The "undiagnosed but convinced I have it" club

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I have to say I'm almost entirely certain I have AS.

The problem is that I feel uncomfortable saying that. Maybe it's just me, but I feel that I'd be met with derision if I claimed to be an Aspie without a professional diagnosis. I'm not even comfortable posting my experiences in the myriad "Does anyone else do/have/(dis)like..." threads up in General.

This thread is for people like me.

No debating the worth or necessity of diagnosis, no discussing how or where to get one, no "do I have it?" Let's just kick back, relax, and do whatever.

Hope this works out well. *crosses fingers*

yeah, i sometimes feel that way too.

Yes, ditto. I didn't know anything about Aspergers until I did the RDOS test which said it was very likely. When I first came to this site and started reading posts it was incredible. I could have written lots of those posts myself. So many things dropped into place. Not just social interaction problems but other things too like stimming, counting, having to be in another room while the vacuum cleaner is on, needing a routine but also being a bit impulsive. The love of numbers and technical stuff like programming. The list just went on and on.

I'm undiagnosed, but not entirely convinced I have it though. I'm not going to call myself Aspie until someone professional does.

I feel welcome in this humble club

I only know I have SOMETHING - I don't know if it's schizoid personality disorder combined with antisocial personality disorder's traits, AS or PDD-NOS.

It's been amazing for me to discover that everything is so neatly explainable. All of my little differences and things I didn't get used to upset me a lot, so there's a lot of relief now.

I'm also kind of mad at myself because I knew of AS years ago but only knew of it in the stereotypical way: if someone with AS has a special interest in X, they'll talk endlessly of X without knowing that people don't care, will write about X, decorate their room with posters of X, surf only sites on X, and just generally be weird and obsessive. I think if the general view of AS was more accurate and not stereotypical we'd see a lot more diagnoses.

I also didn't consider it until recently because I buried my belief that I was fundamentally different a long time ago. It was only one night when i was really tired and reading Wikipedia on AS that it all came flooding back in an ecstatic rush. I specifically remembered thinking things like the following before the age of 12:

"Weird. I never see other people making these little repetitive movements that I like."

"I just can't interact with people. It's like I'm wired differently."

and the real kicker, when I was 9 or 10:

"I'm obsessed with this, but not in a normal way. I just want to gather information, categorize, compare, etc.. I'm not interested in a practical way. This isn't normal."

Lack of proper social skills, being a cripple in sport (despite lack of physical reason, I wasn't physically disabled in any way), clumsiness, ability to read at the age of 2,5, numerous nervous tics, eating disorder (not anorexia, I simply hate eating and it was so since my earliest childhood), maturity and common sense even in early childhood, executive disfunction, lack of empathy, sophisticated vocabulary used by me, thinking in pictures, OCD tendencies, lack of sense of humor, egocentricity, sincerity - all those peculiarities of mine that always were perceived by me as simply features of my personality are now seen by me in a new light.



Lol, I thought about this in the same way. It's fault of all those stereotypical, oversimplified descriptions everybody who's interested in the issue of AS can find with ease on the net. Maybe my own interests are not equally strong and long lasting like in those stereotypical cases but every so called normal person would be suprised by their intensity and sometimes pretty high level of weirdness.



In my case it was obvious to me I was different than people surrounding me and doesn't matter what I would do, I simply couldn't be one of a group. It was funny to think I could have an autistic spectrum disorder - such things always happen to others not to us, anyway, how on Earth could I have something in common with autism? - autistic people are mentally challenged while I not only wasn't ret*d but it was my intellect I used to blame for my weirdness - I was smarter, more clever, more mature than other children/teens and it's why we didn't have common ground. I was a victim of all those popular stereotypes about autism - according to my deeply rooted belief then, if you were autistic, you suffered from a severe mental retardation and you had to wear diapers all the time .




The same. I was always a type of a collector from my early childhood.

I guess I fit into this club. I spent the last year believing I was diagnosed only to recently find out that my psychologist never diagnosed me like I thought he did. I think I know what happened though, he said that he was positive I had it and I took that to mean an official diagnosis.

I think I'm a aspie too, but didn't tell anyone yet about it, because I think that's not right to claim to have such a complex problem like AS without a proper diagnostic.

The problem here in Brazil is that there are a few doctors that can diagnose AS, and see them costs a lot. So, if you are a poor adult like me, sometimes you don't have a choice.

Bye.

I feel uncomfortable saying it too, but only because I'm not 100% certain that AS is where I lie on the spectrum. I know I'm on there somewhere, but it's all fine lines...sort of like a rainbow, I suppose...a bunch of colors that just sort of blend together, and it's hard to say where one ends and another begins.

It's like telling people I'm green, but I'm missing a few hues of yellow, and there are tiny bits of red and violet mixed in.

Yup, count me in here too. I've suspected I have it for a while, certainly recognize myself in other Aspergians' descriptions of themselves.

Haven't been diagnosed for various reasons. I suppose I'm lucky to be in the UK and not have to actually pay for a diagnosis, but while the wheels of the NHS do grind, they grind exceedingly slowly and I don't really like the idea of being passed around between neurological consultants for months. That's apart from my fears of family and work reactions - I've had less than helpful responses from both in the past to my depression (which on reflection, could well have been related to the AS 'square peg in a round hole' feeling), so I'm understandably cautious about revealing this to them.

it's just the simplest explanation that covers all the facts. Wish I'd know 30 years ago.

I'm so sure I have it, I can't be bothered to get diagnosed.

If I did go see someone who said I didn't have it, I wouldn't believe them anyway.

More than a year-and-a-half ago, I decided to see someone with the hope that they would figure out what was wrong with me. Since then I've seen three psychologists, a psychiatrist, and another psychologist. They all misunderstood me and I was continually frustrated. I had heard about Asperger's Syndrome before, but I didn't believe that I had it. I thought that it was a disability, and I wouldn't want to be disabled, and I only knew the stereotypical version of it. But I came across it again earlier this year and began to read more about it. I've read two autobiographies by aspies, and I've read Tony Attwood's "The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome". Now I'm certain that I have it. Luckily, the last psychologist who I saw knows the one person in my area who deals with Asperger's. The weird thing, however, is that this person is the same one who I went to when I was about 10 years old! I remember why I went, and it was because I was feeling frustrated with other people. Also because I was complaining about loud noises such as car doors and school bells, although my mom thought that maybe I was making that up and instead actually had a hearing difficulty. I'll find out when I see him whether Asperger's was something that he knew much about then, or if he did, why he didn't diagnose me with it. Either way, my appointment to see him is less than two weeks away and I can hardly wait!

i fit in this "not diagnosed" but definitely has it.
they don't need to put a label on me to know
that i could be autistic ...socially it's a disaster
ever since, if it weren't for the one friend at
different times of my life that sort of have been
my crutch at social situations, my family, and pets
i would have ended it all already.
right now for a while now, i'm confronting
this fact head on.
i still hate everything. i feel hopeless that nothing
will ever change. i still hate that i can't be normal
and not have this feeling that i'm laughed at and
ridiculed all the time.

I'm not diagnosed but I'm about 70% sure. I felt something was up when I eavsdropped on one of my friends saying "Yeah, well, but <MYNAME> doesn't count.. he's different."