am I an aspie or just socially awkward?

Post Reply New Topic

Okay so I am 16 years old and I think I may have aspergers. I often can't keep eye contact when talking to others, I have trouble empathizing with them and sometimes I can't tell when people are in bad moods (I'm getting better at identifying that, though), I often get obsessed with one thing at a time. The first obsession I remember was when I was about 5 years old and I was obsessed with Winnie the Pooh. I had decorated my whole room Winnie the Pooh with practically everything in it themed like that. Then, when I was about 7 I was interested in science so I spent a lot of time picking out various books about things like blue whales, hurricanes, the solar system, snails, chess, etc. Then, in my preteens I was becoming obsessed with television shows. For example, I was obsessed with Dragonball Z for roughly two years and I had drawn over 100 pictures based off of the show, and all I ever talked about was that show (*cringes*) These past two years I've been obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. I base a lot of my mind power on that fictional character. Well anyway, when I was in preschool, I remember I didn't know how to communicate with people all that well so I often didn't have any friends until around 5th grade. (Then i only had one or two friends) well my mum said that when I was in preschool, the teacher used to talk to her about how I was shy and how other kids would just ignore me and I would start crying during class. I found out about aspergers recently and it seems to fit for some reason. Another thing is that whenever I feel emotions, I constantly have to analyze evey emotions I ever have. I always figured this was OCD because I have struggled with OCD like symptoms for a while. The thing that makes me think that I don't have aspergers is that I read online that people with aspergers syndrome can't understand sarcasm or metaphors and idioms. But in fact, I can understand all of those, I am actually very sarcastic. I also read that people with aspergers often are very skilled in one area and i think this applies to me because I have been playing piano for about a year and within 3 months of my lessons, I was playing Beethoven and Mozart. Now, I'm playing Chopin and am only in 2nd grade piano and I'm playing 8th grade pieces. It seems like it just comes very easily to me because it is all pattern recognition and I am very good with recognizing patterns in things. Also, whenever I talk to someone, i usually go off on the same thing and I don't even notice if they get bored or not. I will be talking about something like the universe or philosophy and I'll be rambling on about it for like 10 minutes before I realise I should probably stop talking. I also get quite nervous in social situations. It isn't just large crouds, even if I'm with one person (other than myfamily) I get really awkward and nervous. I've taken the Myer Briggs personality test and I scored as an INTJ and apparently their characteristics involve not being able to socialize easily. I only really like socializing when I'm speaking to someone with my interests and they know a lot on the subject (such as astronomy or any other science) one more thing, I can never make any decisions based off of emotions. I have to analyze everything logically before I can draw a conclusion. Anyway, if anyone here has any idea as to whether or not i have aspergers that would be a load of help. Thank you so much.

I don't know, but here's a brief test based on the criteria doctors use to diagnose AS.

www.iautistic.com/test_AS.php

I got "Likely to be Autistic" but only one point off apparently

The diagnostic criteria are written for identifying the condition in children. Children grow up, and as they do, they learn things - having a "learning disability" doesn't mean a person is so stupid they can't ever get something, it just means they have a little trouble grasping certain things at first. Just because metaphors and sarcasm seem confusing when you're 3 to 5 years old, doesn't mean you haven't figured them out by the time you're 12.

However, the real difference between autism and common shyness and social anxieties is that autism is not a purely psychological phenomenon. It is a neurological condition, in which the brain is born with more sensory receptors than normal, causing the brain to be constantly overloaded with incoming sensory stimuli, making social interactions difficult to mentally process and keep up with. It means the entire nervous system is continually overloaded and stressed out (thus the rocking, swaying, hand flapping 'stim' motions often seen among autistics). A state of low-grade anxiety that the body experiences even when the conscious mind is focused on other things.

That's what causes the autistic social problems. The brain is always working at more than it's normal capacity to recognize, analyze and interpret all the sensory stimuli coming in from moment to moment, so subtle nonverbal signals may be missed or misinterpreted.

It's also why people with autism have "sensory issues" concerning textures, tastes and so on and why we sometimes notice tiny sounds and flashes of light that normal people miss.

I often find myself either moving my hands around or shaking my legs whenever I'm around people. Sometimes I can be perfectly still, though. Also, the article was not clear as to the age group the sarcasm thing fit into. I don't know if I have any exaggerated senses but I am very picky when it comes to textures. It can be textures of food, clothes, anything. I'm just really sensitive to textures. I didn't think that had anything to do with aspergers though.

In that case, that would mean that reducing the amount of sensory receptors in someone's brain would cure their autism. That just seems so simple... has anyone tried it? is there a way to do that?