Hi, new here, sorry for the late introduction [NVLD]

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Hi, I live in Connecticut. I'm a 20 year old male. I suspect I have Aspergers. I was diagnosed NVLD (nonverbal learning disorder) and either schizoaffective or schizoid personality type (forget which, could have been both, actually). At the time, the people who were diagnosing me were court psychologists, and I didn't get along with them, and they didn't seem to particularly like me, so I sorta discounted the diagnosis, as I got a lot of complete BS ones from the wonderful court psychologists. They also said they didn't want to diagnosis me with AS, I forget the exact reasoning, but they didn't want to.

So yeah, I discounted their diagnosis completely 'til this year. A couple years ago now, I met my pastor's son, who was diagnosed with NVLD, and he was actually super similar to me. I didn't make the connection, really, as I was in my sort of "screw you psychologists, you're all evil" sort of phase, but yeah. He has sorta severe social anxiety issues, much more so than me, but was able to work security jobs tackling people in hospitals, and when other people are all emotional and crying in a crisis situation (on a boat during a storm, for example) he's able to be completely calm. In that way, me and him are really similar.

Me, uhm, after seeing him, and seeing a lot of parallels with him and me, it kinda struck me. I think the only big difference in our lives is how our parents handled our requests. We both actually requested to leave school in 8th grade, and his parents started homeschooling, and mine didn't, and my life turned out a mess, but his turned out with him not dealing with his anxieties and whatever very well, so that I guess was the tradeoff. Also, I realized while the other psychological conditions are pretty subjective to diagnosis, the NVLD was based on an IQ test, they said I scored like 130 or so verbal IQ, but like 80 (I think) on my nonverbal, some kind of ratio like that. But, yeah, I ended up looking up NVLD, and yeah, it sounded exactly like me growing up. I was able to read at like age 3, but wasn't able to tie shoes until 2nd or 3rd grade. I also scored like 12th grade reading level (but only 6th grade math) on a standardized test in like 1st grade (mind you it was private Christian school, they actually teach kids very well at most of them, but you won't get the great experience of "normal" social interaction there, plus my school was ran by Fundie Baptists.)

As far as NVLD, I've heard it said NVLD=Aspergers, like it just is Aspergers. Also, a lot of Aspies are diagnosed schizoid personality type, too. But yeah, it's a good explanation for uh, my life, I guess. I mean, it kinda doesn't change a whole lot. I mean, it's good knowing that there's a general other group of people like you, but even then, they're not exactly like you, and as such, in any social group, there's no utopia one, you're still going to get into arguments, people will still think you're weird, etc. Also, life still has to go on. I could "embrace" the Aspergers thing completely, and maybe get SSI or something and do nothing all day, but I don't want to defeat myself like that just yet.

But I guess one of the biggest things I'm dealing with now is, my emotions switched back on. Since 2007, I more or less had them off, to deal with the court related stuff going on (I don't want to divulge too much detail into all that now, maybe later, though.) You know, things like going to jail and stuff don't allow you to sit in a corner and cry, you have to survive, so from 2007 or so til this year, I had my emotions off more or less. However, they're back again, and I hate it. I started randomly flipping out and getting pissed for randomly no reason, just over completely ridiculous things like car problems or something. I guess now, since July, I've had somewhat of a long lasting meltdown. So now, it's like, time to figure out emotions. Fun fun.

Anyway, with all that unpleasant stuff there, it's helped me and all, it's just been weird. I no longer have social anxiety in the traditional sense, as after going to jail, my thought process sorta changed from "what will this person think of me" to alot more of "what will this person do, punch me or something?" so as such, I'm really outgoing with strangers now, and don't care quite as much about what people think now, to an extent. Obviously everyone cares about what others think of them, just I learned to care less, for the reason of they probably won't punch me or anything for my offending them with my tastes or whatever, especially if they're other suburban white people like myself. It's more I guess self awareness of whose opinions I care about and who's I don't, and for what reasons, etc. I guess I also learned basic "respect" social rules, on how to figure out if someone is disrespecting you, if you are disrespecting them, etc. Eye contact, I can't really use it "normally" but I can make it, and I can use it to intimidate (hell that's why everyone else uses it anyway.) Learned to be a better character/motive judge, too. It's not all bad. I guess assertive is the word, I learned to be more assertive. But still, it's probably a bit abnormal seeing the world as threats and nonthreats, though. The biggest important thing was my reconversion to Christianity in jail, and that's probably a post this long in itself, so I'll save that, but that's been more life changing than anything else.

My big problem is sort of group interaction. I'm bad at conducting myself in a group or part of a team or whatever. Individually, I'm great with people and they tend to like me, and conversely, at a place like a fair or a carnival or city street, I completely don't care, and have very little social inhibition (I'll probably never see them again anyway) but small groups of friends and "acquaintances" are my issue, you know, you can't just be like "whatever" because you do in fact care what they think, as you'd expect they'd care what you thought of them, and you will see them again, etc. Especially like, small house party type stuff, ugh.

As for stuff I do, I like anime, but not quite as much anymore. I mean, I still like it, but I don't devote as much time in my life to anime and games as I did when I was in high school. I ended up liking cars, and own 2 Celica Supras now. I also cook a lot, I took that up, I can make pretty passable Indian food, but would really like to learn to cook Vietnamese food. I like a lot of different kinds of music, I listen to much more music on like, the "pop" spectrum. I like Jpop, especially older Jpop like Mari Iijima and TM Network. Like 80s music in general, especially old freestyle music on the Western side of things. I really like eurobeat and italodisco, they might be my favorite genres, tied possibly with 90s eurodance and happy hardcore. I like jazz fusion a bit, especially Toshiki Kadomatsu, a Japanese jazz fusion artist. Recently, I started listening to Perry Como and the Fallout 3 soundtrack, so I'm getting more into old swing type music, and it's honestly very great music. When I was in high school, etc, I listened to eurobeat and eurodance a bit, but I listened to lots of gangsta rap and hard rock, too, now I listen to gangsta rap and harder rock type stuff almost never. I guess after my "rebirth" I figured I liked girly pop music most of all types of music, and that it's OK to. Oh, what else...I use Linux, but that's not really braggable anymore, and I suck at it anyway. I also figure skate now, too.

Anyway, I think I'll end my post now, I think I probably delved into too many things that should probably warrant a new post. Maybe this forum will be a good place for me, maybe I'll hate it, or get bored of it, who knows. Thanks not for reading my long long post, sorry. I tend to sound like I'm 40 and write long boring stuff, sorry again. Oh, and I used too many commas, too, and should have made my paragraphs more about the topic sentence, oh well.

-Joe

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