Strange obsessive/rigid episodes

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Between 18-21 I became morbidly depressed due to fears that I was ugly. I convinced myself that I was "too ugly to live". I spent hours examining my perceived defects in the mirror from different angles. I made my own face a subject of constant scrutiny. Ocassionally however I would "Momentys of clarity". During these periods I had renewed confidence and felt able to cope again. Invariably however these feelings petered out leaving me to my contemplations of the grotesque. I continued like this for months until the seesawing became too much to bear and I developed a life or death atittude to it: "I need to end it all if it turns out im ugly... I cant go on being hated by all with no romantic prospects. I cant face being alone cradle to grave". I bnecame morbidly paranoid suspecting everyone of being disgusted and repulsed by my apperance. During my "ugly periods" I stopped grooming eating and leaving the house and my drive and energy dimminshed to nought.

The same thing is happening with autism. Ive come to find a medium through which my life makes sense. Ive found The inner world which I had lost. For the first time in a decade I experienced genuine wonder. Ive finally come to a place where I can love myself through and through. Then in the course of my persistent researching i'll discover that I can read body language (See the thread: body language "test") or I convince myself that my symptoms only appeared recently and so on and so forth. I basically convince myself that ive deluded myself for 6 months. Im just a maladapted NT stuck between the lunatic fringe and the inner circle. Today I had one of the worst attacks of depression ive had in over a decade as a consequence of this. Im now recovering and will find myself gripped by industry contentment and hope. Within a few weeks i'll be grovelling in the dust in sackloth.

This process has been a staple throughout my youth. I remember thinking along the same lines when I was 12-13 regarding exam and career success. Back then it wasnt as pronounced however.

Even if you learn to mimic or can show a fuller range of emotion doesn't mean that you are or are not a person with Asperger's. I can read faces better than most with Asperger's because I was trained flash cards repeatedly and told what the emotion is. Does that mean if I was going to take a test I'm better than others who didn't do so yes at reading expressions no at comprehending it.

What I was trying to get at is you can be deep in the spectrum in some ways, but hardly in others. A self test doesn't say that your good or bad overall, keep that type test just for entertainment only.