I might have Aspergers. What do you think?

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Hello community, I'm Matt and though I've never been diagnosed Asperger's, formally or informally, I think I might belong here. My friends and family have often described me as interesting, different, special, and weird, and as a college student I've become acutely aware of some things things that set me apart.

For one, I love to pace and talk to myself when I'm alone. I become very absorbed in my thoughts, often reliving past events in my life or imagining myself as a completely different person. Sometimes I become extremely elated and hyper. I originally thought this was an ADHD thing, but a few posts here convinced me otherwise - at least I think it was this forum. This symptom has been bothering me lately because it is a constant distraction. I'm currently living alone in a a dorm and taking classes. I am not particularly good at organic chemistry and this irresistible daydreaming makes it a bit more difficult.

I am also pretty socially awkward. I knew I had social difficulties in high school, I saw a counselor for about a year, but college has definitely made it more obvious to me. A handful of people told me to my face that I lack social skills, asking me why I'm so awkward, and why I act so weird around people. A lot of these people were close friends of mine, so I took them seriously. I give people the impression that I am just shy and relatively normal, which can be very painful when that initial impression is replaced by me. I have been rejected by many girls as a result. I should note though that almost all of my social problems involve interacting with new people interacting at jobs, and interacting with "people of authority". I have a girlfriend that I feel very close to, a few good friends, and I get along with my family well. I have also been diagnosed with social anxiety and I know a large component is anxiety. I also know though that I am just as capable of being awkward without anxiety.

Also....
-I have been told by my sister that I did hand-flapping, on occasion, when I got excited as a kid.
-I've struggled a bit with eye contact. People have pointed out that my eyes nervously shift rapidly for no reason. I recently caught this on a video I made of myself and I was totally shocked. This would also explain why some people look weirded out when I think I'm acting normal. On a related note, my I've been told that my eyes become unnaturally wide when I'm explaining something I find interesting. My tone of voice at times can be very monotonous as well.
-Sometimes I burst out laughing or smile madly for no reason.
-There are certain abrasive polyesters that do drive me insane. The sound of these fabrics rubbing against other objects is also pure hell. For example, the sound of a seat belt being quickly retracted after unbuckling from your seat.
-I hate it when people lie to me, even when it's no big deal. I have a reputation for being extremely gullible because it rarely occurs to me that other people might be lying. I understand the concept but I don't understand why people lie to me when they do. It just doesn't make sense to me. I get so flustered!
-I am very interested in my interests. Unlike the asperger literature I've read though, my interests are pretty broad. I can spend hours on wikipedia and I have.
-I am sometimes very slow to understand people in conversation, and when interpreting verbal commands. I always make an idiot of myself as a result. I am particularly bad at wrapping my head around social games and ice-breakers.
- I am terrible at sports. I don't have a very good sense of where my body is and what it's doing. My manual dexterity is a bit sad and people have told me that the way I hold a pencil is very odd.
-I'm very bad at understanding and describing the personality of people I know well. My girlfriend often accuses me of not 'knowing her' well enough though we've been together for more than a year.
-This is something that I am not proud of: I generally don't miss friends and family when I don't see them for an extended period of time. Though I consider myself very close to my family, I spent 80% of my time with them before college, when I moved out I noticed that I did not miss them. I generally don't feel emotionally attached to other people. Friendships are always transient for me because I don't feel the instinct to initiate or maintain them. In high school I thought my immunity from loneliness was a strength but in the last few years it has bothered me.

If I do have asperger's, or some of its symptoms, I know it's probably relatively mild and manageable. I work as an RA at my college and I can interact well with people within certain professional settings. I have talked to therapists and nobody has said, you have aspergers. I've been aware of the syndrome for a while and only recently have I really considered it. This is again because my pacing and daydreaming has gotten a bit worse, I recently became aware of my eye contact issues and I've been watching youtube videos of aspies that seem pretty normal and a bit like me. I think I had an exaggerated sense of what aspergers is based on people with more extreme forms of it.

Anyway, I'm sorry if I bored anyone. I knew I would get carried away with this. I've been giving this a lot of thought and I would really like some feedback!

Sounds a lot like me. When I do make a close connection though, which is rare, I miss the person like hell. Didn't happen till the first year of college for me.

I'm also a big pacer and fabrics most people seem to think are soft hurt my hands.

I have a broad range of interests, too, instead of a single focus... but it's broad to me, and apparently not to other people. Do you talk at length about whatever interests you in particular at any given moment? You might want to ask your friends if you seem over-focused on certain subjects when you talk.

Nobody told me I had Asperger's until I was twenty-three and six months out of college. I've been seeing therapists since before I was a teenager. Sometimes it just takes talking to the right doctor. On that line of thought, I think it would be beneficial to talk to someone at your school's student health center, if you have one. They probably won't be experts but they can help give you a better view of yourself and point you in the right direction towards determining whether you have it or not (and "not" may mean you have something else that's similar; one of my doctors brought up a number of other things that were sometimes confused with Asperger's, though I don't recall them at the moment, sorry).

I detest it when people make fun of someone for being gullible. What about someone actually trusting you do you find so hilarious? When did believing that people aren't lying to you become a bad thing?

Why take a good quality (trust) and turn it into something to be ashamed of?

Jerks.

Sorry, just had to rant there.

Welcome to WP, Matt!
U sound a lot like me.

Nonentity, the thing about me is that I am generally very passive in conversation if I do not feel comfortable with the person. When someone briefly mentions a specific interest however, like dreaming for example, I become overtly enthusiastic and often dominate the conversation. In certain situations I can be a bit of a motor-mouth but this is only when I've known the person for some time. Also, I am planning to see a psychiatrist as soon as I can to figure myself out. I've been meaning to for a while, not to confirm Aspergers originally, but to get treated for ADHD. I am torn between many self-diagnoses.

