I need feedback from people who have autism, do I have it?

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I know there are different levels of autism, and without a doctor's diagnosis it can't be for sure, but I strongly believe I have it to some degree, and I thought the best way to get a good idea would be to ask others who have it to evaluate me. I just have no way of seeing a doctor because I have no health insurance and not enough money to pay out of pocket.

My earliest memories involve me sucking my thumb and hiding from people. I used to hide behind my mom when company came over, with my thumb in my mouth. My first friend told me when she first met me, she walked into my room and I was hanging over my bed with my head down underneath it, pretending that I didn't know she was there. I have no memory of this even though I was somewhere around 9 or 10 years old.

I was extremely shy in school, and couldn't talk well. I had to go to a speech therapist. I HATED talking, and I still do to this day. I would LOVE it if the only way to communicate was through emails/texts/instant messenger/handwritten notes.

As a child I prefered doing things by myself, especially during family functions. I would often be found reading a book or magazine while the other kids played. I was close with one female cousin, but as we got older, she wanted less to do with me, and it got awkward for me to even talk to her. Even now, at age 39, when I go to family functions, I usually just stand around near one of my parents or my brother, and listen, or I daydream about what I would rather be doing.

I have never been good at social interactions or conversations. I speak mostly in broken up clusters, not free flowing sentences. I get nervous even when talking to my family members sometimes. I have a hard time even talking to children, and always feel intimidated by them. Everyone that I have ever known in my life tells me that I act like a child or teenager, and my parents still treat me like I can't do anything on my own. Numerous times in my life, people that have known me well have made comments like, "How do you get through life without a helper!?" or made comments to others about me like "I told you she was a fruit!"

I also have a strange phone phobia. I hate talking on it. My earliest memory of this problem happened one time when I was a teenager I stepped away from the phone to ask my mom if I could stay at my friend's house, and for some reason could not pick the phone back up, I think now that I just didn't know how to start the conversation after it had been temporarily stopped. I picked it up and listened to her wondering to her mom about where I went, unable to speak.

All my life I've avoided jobs where I've had to talk on a phone, but a few times couldn't avoid it. When the phone rang, I had a panic attack and then had to come up with an excuse for why I couldn't answer it. I am working at a job right now where I have to deal with customers, and i'm constantly trying to avoid them. I'll hide in a corner and do some work there where there are no people, or i'll hear someone asking me for help and i'll pretend I don't hear them. I feel completely incompetent at helping people in any way. But because of my problems, I have a hard time getting a job so I'm kind of stuck there for now.

I obsess about things a lot, I am always thinking and worrying, especially about what people think of me, especially when I'm near other people. I never feel completely comfortable unless I'm alone.

When people goof around with me or tease me, I never know what to say so I always just laugh. I work with a guy who has autism and he acts the same exact way I do, only a little more pronounced. This is what tipped me off that I might have it too, since I am like him in so many ways. Yet at the same time, when we are alone together, the conversation is almost dead, neither of us talk and we both get quiet and serious.

I also have this strange "fear" of social obligations. I don't think fear is the right word but I don't know how else to describe it. Like if I'm invited to a baby shower or wedding, I will just throw the invitation in a pile, and try to avoid thinking about it. When the time comes, I avoid situations where somebody that knows about it could talk to me so I don't have to explain why I'm not going. This is one example of how I don't fit in with the world, I've always felt different from everyone else but people just call me lazy and accuse me of not caring about anybody but myself. But the way other people show it makes me uncomfortable, and I don't feel like I have that in me to act like that. Of course I care about people but it's the showing it part that I can't do. I also hate people seeing me cry. I imagine how when my parents die, that I will probably just become a recluse and not even go to the funerals. I just don't want to deal with people on an emotional human level. I don't feel like I really need people, yet at the same time I reach out to people online all the time. Like I said, I would prefer to talk to everyone online and not in person, that way I can just type and not talk.

I also have strange physical habits/tics, like I move my left arm up and forward while I'm typing and kinda wiggle it, and I have no idea why I do it. I also have always had a habit of smelling my fingers, rubbing my thumb against my upper lip, and twirling my hair around my finger. As a child I did that so bad that I got a bald spot!

I am also a very clumsy person. I can stumble through the most easy of tasks, like getting the wrapper off something. I bump into things I know are there, I always have bruises on my body somewhere.

I hate disturbances in my daily routine. I hate when I have to talk to people when I first get up, I hate when I can't sit and relax for the first few hours of my day, I hate when plans come up suddenly which cause me to have to stop what I'm doing and plan quickly. Normally I like to plan things way ahead of time. In fact I usually plan things and then never do them. I love to make lists, create goals including all the steps to reaching it, but then that's all I do. I have like 20 empty notebooks that I am addicted to buying because I have this strange need to own a bunch of empty notebooks that I can use anytime I want, but I rarely do! I also am addicted to buying books, most of which I haven't finished reading, some which I totally forget that I even bought, just piling up everywhere!

My romantic/sexual life is almost non existent. I've had one real boyfriend but that didn't happen until I was 26. Guys generally just want to have sex with me or just want to be friends. They don't see me as relationship material, and I guess now I can see why, because they can't quite put their finger on why I am so weird. I have sexual desires but suddenly shut down whenever it could happen. I fear getting pregnant more than anything, I do NOT want kids, so that could be the problem there, but I also have this aversion to having sex. It just seems so awkward to me and I feel like avoiding it is better than doing it, even though I crave it. I am sure I will die a lonely woman who has never experienced true love or good sex.

I'm sure there is more to tell but this is long enough already. So does anybody have an idea of what I have, the level of severity, anything that would be helpful? Thank you so much for reading this!!

