Raised to be an "Aspie".

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Many of you know my story...
About a year ago, I took some online tests and discovered Asperger's Syndrome, and promptly felt that it explained my entire life.

Now, after a year of soul-searching and self-analyzation, I am becoming increasingly confident that I don't really have AS after all... that a peculiar set of circumstances from my childhood has resulted in all the appearances of AS, without much in the way of neurological substance. It seems to me that my condition is more likely the result of a tangled network of introverted personality traits, defense mechanisms instilled in me by my parents and others, and a lately-diagnosed Anxiety disorder. The way I see it, all this stuff adds up to a picture that really looks like AS, but is actually just a mess of neurotic junk that puts a wall between my actual self, and the self that I show to the world.

I'm curious to know what you think about this possibility... that one could be raised to demonstrate traits that mirror Asperger's Syndrome enough to be utterly convincing?

I always start from the proposition, "you know yourself better than anyone else does."

That being said, causation is a tricky thing to isolate. Did these circumstances in your childhood give rise to your Aspie traits, or did these circumstances simply serve to enhance traits that were already hard-wired?

The acid-test for me, the one that persuades me that I really am an Aspie, no matter how much I pass as an NT, is the degree to which I see my learned skills and coping mechanisms fall away when I am under stress, when I am tired or when I am in some other way unable to rely on them.

What lies beneath those layers that I have put on my personality is the essence of who I am. For me, that is a person living with AS. For you, it is not for me to speculate.

Think about what you were like when you were 2 or 3.. if you can remember back that far. Or ask one of your parents what they remember. If you have AS you would likely have been showing traits in early childhood.

I don't see how you can be raised to have difficulties with social interaction. If you are naturally wired to grasp nonverbal cues, then you would be able to develop this skill naturally. Same with sensory issues - even if you were raised in a way that made you shy and withdrawn, you wouldn't have any sensory problems.

Are you saying that your parents were Aspies?
I suppose it could be, but it doesn't seem likely.

I've heard of blind parents who leave the lights off and do other things that (unintentionally) discourage the child from using his eyes, and the child ends up with a functional visual impairment, when there's actually no physical cause. I don't remember where I heard that.

Aspergers can easily run in the family. If a dominating parent wants a certain tone in the house, that's the tone you get. I think that I'm an Aspie both by temperment and training.

Then again, I would think you would outgrow it after living away from them for a while.

I had two brothers and they didn't mimic me. They turned out just fine. My youngest brother however had a few traits. Picky eating, dislike being touched, wanting things done a certain way, sensitive smell, and difficulty with transition to change.


I was never a picky eater or sensitive to smell. But he outgrew the "start over start over" phase when things weren't given to him in a certain order. He also quit being a picky eater thanks to our mother.

Fantastic responses. Thank you everyone.

As far as I can tell, the real heart of my condition comes down to four things: anxiety, an introverted personality, socially-repulsive defense mechanisms, and passive-aggressiveness. Put these four together, and you have something that looks like AS, but is not caused by malfunctions of the brain. It is caused by a lifetime of wrong things piling up on the mind.

I'm realizing today how I was taught by my parents to keep a distance from people, and to think in a way that sabotages any human relationships. I was given no guidance as to proper communication or the expression of emotion. Indeed, I was taught to repress emotion at all cost, to the point of not even recognizing it when it arose.

There is a litany of other examples, but the point is this: I believe I have thought myself into believing that I had Asperger's Syndrome, when all along I was just really really really deluded, and profoundly unaware of myself.

I suppose I agree with this: