Is there anything that makes you think maybe its not Asperg

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I first heard of AS on this site. I had been searching for other people who exhibited signs of sensory processing disorder. At the time I hadn't heard of sensory processing disorder, but I was searching for other people who could not tolerate the specific things I could not tolerate.

A page from this site came up in the Google results, and in the summary a person used the phrase "our obsessions". That made the link to this site much more interesting to me, since I have had one obsession in particular that has lasted over half of my life, and which I am still interested in, although I have had two more-prominent obsessions since.

I read the diagnostic criteria, and I was sure they fit. The phrase "little professor" described me very well. I taught myself to read, displayed sophisticated intelligence at a very young age, noticed and memorized every detail of interests, and scored in the top percentiles in standardized tests.

The first day I read this site, I was shocked. As far as I had known, I had never met anyone who thought anything like I did, and many posts here seemed as if I could have written them.

I had never thought to search for anything based on social criteria. Social interaction was something I didn't attempt much, and something which had tended to end badly for me in the past, so I had given up on being social with most people, although I had sometimes watched others' interactions.

I took rdos' neurodiversity test twice and scored 170 both times, trying to answer as correctly as possible, being very careful to not answer any questions incorrectly affirmatively. A few months later I took it again and scored 164. I've taken the test twice more, and have kept the results as PDF files. My answers have not changed unless I have learned specific details about my childhood or unless I have learned that the questions meant something I didn't understand. Taking those things into account, my score has increased slightly.

I have been surprised at how much I have learned from this site about what is considered socially appropriate and what is considered socially inappropriate. It seems that I know less than many people here. For example, when I was around him I remember my dad telling me whenever I would do something socially inappropriate. I had a job interview just a few days before finding this site. The job was related to my obsession, and I started to monologue and I realized that I had done so and tried to say something to augment what I had said to sound more normal. I knew I failed.

After finding out about the severity of my social deficit I watched many YouTube videos on tips for job interviewing and memorized what they said and get my first real job. I had done self-employment before, and I had been good at what I did, but when I had ever gotten to have interviews I had never been offered a job.

I have still questioned whether I might be incorrect. After reading "The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night" I was sure that I was incorrect.

But I have kept researching, and after watching certain YouTube videos and after reading "Pretending To Be Normal", I was sure that I was correct.

I do still sometimes doubt the accuracy of my suspicions since my mom insists that I am normal, and since she has known me for so long(although she is the only person who has ever told me they believe I am "normal", and many have told me I am or was not. Soon after I started my job I overheard one of my co-workers say to another co-worker that I seemed autistic, and after realizing that I heard her she has explained why certain behaviors fit this). Since reading WrongPlanet I have read many discussions about other possible diagnoses. I also believe that I meet the criteria for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Inattentive ADHD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and social phobia. I sometimes wonder if any combination of those might appear as AS, although I know of odd behaviors I exhibited in early childhood.

Of course I should see someone for diagnosis, but I have no idea about who I would see, how I would schedule an appointment, or how much it might cost.

