I really think I have AS!

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You got incredibly lucky if diagnosis was that easy for you. I'm not sure where the OP is from, but if he's in the UK, you have to go to your GP first and then he has to refer you to a psychologist/psychiatrist, which may be why the OP is currently waiting for a referral.

I'm self-diagnosed and am still trying to figure out exactly how to get officially diagnosed. Being a female and an adult, it is incredibly difficult. I used to live in the US, and had the problem of not having enough money to see a specialist. Even with my insurance, it would've cost me a good $800. Having recently moved to the UK, I've found the process to be just as difficult. You have to go to your GP to get a referral, but if your GP doesn't know what the heck you're talking about, doesn't think you really have it, or simply doesn't know anyone in your area who specialises in diagnosing autism, you're kind of screwed. Even if he is able to refer you, there's no guarantee that the person he refers you to has any experience diagnosing adults. That leave going to a private specialist, and this is going to cost me at least £1000. So no, many people cannot simply "get it checked".

I only felt it fair to warn her!

So here I am trying again:

So do lots of autistic people.

The professionals will say it's not that we don't have imagination, it's that we don't have social imagination. I think that's a copout (a way to continue saying we lack imagination, instead of saying they were wrong when they really and truly used to say we lacked any imagination) but that's just my opinion. I'm trying to report on what they think, not necessarily agreeing with it.

You'll find lots of threads here about things like daydreaming too much.



Pure stereotype.

Autistic people can be science geeks, or artistic, or both, or neither.

I have some interest in science and used to be interested in very narrow areas of math (but had learning disabilities in others). But overwhelmingly these days I'm more into the artistic side of things.

Most people know me as someone who writes. But writing can't really say who I am or how I perceive the world, and so many people think they know or understand me just through my writing. So I took up painting as a way to express my real self and perceptions of the world, and I haven't looked back at all. I still write, but painting is so much easier and says so much more. My "natural" state is so far outside of language that it's seriously difficult for me to write, even when I write better than some people for whom language is more natural to them. Painting makes it possible for me to express myself and what I care about, without the intense strain of writing.



Autistic people tend towards extremes. We can be sensory-defensive or sensory-seeking (or both in one person, or both at different times, etc). Some of us are therefore tactile-defensive and hate touch, while others crave it. (Some, like Temple Grandin, seem to crave it but be unable to handle it from human beings, so she invented a machine to squeeze her in a way she could get the sensation without the difficulties involved in human touch.)

On boards full of parents I often hear of children who are very touchy-feely but otherwise very much autistic.



Pure stereotype there.

I do think that autistic people are overrepresented among sci-fi geeks. But I think we're also overrepresented in any area where people are very intensely interested in something. Whether or not that interest is one we're stereotyped as often having, or not.



The most complicated of my answers, I will try to reproduce it.

So... first off, what professionals say about empathy: They mean ability to rapidly work out what others are feeling and put ourselves in their shoes, not ability to care about what others are feeling.

I think that's just as much a copout as imagination -- they just want to still be able to say we lack empathy even though we have caring.

But anyway.

So there are autistic people (most autistic people really) who definitely care about other people once we understand what they are feeling, but who may have trouble understanding what others are feeling.

There are also many autistic people (including me) who often have intense uncontrollable empathy. I often find myself bombarded by emotion when I am in large groups of people.

Also, there are many autistic people where the empathy thing is a two-way street:

Nonautistic people can easily empathize with other nonautistic people, but have trouble empathizing with autistic people. And there are many autistic people who can easily empathize with other autistic people (or within their own subgroup of autistic people), but who have trouble empathizing with nonautistic people.

That's also true for me -- within my own subgroup (and surrounding ones) of autistic people, I get so much multilayered detail about their emotions and state of mind that it's shocking. Whereas with nonautistic people I can often feel their emotions but not in as much detail.



Yes, you are.

I've heard there are two main reactions to having trouble reading body language -- being overly trusting, and becoming paranoid.

Also, I've read somewhere that people who have trouble reading body language (for any reason) often perceive things like anger more than they perceive any other emotion. So they think people are mad at them all the time when they're not, which can come across as paranoia too. I used to have that problem a lot with understanding my mother.

Yay, I got through it all!

LOL that's one of my big problems in life. Taking things literally. I thought we all (Aspies) did that?

I take your points though. Thank you for helping me to understand where I'm going wrong. I've clearly been thinking things are more black and white than they are, and that Aspies are clones. LOL

Yup. That's what we do. But we're here for you. We will bluntly tell you when you are doing that. And bluntly tell you anything else that comes to mind. Beware the special interest!

I researched the hell out of Asperger's and autism before I went for an evaluation. I was a fount of autie knowledge. It probably helped confirm the diagnosis.

I apologise if I misinterpreted your frankness as rudeness.

People do that to me all the time, so I ought to know by now not to do it to other people!

You say "get what exactly checked?" em well I did make it quite clear what I meant, by putting it in brackets. The basis for your rant. That's what you should have checked.