Huraka, I agree. This world is messed up, but so is being panhandled twice by the same hobo.

Yep, pretty much the same as me. I didn't even realize I was doing it for a long time.

And don't worry too hard about the diagnosis (if you even get one), because you must remember that you are still you. That's hard, I know — I have trouble with it a lot — but try not to focus on it. If you were already planning on going in, you have a good reason to go there whether you have ADHD, Asperger's, something else, or nothing at all, even if your reason is just to talk about what's been bothering you.

I have both ADHD and Asperger's. Based on your post I think you might have AS, so maybe getting a formal diagnosis would be beneficial for you. Before my diagnosis I spent a lot of time thinking about what's wrong with me, but after I did some research and got a Dx of Asperger's it took my mind off stuff.

Yeah, that's exactly what I need. I too have spend countless hours trying to figure myself out. It doesn't help that I studied psychology in college and I'm trying to get into med school for neurology. Diagnosing myself is one of my favorite hobbies but I never seem to get any answers. I'm hoping I finally struck gold

Welkome to WrongPlanet.

The WP Kink

This. I know exactly what you mean. For me, it's denim. I cannot stand the sound of someone scratching their leg through their jeans, it drives me nuts. Carpet, too, I can't stand the sound of something being dragged over carpet.

I'm brand new here too, and in the same boat. I've never been diagnosed, but I have so many of the symptoms, and I feel like this is the best place for me. I also have a broad range of interests, but when I was a child they were narrowed down - animals was a big thing, dogs specifically. Oh my goodness, by the age of 12 I could break down every class of dog there is, tell you what dogs were bred to hunt what, where their breed originated from, what type of environment they need to thrive in. I can still identify 99% of the breeds I see on the street, if the dog's a mix I can tell you what kind of mix it is.

I definitely hear you on being terrible at sports. I'm so uncoordinated, and I'm also left-handed, which made figuring out how to hold a bat or a racket quite the chore. I can also very much relate to not missing friends and family when you don't see them. It's not that you don't care, you just...don't actively miss them. I can take it or leave it, as long as I know they're okay. I have coworkers that were really good friends at one time, and I lost contact with them. It didn't upset me in the least. I can go months without talking to a very dear friend, and I'm totally okay with it. It definitely becomes a problem, because even though I had no ill intention in mind and did not mean to hurt them, it still comes across as hurtful. I have to actively work to maintain friendships, and it gets a little exhausting after awhile.

It's nice to meet someone else in the same boat. So, welcome! Hopefully both of us find the answers we're looking for, or at least a better understanding of ourselves.

sound to me like you have it. but i don't really understand about laughing without a reason or inventing a new "you". i don't know if it has anything to do with asperger.
but do you rock, love animals, love music, love watching the fan or clothes turning in the dryer? did you take the aspie test online? do you have one dull sense like smell and one sharp like taste? are you very sensitive to some pains and barely feel the others? are you more intelligent than most people? is it hard for you to remember faces?

Felinesaresuperior, the only reason whey I mentioned the daydreaming is because it accompanies pacing that some consider an aspie trait. I do rock sometimes. I like music, but I only developed a recent appreciation for it in college. I guess I have above-average intelligence but for a premed student I'm not particularly good at the sciences. I can ace biology but not chem and physics. I have a relatively poor sense of smell that I always attributed to allergies and I think my hearing might be a bit below average. I've never had vision problems though. Remembering faces isn't usually a problem for me but I know I can't identify familiar voices, especially over the phone. I took a few of those aspie tests and for one I got a borderline score, 30 when the cut-off was 32, and for another one out of 200 I got a 130 and it said I likely have aspergers. And yes, felines are definitely superior

Miskadoodle, I'm definitely on the same page with your difficulties maintaining friends. Even the few close friends I have now I hang out with very rarely. I also hated jeans for the longest time. I almost exclusively wore sweat pants until high school. I got used to it over the years and now I only wear jeans. Do your coordination issues affect other aspects of your life? I know for me, I can't hold a pencil or chopsticks for my life, I'm really slow at things that require dexterity like washing dishes, separating a piece of paper from a stack, tying my shoes, and other random things. I bagged groceries at a supermarket to make money in high school and I always lagged behind the other workers. Also I cannot dance for my life - absolutely no ability at all haha.

I can't dance at all. I like to (when no one's watching, naturally) but I don't have much rhythm. And I obsessively love music. The coordination issue, I can't think of anything in my day to day life it affects tremendously, other then when I walk. I wouldn't say I'm clumsy, but I'm a little unsteady on my feet. It's like I never place my footfalls correctly, I don't evenly distribute my weight at the same spot on the soles of my feet, so it looks like I stumble over...well, nothing, haha. Everyone I know thinks it's amusing, but after awhile it's kind of irritating. I'm also not very spatially aware - I could be walking down a huge aisle that's empty of everything but a few displays or pallets, and I swear I will hit it every time because I'm walking too close. Turning corners, I'm always too close to the wall and I clip the doorway. I don't know if that's an uncoordinated issue or a I'm absorbed in my own head and not paying attention issue.

My handwriting is also absolutely atrocious. I mean, it is god awful, and nothing I do seems to make it any better. My boss jokingly tells me all the time she's going to buy me those books with the lined paper they give to first graders to teach them cursive and how to write properly, and I seriously think I need it sometimes. I can't even read my own notes half the time. Slowing down doesn't seem to work - I don't even know if I can, it feels like my brain is way ahead of my ability to write fast enough, so I'm trying to keep up, but it only makes it even more difficult to read. Typing is soo much better.

To WrongPlanet!! !

I wonder if this poster was diagnosed.