A few things.. But for everything that makes me think i don't have AS, there are some sorta-related symptoms that make me think i do.
First, I don't really have any routines in my day. I don't do the exact same things every day the exact same way. Or, at least, it doesn't seem like it to me at all. My mind does get stuck on a single track very easily, though, and i do like to have a mental picture of something i'm about to do.. Not a "spur of the moment" person generally. But, my days still aren't organized in any particular way. I don't even go to sleep around the same time from day to day.
Second, i don't have a particularly photographic memory like a lot of people with AS seem to. There are certain things i will remember really well(IF it gets my interest), but most of the time i'm just not going to notice whether or not someone moves an small item in a room that i usually don't pay much attention to.
Third, no severe motor problems. Yes, my hand writing does suck and i often feel awkward or uncomfortable with my movements... but i still manage to have pretty good balance, and as a kid my NT sister was much more accident-prone than i. I rode my bike a lot, rollerbladed, etc. When my mind wanders, i do tend to drop things, walk into thing, or just generally forget where parts of my body are, however.
Fourth, i use my hands when i talk, even though that's a kind of nonverbal communication. Quite a lot these days, actually. I don't usually pay a whole lot of attention to other peoples' hand gestures except when they're pointing at something, though. I point at things a lot, and i tend to describe things with my hands kind of like they are a picture in front of my. If i'm explaining where something is, for example, i might put one hand where a certain point of reference is, then point to the location of the thing i'm describing relative to that point of reference(i don't know if that was clear or not...).
Lastly, i do seek out social interaction. I will often go up to a coworker and just say "hi! whatcha' doing?" or just start talking about whatever random idea pops into my mind. I don't think it happens in a way that's quite as fluid as most peoples' interactions, but i do end up getting into conversations(and don't always monologue, even if i do generally try to direct the conversation toward a special interest). I think i'm getting pretty good at the "and how was YOUR day?" stuff, too. So i'm not as hopeless as some people, i guess.

Matt... your mother says that you are normal, but as a mother of an aspie myself, I think a more accurate thing to say would be, "you're perfect, just the way you are." Your mother has known you and loved you for your whole life, she sees you and loves you for yourself, whatever that is... and to her you are normal, in fact better than normal... you're her son.

My son is perfect. Just as he is. My Mum told me the same thing when I was growing up. (I didn't realise I'd been diagnosed auty, but knew I felt different from everyone else.) Just accept that your Mum loves you, and be glad about it. And don't worry about whether you're normal or not. Who wants to be normal anyway?

I am diagnosed, but I wonder.

Do echolalia, being totally alien beyond what many others with AS describe, language deficits and ignoring others in childhood and the immense gap between symptom and functioning-level that developed with time passing, the symptoms that lessoned at age 5 really fit AS? Or is it HFA seeing how I fulfil the criteria?

Very confusing.

It could be high functioning autism, I don't know. I was diagnosed auty as a child, but I don't think that quite describes me now.

Regarding echolalia, it actually helped me in many ways... I'm very good at languages, and even today when I hear people speaking an unknown language, my brain grabs at the sounds, and I have to repeat them. I've also got an excellent memory for spoken texts... I remember poems and passages of literature that I haven't read in over twenty years. If I ever heard them read out, then chances are high I'll remember them.

The main question mark above my AS is and always has been that I don't really have obsessions with routine. I mean, there are certain things I like to do, but I don't cry my eyes out if someone interrupts them.

This is what's weird--

At first, I couldn't get a diagnosis of AS because I appeared so normal.

Then, "layers" of testing uncovered that I not only have it, but that is moderate and not mild.

Sometimes, I know I'm coming across so normal that I wonder how in the world I could have it.

But yesterday, I misunderstood the bus driver and appeared completely ret*d. He tried to explain to me that I needed another bus and it came at another location. I kept asking, "Where is it?" because I couldn't see it. He told me to sit down on the other side of the wall and wait for it.

That's just my most recent example. BF says my AS is completely obvious.

Hmmm... it depends mostly what other people say about me sometimes.

What makes me doubt: When people say my conversation skills are too good, I have too much emotion in my voice(though not as much as an NT), I have good eye contact, and the fact I'm pretty good at reading people. Also I have a dx of a mental illness and I know that could cause aspie-like things to go on.

BUt when my psychologist admits I have stereotypy and obsessive interests going on and compares me to Bill Gates, I get into the cycle of wondering again if it's true.

I've had people come right out and say I was an aspie and other people say for sure I was not :x

Even the aspie and aq tests I'm right on the border... I'm one confused person.

