather than inferior, I don't really avoid social situations (I'll usually go out when someone invites me, I work in a job where I'm bombarded by a constant barrage of people, I do volunteer work with other people), I have very high self-esteem, and socialization doesn't really provoke an "anxiety" response - I've felt how extreme an anxiety attack can be with my OCD stuff, and socialization doesn't really bring on that feeling much at all; sure, sometimes I feel anxious about a new social situation, and I do tend to obsess about being liked and not doing things to offend or put off others, but these worries don't really prevent me from attempting to socialize. I feel like I avoid socialization because I've just grown weary of attempting to form relationships, and I know that every time I go out with other people, it's going to be an awkward experience where I'll likely act weird, not have anything to say, and feel like the whole thing is just a waste of my time

Moving on (kudos to anyone who got through that last paragraph lol), these are the reasons I feel Asperger's suits me particularly well. I've been thinking about what I'm going to say next time I talk with a psych, and I've concluded the best approach is to focus on the things that are currently causing me distress, and that I would like to change: general problems with conversation - can't keep a conversation going, don't know what to do with my hands, don't have anything to say, direct eye contact is uncomfortable, other people bore me causing me to zone out, dislike small talk, often I have to mentally prepare what I'm going to say before I say it (and screen it for any potential to offend) I have an extremely difficult time getting a new task started - I will put things off indefinitely, because I just can't get myself to get going on something (maybe I'm just lazy - I think that might be part of it) - my stuff is still mostly in boxes despite the fact I've lived in this apartment for nearly three years, and have planned to perform an extensive organization countless times I have a lot of difficulty focusing my attention on learning anything other than whatever I'm currently obsessed with, despite the fact I may really want to learn something - a prime example is that I've intended to hone my guitar-playing skills to a new level for many, many years, but I can never seem to get much past the "sitting around and noodling around on it" phase. I have trouble branching out and trying new things - I can listen to the same albums an infinite number of times, watch the same sitcoms and movies over and over again endlessly, workers at my favorite restaurants know exactly what I'm going to order - all this despite the fact that nearly every time I do branch out and listen to a new band or try a new food, I almost invariably find it to be a positive experience. I very much prefer to be alone, often thinking that interacting with others is much more trouble than it's worth. I have sort of my own set of rules of common courtesy, morality, and what is polite, and I often find it infuriating when other people deviate from these rules - for example, when people come to pick up food while I'm the cashier, and they don't begin the interaction with a "how's it going" sort of greeting, and a huge list of do's and don'ts with regard to traffic courtesy. I have "meltdowns," sort of temper tantrums when I'm having trouble getting something to work right, or when I feel overstimulated. This often happens at work - it used to be worse where I would start cussing vehemently, slam doors, just leave in a fit of anger, and say and do things I truly regret. I've gotten a lot of that under control, but I still have outbursts of a somewhat lesser scale. One common thing that gets me overstimulated is when people invade my personal space and rub up against me too much - when I'm cashiering, I have to stand in one place in front of the register, in an area that is cramped for space, with people often running around and bumping into each other, and reaching across me for this or that, and sometimes it causes me to freak out on someone, or snap and fly off in a huff.

I've identified another couple things in the past day or two that brought me from being about 75 percent sure of an Asperger's diagnosis to about 90-95 percent where I am now. The first is my difficulty feeling empathy for other people. I've kind of identified this before, but it just never really sank in, similar to how I identified the OCD car circles as odd, quirky behavior many times in the past, but never really fully realized how weird and stress-inducing it was. I've often noticed in the past that I don't seem to have a correct emotional response to news that should be very emotional. Things like a relative dying or becoming sick, or getting a divorce. I feel like I can summon up feelings from an intellectual origin - I understand that it's a tragic event, and that I should feel grief and compassion for those who are affected by it, but there just isn't any actual emotion that comes along with that intellectual understanding (or if there is, it's hard to conjure up and is pretty weak) This is an incredibly disturbing observation for me, because I generally feel that I'm a very caring, honest, moral person, and it's very disconcerting to fail to cry when first hearing news of the death of a family member, but then be reduced to tears and despondency because my internet stops working for a few hours when I was planning to come home after a long day of work and watch some stuff on Hulu. I think if you had asked me if I felt empathy for others prior to me realizing this distinction between intellectual and emotional empathy, I would have said sure, I do, since I think I've always identified that intellectual empathy to simply be what empathy is, but I'm pretty sure normal people have some automatic emotion in there as well. (I know I've browsed past the "lack of empathy for others" trait of autism/Asperger's before, thinking, no, that's not me, I feel very deeply for others)

The other thing I've just realized lately that is a similar "I just never connected the dots" sort of thing, is that I'm pretty sure I'm almost constantly stimming. I've long realized that I fidget around a lot, do a lot of tapping, stretching, scratching, etc. but I think I've always either dismissed it as a nervous tic (or some ADD-related thing), or that I'm just sensitive to itches and so on. I haven't really read much on stimming yet, but from what I understand it includes a lot of this stuff I'm doing nearly constantly - scratching, rubbing my skin, tapping my fingers or feet, twisting my fingers, applying pressure to various body parts, twirling hair, stroking my beard, pulling loose hairs off my head (or plucking eyebrows, nose hair, body hair), picking my nose, pushing on and pulling back my fingernails, stretching, yawning voluntarily. When I'm in a social situation I tend to stick to tapping rhythms and bouncing my foot, etc, (more socially acceptable than picking your nose or pulling hairs), and sometimes I get some quiet from this, not feeling the need to do it, but if I try to consciously stop it when I'm doing it automatically, it quickly becomes distressing.

