Post if your Dx is "Not sure if I have it or not"

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There are NTs that over analyze, but the difference is the level of intensity, and focus. My brain doesn't stop. It's always buzzing in deep thought. I don't skip, and hop around in my thoughts skimming over subjects, I dive into them full on. If I run into subject matter that I don't understand I'm compelled to google it. Even if it's something that's insignificant that I'll never really need to know I'm still going to read at least 5 google search pages about it, not stopping until my thirst is quenched. If you type in 'over analyze' into the search option here at WP you'll see what I mean.

I guess I'm unsure of both. I'm 95% sure that I have AS, but I always will have that little bit of doubt. I would feel better about the whole thing if I had a diagnosis.

I do agree there are people on here that speak about symptoms that don't match AS. I think there could be several factors that can cause that. For one, we're all still human, and not everything about us is going to be about AS. We all have our own personalities, and I'm sure that many on here have co-morbids that affect them, too. There's also the factor of you only need to meet so many parts of the criteria to be diagnosed with AS. Most people aren't going to match all 8 criteria from category A, and B.

Of course, there is always going to be errors on the part of the psych community that diagnose incorrectly. I would like to think that that would account for a very, very small population here at WP. There's also going to be people that post on here, and other AS sites, that say they have a diagnosis, but don't.

I am ready to conclude I don't have AS. Like the Serenity's need to know why on everything, I experience that too, and I often get accused of over analyzing, but when I can't come up with a logical solution for why, I just put the question on a back burner and let my subconscious intuition work on it. I know from experience that the answer will come bubbling up from somewhere inside at some future date, so I don't worry about it. That apparently isn't an option for folks with AS, eh?

I wouldn't say that. I often over-analyze things but can forget about them when an answer isn't immediately apparent. I think it depends on whether it is a special interest. For instance, I can temporarily back burner thinking about AS, but as soon as I stop thinking about the stuff immediately in front of me, it comes to the front burner. I might be a bad example, though, since I'm AS agnostic.

In short, AS does not necessarily require the person to have a special interest or obsession.

I am more likely to forget about it entirely, and only remember it again when a solution comes bubbling up into the middle of something else I might be contemplating at the time, or until something I hear or read provides or implies a solution. I usually have several different things competing for front burner status and my mind is usually bouncing all over the place trying to service them all at once.

Wow, I explained that really poorly. What I meant to say was that I am like you for non-obsessive interests. I'll study them for a bit, but then I'll subsequently forget about them and move on to something else.

I would consider my interest in AS to be an obsessive interest.

Hmmm. I wonder if I have obsessive interests? My interest in AS is kind of acting like one at the moment, but I know that I will eventually reach a saturation point where AS will no longer be stimulating, and then something else will take it's place. Before AS I needed to absorb all I could about narcolepsy, and before that it was the INFP personality type, and before that understanding people who are INTJ personality type, and before that Highly Sensitive Persons, etc. etc. I guess my craving for insight into what it's like to be other people might qualify. Sometimes it feels to me like most folks in this world are not like me, so I need to go discover what they are like.

It sounds like you are on a quest to find an explanation for why you are the way you are. That's not necessarily an obsessive interest, unless you can't really stop thinking about it (like the way I described my current relationship with researching AS).

But anyways, we digress...

Well not totally trying to understand me. The narcolepsy was about an online friend who I thought might be describing narcoleptic symptoms in herself so I decided to check out my theory. Something I do know about myself is that I greatly enjoy when I am able to help another person feel understood, so I am on this quest for insight into others and myself. If I can find a way to relate something I observe in another person to some attribute I experience in myself, then on some level I am able to know what it feels like to be them. And yes I think about this a lot, and it is hard to turn it off. It tends to fill most of my idle thinking time, but at the same time I am in this ongoing inner conflict between this, and things that I know I should be doing instead, like learning a couple of new software languages for work, which is also very stimulating for me but yet somehow it conflicts with the other, as if it uses another part of the brain that cannot easily be utilized at the same time as the part used for the former, or something, and other needed tasks that are more draining. I am very much stimulation driven, but maybe everyone is.

I am curious whether our speaking in terms of front burner versus back burner is making our conversation hard to follow for folks who are HFA.

Very interesting, Willmark. You and I seem to have very similar approaches to things that intrigue us.

Yes, for me it's usually about one thing at a time. Before AS, it was all about some software I was designing. When that's not it, it's often a knitting project I can't put down. About 10 years ago, I was on a MUSH during pretty much all of my free time. It seems that if I put my mind to a long-term project, it really gets done in an incredibly thorough manner. Sometimes it doesn't get done to completion, though. I have several unfinished knitting projects that are most of the way there, but I almost never think about them because AS is on my mind so much.

