To be NT, or not to be NT... That is the question.

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As I slowly clear away the muck of depression and low self-esteem with CBT, I get closer and closer to figuring out who I really am. I've spent so much time "acting" and trying to please others, but I haven't taken enough time to just think about me. Me, without the interference of other people.

I'm too NT to be neurodiverse, but too neurodiverse to be NT. If we're being technical here, I tested as "gifted" in elementary school (still not entirely sure what that means!). In 4th grade, I needed glasses badly. I sat in the row furthest away from the board, and obviously couldn't see a thing. For whatever reason, I waited for weeks to tell anyone, and started off math with a terrible grade and lack of knowledge. Things like that make me wonder: was I shy, or was I literally incapable of expressing myself?

I don't have sensory issues, except for maybe the TV being too loud or hating the feeling of water surrounding me. I don't stim, but I sure do pace, sometimes running when I daydream or think. I understand sarcasm, most of the time. Small talk drives me insane. I struggled to look others in the eye until my first year of high school... Or was I just too embarrassed of my acne?

I finally told my counselor that I often wondered if I had HFA, and based on my behavior, he told me that everyone is on the spectrum in some way - but I don't appear to meet the critera. While I see this to be true, it still frustrates me that there isn't some sort of clear cut explanation for why I often struggle to fit in with others. [b]The fact that this frustrates me, frustrates me also.[b/] I shouldn't need to be diagnosed with something to feel validated.

When you have friends with HFA, ADD, etc - you can sometimes see yourself in them, and it almost makes it harder to identify personality difference vs. neurological difference. Have any of you experienced this? Feeling "halfway"?

There is something significant about the lack of replies to this post.

I think the OP is way too unsettling, like a post from limbo. I get a lot of comfort from being a genuine autistic high functioning yes, but still a full case. I like tohave other fellow travellers I can comiserate with.

I don't want to be the half-sane person I was in the past, I want to be fully autistic.

I would discard the ruminations of a counsoler. I would research PDD-NOS and atypical autism. If you want to be more sure see a specilist in Adult Female autism if one is affordable and available.

I grew up in a blue coller neighborhood and was smarter then most kids but not smart enough for the advanced classes.

I know the feeling. My advice is to check out the book " I think I might be Autistic" [ Amazon link here ] and look into the book "Aspergirlslife be" as well. Studies have shown that in women with HFA/Aspie women, we tend to mask our issues better and get diagnosed later in life because of these coping skills.

I do understand the feeling like I shouldn't need a label to feel validated but at the same time, as human beings, having an answer to our questions can give us a sense of peace. Like you, I wonder if I'm HFA/ Aspie, even though I don't have any "traditional" stimming. [In fact, a traditional stim, hand flapping, often makes me anxious]

I would ask your counselor to refer you to someone who can do an evaluation if you really want to get to the bottom of it. I wish you all the luck and I'm sorry you are feeling the way you feel but know you aren't alone

I can relate, too, but I think we have to be cautious not to throw anyone who doesn't fit in into the 'must have some disorder' category.
My personal solution is firstly to accept that I will probably never have this feeling of 'belonging' in a group and instead look out for the one or two persons who are similar to me regarding interests, personality traits and so on and concentrate on them instead of all the others.

If your ASD impairments are mild enough to suggest you could be NT, that's probably quite good. I get that it may feel strange being stuck half-way between the NT and AS world, neither one thing or the other, but there is no AS culture as such, so there's no particular need to feel excluded. And the truth is, most people are neither one thing nor the other. That's the nature of a spectrum disorder. It's not black and white.

I often suspect that I might not be as Aspie as my diagnosis suggests. So much of my assessment was self-assessed, which is a dodgy way of determining anything IMO. I did an alexithymia test the other day which came out as normal. I don't know if I fudged it or it's if the truth, but I tried to be fair and my partner said that she didn't see any bias in my answers. Yet Aspies are supposed to be lousy at understanding feelings. I still think I have some kind of impairment there, but I reckon it could just be that it takes me a little longer sometimes to suss out feelings.

Anyway, I wouldn't worry too much about the exact diagnosis, unless you need accommodations or benefits. I think that for self-discovery and personal progress, all you need is a clear understanding of your individual traits.

Um, yeah, not everyone is on the spectrum. I am most certainly not on the spectrum. I can confidently say that as a person who has lived with at least one autistic person and sometimes more for 30 years, and as a person who studies autistic adults as a population.

I second what other people have already said, especially about reading up on autism in females. I think that would be pretty helpful. I would also go ahead and do both the RAADS-R and the Aspie Quiz. If you need help interpreting either test, let me know. I have my own scores saved for comparison purposes.

If you end up scoring as "barely" neurotypical, you might want to look up the Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP), which is having autism traits, but not enough to qualify for autism. I still say in these cases that if after reading up on autism and listening to/talking to autistic adults, you end up feeling that the autism spectrum fits for you, you are autistic no matter what a test says.

Then I do also strongly second the recommendation of getting someone else to properly assess you, instead of going with this incorrect dismissive statement from your counselor. I'm sure your counselor was trying to make you feel better, but that was not a good response to a perfectly valid question from you.

To be an autistic person thinking they are neurotypical living in a neurotypical world is a creepy place where black is white, red is yellow, a place with no anchor somehow similar to Kafka's novel "The castle" (A must read book). You didn't offend me but sometimes I find the NT world somehow takes the grotesque complexity of reality, and speaks of it in a dismissive way as if it somehow owns it. If you understood what I just said then you're smarter than I am.

Trying to explain yourself to neurotypicals is a kafkaesque nightmare if there ever was one.