everything's starting to make sense

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Hello all.

I've been doing research for the last few weeks because I'm suspecting I have Aspergers. My journey started with a recent episode of Parenthood where one of the characters, Hank, thought that he might have Aspergers. He mentioned an online test, so out of curiosity, I did some poking around. I found the AQ and scored 34.

I wouldn't say that my high score on the AQ was a "revelation" so much as an "aha". For one thing, whenever my friends took psychology classes, it always made them think that I was autistic. Of course, none of them were actually working toward psychology degrees and I obviously didn't have classic autism, so nobody took it seriously. In fact, I vaguely remember taking the AQ several years ago, but it was presented as "one of those stupid online tests", so I just thought it was amusing that it also said I was autistic.

Needless to say, I took it more seriously this time around. After doing research on Aspergers, my life started to make a lot more sense. I've recognized my odd personality traits and quirky behavior for a long time, but I never considered that all the pieces were part of a larger whole. I think that people close to me knew that something wasn't quite right, but it was never a "problem" so nobody really thought much of it. Personally, I didn't even see my now recognized to be autistic traits to be an issue until high school. I guess that the stronger push to be social made things more apparent to me. It wasn't until after college that I started to realize that I was actually different than everyone else. Having more intellectual lunchtime discussions has shown me that I don't think the same way that others do.

I also want to mention that reading forum posts and blogs from Apsies has been really interesting. It's like they're inside my head. In fact, there's things that I didn't know weren't "normal" until I read posts saying that they aren't.

I'm at the point that I'm almost certain that I'm somewhere on the spectrum. But, I still haven't decided where to go from here. Trying to get a formal diagnosis would just be to satisfy my own curiosity. While I do have some difficulties and things that I don't like about myself, I don't have any problems that warrant seeing a psychologist or getting a piece of paper that says I'm disabled. And the fact that I've managed to make it into my late 20's without anyone noticing it before probably means my HMO won't willingly cover the evaluation.

when my nephew was diagnosed, I was 55. as I read about his Asperger's diagnosis, I saw myself described. suddenly, lots of things made sense. I have some coping skills and a scaled-back job that allow me to be comfortable without a formal diagnosis. I wish you the best. welcome to WP.