What did you think was wrong before you heard about AS?

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Been there done that.

But ditto on the defective, pathetic, and weak. I thought that if I were just strong-willed enough I would not have to stim or do all the other weird things I did for instance.

I always tried to figure this out. I thought maybe I just didn't 'get' NTs and maybe nobody 'got' me because I was raised in the counter-culture. Or maybe because I moved all over the place. I thought maybe kids were only friends with other kids who grew up in their stupid neighborhood.

HOnestly, I still feel as though I could borrow a 'normal' person's clothes, and ask them to teach me some normal things to say, and prepare some normal topics to talk about, and put on my friendliest attitude, but I couldn't fool anyone. I can't fool anyone. Everyone, all the time, has always treated me like I'm such a freaking weirdo. Even when I make an effort to be friendly.

So, I always knew something was different. I still am kind of in denial. I need a therapist to tell me, and I'm waiting for one to become available at my local poor people's clinic.

Sigh....

thanks guys it really feels good when people say i'm a good person
you guys rock

when i was younger , before i understand what really autism is (because i had knowledge about it), I thought all my social difficulties are caused by my very short height .

See, i was always the shortest male in class since kindergarten to the last year of university I am now 5'3 , i suffered from heightism miserably when I was child , bullies always picked me and classmates refused me in sport games because I am too "midget" .

Almost all girls dislike short guys unless if they are friends , in parties they always felt awkward when they dance with me and they admit it...that's when i have the courage to ask them and this was a really rare thing i did .

In fact , after I read a lot of articles and forums about shortness I can say that Short men (not short girls) and Autistics develop a lot of similarities in personality and in social difficulties :
-they are both bullied in childhood
-the are both have extreme major troubles with romance
-Short men usually develop an avoidant character while autistics are natural Schizoids but both of these 2 personality types lead to same social consequences.
-they both usually suffer from low self-esteem


So I thought that my personality was affected only by the fact that I am a short guy but still other short guys I knew suffered from autism but hadn't much less trouble that me to cope and many things in me remained unexplained by my shortness :

-my delayed speech till age 5
-The belief of doctors that i was ret*d when i was 5-6 yrs old
-my strange way of playing when i was kid ( I was used to line up my KinderSurprise little toys and matchbox cars )
-my extreme shyness
-my extreme love of solitude
-my poor eye contact
-my obsessions
-my fingers flapping and other odd behaviors
-my difficulty in communication
-my 'odd' view on the world
etc etc etc .....


So i think i am cursed with a Duo-ism : Heightism and Autism

Both my parents are psychologists, so I've known about the autistic spectrum for most of my life. I always thought I was on it somewhere, until I found out about NLD.

You'd think that my psychologist parents would have figured something out at some point, especially when my fourth grade teacher called home because she was worried by how shy I was- I had asked her not to compliment me because I found it too embarrassing! Actually, my mom is still convinced that I just have social anxiety, with coincidentally awful spatial skills. She even tested my IQ as a teenager, which found a huge difference between my verbal and perceptual indices (39 points), and that didn't tip her off any, apparently. Even now that I've had NLD testing, displayed the typical pattern of deficits, and received an official diagnosis of NLD, she doesn't think I have NLD. I was always the child who did well in school and was able to manage my schoolwork on my own, unlike my dyslexic brother who always required a lot of help, so I guess she doesn't think anything can be wrong. Never mind that I used to come home crying in 3rd grade because I couldn't find my way around the 2nd floor, and that at nineteen years of age didn't understand that when you're turning left in an intersection, you have to look for oncoming traffic! Okay, done ranting now.

Last edited by LostInSpace on 30 May 2007, 5:10 pm, edited 4 times in total.

I thought of myself as smart, shy, and prone to monomania, depression, and social anxieties.

I actually thought of myself at times as being rather similar to autistic, but higher-functioning. But I
thought of this as an insignificant curiosity. It
never occurred to me that there might be other people in this world that fall into this
same category.

Oh dear... anyways... back on topic. I used to think I was just shy and everyone else thought I was depressed.

Deleted the post just above ChrissandraChrissamba. Spammer....

Whoops, there he goes again! I swear, these spammers are as difficult to kill as cockroaches, and about as welcome.

I've squashed him. Now to clean up the mess....

Yay, Quatermass! Spammers check in, they don't check out...


Edit: Ha! I just noticed how applicable your Dr. Who quote is to this situation! Hmm, my guess is that the Doctor's sonic screwdriver would handle this troll quite well if he persists...

I started by just thinking I was just shy back at secondary(high) school.
I then started to think about why I was so shy and started to think I might not have quite figured out what life was all about, maybe I was missing something important.
About this time I also started to realise that I wasnt quite into the things other folk were into so thought I was a bit of a geek. I used to come home from school and watch this documentary called battlefield Vietnam that was on everyday. I knew other folk didnt do this sort of thing, they were all too busy playing football.

Then it was on to college, although my shyness was at an alltime high, so I thought I had Social anxiety disorder. I still think I have this. I also noticed I had no desire to fit in, I thought I had some sort of non-conformist attitude at first, but then discovered it's not that I try to be different from the majority, I just dont see why everybody tries to be the same.

After college I started to work, and really liked it, it involved an interest i truly liked so couldnt fault it. I could never understand how people could work in jobs they dont like, I still dont understand that. I thought I was pretty 'normal' at this point though, just a little weird/anxious.

Now I'm back at college studying something i really enjoy too. I had been thinking I was just a misanthropic geek lately, still with social anxiety. I've just lately discovered AS and seem to fit some of the traits, but not others. I have no trouble understanding facial expressions or unspoken social rules, I just dont see a point to them.
If anybody has an opinion on if I have AS or not I'd love to hear it.

You flatter me.

Anyway, enough talk about the spammer, back onto topic....

In my teens I thought I was very shy and felt different due to my relatively sheltered upbringing.My parents moved house so I lost touch with friends and started to watch more TV which affected the way I looked at the world as well.The I started to read the Bible and figured I was special and had been 'chosen'. In my twenties I stupidly allowed myself to become
arrogant and stubbornly believed that I was somehow superior and smarter than most other people,but deep down I knew that wasn't really true and suffered bouts of depression.
It was only in my forties that I noticed an article on Einstein in Wikipedia that in turn led me
to read about Asperger's.After recognising a lot of the symptoms I then bought Tony Attwood's
book and everything fell into place.It was like reading a book about myself !

I thought there was this anti-me instinct that had been lying dormant within the human species for tens of thousands of years just waiting for me to arrive and awaken it, and I finally had.

I just knew I was pretty creative, loved technology, and was pretty shy... After I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I found a much deeper understanding of myself. Only when I did a Wikipedia search on autism did I come across AS, which I'm very confident I have.