Did someone tell you or did you discover AS yourself?

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I'm curious as to how many adults learned they were Aspies on their own verses being told.

Last edited by faithfilly on 09 Dec 2008, 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My mom told me I was autistic when I started asking questions.

How old were you when you were told?

I discovered it when I could easily get along with the autistic and AS kids I played with. I also saw some TV shows (Like America's next top model) that made me start to think. Also many IT workers have some form of PDDs.
I looked it up, and found out I am very similar to these people.
My moms friend has a nephew with AS. Whenever I see him, I also see me. I looked up what AS is, and identified with it.
My psych said it's possible I have AS. But I will go with "I discovered it myself".
I've always known I've been much different than the others.

I figured it out from a trail of bread crumbs when I was 48...

I mainly read an interview of someone who had it, and then too many of the symptoms fit me. After a little web searching, it kinda fit.

A guy from my World of Warcraft guild sent me a link on AIM saying it was the most messed up thing he ever saw. A friend of his from high school had invited him and other old classmates to be friends on facebook. Then the guy came out as being transexual and was saying in the post how hard it will be to live as a woman for a year before he can have an operation because he was an Aspie. I didn't know what an Aspie was, so I googled it. And 3.5 months later, here I am. I was diagnosed last week.

That's how I learned about AS.

Call to AS topic

I discovered a challenge called AS through reading and wondered, but I was told when tested for unrelated matters. The psychologist suspected and then did the tests.

I was told I had autistic traits when I was 17, and then these were refuted by the very professional who issued them to me. But the seed was there, and even before that I knew there was something different, from the earliest memories of my existence.

My mother told me when I was 12.

One of my best friends told me and i started searching; that's when a lot of stuff started making sense. Finally!

Never heard of it before someone suggested I may have it on another board last year. My uncle kidded that I was autistic when my mom told him I was artistic back in 1991. Didn't know anything about autism then and didn't look into it, I thought it was just another form of retardation and that he was being an ass, but he may have been right.

my former phycologist when i was 14 told me and my parents that she suspected it could POSSIBLY be asperger's syndrome. but she didnt diagnose it because she didnt know enough about it.


a few years later when i was 17 going on 18 i was officially diagnosed by a different phsychologist who specializes with people on the spectrum

I'm suspicious that my parents may have known, but refrained from telling me- I've yet to confront them with it. They never told me something else about me that I found out on my own, so I'm suspicious. Hell, they never even gave me "the talk", so they don't exactly tell me the important stuff.

I learned about AS from a lecture an adjunct professor of mine gave during a child psychology class. It was an epiphany. The dots connected, and I was relieved. Other emotions came later.

my first boyfriend asked me why I looked down all the time (avoiding eye contact). years later when i finally made the AS connection i emailed him to let him know, coz i assumed he must have been hinting indirectly or encouraging me to connect the dots myself. but actually he wrote back and said he thought it was highly unlikely i had anything related to autism. he just wondered why i looked down all the time.

anyway, after his first comment, i started researching eye contact (because i really had no idea why i looked down all the time) and came across info on AS, but it all seemed related to young boys and train schedules, and didnt seem to fit my situation (im female, approaching 30, and have trouble even catching the train on time) so i forgot about it for a while. It wasnt until I came across a news article a year or 2 back about a woman who had been sitting on her toilet for several years. there was an interview with her aunt who said 'theres nothing wrong with her, she's just going through a tough time now' or something to that effect. i remember thinking, what must someone be going through someones mind to just retreat to the toilet for a few years? and it also reminded me of my own self-retreating behaviour over the years. Even now I frequently retreat to my bedroom like a teenager, for long periods of time. maybe the bathroom was the only safe place for her.

anyway, after i read that article, it occured to me to start researching FEMALE aspergers for the first time, and then i instantly came across page after page of experiences that could mirror my life story exactly.

the woman who sat on her toilet for years is responsible for me finally understanding myself.

I think deep down I've always suspected. why?

-As a toddler my mums friend had a son who was Autistic called Andrew, I don't remember him very well, the only memory I have is of sitting at their table eating a malt cereal quietly with him sitting next to him, we didn't talk and I felt quite comfortable sitting next to him. In fact I felt content. People would mention he had autism and I remember been confused as to what that possibly meant as It came across like it was supposed to be a bad thing but I didn't notice anything odd about him in fact he was the only kid that didn't come across as too chaotic for my tastes (I also have a down syndrome cousin who's behievior I did notice as odd, so I reconised that someone acting a certain way could have a reason and it was linked to the words Down Syndrome. So it was just that a child doesn't see differences it's just Andrew seemed normal to me) I didn't have any attachment to him but found him company pleasant.

-As I got older I came to understand what Autism was, still perplexed as I couldn't remember Andrew as being that much different from me, But as I read more about it,(and felt in some ways what I remembered on Andrew didn't fit it, I acknowledge that I didn't know him that well) It seems a bit like me but not enough so I dismiss it. But it just kept coming round and round again. It was the only thing that explained quite a few of my symptoms, But I talked early so I wasn't about to become a hypocondria and say I had it just because I wanted to fit.

-Then my mum went to a Psyciatrist who said he suspected she had some form of Autism, (my mum and me are very similar in behievior patterns) and that got me thinking and so instead of dismissing it, I accepted it as a possibility but as I didn't know about AS and just knew about the extreme stereotype of autism I figured there was just nothing that could be done about it if we did have it.

-Then I saw a sign in the doctors office (unfortunately I don't go to this doctor anymore if i did it might make diagnosis a lot easier) showing the symptoms of AS, it only had a few though, and again I didn't just want to jump on thee bandwagon, But i raised the possibility with my mum.

-About a year and a half ago I got the internet and on a whim I looked up AS on wiki, and seeing all the symptoms this time it was like someone had written my biography, suddenly everything in my life made sense. But again I was afraid that I was just looking for an excuse for all my pain and anxiety my whole life.

-So I went to WP and read and replied on the board, and while I don't have a diagnoses I feel like Whitney Houston when she said "its my land!!" for the first time in my life I'm normal-so to speak!

I was not told about Aspergers Syndrome by anyone. I eventually stumbled upon it while doing research online. I cannot remember exactly what it is was that finally brought my attention to Aspergers. All I know is that it may have happened because of my intense interest in reading about introverts, highly-sensitive persons, eccentrics, geniuses, and insomnia—along with noticing some of the similar correlations in that mix. I believe it was the insomnia topic, with its related information about serotonin and 5HTP (5-hydroxytryptophan), that finally introduced me to Aspergers Syndrome.

After getting a healthy dose of data online about AS, I went offline to make further investigations. With the help of phone calls, books, certain people, and fate, I was able to confirm and erase any doubts about my being an Aspie.

The important thing was that I got the answer to my life-long question, “What’s wrong with me?” You can’t imagine the shock that came from discovering there is nothing ‘wrong’ with me. I had no idea that what was (and still is) ‘wrong’ is totally due to a communication barrier between two different ‘cultures’ of humans → the neurotypicals and neuro-A-typicals.

I wonder how big of a difference it makes between Aspie adults who ’stumble’ upon learning about Aspergers verses those who are told they have Aspergers. The specific difference is self-perception. Even though I went through stages of mixed emotion (shock, depression, and anger; ending with joy and contentment), I did eventually settle into a category I never before had. I like myself now and no longer feel obsessed to ‘fix’ something that isn’t broken.

Things started falling into place once my son was diagnosed. The revelation was entirely freeing because my weak points were not from a lack of effort, studying or forcing myself to be more social.