Greetings and Salutations

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Hi,

I don't know if I have Asperger's, but I'd say the chances are more than pretty good.

When I have to do Meyers-Briggs based personality type activities for work, I'm an I or ENTJ, depending upon my mood. On several online "do you have Asperger's/Autism" assessments, I typically score in the area of concern. I have a detail-oriented 4 year degree (English), and a performance-based 2 year degree (theater and communications), with a strong math and science background, and work in a detail oriented field (residential energy conservation).

Throughout my life, the words most commonly used to describe me have been: weird, spacey/space cadet, "little adult", "little teacher", "trivia buff". My affect was typically described as distant/standoffish/stuck up/cold, "has her head in the clouds" etc., and was I frequently accused of dominating the conversation. In my adult life, I've been told that I don't display emotion, initially come across as stuck up, and am oblivious to certain sets of social cues.

On my dad's side of the family I have a female cousin who has Autism and mental retardation. On my mom's side of the family I have a female cousin who was diagnosed with hyperactivity before they called it ADD/ADHD and a male cousin who was diagnosed with dyslexia. The males on both my mom's and my dad's sides of the family fall into either the "would qualify for both ends of the extended educational services spectrum" or "extraordinarily intelligent, under-perform academically, and have minimal to no social skills" categories.

I have long suspected my father has Asperger's, and that my maternal grandfather did (he is now deceased). I see different tendencies in my sons, particularly my eldest son; my mother, my sister and my sister's eldest daughter.

As for me, it isn't that I don't like people, it's that I don't understand their motives and they exhaust me. I can't tell what they want from me, so I'm prone to providing too much detail because that's less work than trying to figure out what they want. If I tell them what *I* think is important, they don't know what I'm talking about anyway...so if they won't give me the courtesy of making a specific information request, I just do a "brain dump" on them and let them sort it out.

I wouldn't describe the way I receive sensory input as an attention deficit problem; I'd call it more of an attention discretion problem. There's too much going on, and I have no idea how "they" figure out what it is they're supposed to pay attention to. My guess is that "they" don't pay attention to any of it, and leave folks like me (us?) to pay attention to all of it!

So anyway, that's me and I'm new!

You are very welcome to the forum

Welcome!

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Nice to meet you! Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Other than my cousin, who has Autism with mental retardation, I've never met another woman in person who's on the spectrum.

How long will it take for the "omg, I've found my people!" effect to wear off?