I know I'm not NT because...

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Because I call people having "NeuroTypical syndrome" and I call people stupid. And I believe people with Asperger Syndrome have no disorder

Because I fit the official criteria and have and at least to some degree have most of the traits associated with Autism Spectrum condition/disorder

I didn't trust my diagnosis. I knew I wouldn't either way. If it was a 'no', I'd be insistent I was. If it was a 'yes', I'd insist I wasn't. It was a 'yes' in the end, though somewhat tentative - I have learnt/practised ways of presenting myself that may seem somewhat formal and stilted but are still 'engaged'. What helped the psychologist decide was describing my case to his colleagues who hadn't met me, and them responding with a resounding 'clearly!'. I went away and thought about it. I read about it, and others' experience, and saw consistent overlap with my experience.


Certain sensory issues - photosensitive (need to squint unless it's a particularly overcast day), hearing that always seemed keener than most others, can only bear to wear/sleep under cotton, limited palate.

A sense of the world being too much.

I imagine lines a lot: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt207711.html

I get fascinated (in the proper sense, clost to enchanted) by objects and their properties and the relationships between such. http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt208145.html

Poor executive function.

Shutdowns (meltdowns, thankfully, are rare).

Mental stimming - a repeated thought process/exercise to try and calm down ('that chair over there - how many of those could fit in this room?'). Physical stimming is pretty much limited to a 'one hand clapping' motion, tapping my fingers against my palm.

A need for plans, and a horrible feeling of being untethered when said plans need to change, or might not be possible, before I can quickly think through and settle another plan in my mind. Related: a hatred of others' spontaneity. I can do my own - be out somewhere, decide to hop on a bus and go mooch around some other place - but if I was woth someone and they suggested so - panic.

An inability to pick up on the context of social conversation with those I don't already know, so having to run through the possibilities before offering up what I hope is the appropriate response (and the appropriateness of which I will worry about for a good while after), which is exhausting and makes me seem both slow and fast (taking longer than most to respond, but responding with a rush of words and overly complicating clauses). Which is exhausting, and so I try to avoid it.

Certain recurrent obsessions in the 'special interest' sense, and possibly related but still distinct, a propensity for getting into certain obssessive behaviour/thought. The former I take as reverie, the latter as compulsion.

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Considering this stuff, and reading about others' experience of Aspergers, and (perhaps above all) finding the label helpful and useful in understanding myself and learning ways of navigating the world, I went with it.

Me too. On one hand, something like Asperger's would explain an awful lot about me; but on the other hand, I strongly resemble certain characteristics associated with "Melancholic" introverted personality type, and I've read that its actually very common for someone with this "normal" personality to wonder what sort of disorders they have, sometimes to the extent of seeking out a diagnosis...

On my second visit to the psychologist (the one where she gave me her results), the first thing that I said when I walked in was, "I'm so sorry! I don't have Asperger's. I'm a very introverted person with a Melancholic personality. I'm embarrassed for visiting a specialist in autism."

She said, "O reeeeally? What makes you think that?"

So I gave her all the excuses. She said, "According to the test that you filled out, you're probably on the spectrum."

I said, "I must have misunderstood some of the questions!"

Her: "You scored 125. Anything over 65 is potentially Asperger's."

Me: "That's a lot of questions to misunderstand."

Her: "Yes, it is. Here are some pivotal ones...do you feel that you misunderstand this? Or this?"

Me: "Nope, those are correct."

Her: "I'm convinced that you have Asperger's."

I hate people turning up at my house unexpectedly. When I get home from work or from being out at the shopping mall or whatever, I like to just have solitude. I sometimes enjoy my own company, and I like to be able to do things that require a quiet environment, like meditation or have a nap or just lay and listen to the clock ticking or the birds singing from outside. Doing this clears my mind and does me good. I can't do this properly when there are people round, even if they are not coming in my room I still can't concentrate on anything, plus I have misophonia, so only certain noises I can tolerate and other noises drive me mad. I often wish I had a place of my own, but at the moment I can't afford it so I have no choice. Even though I am 24, I don't feel like I am emotionally mature enough to live entirely on my own either. I think I would be better off just living somewhere with my dad, because he's a quiet man too, and if he wants to see people he usually goes out to see them, his friends and family don't often come round. So then I would practically be living on my own, but not entirely on my own, if that makes sense.

I know I have Asperger's because of all that above. I suppose that sounds quite typical of somebody with Asperger's.