I wasn't saying go check yourself to see if you're an Aspie, I was saying go check the facts before you jump into a post. LOL

With regards to my referral: well, it doesn't work like that over here. I'm in the UK.

Things take time. And NHS care can vary dramatically for different health conditions from one county to the next.

Of course I have been to my GP. I'm not stupid. But I'm not living in Australia.

It's like banging your head off a brick wall trying to get someone to refer you, and, once they do, it's like banging your head off another wall waiting to actually be sent a letter announcing your referral, only to see that your appointment is about ten years in the future and is not even with a specialist, it's just with a general psychologist who might be a counseller, not someone who even knows anything about autism....

Still haven't got my referral letter yet though, so I'm making assumptions. But that's what NHS referrals have been like, in my experience, for other health problems I've had (spinal injury).

I want to go private, but have to request funding and paperwork via my GP and all that takes time and faffing aronud as well.

Edit: wow, I hadn't realised this thread had got so many responses. Thank you so much to all the people taking the time to reply. Especially the person who wrote a long reply and then lost it, and typed it all out again. LOL. That sounds like me. I HATE it when that happens.

Yes, I am a female. Yes, I am in the UK. No, I am not in school or work. I am at home, having a breakdown.

I've always had breakdowns, and always been bullied at work, and people have always shouted at me and hated me and thought I was rude, and I've never known why. Now I understand. Depending on how I want to look at it, this whol time I was either the only human being living on a planet full of aliens, or the only alien living on a planet full of human beings. That's why. It all makes sense.

Now I know there are more of us, I don't feel so alone!

I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.

That scene from Casablanca always gets me.

I had a similar problem, and when I knew I was probably autistic and yet the material I read was clashing with my self-perceptions (which were not all entirely accurate, but that's another issue) I had to stop and ask other people because my interpretations were too literal and rigid and I had trouble applying them to myself. I finally did what you did - I asked other autistic people, and it was such a huge help and relief.

I hope you can get your referral and diagnosis soon!

I was self diagnosed and would have stayed that way until someone on this site accused me of being NT so I got a diagnosis. The doctor who gave me the test said he knew I had Aspergers from the first conversation. He gave me the test so I can have it on paper and be able to see a psychologist that specializes in AS. You are going to meet a lot of people here on WP that are going to question your aspieness until you get a professional diagnosis.

I'm not a dude, I'm a dudette.

How's it hanging Down Under?

This is because you think too much, I don't understand why they say aspies don't have imagination, maybe it's a different one, but it's clear that I have an amazing imagination. Being in your own head all the time does that I think!



Well that depends on your personnality, I'm a brute in math and science, I understand theory in no time when my schoolmate would take months to understand the same thing. Still, I can create some crazy drawing, sculpting, even my french teacher in high school told me I should do my career in poesy. But, I'm in electrical engineering. This as nothing to do with aspie vs NT, but left vs rigth brain predominancy.



I'm sure this depends on what type of touch, this is a hypersensitive traits. So you might like soft tissus but easily irritated with different texture. I hate physical contact when it's not desired, like I hate being touched by other man, even my friend, but I would like a female touch or furry animal.



Possible, this is a special interest some have, not a trait



What you may see as empathy isn't! wiki citation : "Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings (such as sadness or happiness) that are being experienced by another semi-sentient being." Before taking online test I also thought I had a lot of empathy, but by passing the EQ (empathic quotient) test I've realised I was apathic. This is because you care about others and want them to be happy and dislike to see distress. But you might not share the same feeling like they do. It's being able to put yourself in someonelse's place and has nothing to do with sensibility!



This is an easy one, I do this too. This is the too much details trait! You won't feel when someone's crying, but you'll realise it when you see his face turning red, see tears and mouth going ... This is a learnt thing, not innate! Well for me, probably for you too.

What you need to do is to see how you got impaired in your life because of this syndrom. I did and realised AS got my life f****d up. I can make a relation between all my problems in life with this. Eg: I lost many friends, I had a hard time at school even if I'm gifted, financial problem due to social anxiety when working (made me quit my job easily), impulsive reaction which broke many things, suicidal ideation ...

Also, you could see the Global Assessment of Functioning and see how you think your life got f****d up (I know I got 31-40 period). Go get help, it's a long journey! I was at your point 6 months ago and still haven't got a diagnosis, but it will come soon! Competence in autism is hard to find.

I've known (or at least, felt very strongly) I had it from the moment I did the test.

Does that count?

Probably not.

Thank you for your kind and helpful answers, which, for the sake of not cluttering up the boards with unnecessary quotes, I have decided to neatly summarise, using the sentence that jumped out at me as being the most spot-on of all.

LOL

These are all just stereotypes of the condition, and some on your longer list seem to be as well. You might want to look up the actual diagnostic criteria.

