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After looking at this a few times i decided to join. i think i might have mild aspergers. i am 16 (about to be 17) and a girl and just about to finish my junior year of high school. i hardly ever dislike people but i have a really hard time making close friends. i have a lot of trouble with conversation unless i am with a very small group of people. I feel like it always takes me to long to figure out and answer or the right thing to say and by the time i have a response to a question or something to say the conversation has moved on. Usually if someone asks me a question I just won't respond becasue i cant think of an answer off of the top of my head. Also i dont look at people in the eyes when i talk to them or they talk to me, it weirds me out. if i look at someone while we are talking and i am angry or upset it will just make me even angrier sometimes to the point that i want to seriously hurt the person (thankfully i never have) so i just stare at the sky or focus on some object. This makes my parents angry with me all the time because they think i am disrespectful. We fight a lot and i tend to get mad over little things with my family but i dont get mad very often with people outside my family. Whenever i get mad i tend to get tics in my arms and legs and will spaz out. This makes my parents even madder at me because they think i am having a temper tantrum but i am just trying to control my anger.
I go to an all girls private school so talking and being social are really important but it never comes naturally to me. Sometimes i have to remind myself to say something or respond when someone speaks to me. i am one of the quietest girls in the school and i do have some friends who try to help me be more outgoing by prompting me to speak more. Often, though, a conversation fizzles out because i just dont know what to say or they will put me on the spot and ask me questions and when I dont have an answer right away they dont understand why I am not saying anything. Mostly these are my teammates because I am extremely obsessed with sports. It play lacrosse and field hockey and even though i no longer play basketball seriously i live and breathe for these three sports. The rest of my family isnt as crazy about sports as i am and i think they get really sick of listening to me talk about lacrosse.
I am also probably the smartest girl in my grade. schoolwork comes naturally to me especially math and i finished ap calculus bc this year so my school has nothing for me to take as a senior.
I try so hard to be friendly with people but i always just end up being extremely awkward. after doing a report on autism and reading an article on the traits of aspies i felt like it described me perfectly. i have a friend whose younger brother has aspergers. i feel like if i told anyone i thought i had AS they wouldnt believe me or take me seriously or they would tell me you cant self-diagnose that. I would really appreciate any opinions or advice!! ! Thanks so much guys!! !

Welcome to WP!

If they say that you can't self-diagnose like that, here's a smart-ass comeback: "Then how come we have so many psychiatrists, then?"

Welcome to WP!

Tim

Sounds like you have a full plate.

You are a teenager, you will get over it.

Hi, and welcome!

I think you'll fit in very well with us here!

Welcome to WrongPlanet

Hi and Welcome to WP
It's possible you may have mild AS of course,but I wouldn't let it worry you too much.
The best you can do is learn from experience and try to enjoy time with your friends and
hobbies.

oh, this is the place for you!

Welcome in!
I will try not to offer the old bromides about your being young, plenty of time, all in due course, and all that other rot, OK?
It's just that you are in the right place at the right time!

Merle

Would it work if you picked some threads that sounded like your own experiences and get your closest parent to read it. In any case I think you should tell them your self-diagnosis and also get an official diagnosis? Dig your heels in. Being a teenager is bad enough without difficulties with social skills and tension at home.

I think it is such a shame when parents won't recognise a child's problems. You almost certainly inherited your condition from somewhere if you have aspergers, and one of them may be in denial of their own condition. Or maybe they see something in you that reminds them of a close relative.

The best thing of all is that you have an insight into your own problems. Good luck

Thanks for the welcome everyone. from poking around a little more its nice to know im not the only one who finds a passing "hey whats up?" in the hall the hardest question ever asked at school.

My mom really tries to avoid social interaction especially with people she doesnt know very well. The other day at my lax teams awards night she wanted to go say thanks to my friends mom for organizing a lot of stuff for the team but was too afraid to so we stood around for about 10 min while she debated with herself whether or not to go over and say something but she eventually decided she didnt want to.
My dad tends to get angry easily if things are not the way he wants them to be. He doesnt like it when people like to do things a different way from how he normally does it even if both ways work just fine.
My older brother has always been pretty quirky but is much calmer than I am and has a pretty good group of friends.

I seem to have gotten the worst of both my parents with bad socialization and anger but ive gotten pretty good at controlling the anger around people who arent my immediate family.

On the outside I can appear to be well socialized because my teams always do a lot of teambuilding so we are together a lot in season. The friend I mentioned earlier is our captain and very outgoing and well spoken (pretty much the opposite of me) and sometimes makes it her own little project to try to make me more social. but a lot of times she will call me out in front of everyone and ask me a question or tell me to say something and they dont understand when i say that i have nothing to say or when it will take me a really long time to respond to a question with a decent answer. i always get scared because i dont know what to do but i feel good about myself and am actually glad she does it if i can get out a semi coherent answer past "i dont know".
i dont really have a set group of good friends. i just can never figure out why people act the way the do theres absolutely no logic.

sorry my posts are so long. no ones ever understood the real me before so WP is pretty exciting.

You are welcome, my friend!

hey i think this website is really cool. some of the articles and threads about how to make conversation have been helping me to talk to people more even though we dont have practice. Sometimes its still difficult like today at lunch i either felt like i was just listening in on the conversation and not contributing or being interrogated by the whole group.

i feel like i should tell my parents i think i might be somewhat AS but i am afraid to. Previously they have used "maybe you have a problem and we need to get you help" as a way to try to get me to stop when i have a meltdown. sometimes i want to scream "yes i do". my dad really hates it when i get into a tic and cant wrap his head around the fact that it helps to control me/calm me down.

i had a pretty bad meltdown the other day. i was going to the gym to go work out and my parents said i needed to get all stuff out of the garage before i left (no one told me my dad was pretty much finished cleaning the garage out and was just waiting for me to get my stuff) so i said i would get my stuff as soon as i was finished getting ready to go because i had already started that. it usually takes me a little while to get all of my stuff together but when i wasnt down to clean my stuff they began to nag me a lot. Each time they would say something it would slow me down but then they would get more mad that i wasnt there yet basically feeding the cycle. they decided i was planning on never doing it even though i had the full intention of doing it as soon as i was ready to leave for the gym and it ended with me screaming a lot and my parents threatening to throw all my stuff away and me ripping a trash bag into pieces.

My brother who just got home from college decided he was sick of me and my parents fighting so he said we should go to family counseling. My parents agreeded to this and now they want to go. I am sort of afraid to do it and dont know if it will really help. I'm 16 I know I shouldnt be acting like this but sometimes I just cant control it. Any advice, words of wisdom?? I am pretty much at the point where i might run away if we have another fight like this!! !

Well the AS thing would explain a lot to them, and given the guidelines AS conforms around a lot of the time, it can help them adjust and be more patient, and may throw off the need for family counselling. I can't help meltdowns either and if they don't beleive you, give them a tour of WP (maybe keep in your memory a collection of pages you think would be good to show them an example that it is real).

Same for me, it is hard to get friends. But I don't really care, I only need one or two.

With the right counselor, I think family counseling would be great. All of you could gain insight into each other and more understanding and sympathy. We went into part of the family counseling with one of the children and us two parents, and it really helped. We tried to give her a more exciting life, and she quit sneaking around, for a few years anyway. We got her safely to adulthood. If she chooses to crash and burn now, it's her business, not ours.