Do I have AS?
13 Dec 2011, 6:45 am
Hello y'all. Found out about this amazing support network just minutes ago, internetting about AS after finally accepting that I have clinical depression and have begun to at least tentatively take steps to treat it. Having attended my first ever therapy session, also earlier today (no, wait, it's 5 am and I've been unable to sleep all night, so that was yesterday), I've been thinking about my behavioral patterns over the course of my life, and see that many of them fit into the rather diverse set of AS-associated patterns of thought and behavior. I would more readily have written off the description, except that I saw in it something that surprised me-- associating AS with an extreme tendency towards an elaborate gait, or very fluid and routinized movement. I suppose it makes sense, if the hallmark of AS is intense and repetitive focus on a few outlets of physical and mental experience. I tend to be extremely conscious about the way I let me feet fall, about the motion of my arms, about the relative quiet or overall grace of my total motions. But I've always thought that this stems from two childhood focii: 1. having walked as a child with my feet overly splayed (or so I thought as a kid; now I wonder if my mother wouldn't have said something about it if it were truly the case), I self-corrected this, which required constant vigilance over my gait, and so avoided what could have become a more permanent habit, and 2. having fallen in love with fantasy literature and epics very early on, I became very fixated on the descriptions of heroes, painted as graceful combatants, executing well-trained perfect movements, and so like any kid, tried to be like the characters I idealized in many ways, movement among them (but also including a kid's attempt at things like chivalry, honor, virtue, fair-play, respect, etc.-- some of which I still try to adhere to in that peculiarly compromised world of adulthood).
More importantly, probably, is that I may indeed have serious emotional deficits. I have never truly been in love, and am not quite sure what I'm supposed to be looking for, or if the very act of looking is what undermines the possibility of experiencing it (i.e. is it just an expression of the "faithful," much like religious belief, incapable of being proven; or is it something real, that NTs don't have to even wonder about, it being so obviously real to them? Or have I just not me the right woman (I did tend to fixate on their problems or our incompatibilities; but how is that different from just being a negative, obsessive type?). I have a very hard time getting excited, but I don't think such was the case as a child, just more so after all the bullying and ostracization I endured during K-8. I can be very empathetic, even to the point of being moved to tears, but not typically in face to face interactions, more so when say reading someone's harrowing account or watching a documentary. Basically, I feel like I do at times have rather strong emotional expressions, even when other people are present, but when someone reaches out to me in sadness, or in a loving embrace, it's like this wall comes up, and I feel little or nothing at that precise time. I know this sounds especially AS, but isn't it possible that all this is the consequence of the extreme bullying I suffered well into high school, rather than the consequence of genetics? Like, I've deeply internalized emotional pain stemming from face to face interactions, and so I've learned to isolate my emotions from direct interaction with people, since for many years interactions mostly led to pain (and I felt all that pain very keenly, I assure you). During the worst of the bullying, I used to go home to my one-parent, broken household, and have explosive rages I would level at my siblings, though never at my mother. But once I entered my teens, my anger became much more manageable, and today, I only rarely get angry at all, but then as I said, I am also deeply depressed, more so now than previously (it became what I would consider clinical about 1-2 years ago, and got much worse once I began my current MA program). I do still get quite nervous in public speaking.
I should also add that I have a hard time gauging when I'm being offensive, and so to some extent annoy people with my "insecurities," by trying to make sure my jokes come across as jokes, and not just rudeness. I am also quite quick to pick up on when I think someone is becoming bored in a conversation, but again it takes on the aura of insecurity, since I actually feel the need to ask people to confirm whether or not they're uninterested (knowing, at the very least intellectually, that it's an awkward question, but i try to be polite about it).
And here is an important question for me: How much of all this could just be learned patterns of thought and behavior leading to anxiety and insecurity, as opposed to something I can't unlearn? How much of this resonates with those of you reading this who have AS? Am I a robot? As I entered that last sentence, I made myself almost cry, though all while feeling detached (but again, detachment is the hallmark of depression, not AS, right? And I have been detached from things to varying degrees for at least the past 8 or so years).
