Is this Aspergers or something else?

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I'm not looking for a diagnosis or label here, what I am after is the perspective of some members with Aspergers on my situation.

I am a 19 year old male diagnosed with Bipolar II & ADHD but after reading about the symptoms and the stories of individuals with AS I realize that most of my life would be explained by a diagnosis of AS.(along with the Bipolar of course, I’m not sure about the ADHD) In saying that, there are still parts of my personality and emotions that aren't compatible with that view. What I'm looking for is some objective views on my situation in an attempt to gain a better understanding of my behavior and personality, and hopefully provide a more complete history for my doctor.

Here is a list of my symptoms as they relate to Aspergers.

Childhood
• Very intelligent for my age, however struggled with topics relating to common sense and social awareness.
• Trouble making friends. I was mostly liked by others however didn’t enjoy spending time with peers save for 1 or 2 individuals
• The only true friend I had until the 3rd grade suffered from epilepsy and something like ODD along with learning disabilities, caused him to be quite violent at times to others and occasionally. I was his only friend and teachers thought it was strange considering the difference in intelligence.
• Spent most of my time studying insects either through books or observing them during playtimes.
• Along with insects I had a strong obsession with space, specifically the formation, size and different categories of stars. I remember one field trip in particular where I pissed off the teachers by sending the hour long bus trip talking to them about stars without shutting up.
• Very clumsy with terrible handwriting and certain fine motor problems.
• Prone to tantrums and a very short temper. Often when angry had an urge to bite down on objects (lost my first tooth biting on a t-shirt)
• Problems with textures of some foods particularly gooey ones. Banana’s would make me sick from the texture but I was fine with the flavour.
• Couldn’t stand the feeling of stitching inside of socks and wore them inside out, hated tags inside clothing.
• Hated having my nails clipped.
• Hated getting dirty or sticky if i wasn’t able to wash and dry myself immediately. Also had a long stage where I hated being wet and refused to take showers.
• Love of animals and preferred spending time with dogs than other people.
• Always wished people would stop talking about feelings and only talk about concrete, real things and objects.

General
• Hate eye contact, if forced to do it I tend to spend too long and stare.
• Sensory overload: I have a lot of trouble understanding people when they speak and constantly have to ask for clarification despite the fact I have excellent hearing. Certain noises and pitches cause distress eg. People eating, sudden increases in volume.
• I hate particular textures such as ceramic or anything dry and cracked.
• Can’t express my emotions and often feel like I have no emotion.
• Lack a normal sense of empathy. I’m not sadistic or anything but I can’t put myself in others shoes even if I understand what is causing their pain, it just isn’t natural.
• Uncomfortable around crying or upset people, don’t like big displays of emotion.
• Don’t enjoy being touched.
• Get highly focussed and passionate about particular areas of interest and talk excessively to others about them even when they’re not interested.
• On a positive and funny note I’ve always been excellent at solving my friends emotional problems. I have no interest in the emotional side of it but I look at things logically and rationally and manage to provide really good information, further proving that people would progress a lot further if they used more logic instead of getting hysterical.

There are more things but essentially they are along the same lines as the stuff I’ve mentioned. Now all of these things would make a compelling case for Aspergers, however there are certain parts of me which seemingly contradict that diagnosis. These things have developed as I’ve gotten older and some of them are natural, others are affected due to increased perception of social norms. Things such as:

Things that contradict Aspergers
• Cynical/Sarcastic sense of humour. I use humour as a huge part of my personality and I also enjoy and understand humour that is cynical/satirical/deadpan etc. People often take me literally due to a very deadpan and understated sarcastic delivery.
• Better social awareness: I now function quite well in social situations as I understand the requirements of me. I have gradually gotten better over the years at this, however I still don’t really enjoy these conversations, I just know what is generally expected of me and try to appear interested.
• Very introspective: I have become quite introspective and question my personality and thoughts, this is probably the main thing contradicting an Aspergers diagnosis,

Final Thoughts
I feel that I fit a large proportion of the Aspergers guidelines however I feel like I have a better developed social functioning and so forth. I’m not looking for a diagnosis as even if I did have Aspergers I wouldn’t consider it an illness or something that needed treatment like the Bipolar but I’m really puzzled as to what could explain the fact that I share so many of the traits.

Am I missing an obvious answer here? Is there some simple explanation that would alleviate a lot of this confusion and frustration? That’s what I’m hoping someone can help me with, I appreciate any responses.

