I'm sure you get a lot of this, but... could I be an Aspie?

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A boy in high school with Aspergers said he thought I had it, too, and now I've been asked this a few times in forums online. I'm a 21-year-old female college senior with a 4.0 (no joke), but when it comes to social interactions that seem to be instinctive for everyone else, I feel lost and helpless.

- I dated one person in my entire life and then just for a few weeks. (This doesn't depress me, but something tells me it should.)
- I love my family deeply and keep in touch with them and couldn't live without them, but I don't really have any friends... but that doesn't bother me! I can entirely enjoy myself alone, whether I'm in my room reading, at an amusement park, taking a walk (I take several a day, sometimes at midnight), or running errands (I consider clothes shopping to be one). My mother and one friend find it unfathomable that friendships aren't a necessity for me.
- I don't get stage fright (I love acting on stage) or overly nervous at work or in class, but in what should be casual social situations, I feel on edge, like everyone is judging me, like I'm not doing anything right, like everything I think/say/do is abnormal and wrong just because I do it!
- I HATE talking on the phone. I thank God that I was born after e-mail was invented because of this.
- But I love just walking around campus and day dreaming.
- I can't drive. I don't mean as in I flunked the test; I never took it. I haven't tried since I was 16 because no matter what I did, the car just never seemed to steer straight.
- Peers have accused me of being passive (because I'm too polite, since for years, people told me I was too bossy, and I've overdone it) and arrogant (because I don't do drugs and am very public about how much I disapprove of them).
- My bosses and professors love me, though. I'm a hard worker and a great writer.
- The scariest thing, though, happened three years ago when I went to the bursar at my school. I wasn't nervous at all. There's no way I could be the first person to go to the Bursar's Office to settle a bill, right? But the guy made me so nervous, saying I should act a little nicer for someone who owed 4,000 dollars, like I was being rude but I had no idea why. I got hot, dizzy, and just passed out. The Health Center couldn't find anything physically wrong with me. How could I get so paralyzed with fear over an accusation of rudeness?

I saw a counselor at my school last semester, but the cognitive behavioral therapy felt like drawing more attention to my social anxiety. While poking around this site, I read the article at http://home.att.net/~ascaris1/neurotypicality.html about Understanding Neurotypicality. The more I read, the more it looked like a list of all the things I find most annoying about people and society!

Like I said in the subject, I'm sure you hear lots of people coming on here and asking Could I have Asperger's? and I have no idea if that's weird or unacceptable, but what else is new?

Anyone with an opinion, I'd love to hear it.

Welcome to WP!

Tim

Welcome to WrongPlanet

CarpeDiem118,

My days of getting a 4.0 ended a bit early, as I just got bored early on, and it seems like they just bored me to death with what I knew, etc... I DID get a straight 4.0 earlier though, and never really did THAT much worse. Also, I give myself wide berth on driving, and they forgot to test me on the senseless unneeded stuff that I managed to avoid for the past 25 or so years, so I drive just fine!

Other than that, You sound like ME!

Frankly, I think I have it, and can relate to many diagnosed people here. And HEY, that boy probably isn't to free with giving such an assessment!

Hello, welcome to WP.
Sounds like you might be an Aspie. You could just look up the DSM criteria for AS and see which ones you meet. That's what I did to reach my self-diagnosis, which was later confirmed by a doctor. You certainly seem to meet the "normal or exceptional intelligence" requirement, as well as the social awkwardness/ lack of real need for social interaction. I don't know about any of the other criteria, as I don't know you and you didn't provide all those details, but what you posted definitely sounds like Asperger's.
Good luck in your quest to understand yourself.

Where can I do that?

I'm not gonna say one way or the other, I don't know you well enough. You might be aspie, or you might just have social anxiety disorders. The best advice I can give you is to see several psychiatrists and see what they all have to say.... But see more of them than one because the psychiatric institution is wrought with fraud.

Here's a good one: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/1807/criteria.html

Have one scheduled for next week, but it's the Labor Day weekend, and I'm impatient.

Thanks. I read it. I don't have problems with eye contact or posture, but I do twirl my hair... all the time, whenever my hands aren't doing something else. I don't know if my introversion is a sign of the rest of Category 1 or just, well, introversion. Being an introvert/loner is considered freakish enough these days, of course.

Last edited by CarpeDiem118 on 02 Sep 2007, 8:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

sure sounds like your a aspie too. i'm a aspie too and 27 years old, gratuated from high school with a 3.9 gpa. tons of educational certificates, and believe me school was hell boring, already new everything. and even was successful with my own internet business for a while, till i overloaded.. though i do have to ask you one question? do you do the same activity for 10 hours? and have to go out for a walk every couple hours and when theres alot of company, noise. etc? repetitve activities is a big symptom for aspies. you checkout checkout the following quizzes.

http://www.thegeeksyndrome.com/

http://www.pttools.co.uk/asc/asc_wp2.php
Scored: 166/200 which tells me i'm a aspie and hell intelligent on a specific area, which i think is computers...

About the "activity for 10 hours," no, I get bored quickly. That would be torture. I wish I could do that, actually; I'd get term papers done so much more quickly. About the walking, yes, I walk aimlessly and daydream several times a day. I dislike a lot of company my own age, but I don't mind being around people I don't know in public places like swimming pools and skate rinks; I'm a city slicker through and through. When it comes to noise, I've had super-hearing all my life; I started sleeping with earplugs a few years ago, and now I can't sleep without them.

I don't know...a lot of it could fit into social anxiety and shyness too.
Do you have sensory issues?
You have to meet a certain number of the criteria to be Dx'd with Aspergers.
Obsessive interests and a liking of routine? That is another common Aspie trait.

But you meet B and D, which is enough qualification for Category 1. As for the focus, AS has an extremely high comorbity with various forms of ADHD. I can't do something for an extended perios of time unless it's something that really interests me, and even then, 10 hours is a bit extreme. I have the sensitivity to noise as well, it can be a real pain.

I took the test at http://www.pttools.co.uk/asc/asc_wp2.php and just scored high in the Social Impairment section. I don't get it. I got through high school always proud of who I was no matter how weird, just being myself and not caring what anyone else thought of me, never once caring about being popular or fitting in, scoffing at those after school specials that preached "Popularity isn't everything" thinking There's actually people out there who need to be taught that? I thought I missed the egocentric-and-overly-socially-anxious phase.

I had a 4.0 in high school, and so far, I have a 4.0 in college.

Tim

Here's how I just scored:

RBI =6.25
SI=8
L=1.5
POC=4
IR=1.75
RP=1.75
S=5
M=1.75

But if you didn't care about social things, why should scoring high for impairment there surprise you?

Steve