This is a LONG one, but I want to contact similar people.

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I've been coming to this site for a LONG time now and find myself still hunting for people to whom I can relate... but I seem to be on the losing side. So, I've decided to put myself out there first, in the hopes that people will be able to relate to me and post their own replies.

I'm a 28yr old female. I have a nice boyfriend that I met while I was in the Air National Guard. We've been together for almost four years now and we're finally expecting. I'm an undergraduate and triple majoring in Behavior Psych, Social Psych, and Women's Studies. I plan to attend a graduate program in educational psych (for gifted and learning disabled education) sometime in the next year or so. I have been diagnosed with AS since entering college, after a lifetime of being bounced from labels of gifted (as a child) to PDD/NVLD (later childhood) to "gifted but with autistic traits" (adolescence) and finally here.

My interest lies in psychology so I am wondering, how many others have had experiences similiar to mine? The following insights concerning my experiences have baffled me for some time now as they don't quite seem to fit the mold of AS.

Memories: My earliest memory is from just as I was learning to crawl (developmentally on time) and is very detailed, but my memories start to fade out completely after three and a half years old. Only a few here and there from then on and not extremely detailed. A very few scattered memories of people (including immediate family members) but which tend to increase in number by age ten. Also, my memory recall is either visual, auditory, tactile, etc. but never all at the same moment. I only encode one sense at any given time. Note: that means if I am having a conversation with you, I am either hearing you or seeing you, but never both... so don't ask me to focus my eyes and ears and expect me to function well in either respect.

Learning: Almost everything had to be learned by rote. I did have a naturally developed sense of humor to some extent, though it was limited to multiple meanings of words, alphabetical and nuerical patterns, and similar simplicities. I didn't have any other sense of humor, including the ability to get otherwise "simple" jokes, before the skill was specifically taught to me in my teenage years by my uncle. Exposure and explanation was my only teacher. Therefore, I have pursued both intently. I was also a born programmer - just felt I could relate to it better than I could people. It has served me well since then, but in ways beyond computers. I program myself, my environment, social systems, animals and even other people now. It's quite liberating. As a child, I was also a very early reader (i taught myself to read before my parents had the chance) and a timely talker (though I did not like the way my moving tounge felt in my mouth).

Sensory Issues: Always an issue. From bothersome tags and elastic on my baby clothing to panic-inducing neuro-fixations on tactile and auditory stimuli (just 'cuz they aren't there anymore, doesn't mean my brain has stopped wanting to react to them, isn't still registering them, and won't even amplify the sensations over the following two to ten minutes... in which case, I might try to "reset" myself by producing a sudden sound ("ah"), or "freeze" my body and mind (unknowingly) until the fit subsides), or exhibit any other of several strange behaviors, depending on my level of general stress or specific irritation. Also, the more comfortable I feel about being myself in a given place or situation, the less I am likely to supress or cover up such behaviors.

Social Behaviors: I have rarely opened my mouth without programming and, therefore, have rarely found myself to be socially awkward. Times when this occurs is limited to when I understand that I am required to talk, but I am in the unfortuinate situation of having to learn an overly challenging "program" "on the fly". For this reason, I prefer to listen as much as possible and ask questions before I end up being required to really speak up for myself. Many times, I just nod and rephrase, without any true understanding, in order to "buy" more time to learn the particular parameters and processes within the new program. Again, my social programming is fairly sophisticated after so many years of study, so this is actually quite rare, but it does still happen on occasion.

So this was just a start on listing some of the things I've noticed about myself over the years. If anyone has had any similar experiences and/or has noticed many these same things in his or her own life, I would love to hear from you.

i relate to your social behaviors thing but I sometimes talk when i'm not supposed to. I did find your memory encoding theory about being able to only store one sense at a time to be quite interesting.

Welcome to WP!

Your programming is much more advanced than mine.... i have a set series of programs that run independant of each other... my friends never meet my family, my family never meet the people i work with... etc etc... Now if I could get my programming ot run smoothly together like your sounds like it does, i might just be able to function better.

My interests lay in the medical field as a whole and in fixing things. (My parents are RNs) So psych work does actually fit into my field of interest. I have become fairly burned out though when it comes to dealing with people on a day to day basis and so have not pursued my interest as my career. (I once told my mother that I would become an ME if I didn't have to be an Intern first.

I was on PhenyBarbitol from the age of 1 to 4 so I have no memories before about 5. The memories I do start having then are 5 to 15 second flashes of sensory effects. Spinning around. Hearing a fight. Algebra equations on my big sis's blackboard. Cold metal at the doc's office. The tree bark from the tree in the play ground. I don't have very good memory recall if someone is asking for a play-by-play. I can sometimes do it, but it is pieced together backwards from what i would have had to do in order to get where i was.