This is me, entirely (a skeptic).



Good point. Ultimately, the thing that convinces me most is the deficit in Executive Functioning. As it explains difficulties in socializing.

1. Deeply obsessive computer-like thinking that makes me highly gifted in some areas and extremely disabled in others.
2. I look weird. If you were going to play "guess the AS person" using a group photograph with me in it, I am pretty sure you would pick me.
3. I had obvious social problems as a young child.

Sometimes I start thinking that I might almost be normal after all.

But then I will sit down to eat in a restaurant, and begin to feel like all the noise in the place is clattering directly inside my brain, and the smells are so overwhelming I feel sick, and I have to close my eyes or put my head down or leave.

Or I will be having a great day until there's some unexpected change in routine, and suddenly I feel like I am going to fall apart because I can't mentally adjust to doing something different than what I had planned.

Or I will think I am getting along fine in a social chit-chat type of situation, suddenly someone will look at me very pointedly and ask "why are you so quiet?" or make a joke about me that I don't understand and everyone laughs loudly.

Or when things suddenly go wrong and a person behaves in a way I never expected and I don't know why they are acting like that but everyone else seems to know.

Or when I run into someone who knows me, and I realize they are vaguely familiar but I have NO idea who they are or where I know them from.

Or when I am talking and my mind suddenly goes blank and I can't remember the word for what I'm talking about, or the entire subject I was talking about and I feel very confused.

Or when other people just go on and on talking and I feel like I never have a chance to say anything.

Or when I realize that other people have a lot to say about something and I have nothing to say at all.

Or when I think I've had a good day at work, or a family gathering, until it's over and I realize I am just totally exhausted.

Or when it takes me a full day of total withdrawal to recover from being around people.

Or when I go out to do something I really enjoy but in a few hours I have a pounding headache and feel like I'm going to explode and I just want to lie down in a dark room.

Or when I realize that other people my age live much fuller lives than I do, they work full-time and have kids to take care of and still do social stuff or hobbies besides that, while it only takes one or two significant activities in a day to fully exhaust me.

Or when I realize I am not able to do even half the things I "should" be capable of doing given my IQ and other talents.

Or when I realize how long it takes me to do a normal activity that most people would have long since finished.

Or when I look around my house at the piles of unfinished projects and things I think I'm always going to do "later" and realize I've had the same to-do list for the last 5, 10, 15, 20 years.

And when I compare myself to other people, I can see that other people have a lot of the same frustrations that I have, but mine are more intense. Like other people might think a place is too noisy too but they are still able to talk and have a conversation in the middle of it, and I can't.

I still question whether or not my difficulties are due to autism, or something else, but good grief when I write out a list like this it seems kind of obvious. But still I wonder whether I could have some other neurological problem.

Yay, new game!!

I don't know how to smile and can't even look myself in the eyes in the mirror.

I live in the UK, and was assessed through the NHS. I'm 34. When I first approached my GP about 3 years ago, wanting to be assessed for Aspergers, I got an hour with a psychiatrist, who rattled through a whole bunch of checklists I could easily recognise (depression, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia, Borderline etc) and slotted in about ten minutes on Aspergers. He said it was unlikely as, when asked if I played teamsports, I responded that I'd sometimes done ok joining in some stuff (cricket, rugby) during PE at school. He decided I was simply ruminative and anxious - both these are quite true - and sent me on my way with advice that I ought not be so ruminative and a prescription for some anti-anxiety medication, which I didn't take him up on.

I didn't feel the matter was settled - I didn't have confidence in the psychiatrist's judgement. A few weeks later I went back to the GP to ask for reassessment, and got seen, jointly, by a social worker and CPN who then put me through to a psychologist. I had about 15 to 18 hours with him, including a lot of questionaires/tests (AS, EQ, IQ, something that put a number to quite how very despairing I was, etc), and at the end of that he offered me the diagnosis, rather than simply stating it. As I said, from his description, his colleagues were sure of it. I think he confused my (special) interest in talking enthusiastically with him about mental states and social interaction/psychology and the philosophy of psychology, and ability to be funny, with something like an ability to be at ease in conversation. In general conversation, I have humour. As the rather excellent Kelly Braffet put it:

Yep.

