DO I have Aspergers, should I go for Dx after Neuropsych
YEs, you all have read this many times before from other people and I've read a lot of the posts on the subject and I can't help myself, ME answer me!! So I implore all you kind folks on WP.... one more time for little ole me?
Here goes:
Reasons I think I have Asperger's:
- sensory sensitivity (socks with seams on the toes as a kid; as an adult many more sensitivities, texture and temperature of foods a big one)
- repetitious behaviors (doing things three times)
- fascination with 3 and multiples of 3
- narrow interests ?? explore (yeast breads, playing a mage in World of Warcraft, Eastern philosophy/religion)
- intolerance to frustration (before and after meditation period of my life)
- extreme emotions (labeled "emotionally disturbed" as a kid, continue to have strong emotions now as an adult)
- strong preference for doing things by myself; difficulty working with other's ideas/suggestions, inability to include others or modify own behavior to work with them
- high IQ (138 as a teen on the Weschler) with little common sense (even though I'm "street-wise", I can't balance my checkbook or plan payments on my bills, etc.)
- very clumsy, often misjudging distances and bumping into doorways, knocking things over as I reach for them, etc.
- extreme resistance to change, even small changes like talking a short walk in the morning instead of sitting at my computer until I have to leave for school.
- taking things literally (ex. my teacher told us there were 300 questions on the final and I asked if I could get up and walk around sometime during the test (this helps with stress), then I received the test, which had 50 or so questions.
- severe communication issues, only recently being seen by me.
- hyper-focus, especially on parts of things or details of a situation
- always noticing grammar and spelling mistakes in text I read (this bothers me a lot)
- people telling me I can't see the forest for the trees? what the hell does this mean lol
- organizing and re-organizing things
- focus on routines and systems of doing things (even if these don't make sense to others, like, I feed the cat after my husband leaves for work, like I need to do it then to remember it at all)
Reasons I don't think I have Asperger's
- Other psychiatric conditions haven't been ruled out thoroughly.
- Hard to think of myself as autistic but may be due to short term knowledge (less than a year)
The reasons I don't is proving hard to come up with.... anyone else (with a late dx, past teenage years, or going for a dx as an adult) tried desperately to "prove" they didn't have Asperger's or autism? I'm expecting some period of time wondering but this is driving me nuts....
edit: clarification of details added more, neatened it up.
There are a lot of aspie stuff here, like I'm sure you know, but what about the social aspect? You have some communication problems I see that but I still thing there is little information on the subject, and childhood. People who ask always write far too little of their childhood. I get that it's hard to remember (so other sources can be good) but still, it's important.
Social aspect:
Child/Teen
- always felt like "from the outside looking in"
- normal language development, actually spoke my first word before my younger siblings
- constantly smelling objects and touching myself and smelling my fingers
- obsession with Honda Preludes, knew every model, when the model changed, which engine/powertrain with which model, etc. (owned four "manuals" and owned a '91 Prelude that I did all the work on myself and taught myself how to do brakes, etc.)
- obsession with dragons, drawing them, reading about them, I have 2 on me as tattoos (one at 18, one at 24)
- the number 3, multiples of 3, doing things 3 times (rinsing out a glass I wash twice, then one more for good measure!) [this continues today]
- loved animals and would rescue slugs, snails, earthworms, you name it, from my Dad's lawn mowing, wanted to be a veterinarian or animal medical scientist
- extremely verbal and talkative
Adult
- feeling disconnected from people, can't feel someone's love for me, have no "bonds" with anyone, even my husband (he's an Aspie, undx'd) [this symptom makes me lonely enough to have suicidal ideation]
- mishearing and misunderstanding spoken word, difficulty doing things that were only told to me and not written down
- no normal relationships with people my age [I have no friends online or otherwise, I just have my husband, brother and parents that I'm able to have any relationship with and those are fraught with misunderstandings and not knowing their intentions toward me, "I don't know how to be a daughter, wife, or sister"]
- extreme emotionality that impairs relations with others
- abnormally high anxiety levels that don't match my life circumstances at all [this may be psychiatric, poss. due to not handling things well for so long combined with hypersensitivity]
- talkativeness, verbose [realized this is a stim for me, I just enjoy the feeling of saying words and getting on that high energy level of explaining something to someone] -- and also don't know when enough is enough
~failure to attain life goals (or even make them) [not sure what this is due to]
Major impairment now: suspected ADHD (was diagnosed as a kid) which is causing my executive functioning to deteriorate further. This is an interesting mix, ADHD and Asperger's.... when I do focus on something it's great and I can sustain it forever, but switch me off that task and its like someone just pulled the rug from under me, I can't do the task and I can't switch to what they are saying /process what they're saying/doing, also if I don't have super focus, I have NO focus and can't concentrate on anything... like a big garbage disposal in my mind that just eats up all my energy...
Thanks for your reply, trying to get to the bottom of things is hard and I'm grateful for your direction.
edit: one of the social aspects I've "accommodated" is eye contact, a long time ago, I was taught in high school that instead of looking directly into a speaker's eyes, look at the bridge of their nose or forehead to indicate respect and alternate your gaze from nose to forehead.... Now I notice myself doing this instead of looking into anyone's eyes' even my family... or I'll switch to watching their mouth so I can tell what their saying better..... (only noticed this in the past year or so, it's amazing what we hide from ourselves...)
edit: ALso the thing with the number 3, I don't HAVE to do things 3 times, I just discover myself doing things like that... I don't get upset if I stop myself at 2.
Last edited by kirayng on 13 Jan 2012, 11:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
Sounds like an Aspie to me. You need a professional assessment, though. As for proving that you don't, that's difficult, especially the farther you get from childhood, because you learn to cover it, to get along with people better, and some Aspies never did have some common traits -- I never had the extreme sensory sensitivities, for example, unless you count objecting to the amount of starch my mother used on my dresses and blouses when I was very young and had tender skin (seams like saw blades!) and I think any child would have had problems with that.
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Asperges me, Domine
I've got a neuropsych scheduled for the end of March, then an autism specialist wants to put me through their battery of tests (usually for children, they'll modify it for me) but my insurance doesn't cover it....
Does the neuropsychological evaluation give enough information to arrive at a diagnosis or should I pursue this further testing by the specialists? It seems as though the further testing would find my place on the spectrum-- how severe or whatever.