I cannot diagnose anyone online or offline, but you sound like you could be on the spectrum. You described some autistic traits from the perspective of personally experiencing them rather than as a list of symptoms from a book, so you could be on the spectrum.

I think that the best thing to do is to stick around here and see if you identify with the experiences of other posters. Since you can't see a professional, this is the probably the only path towards gaining some clarity on this issue.

One question to ask yourself is: Do you feel that you are pretty much blind to the minds of most people around you, and they are blind to your mind? Obviously, you feel different others, because you are posting here, but do you feel that you think and feel very differently from most people around you, and your social and communication problems cannot be accounted for by depression and/or anxiety? Is it a fundamentally different mind screwing up your social functioning, or is there an anxiety-related blockade on normal social functioning?

Another approach is to review your childhood, back as far as you or your family can remember, to see if you as a child fit the profile of an autistic child.

Yeah. I agree with your self diagnosis. You know something is off socially, to say the least, so there is a high chance it could be autism. There are other things out there that are similar. You could just have a phobia of social situations. There's so much overlap between disorders.

Yeah I've already checked out a few of the threads and so far I can relate to a lot of what people here are saying. Either way, I feel at home here, and welcome, which is the important part!



I'm not sure if I'm answering this right, but I'll explain it this way: I always feel like people are thinking something negative about me, but my rational mind tells me that can't always be true. If somebody is quiet with me or doesn't pay any attention to me, I ALWAYS think it's because they don't like me, even if they don't know me. And as for my own mind, I feel that often I am misunderstood. Like I'll say something and people will react like I just offended them, and they totally don't get what I meant by what sounded obvious to me. I also have this over-explaining problem, friends have told me I defend myself too much, well that's because I know i'm misunderstood, and it requires a lot of explaining to make them understand how I feel. Also sometimes it takes a lot of words to come up with the ones that correctly say what I mean.



There is no doubt I have anxiety, but what tipped me off to this being autism was when I thought about my entire life, from childhood on. I was not depressed, I don't know how a small child can even have anxiety, so the abnormal behavior has to be explained somehow, this is the closest thing I've found so far.



Yeah that's what I did when I was writing this post, I don't want to talk about this with my parents though but I've had enough incidences with friends & aquaintances that mirrored back to me that something was not right. I've always felt disconnected from people, judged by them, ridiculed by them, unaccepted by them, and that I will never be like them. I even have a friend right now that jokingly calls me an alien, and I had to smile to myself when I saw the name of this site, because I have never felt of this planet! At least not with the people on it.

Makes perfect sense to me. I have the same thing and have described it in almost the same words in the past.

I actually hate my "over-explaining". It's something that really bothers me and I wish I didn't do it. But I can't stop doing it because other people misunderstand me when I don't do it, and make assumptions which are incorrect, and that bothers me as much as my over-explaining (possibly more).

This of course, usually happens in writing rather than speech because speech is difficult for me. Sometimes I lose the ability to speak altogether and then end up over-explaining that in an email to the person who was with me at the time because I don't want them jumping to wrong conclusions. Of course, they have usually moved on by the time I've perfected my email ... and then it all gets worse!! !!

Guh. Hate this! You are not alone!! ! Stick around.

I am just like you! I think I may check into this Texana place over here. They offer free diagnosis. Just scared and nervous. I hate talking to people.

Yes, this is exactly how I am too!! I'm so glad I know I'm not the only one like this. Now I don't feel like such a freak. And I will definately stick around! Thank you for helping me feel welcome!

Ooh, a free diagnosis, that would be nice if I could find something like that! I'm gonna check around!

From your post, it sems pretty clear to me. I'm not normally someone who would just answer "yes, you're autistic" to somebody online, but given the fact that you are female, (so am I), I can relate to everything you've said. The childhood spent sucking thumb and reading books , i have lived it. The phone aversion, i still have it . Planning, worrying , trying to forget plans so i don't feel guilty saying i had forgotten when i don't go (is it really how far our fear of lying goes? for me it does).
You seem like a pretty textbook aspergirl
But I will still tell you what I say to everyone: as long as you feel that you fit in with us, diagnosis does not matter to me.

You sound somewhat like me.

I didn't take a test for Aspergers so I'm not sure what the difference is between that and autism, but yeah, like you said, it doesn't matter as long as you have the same issues as others so we can understand each other and have a reason for the way we are! Thanks for your post!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aspergirls-Empo ... 1849058261
this is what I was refering to when I say "aspergirl", i just like the word :p
Asperger's is on the autism spectrum, or it was, or you know, they keep changing stuff around....lol.
But I say either autistic or asperger's, I don't differenciate them much.

Wow, I read a few pages of that book in your link, and it talked about being obsessed with information, and that totally rang a bell with me! I have become obsessive about buying books, for like the last 6 or 7 years. I buy books at thrift stores so I can get a whole bunch really cheap, and 99% of the time, they end up in piles all over, only half read or not even started. I have hundreds of them! I feel like I need to own all the best information about my favorite subjects, even though I rarely actually read it! I'm also obsessive with researching information online, I'll find a good site and I'll save it on my desktop and then rarely do I ever go back and check them out.

I had a bad day today, my coworkers were teasing me about having mental disabilities, and I told them I actually might have autism, and they all laughed and said no way, I don't have that. But my coworkers have only known me for like 10 months and they don't know all the things that I've never told them. I put on a good act at work and don't tell them the full truth about myself. I really need to figure out a way to get diagnosed so I can tell these people they have to believe me! I also have an online friend who doesn't believe me either, she just thinks I need to see a therapist but she doesn't have a very open mind so it's hard to convince her of anything.