Well, it's a possibility, but you really need to take everything into account.
The thing is, having Asperger's Syndrome in the informal and more absolute sense, which means a group of co-occurring cognitive and behavioral phenomena, is a lot different from having it in the medical sense, which means a debilitating condition that severely impairs not only social functioning but relationships with family and performance on the job.
In the informal sense, it's just easier than going through the whole constellation of symptoms to explain yourself to people:
1) I have difficulty with the give-and-take dynamic in speech, and it seems forced to me.
2) I seem to feel uncomfortable in my own skin. When I was more spiritual, I sort of believed I might be a different sort of being trapped in the wrong body.
3) My gait is either stiff-legged and robotic or weirdly bouncy and giddy.
4) I do self-stimulatory things like bouncing on my heels or swinging my feet out to the sides as I walk.
5) I take the things that people say at face value, and I never really think to try to ask questions in my mind like "Why did they say that?" or "What does this tell me about how this person is feeling?" I just treat the words spoken to me like written textbook information, and it's really weird for me to actually try to analyze speech in the way that most people do. It just doesn't occur to me in the moment.
6) For some reason, I can't find anyone who understands what I see in reading about ancient Indo-Greek philosophy. It seems very important to me, like it's something everyone ought to know, yet when I try to talk about it, people act disinterested and take the first chance to try to change the subject.
7) I never liked social chit-chat. It just seems so pointless, and I can't understand how people can stand going on about stuff that is so empty, petty and meaningless.
8) A lot of people say that I am weird.
9) I can have these attacks of overwhelming emotion that make me feel like I've gone into a Fukushima meltdown or something.
10) I often catch myself rocking back and forth while I'm thinking hard about something.
11) I tend to read in an odd curled-up position, like some kind of cat.
12) I have eccentric habits like taking long walks during the night.
13) People think I am more argumentative than I actually am. For instance, if someone asks me if I would be okay with eating Chinese, I will say something like, "Chinese is fine. It tends to be a little high in MSG, though, and it can aggravate certain inflammatory illnesses. Did you know that the Chinese don't even eat American Chinese food? It's weird, like why do we call it Chinese?" and that person will get angry and say, "It's okay, you could have just said you didn't want Chinese." And then I'll say, "Nononono! I love Chinese! I prefer it, actually." and that person will say, "Would you make up your mind?"
14) I get immersed in "splitting hairs" without meaning to. This makes some people think I'm talking in circles, but I really do feel like I'm on some really important detail that makes all of the difference. Looking back on some of these cases, I still feel that way. Those fine distinctions make two different interpretations of a thing completely remote in why they are actually significant. I just can't convince anyone else of this.
15) I have always had people say that I had a "dry sense of humor." It took me a while to realize that this just means humor in which the humorist is not taken in by the humorous element, leaving it to the audience to pick up on what is funny about it. I am not entirely sure that I am actually trying to be funny in these situations. I am just describing a situation that I find to be interesting and peculiar with sort of analytical, academic interest, and someone thinks I'm trying to tell a joke. I was really hoping to engage their interest, but it doesn't work out that way very often.
16) I have oddly childlike behavioral habits and an unusually youthful appearance that makes it hard for me to win the confidence of an employer.
Now, I could just go through the litany with everyone that I meet, or I could wait for these things to become a problem before I mention them. Telling people, "Hey, I have a little Aspergers" gets the point across a lot more readily. People have a vague idea that there are a lot of odd behaviors associated with Aspergers, most of which are completely harmless, and they understand the important point that I'm not engaging in these eccentric behaviors because of substance-abuse or anything. I'm not trying to bait them or antagonize them. I just understand the world in a different way. In the end, that's all people really need to know.
But really, what you describe does not necessarily constitute signs of any ASD. The Spectrum is actually quite varied, but you really need more than just a few odd behaviors to really say you're in that basic constellation of symptoms.
You don't need a Psy.D. to say you have such behaviors, and you don't need a Psy.D. to say your behaviors are a dead-ringer for an ASD. You need a Psy.D. to prescribe medication, you need a Psy.D. to manage referrals to specialist and therapists, and you probably ought to have a Psy.D. before recommending over-the-counter or dietary remedies of any kind. On the other hand, most self-help books for people with ASDs have advice that many who are NT would benefit from, and if you're really a dead-ringer for some form of ASD, it's not hard to tell.
Just spend more time on self-inspection, and see where it goes.
03 Dec 2014, 6:00 pm