I don't fit the stereotype in some ways:

My rote memory is so-so but certainly not impeccable.
Not into the computer programming thing.
Good with euphemisms, metaphors, similes, allegories and "feel" language while writing and in fictional literature.
Not so much a concrete thinker in some ways but it's easier for me to understand concrete situations instead of complex, abstract idealogies. Geometry is easier than Trigonometry.
I am not gregarious. I dislike going up to strangers and talking to them ( I get the impression people think that's the difference between AS and HFA - this gregarious quality. I don't have it and anytime I have been expected to fake gregariousness it has caused me a lot of trepidation because I have been so uncomfortable with it. One time I had a job selling something and the employer wanted me to bark at people carnival style but I hated it and wouldn't do it.)

i am long-time ADD message board person...pretty much since when I discovered it..as a senior in High School...after years of suffering from extreme undefinable awkwardness..for my entire life..this was in 1993-4 when Asperger's not really heard of..I read about ADD first in an old diagnostic manual where it was called "Mild brain dysfunction"..or something like that..and doing further research, I bumped into ADHD....and that was a "eureka" moment for me...though I didn't receive my half-assed diagnosis for ADD till I was 29 or so..

Explanation as to WHY I think I have AS in the first place:
I have always known that I was "different" or that something was "wrong" with me...The word "autistic" creeped into my vocabulary around the age of 7...but I don't recall the context...albiet, the only member of my immediate family who was outspoken about the fact that I was not developing quite right was my paternal grandfather, who was very ASish himself and who's younger brother had more severe Autistic/OCD symptoms....I always had difficulties in school, and my problems were usually defined by the various teachers and councelors as my being "emotionally disturbed" or "emotionally immature"...anything beyond that, I didn't pick up on, because it was usually told to my parents behind closed doors, and they didn't repeat it to me...After being placed back into 3rd grade after having a major meltdown in class, I eventually became obsessed with going to a "special school" for kids like me...but that never happened. I spent most of my elementary school years scoring in the top percentile on standardized tests while doing horribly on the school work because i was completely sensory overloaded and spaced out. I took every opportunity to either stay home from school or go home sick. I also had extreme motor clumsiness, severe problems with organization...EVERYTHING gave me a headache(florescent lighting in the classrooms)...or a "stress-induced" rash...I was bullied constantly..I tried to have friends and managed to "force" a few short-lived friendships here and there..but I didn't understand boundaries, and managed to repeatedly anger both friends and their parents...blah blah..I won't go into my life story....I am also a toe-walker...I don't make eye contact..I don't drive..for many reasons....I have the male digit ratio...I have meltdowns....What seem to be Aspie traits exist on both sides of my family..

I am "assessed" as having Asperger's...which means I has an interview with a specialist who said she could tell right away that I was an Aspie...but though she said I could pretty much treat her opinion as a diagnosis, I know it is not the same thing...so i will always have doubts

Reasons I have doubts
I often think I am not intelligent enough to be an aspie...I come from a family of very gifted people(musicians, architechts, engineers, inventors)...and I am sort of a dim bulb among them...learning has always been a struggle because of auditory processing and reading troubles....(I am a slow reader and have to read stuff over and over in order to fully comprehend).....ANNNND I have dysclaculea...and I have a memory that is only good for visualizing where things are.

Although I feel largely detached from most people, I have been socially gregarious at times, and I have wondered whether or not I was too socially dynamic to be an aspie. I help run a performance and art venue...(not a very ASish thing to do..though it took me years and one major nervous breakdown that cause me to move to another state for 6 months before I got used to it)

I have some friends...(albiet..they all have varying degrees of non-neurotypical-ness)
And I have been in a non-stop string of relationships since I was 15, and now I am polyamorous with two partners...(not a typical aspie thing to do )

I managed to be a somewhat normal teenager who had friends and whatnot...I went though a phase during adolescence where I was very hyperactive and gregarious...(even though a lot was faking it and filling in the gaps from my dysfunctional childhood) My lifelong obsession with singing landed me in a band at the age of 15 and I was in that band for 10 years..(not sure if that is very Aspie-ish)

What I think it might be if it is not Asperger's:

Brain damage...either something happened while I was 10 months in the womb during the time when my mom didn't know she was pregnant....or from having experienced various head traumas when I was a small child. I was pulled out with forceps when I was born...I was dropped squarely on the head from a few feet up around the age of 3 or 4, I was also in a moped accident at an early age (my drunk babysitter took me out on a moped and let me fall off after he parked and i fell right on my face..including the front part of my head)