I can also have a short-term intense interest (hours instead of months), where I thoroughly research, say, black holes for an afternoon. Then it's gone. It seems that my interests work a bit like a stack: last in, first out.


Maybe some of them, but I've gotten the impression that many have varying degrees of this and can do exactly what you describe. You kind of have to be able to do this to some degree to be high functioning, else you wouldn't be able to show up for work on time, shower, meet deadlines, etc. (Actually, if I'm working from home and engrossed in something, I often forget to eat and shower. Then again, I know in that context it doesn't really matter, so I let it go.)

Maybe a "not sure if I have it or not" thread is a bad place to ask folks diagnosed HFA how this works for them. Maybe a new topic will grab a larger audience.

It sounds to me like you have an obsessive interest in trying to figure out what makes people tick. I do the same. It will jump around to different categories, like personality disorders, dyslexia, epilepsy, ect... but the main theme is still all about categorizing people in an effort to understand them better, and hopefully myself as well. This all began around the age of 12, or 13. Instinctively, I knew that I wasn't like others, so I began trying to analyze them. It's been an effective coping skill, because it allows me to predict other people's actions, as well as be able to empathize with other people, to some extent. This especially is true with my children, who have been my special interest since the moment they were born. Two of them have ASD, so that has been my primary special interest for the last 3 yrs, with no sign it's going away anytime soon. My daughter, and husband have dyslexia, that's also something that I studied about extensively.

Yes, but to make it a new thread I would have to include a chunk of this conversation so folks would have all of the context to judge from. On the other hand, I would like to know whether I am excluding anyone by not talking in a way that they can follow my logic. Its a very visual metaphor, and most everyone has experience with using a stove, but I don't know if everyone will realize back burner means subconscious.

I can get engrossed in something and forget to eat and shower too. Something else that can cause it is for something unusual to occur while I am getting ready to go. This can cause me to show up at work with mismatched socks, or colors shirts and pants that clash, or missing belt or whatever. I don't have set routines. For me it's more like I have everything that needs to be accomplished, in working memory at the same time, and I pick and choose what I want to do. Some things are contingent upon other things being completed first, but of those that do not have contingencies, I like to do it differently every morning. It is much more stimulating that way. But encountering something very unexpected can throw working memory out the window, and make me look absent minded.

Maybe what we both have is ADHD, except I failed that test too.

You could be right, or else we both are not AS. I started my quest much later than you, and I adapted the MBTI Personality theory's organization to organize the attributes that I observed in people, to recognize patterns, and to predict their behavior. Most people seem to become interested in that theory to help them understand themselves. Not me, though it has also helped to accomplish that, but people writing about themselves and how they compare to the standard, has enabled me to build up my people interpreting filters.

Mine is listed as don't know if I have it or not. After going over the diagnostic criteria point by point numerous times, extensively researching the subject, and scoring high on the aspie test, it's probably pretty safe to say I have Aspergers, but I have no interest at all in seeking a diagnosis. To be honest, I don't want to know for sure if I have it. If I were diagnosed, I'd feel obligated to tell people, and all the weird things I do would no longer be cute and quirky, but rather, symptoms of something that's wrong with me. I really don't want to be labeled as a special needs person in anyway, as I would find that degrading and it might make it more difficult to get a job. For me, ignorance is bliss.

This is me, exactly. It can get annoying to my son & spouse, because there are so many times they ask me a question, and if my answer is "I don't know..." they know that an endless google search is coming. Like you, I'll google and overanalyze things that aren't even relevent to me, if only to feel I have an understanding of them. This is what contributes to people looking at me like I'm the Dictionary of Useless Information.
One of those obsessions was medicine & anatomy. Anything that could go wrong in the human body, I felt I needed to understand. I'd spend hours reading and reading and reading. I'd even read pages that stated the exact same information with a slightly different wording, just in case there was something I'd fail to understand. When my son (now 12) was 2, I decided to take a course in Medical Office Assistance. The added bonus would be that I could wear scrubs everyday and still appear well put together. I took a course over a year and a half at home. I dove right in! In the end, I graduated with a 96% average, and earned a diploma with honors. For one of the first times I felt so proud of myself. Until I realised, or thought about the amount of social interaction that would be involved in that position. I was scared senseless of the interviews, and of course failure, so I just stopped. I felt that what I needed to do to get the job done well, was just out of my reach. Especially when I'd go to a walkin clinic and see the assistants happily exchanging ideas with Dr.'s and nurses. Or happily guiding a nervous child through a routine procedure... it was all too much.

So now, instead, I work at my good old dead end job. I'm happy with the way my brain craves information. I enjoy learning everything I can about something. I detest one on one interaction with people I don't know well.

I joined putting 'Have Asperger's - Undiagnosed' and then changed it to 'not sure if I have it or not' and then to 'Neurotypical' and then to 'not sure if I have it or not', contemplating putting 'neurotypical' again.