When did you first encounter the concept of "Aspergers&

Post Reply New Topic

I first read about Asperger's Syndrome in December 2001 in Wired Magazine in an article entitled "Geek Syndrome". Here is the article:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers.html

When I read it, I thought, "Wow, that sounds like me." I took the Baron-Cohen test and came up with a score of 39, which for me at least, seemed like a confirmation. I've never bothered with getting an official diagnosis, and I'm not sure what it would accomplish for me to get one. I am who I am, and a diagnosis wouldn't make me into anything else.

I had vaguely heard of Autism when I was a teenager, but had no practical understanding of what it meant. I assumed it was something like Down Syndrome. I did not hear about Asperger's until 2006, while taking a college class about Varying Exceptionalities in Education.

It was there that I learned about the Autism Spectrum, and what these disorders actually meant. While I initially identified with some traits of AS, I did not connect the criteria with my own thoughts and behaviors. I did not understand it well enough to see all the parallels, and ignored it.

Things lasted this way until December 2008, when someone I know casually forwarded me a link to Baron-Cohen's AQ Test. It was supposed to be just for fun, but then I scored a 34 on it, mentally screeched to a halt, and proceeded to read everything I could about Asperger's. Suddenly it all fit. It was at that point that my world was turned upside down and I knew that I had AS.

I am currently in the process of getting a diagnosis. It won't change who I am, but it will help some people around me to positively change their understanding of who I am.

The word "autistic" entered into my vocabulary when I was 7. I remember my mom telling me that I wasn't autistic, I was artistic, but I don't remember why she told me that or what the context was. It might have been that my grandfather was worried that I might be autistic, as he was sorta freaked out about my odd development..(his brother had strong traits and led a very isolated life...my grandfather had many traits himself)..or he was very clinical/technical, super OCD and very ritualistic and repetitive..if that counts...
He was very scholarly and was always giving my parents articles about child development. He was somewhat adamant that there was "something wrong with me"...though my parents were in denial.

I did not know what Asperger's was or that there was an "Autistic spectrum"...or anything like that until someone on the internet suggested that my self-descriptions on some other forum matched those of someone on the autistic spectrum...This was maybe in 2005 or so. I toyed around with the idea and dismissed it several times before becoming addicted to Wrong Planet.

A notable time prior to that, i recall the term autism coming up in the context of a visitor observing my former roommate and commenting that he seemed "autistic". This was around 2003. He was going through a silent phase, which sometimes happens after a manic phase. I was dismissive of the notion to the visitor, even though he kept insisting. I had never regarded him as being "Autistic"...though he was diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, and now that I know more about the "Autistic Spectrum", i recognize that he has many autistic traits.

i talked to a guy online who had it, hes registered here, and i mocked him for it :]

over time, i realized everything i mocked, was stuff i recognized in myself, as is often usual when people mock others.

the more research i did on it, the more i realized my entire life fits, and that all this time, ive just regarded myself as a weirdo who needs to grow up. im hoping for a diagnose as soon as possible..

Well, I first heard about it in an internet discussion a while back, and I simply decided to ignore it.

I first started suspecting I have it when I was reading a novel, and the character who made most sense described himself as being an aspie.

I first heard of it in 2002 when watching a documentry about a family where all the boys were on the spectrum, and the oldest has aspergers, and I was like "ha what a neeeerd!" but then in 2004 (the year I was dxed) I watched it again and I was like "wow that's me" and my mum told me I have it.

I first heard about it from Boston Legal a few years ago - the episode where Allen correctly decides that Jerry has AS. I'd never heard of it to that point, but I thought to myself "hey, that's me!" in a lot of ways, so I went and looked on Wikipedia and thought I had a lot of the symptoms.

I found out when my mother, tired of me disrespecting her (but because she disrespected me) and not getting good marks or having friends, started looking up autism on the internet, because when I was 4 or so a woman at the children's hospital told her that I might have autism. She found info on AS and never shut up about it. At age 13 I was "diagnosed" with it by a GP, then at age 14 I was diagnosed by a famous autism specialist, who didn't even test me, just diagnosed me mostly on what my mother said and how I talked to him. But anyay, I'm getting off topic. I knew about AS since I was 13.

I thought I knew about Autism from when my mum started working with special needs children at school... so about 12 I guess. Looking back I didn't really know anything about autism - I couldn't have explained what it was. I only re-investigated it and learnt about it properly in my twenties, shortly before my DX.

It was thrown at me as a 'possible' by a well-experienced (30 yrs, I researched) educational psychologist in 2006. She was assessing my cognitive ability in relation to whether I and my then partner could keep our daughter.

3 years later, I may well have read everything about it, and even comorbidities, and still don't have an adequate diagnosis. Sure, I saw some psychologists 3 weeks ago, but I could tell they were both ignorant about AS and suspicious of me by the questions they asked. Unsurprisingly, they voted nay. It was down to the fact that I have a social life (albeit limited), make good eye contact and have worked.

I want to see a well-qualified specialist. If I do see one and he/she says NT, then I will accept. When I'm clearly more studied than the professional, I think that's a time waste.

I particularly love my Weschler IQ test results (only partially reported) from 3 years ago:

Full scale: 125
Verbal: 127
Performance: 117
Verbal comprehension index: 136 - very superior
Perceptual organisation index: high average
Social comprehension: average
Non-verbal social comprehension: average

These are just a few snippets of info from the report. The psychologist clearly states that, given my high scores in other areas, she would expect the last 2 to be much higher.

The recent assessment included no tests, no report, and only 20 minutes worth of conversation in an hour long session (the rest was them attempting to explain why they came to their conclusion).

Am I obsessed? I'd say no, others would say yes. I like to be sure I know what I'm talking about, and my self-diagnosis is worthless to me if I do not know all there is to know. That's why I'm here. To share my own experience for others to interpret, and to learn more from others. So far I feel that yes I do belong here, as I seem to fit in perfectly for once. If that is the case, then the ongoing question of my self-diagnosis is somewhat settled.

((((hugs))))

~Loving Light~

My son is 11 now, and was diagnosed with AS at the age of 6. When he was about a year and a half old, we used to go to the park and meet up with our new friends (a woman and her toddler).

My son was running around, wiggling his fingers in excitement. My friend said, jokingly, that his finger-wiggling, his funny way of talking, his precocious language skills, and his love of spinning wheels reminded her of this thing she had heard about called Asperger's. We just laughed about it, because it was OBVIOUS David couldn't possibly have that, because he and her son played together, rather than along side each other. Well...it's true, they did, but that was pretty much the only time in David's life that he played with someone that way, other than with his own brother.

It wasn't until a few years later that we revisited the AS idea seriously. And it wasn't until a few years after David was diagnosed that I began to see that AS explains a lot of what I experience. I still don't know if I would qualify for an official dx. On some days, I think I definitely would. On other days, not so much.