I'm estranged from my family, so there was no-one who could answer questions as to what I was like as a kid - I think I was kind of weird, but then, kids are pretty damn weird, and though I felt apart from others, at odds, I put this down to having a single parent (a rarity around when/where I grew up), being poor when anyone I mixed with was from a pretty well off family, and my food peculiarities - so the psychologist could only go on how I was now. But, I went away and read around - particularly the lived experience of others diagnosed - and my problems started to become clearer to me. I accepted the diagnosis.

I'd been mulling over the possibility since about the beginning of 2011. My wife pointed me to this when it appeared:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8440 ... elief.html

and I was very struck by his description of his experience:



Yep.

I think dianthus gave some good examples of how I (too) get, and a good example of how I feel: left largely to my own devices, lost in my head - hey, I'm fine. There is nothing wrong with me. Not at all. I'm Mr Functional! And then I realise I can't begin to work out how best to tidy up the apocalyptic mess in front of me til I've spent half an hour finding just the right podcast to listen to, or that my mind has been doing what the comedian Bill Bailey describes - link- as his experience of acid (I don't drink save the times I've needed to get drunk, let alone do anything harder) for I don't know how long. So, there is something awry with how my head works at the level of sensory experience/information.

Introvert? Melancholic? Yes, and yes. Indeed, melanchaholic. I can gladly spend far too much time on my own, given the chance. Luckily I am not really given the chance, as it's not very good for me, and I do go kind of peculiar. I absolutely need a lot of time on my own, in my head, though (in a reverie of rumination). Which is at least one dictionary (if not psychological) definition of autism.

I think of the label as something that's a useful way of looking at things. I watch Aspergian videos on youtube, or read blogs or such, and I find a lot of the experience and advice resonant and helpful, and when I take my problems seriously in an Aspergian light, I can find good ideas to mitigate them. I am still melancholic and introverted, and I quite like that. It can make life hard, but it feels right. It's just me.

Though I knew it wouldn't, I still expected getting the label to change things. Some clear demarcation of my life pre- and post-. But, nothing. I wanted the label to have a meaning and impact it simply couldn't, at least for me, at a kind of existential level. There had been a gradual coming to terms with the idea, approaching it, backing away, not trusting either my own judgement or that of the medical professionals, and that carried on after formally accepting the label. Am I kidding myself? Are they wrong? And then, William James to the rescue:



Thinking of myself as having/being Aspergers worked. It made sense. Not of everything, but then nothing does. It didn't fit perfectly, but again, nothing does. What it did do was help me work some stuff out, and help me put certain bothers to rest as satisfactorily explained or understood. And that is good enough.

Yeah, I start thinking I'm fine, I'm just as functional as anyone else, until I run smack into a situation that reminds me I'm not.

And I realize that I've basically tried to organize my whole life around avoiding all those things that are problematic...which is not something that most people do because they don't have this long list of quirky things that are problematic or exhausting for them. But I tend to forget that I've organized my life that way, so I spend a quite a lot of time on my own, sort of lost in my own little world and imagining things how they could be or how I wish they could be without really thinking about how uncomfortable those things are for me in reality.

I might realize I'm avoiding doing something but I'm not really sure why, unless I actually do it again and then I remember. "Oh yeah, THIS is why I hate going to this place." "Oh yeah, THIS is what actually happens when I interact with these people." " Oh yeah, THIS is why it is so mentally draining for me to do this project." etc.

In some ways it has probably cost me years of making the same mistakes over and over again because I haven't recognized my own limitations.

It's ridiculous that I agree 100% with all of this. I was in awe as I read it that you nailed everything. For reals... I literally couldn't have said it better

Certain noises make me feel like I'm going to either throw up, pass out or both.

I have the weirdest posture of any person I know. I walk past shop windows and think " OMG I really walk like that"

I am no good at eye contact.

I can not do "office politics" to save my life (or job as the case has been). Other people seem to get away with murder, but I am the one who is often suspected of god knows what, and afforded no respect.

Bullies pick me out from 50 paces.

I have selective/elective mutism. I consider approaching a stranger for information and directions an achievement for the day.

I can relate to that. Since being diagnosed 15 years ago I've came a long way in being more independent, adapting to Aspie things etc, and as its been a couple of years since I've been around other Aspies IRL I'd almost forget about being one; but every now and then something would happen which makes me feel like nothing's changed. Not that I want to forget my aspieness, I'm comfortable with my identity and I wouldn't change it, but things like meltdowns etc can bring the fact home.

don't have much to say and is paying more attention to inner world?
it would be called introvert!