And finally, a collection of other oddities I've noticed about myself - I have a hard time recognizing faces (I think...) I've identified this for a long time, and it happens repeatedly where I don't recognize someone at first who I've known for a long time when they make a significant change to their hairstyle, etc, or I encounter them out of context - once, when a coworker of mine shaved his head to support a friend with cancer, I looked right at him from two feet away and almost asked if he was dining in or taking away (I had known the guy for two years, and we got along quite well, having had somewhat long discussions many of times) However, I recently took the facial recognition test mentioned elsewhere on this board, and scored just a couple points under average (although I did feel like I was largely guessing a lot of the time, and I re-took it 12 hours later, and scored slightly worse, despite dealing with the same faces) Yet I feel like this has been a long-standing difficulty with me, and it's discrepancies like this that make me wonder how well I'm really reporting my own difficulties objectively. I was curious if anyone knows if facial recognition is something that can get better with practice, because my job cashiering certainly requires a lot in this area (which can be frustrating sometimes) - remembering who is waiting for what, and picking out a person I just met from a milling crowd, checking ID's for alcohol purchases (incidentally I have a terrible time discerning age as well - I think my record so far is when I carded a 58-year old woman (and probably made her day ) Some other things: I often get intensely uncomfortable when someone is standing or walking behind me - when I'm hiking with other people I feel like I need to be the last one. I use hand gestures while I'm talking on the phone. I wear almost the exact same clothes all the time. Proper air circulation at all times it an absolute must. I have a hard time sleeping anywhere unfamiliar, especially if the only bed available is too soft. I will wear clothes until they disintegrate into individual atoms. I took seven years of Spanish classes and can barely piece together a basic sentence today. I can watch running water or fire all day. I don't keep in touch with anyone who doesn't live in my vicinity, except my immediate family and a couple select friends. I will often be unable to understand the plot of a movie the first time I watch it because I can't follow which characters are which, I have poor attention, and it just takes me a while to get to know the different characters. I can flawlessly transcribe phone numbers and credit card numbers, but when someone needs to spell their name because I can't understand them, I get lost about three letters into it.

Anyway, that's about it for now - I'm sure I could continue to ramble on for some time, but gotta call it quits somewhere. I'm going to see a psychiatrist before long who has experience diagnosing autism spectrum disorders, so hopefully I'll know for sure soon. I feel like I have so many of the qualities I've read about in my research, but I'm just not sure if they are severe enough for diagnosis, and that maybe I'm misreporting some things (like being sure I have an awful time recognizing faces, but then performing quite well on a scientific test) The possibility that I might have Asperger's just seems so strange, since, while I don't exactly thrive in life, I seem to get through it all right, and usually have always had some sort of significant interpersonal relationships. Also, I wonder how much I displayed these traits as a child (I can't really remember a whole lot about my early childhood, although I do recall having trouble making friends (which I believe is the reason my parents took me to a therapist briefly, prior to Asperger's being added to the DSM-IV - I'm 28 now), and spending a lot of time playing alone in my own fantasy world) And I'm not the most objective witness in the world to report these things, since, to be frank, I greatly desire to be diagnosed with Asperger's - it will validate my struggles to belong, it will help me reconnect with friends and family, and, well, it gives me a good excuse to act weird when I want to (I grow tired of the charade I feel I have to keep up to appear at least passingly normal) I feel like I've finally found a group I could entirely and authentically belong to, and it worries me that I might simply end up being told: "no, you don't have this, you misconstrued all the evidence," and be cast back into a world it seems I can't relate to. Thanks again to everyone who read all the way through this - any comments would be very helpful.

Welcome to WP!

Hi and welcome. About half your stuff is "regular person stuff" and half your stuff is "obvious signs of asperger's stuff" and I'm not qualified to diagnose people so I'll just say that there is a strong possibility and it's a good thing that you have an appointment scheduled with a professional specially trained in spectrum stuff to help you sort it out.

My diagnosis was both an affirmation and a source of stress for me and it's taken me many years since then to sort things out and come to terms with this new knowledge about myself but I have never regretted getting the diagnosis.

If you have a printer or access to one, print out your post and take it with you when you visit the professional. I don't know about you, buy I find that I often plan all kinds of things I want to say and then blank out in the moment. It could be useful for you to have it all written out like this as starting points for discussion with the professional if needed. I often bring bullet-point lists of things I want to discuss when I visit an M.D., a counselor, a neurologist, a psychologist, etc. so that I don't forget anything.

Be well, and I'm glad you found this place. May it be a source of helpful information and connections with others.

Welcome to WrongPlanet, and welcome to my time warp.

Hi trekker.

A lot of what you described sounds like Asperger's to me--quite a bit of it is stuff I do/feel to a certain extent.

I am self-diagnosed (about 6-7 months ago). One person (a professor) thought that I had it from the first time we met (more than 2 years ago--I just found out he thought this at my graduation 3 weeks ago). There is someone in his family with Asperger's and, apparently, some of my behaviors seemed familiar.

I hope that your appointment goes well and you find out what you need to.

Regardless of the diagnosis you get from the therapist, you are always welcome here. Glad you found us.

Btw, here is the self-diagnostic test I used (it's mentioned elsewhere on this site, but I'll repost the link):

http://www.piepalace.ca/blog/asperger-test-aq-test/

Again, welcome to the WrongPlanet.

Welcome greetings, fellow-traveler trekker, to the WP forums.

Live long and prosper!

Hello trekker, welcome, enjoy your stay on the Wrong Planet!