How did you find out that you are on the spectrum?

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Funny, another person posted the same question (pretty much) right before I posted this but anyways...

I just heard about this. Im having trouble getting a grip on the whole issue.
It's not just about feeling alien on a stange planet.. when i connect the dots.. am I connecting the dots?
Is it the way that I look at people? As if they were things to pick apart and discover. Is it that I don't just accept my ego as myself that I feel in body but as though I were here to discover and research. Perfectionist.. matured early but not able to understand limits and feelings. I remember being the one that everyone turned to because I had like zero abilty to judge or discrimminate.

Obsessions? A need to classify everything in order to make it work? Being the kid that gets up in the middle of a test to look in the dictionary. Physical oversensitivities and insensitivities? Shyness, an acute awareness that alienates you?
When I read articles about Asperger's I think "that is such an NT way of looking at things" So help me out...what should I catch?

Somebody in another forum told me to look into it because she thought I sounded like I might have it.

Earlier this year I finally decided to try to figure out why I've always had serious sensory issues. My search kept leading to different parts of my personality that all seemed to be related. Eventually I got to AS and it all came together. The problems that I've always had in life started to make sense. It's nice to know that I'm not alone, because I always felt like a freak.

ditto

Took me years to find out I was on the spectrum. I used to look up AS all the time on the internet when I was 15 and autism pages kept popping up in the search engines and I noticed on yahoo, Aspergers was listed under the autism catagory under mental health disorders. So I asked my parents if I'm autistic and they said no and I asked them then why does it keep coming up when I look up Aspergers and they said "because it's a form of it."
Then when I joined aspie groups in 2003, aspies kept labeling themselves autistic and some said I was too and I kept denying I had autism. I then realized AS was on the autism spectrum and it's part of the autism spectrum disorder. If I am diagnosed with AS, I'd assume I was on the spectrum too even though I wasn't listed under that catagory in the IEP. I still don't accept I am autistic and still deny it. I don't feel autistic. I am a lot better than lot of them who truely are. I can cope better than lot of them can.

My wife and I heard an interview of an Aspie on NPR radio and half way through the interview we turned to each other and said "hmmm they are describing me perfectly." I then took the online tests and I test very high, 45 out of 50. Every male member of my family for 3 generations is an engineer, except me. Now that I know what an Aspie is I am sure my father, who is very successful and intelligent, is also on the spectrum. I even recognize that my best friend, who killed himself 2 years ago this month, was also an Aspie. He was a mensa member genius but had so much trouble with life because of the disorder. It eventually was too much for his wife, she left and he killed himself soon after.

I agree that it is very strange when you first find out about the disorder. Realizing that so many things that you thought were "you" are just characteristics of the disorder. Alas it has been difficult but positive for me to realize that I am AS. I am no longer trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. I am learning to make choices that agree with my personality. I think ultimately a deeper self understanding will lead to a more satisfying life.

Good luck and welcome to a wonderful community.

I'm not one hundred percent sure I'm on the spectrum, but really I know its the only way to describe it. I had a lot of trouble with emotions as a child, like, I wouldn't show any most of the time, then someone would say the wrong thing and it was like I couldn't turn it off. I also went back to my old elementry school a couple weeks back and was talking with some of my old teachers, and they were telling me how I used to always avoid the other kids. I apparently went an entire school year pretending to be a cat because I liked cats.

I'm lucky my mum was in the same boat as I was at my age. She really taught me a lot of tips and tricks for dealing with normal people. I really had to 'learn' emotions like other people do words, and sometimes it still slips. I've always had to conciously think about looking people in the face when I talk, cause I'd much rather be looking at something maybe in my hand, or the pattern on their shirt. Its just weird learning all of these things I used to think made me special really just make me different... but now that I know, I can work with some of it. I know now I have a reason for doing what I do. It also really helps that my bf is really understanding, he just accepts this as part of who I am. He doesn't try and change something I cannot change, unless its just me slipping. Really, he's quite supportive, lets me know when I'm falling back and picks up the slack for me.

I've learned one thing being an aspie. Don't get a job in customer service! Its hard enough showing emotions to people you really DO care about, its so much harder caring about some random person. I know my current job is really good for me (computer tech) cause the machines don't talk to me, they don't expect me to care that their cat is sick, whatever.

I'm rambling again. And its bedtime. 3am sounds like a good bedtime tonight.

A psychiatrist put "Social Anxiety" down on some official thingy whilst in the mental hospital because I avoided the cafeteria; I was the only person there who ate in his/her room due to the feeling of immense...discomfort caused from all the people talking and stuff. I thought it was weird how I couldn’t “handle” such (I was in a deeply introspective frame of mind), there was people with pretty much every mental disorder there chatting and socializing to some extent, and there was me in the corner wanting to jump out of the window. I ate there once and only once (I never went to any of the group things either).

Had/got OCD, clicked on Asperger's for some reason or another when it was linked as a comorbid condition on a website; I thought that that looked like me ("social difficulties"), took the AQ test and ended up here.

YEAH, this is what really gets me! Are some of them are ****ODD**** and complex! It really make one think of race memories.

I was taken out of school at around five and had to attend sessions in the company of esteemed professionals in the field of child psychiatry. This was the early eighties in Dear Old Blighty, and if you were to mention Asperger's most people would have thought it was the name of a Nazi bomber. Consequently my mother was told to train/pummel certain behaviour out of me and nurture any gifts I had. Then it was back to mainstream school and the rest is the kind of history you file under 'train wrecks'.