Particularly no imagination is just a complete misunderstanding. It is born out of difficulty with a specific type of role-play, imagining multiple characters how each view their world and how they might interact. If you find threads where people list jobs or hobbies, more often than not they require allot of imagination.

As a side note, please don't use "creative" as the opposition to a scientific mind.

The visual nature of physics, how heat, electricity, sound, concentrations, mechanical stress all interrelate to one another, yet are all exactly the same, the complex shapes they naturally make. Designing and building something new, using material to shape these quantities and how they relate to one another, there is an art and creativity to it. People for some reason seem to see science as a crank you turn or calculation you make, to inch forward, it's not.



People seem to be on one end of the scale or the other in terms of touch, with hating being slightly more common. Empathy is more complicated, but i don't think that reaction is uncommon.

My list is based on ME. If I am a stereotype of anything, and that offends you in some way, I do apologise. I'm still learning.

Please don't patronise me. You may not be, and I may just be reading you wrong, but it comes across that way. I have done extensive research on all of the self-testing diagnostic criteria available to me at the moment, while I'm still not yet officially diagnosed, and am still waiting to be assessed by a specialist using their diagnostic criteria. Doing self-testing, I score 42 out of 50 in one test, and 175 out of 200 in another. If anything I wrote on my list is a stereotype and you object to it because you've known about your condition for years, give me a break. I've only just stumbled into it and found out what I am and what's been wrong with me. I am humbly willing to learn and be told about my mistakes and constantly adjust to new ideas, but not by people who don't bother to read what I've written. What I've written will inform you that I have done months of extensive research already, but you then go ahead and casually imply I just stumbled across this forum, decided to be an Aspie, and haven't even bothered to look up the diagnostic criteria. LOL



I see.



Oops. I beg your pardon. I'm stupid. *Face palm* I see what you mean. Scientists are creative. The word I was looking for was "artistic." I'll go back and change it.

I think that a person who believes they are on the spectrum usually has a reason for it. All my life I knew I was different. I knew there was something about me that was not like other people. Sensory issues are not that severe for me, but I hate loud noises, I get startled easily from loud noises, bright flashing lights an unnatural light bothers me after a while. I like being touchy-feely, but I hate being bumped into. I have terrible social anxiety, anxiety about change and breaking routine, and anxiety about places, experiences, and people new to me.

I don't really like any scifi other than star trek, I'm very bad in math, and have intense hobbies in electronics of all kinds. I once spent $1000 of a evaluation board for a high performance car radio tuner module because I was so interested in the design of these tuners and just had to have one. I wanted to design my own radio based on that tuner, but couldn't do programming so I was stuck to playing with the evaluation board with PC software. $1000 was a lot of money, I've long since paid it off, but still have and enjoy that evaluation board. These are how intense my interests are. I've always been interested in the design and operation of AM/FM radios, I have a few beloved transistor radios in my collection, and I have a demo board of a radio chip used in portable applications. This is just one of my interests in electronics. I'm currently playing with a Weatherstar 4000 and love Cisco networking.

These interests were so intense all my life, and I thought they were normal. I knew everyone was different, and I was different in respects to my hobbies. I also knew I was shy, had social difficulty, but other than that, really never put any more thought into it. As I got older, the anxiety would affect my life more and more, so I sought treatment from my doctor, who gave me an SSRI. It was a classmate in college that introduced me to social anxiety disorder, which he believed he had. He was quiet, and I remember reading it online that he posted. He definitely has AS. We never really connected because he was so quiet, his self esteem is very low, and we never really had much in common other than electronics, but his interests in electronics were a bit different than mine.

After getting tired of the side effects of the SSRI, I waned myself off of it, and started throwing around the idea I might very well had AS. So after doing very intense research on the subject (like most Aspies do), I came to the conclusion I had AS. At first I was very depressed, that something was "clinically wrong" with me. With time, that passed and I began to realize that it is part of who I am, and to embrace my strengths and disabilities, be proud of who I am, and to enjoy life as I always did.

I sought a diagnoses early on after I figured out I had AS, because at that time I was almost certain, but wanted a "professional opinion" to set it in stone. After finding a psychologist 40 minutes away that had dealt with AS, I went to him for three sessions, but stopped going because he never took insurance and they got expensive. So, I know I have AS, the psychologist said I meet all the diagnostic criteria, but he wasn't too concerned about giving me a diagnoses, rather than looking at it as a personality trait or who I am as a person.

Where I live, the psychologists only really specialize in drugs and abuse cases, not really developmental disorders like autism, so I have to travel at least an hour to find someone who knows adult AS. So, instead of doing that, I'm going to try a psychologist in my area hoping she can treat my anxiety.

As for the lack of empathy, I think it's a misinterpretation. Hans Asperger first described it, but I think it a perceived lack of empathy, and he only worked with young children. As a child, you still need to learn quite a bit about life, especially social rules. My psychologist that I went to for three sessions said the lack of empathy really isn't true, that people on the spectrum are more aware of it that neurotypicals, which I feel the same way.