Just regular combined-type ADD

There is the theory that I am just an aspie with head-trauma that took away some of my would-be Aspie intelligence

Developed oddly due to PTSD

PDD-NOS

HFA (I am afraid to ask how old I was when I first started talking)

OR I really just am the hypochondriac various partners have said I was.

i was suspected to have autism by 3 months because i did not "bond" with anyone as a baby.

i was taken to specialists very early in my life to find out what was "wrong" with me.
there were many key factors that made them suspect i was autistic.

it was noticed that i never sought attention from anyone except to be fed.
after that i ignored them and could not be roused into their world by any action they performed.

i was hard to hold as a baby because normal babies offer a subconscious muscular assistance to being held because they understand somehow what is going through the mind of their holders.
i was like a dead sack of potatoes and i often fell through peoples arms when they were trying to hold me.

i was very studiously attentive to things that are totally irrelevant to normal development.
if there was a fly stuck in a windowsill , i would watch it all day in preference to any person who is going "gahh gahh gahh ,mark!! ! lookey here lil guy" etc.

i preferred to look at things that were (coincidentally) not relevant to effective NT development.

i had no idea about the people around me but i knew where i could be fed and i gave my scant attention only in that direction.

when i started school, it was seriously obvious that i was not normal to the kindy teacher, and she could not talk to me because i was blind to her words.
then i was put in a class for people who had to have special attention by teachers who were also medically trained.
i went for the whole 6 years of primary (elementary) school with the diagnosis of "autistic", and in a special class. not much was ever done to "cultivate" me. all that they did was "accomodate" me.

then when i went to highschool when i was 11, i did not last and there was no facility to deal with me, so i was expelled and i started a long process of analysis at an adolescent unit called "rivendell" i spent most of my time in adolescent units when i was in highschool .

my primary psychologist thought i was asperger syndrome even though it was not a DSM diagnosis at the time.

i had very many tests done (which i have posted about before) and i was told that i was asperger syndrome even at 12 years old, but i was told i could not be officially diagnosed with it because there is more work do be done to establish "asperger syndrome" as a truly distinct phase of autism.

i can not be bothered to re type my diagnostic history and the original question is "is there anything that makes me doubt my diagnosis"

well the thing that i am surprised about is that i am now on a forum with people that are supposed to be autistic like me, yet i never felt any understanding from them and i also do not understand them.

either most people on this forum are not telling the truth about their diagnosis, or i am not asperger but some other "nos" thing.

i never saw many fresh idea's here that are ideas i would have thought if i had thought of it first. (i have seen some from some posters who i identify with however).

i just see what i think is mostly pamphlet trained pretenders.

if the people on this forum are all AS, then i am not.

but i am diagnosed painstakingly over my whole life, and the majority of people on this forum are not like me and they are often self diagnosed.

i will go away from here when i realize that everyone here is different than me. i am not convinced everyone here is different than me yet.

i will never believe i do not have autism even if i never understand or feel similar to other autistics.

i guess autism is just "self" ism and therefore i am not able to connect with anyone else than my own self, not even other autistic people.



i think i should go to sleep now as this post may be garbled ( i can not tell).

I don't have rigid routines either, outside of posting on WP every morning and evening and sometimes being unable to stop.

I am too jumbled and scattered for it to occur to me to line things up. I am not sure whether I lined my toys up as a child....but one time I was repremanded for arranging all the canned goods in a pyramid formation on top of the refrigerator because they could have fallen on someone's head....

I do know that I span around in circles a lot because I remember doing it....

my childhoood. no one had many concerns until middle school. I mean looking back on it you can see, but no one at the time did.

I have no doubt that I have AS. What I keep doubting is whether it's the AS that's causing all my current problems with keeping a job or a relationship, or whether it's the accumulation of trauma of 47 years.