As time went on I didn't really appreciate how this business in childhood had affected me. It was only ever occasionally mentioned by my mother and mostly in a very resentful way. I knew I was different but thought that was down purely to being ahead of the kids my age in so many respects.

Of course as adolescence crept up and gave way to full-blown adulthood, rather than getting any better things just got out of control. I was able to maintain a reasonable NT facade (albeit a very unconventional NT) but I would constantly get burned by the outside world an regress. I won't go into detail here, but over time the wheels fell off my life. Suffice to say no progress was made because I'd been led to believe any shortcomings were because I was a lazy, inadequate, self-indulgent person. It didn't occur to me to really look into the autistic spectrum until I met a boy diagnosed with dyspraxia whom I found I could talk to easily from the beginning. I mentioned my early experiences at the clinic to him. Then some months later I was pouring my heart out to him after yet another crisis of confidence and he took a lot of interest in what I was saying. he started asking some very meaningful questions and before long the penny dropped.

Since then I've done some reading, taken the ASQ, Aspie Test and the like and they confirmed that the child was never 'cured' and never will be. I'm sure I'm not alone, however, in feeling so much happier as a direct result.

I ran across mentions of Asperger's for the first time earlier this year. I realized that I might also have some kind of neurological oddity that made reading social cues so hard for me. I still didn't immediately connect Asperger's with the events in my life, because I thought AS meant that you couldn't feel any emotions and that you must hate all touching.

Then I was reading the science blog Pharyngula, and I found a post where the author jokingly announced that he didn't have Asperger's, he was just cruel and insensitive on purpose. He posted a link to the AQ test, so I took it, fully expecting to get a low score. I got a 41. I Googled "asperger's syndrome", and realized that the descriptions sounded a lot like me. A lot of things in my life suddenly made sense. The next day, I googled "asperger's forum" and found Wrong Planet. One month later, I'm very sure I'm on the spectrum, and I'm trying to arrange an evaluation to get officially dx'd.

I had on my white noise TV, it was on CNN. Their Doctor had a little special on Autism, the young lady's name was Amanda. Extremely articulate using a computer. Near the end they talked briefly about the full blown types of Autism and I wondered why it didn't have degrees of lesser. I mentioned my question to my wife when she got up and she knew about AS. I took the test with her help and was stunned. My life suddenly made sense.

4 years ago I was sitting in front of my computer; bored and wondering what more I could look in the net for. I wrote:"autism" in the browser. In that time my comprehension of autism was extremely stereotypical - I had seen some films about children with a severe form of ASD who were trapped in their own world, unable to communicate with others. It was all my knowledge - few films and several articles in my mother's magazines which took up that subject but also in a stereotypical way.

I wanted to know more. I found a page created by mother of a boy suffering from something what was called "Asperger Syndrome". Having read what the symptoms are I thought that I resembled people with AS in many ways but I didn't hit upon an idea I really could have something to do with it; it's mostly because descriptions of Asperger's found by me were so simplified and full of popular stereotypes. It was in last year when I became more interested in this issue and now I am almost sure that I have AS.

The first Ive herd of AS, was when my professionel mother told bout a pt of hers, making it comical symptom, but Ive loved it.
It was like, that I know, I know all if thi, Uve told me before I know all of it and then it hits you, whats wrong with me, n I dont mean like you... I know, am the noed of things, like that and the sky is falling, I dont cear I joust want to feel good...
Nooooo, no dont take them off, I like this s**t...Im not diagnosed AS, thou a psy'co'path speculatet about ME, having Asp, but I was accualy forced on to the spectrum, for that to b understanderbull weve got to look back a little while, and I bet you no matter how we pop up now, we are a rear breed, but bout the forcing, I got diagnosed Skizofrenia witch are Autisttypid't, f**k I diddent know, U think but let me use more words then are nessceari ones again joust there are symptoms of the skizzodrenn condition that are the same as for AS, besides I smoke weed, another "symptom" then AS/skizo, but Ive always known that I was different...
...And then it hit me, thats so an NT way of thinking, contra souch an damiging contra view, I know enjoy, Ive havent yet realiced Im Autist, not joust AS but ASS...dont laugh, I was on a weary strange swimming in apollagies sleeping under the rain, my birth again, my mother was not joust psykiatric nøse shes an manic deprest pt self medicaded, my farther an canabitch using pesagog.
I dont know if it runns in the fammily, think so wer all a little strange, but mother dont get in the mushrooms serve them to the eye.
Im an aspi and I proud, Im the lost fammily member beeing skizotypid, lolaalala, I hear some rain, it rained that night to, how much mushroom can I do before I puke, I joust cant get enuf, for what I wanna say U joust sead.
cC.

My Study Hall teacher in High School handed me a packet stating that I was diagnosed with it.

I read the expression "Asperger syndrome" in a novel and looked it up on the Internet. The more I read about it, the more it seemed to explain about my life. I'm not entirely sure whether I'm an aspie though, because a lot of what people write here doesn't fit me: I have no trouble reading facial expressions and only a little difficulty in recognising faces, I don't think I have a monotonous voice, I don't care for dogs or cats, I don't enjoy watching spinning fans (or similar things), and I adore fiction. On the other hand (or both hands, actually) I stim, which I think is pretty much a dead giveaway. Also, my father was completely face-blind and had obsessive interests, so I think he may have been an aspie, too.