I am also a kinetic learner. I learn things by doing. You can't just show them to me, i have to do it at the same time. If I am assigned homework before a teacher teaches the subject and i do it wrong, that is how i remember to do it. I was also a gifted student, it helped some, because I got pulled out of the tedious classes and taught about interesting stuff, and i got more hands on experience with a computer at a very young age.

I was dubbed mrs motermouth by a Kindergarten teacher that didn't like me, or just couldn't get me to shut up. Then for the next 12 years i learned to shut my mouth and listen. I was recently placed on a new seizure med that slowed my reaction time enough that the block i had placed to keep me from babbling was not quick enough to halt the flow of aspergian words coming out of my mouth. I have had a hard time adjusting to having all the words that used to be safely ensconced in my brain now running amoke on my tongue.

LqdCrct and Kit to tenth powers,
Both of your stories are fascinating. Thank you for sharing.

This is a really interesting thread. I'm glad you posted this. I was diagnosed with NLD (but another Psychologist said that they would have diagnosed me with "mild Asperger's" instead, because NLVD wasn't in the DSM yet).

About the two senses (sight and sound) competing for attention in the brain... I have found that when I wear headphones and am listening to some music that isn't really distracting but more rhythm oriented (something not too lyric-driven), that if I am out in a large department store, I can actually pay attention more to body language and process it better.. It's not as overwhelming to the senses because all the noise of the people talking, etc.. isn't there.. I'm able to pay more attention to their body language. If I wear slightly darker glasses, I don't feel self-conscious about observing them and that way, they can't see "me" so to speak -- if that makes any sense... Music seems to help calm me down in otherwise high-sensory environments like a Walmart or Mall (places I otherwise tend to avoid).

I, too, didn't like elastic or any type of scratchy clothing as a kid -- didn't like to wear any underwear for instance. I remember when I was 4-5, I would get into trouble for secretly removing the underwear and just wearing my pants.. I refused to wear dresses (but that's another story....) I too majored in Social Psychology in school and have thought to go back and get my Master's degree in a similar field. I've also been called "motor-mouth" -- people's jaw's have dropped in disbelief and they say things like "I have never in my life heard anyone speak as fast as you do and yet I can understand every word!! !" as though I am some type of alien! HA!

Like Kit, I also learn by doing instead of just watching something shown to me.. My mother could show me how to prepare a recipe for dinner 100 times, but until I actually mix the ingredients myself, etc.. I won't learn it.. It usually takes a few times of my doing it myself to really get it down... As for my childhood, I don't remember it very well at all.. I wish I could sometimes..

Body language and subtle social cues have always been may shortcoming in the social arena... If I could only continue to improve upon these skills, it would be alot better.. Jokes are still difficult to understand frequently and I still find myself taking people literally sometimes.. Yoga helps relax my mind so that the anxiety is momentarily gone, it's like a natural sedative of sorts

LqdCrct, if you consider that intangible/abstract feeling is the most base sensation of the human being. That smell, touch, hearing and sight are all extensions of just a sort of underlying area of intangible feeling. Then it might help you to reveal some of your memories if perhaps you focused on separating the feeling from the sense. Even though the feeling is recorded by that sense, the underlying feeling is still their just by the nature of how the brain works and if you can get your attention to stop focusing on it's associated sense, then perhaps it will reveal the underlying feeling and more of the memory.

I say this because, I'm seemingly opposite of you in memory storing. I store everything in just this intangible feeling, then can connect it out to my different senses. And I find that really young childhood memories are typically, only stored in just intangible feeling... because the sense association isn't strong enough at that young. And much of what I was trying to remember as a really young child, weren't so much memories, but just feelings. It wasn't until I stopped seeking 'memories' and just started sorting through feeling, dis-attached from senses, that I started to really remember my childhood.

Funny but I hate a lot of loud noise, but also a lot of silence sort of makes me a bit crazy. It is sort of like understimulation. I seem to prefer a medium amount of background noise at all times.

Thank you everyone for posting your replies. All of these stories are really wonderful and deserve more attention than what I can currently muster (I have midterms this week). Please keep them coming and I will stop back to read them further and respond properly when I get the chance in a few days! Again, thank you for all your submissions and comments.

My memory recall is like connect the dots most of the time. I have a memory in place, usually because i have pictures to remind me what was happening. But i won't remember most of what happened, or the memory will be sensory split. if i remember actually doing something, i won't remember what was said, if i remember what was said, i won't remember what i was doing at the time or where i was, or even who i was talking to. Sometimes all i will remember is a smell. those are the ones that drive me nuts because i can't figure out where i've smelled something. Every once in a while i get an opposite effect, where one of these sensory triggers will trigger a full memory of an event.