Thank you and sorry for the lengthy post.

It definitely sounds like you have quite a few traits. Whether or not you would qualify for a diagnosis, I do not know...but you said you weren't looking for that right now anyway. Do you have ADHD traits as well? Trouble concentrating, etc? A lot of people with AS are misdiagnosed with ADHD (most likely have both, but some are just completely misdiagnosed also).

The reports of our lack of humour are greatly exaggerated.

I love sarcasm myself and, while I'm not officially diagnosed, I do know one other (official) Aspie who has almost the exact same sense of humour as I have. I also love wordplay.

For the rest, it honestly almost sounds textbook.

This also depends on the person of course. Everyone says I have basically 0 sense of humour, and I never get sarcasm or jokes...

Of course, of course, but the Wikipedia article says that Aspies basically just don't have a sense of humour at all. Like many other things, it's simply a generalisation. There is a lot of variation in the Aspie population.

Also, do you get jokes later or just not at all? Do you find things funny yourself? I've noticed that it takes me some time to get some jokes and that I don't find others funny at all.

Sarcasm seems to be either completely impossible to understand or constantly used by Aspies.

I definitely have ADHD traits, trouble concentrating, lack of focus, hyperfocus, distractibility etc. Basically a textbook case that was overlooked due to my general intelligence throughout my schoollife, however now that I'm more aware of Aspergers I start to wonder if ADHD is a misdiagnosis, or at least only a partial diagnosis.



Most "typical" jokes I tend to spend a bit of time working out, mainly because they're not all that funny and I think I've missed the point. I find a lot of things funny but it's mainly deadpan, awkward, surreal humour as opposed to "3 men sitting at a bar....." type jokes. Fortunately my best friend shares this sense of humour so we can relate through that.

I appreciate the replies.

I think a lot of jokes around my house end up losing some of their humour for those who DO get them, because they have to analyze them out to me. Sort of takes the fun out of it for them...especially when I still don't find it funny. Some jokes I never end up getting. Those that are analyzed out of to me, and I say "oh" to, I still rarely find funny. A few jokes I get right away, and I find some of those funny, but overall, I would say I greatly lack a sense of humour. I tend to be quite serious. Well, it might even be more accurate to say that I just have a different sense of humour: I find some things funny that others do not.

You sound somewhat similar to me in regard to sarcasm (and a few other things, but I'll address the sarcasm). If I am not sure of the person's sense of humour, intelligence, etc, my brain will usually immediately jump to assessing what they said as if it were being said seriously. However, I use sarcasm often, myself, usually deadpan and subtly.

The difference is that, especially for Aspies who are linguistic and/or pattern thinkers, sarcasm can be understood at an intellectual level without too much difficulty, I think. Using sarcasm yourself doesn't require reading social cues, empathy, perspective thinking etc. although lack of ability in any of those things may result in the socially inappropriate use of sarcasm.

You've got enough there to consider going for an evaluation. But unless you're having trouble in your daily life that you feel someone could help you with if you had a diagnosis, I wouldn't bother; there's no reason to diagnose someone who isn't having trouble. You seem to be doing pretty well. You might well have benefited from a diagnosis when you were younger and hadn't learned socializing yet; you might've learned faster had you had more resources. But that's water under the bridge; you've learned now, even if it did probably take longer. If you were autistic as a child, you're still autistic now, whether or not you can be given a diagnosis; but that doesn't mean you need treatment, necessarily. Maybe you could benefit; maybe not. Either way, yeah, those are autistic traits, and you won't look silly if you go to a doctor and ask for an evaluation.

Yeah, it DOES sound like AS. The contraindications you lit aren't valid. Any reasonably intelligent person will do that. And you DO sound a lot like I was/am.

To both: exactly. I think it's more of a different kind of sense of humour rather than no humour whatsoever. Then, within that subset, you have more serious and less serious people. A serious person with a very different kind of sense of humour will quickly seem as someone without a sense of humour.

Personally, I don't go through a day without trying to make a silly pun somewhere. That still doesn't stop me from failing to get a number of jokes and having to get them explained to me.

All of these responses have made me feel a little less confused about what I should do, so thank you for the help. It just becomes so frustrating when I'm not sure what the problem is, and therefore not sure what I can do to help it. Having more information lends a lot of clarification and might make a bit of a difference.