I suspect I may have Aspergers. Help me out?

Post Reply New Topic

Hey there. After long consideration, and dealing with a number of issues throughout my whole life, I am wondering if I have Asperger's. I'm planning on finding a specialist to help determine a diagnosis, but for now, I was wondering if I'd be able to get some feedback based on my symptoms:

- I do NOT handle stress well at all. Especially tasks which I percieve to have many tasks at once. Which is anything. Learning to cook for example, feels excruciating. Not because I don't think I'd do a good job, but because the mechanical or physiological task of thinking about many aspects of, cutting food, for example, feels overwhelming. For exaxmple, rather than viewing it as "cutting food", my mind breaks it down as, "Lifting up the knife, slamming down the knife". I get pictures of each of those steps, as opposed to just telling myself to cut food.

- I feel empathy only when I spend a lot of time "calculating" why people's well-being matters. I'm in the middle of writing a book, and the more that I can put into words why society should logically matter to a human being, the more I feel emotion/empathy.

- I'm a very, very black-and-white thinker. Or have a tendency to be. I've had to teach myself how to step away from that. As a child, I was very religious, and took doctrine to heart in extremes

- I have no desire to socialize with people. I have before, but deep down, even on my best days, I do not feel the same as other human beings. I feel as if all my social habits are even intonations in my voice are self-taught, and I have had to observe people and imitate them in order to learn social behavior

- When I was younger, my sister criticized me a lot because I was way too much of an open book. I fixated on spirituality, and it was all I talked about with anyone, and never conceived of the idea that people could feel uncomfortable by the obsession. I remember my sister telling me to ask more questions, and do to very specific things in order to be "normal" in conversation. At the time, I thought she was just being critical, but looking back, the fact is, I was pretty socially abnormal. My parents would even tell me I needed more balance in waht I talked about.

- I have had to teach myself social behaviors/emotionally connect to social behaviors in odd ways...standing in front of the mirror, and acting out very detailed nuances and facial expressions.

- Eye contact has always been very difficult. I've taught myself how to make eye contact by staring at a pair of eyes I drew on a piece of paper for 20 minutes on end. Then when I was with people, I'd picture myself staring at the piece of paper, and I'd be able to hold eye contact.

- I'm waiver between two obsessions of music and philosophy. In both, I HAVE to write down an exact step by step system to reach a certain emotional state or state of thinking so as to enjoy whatever I'm doing.

- I definitely need routine. The anxiety of interruption is better than it used to be, but that's because I consciously expect difficulty if my routine will be interrupted. Before, I would get really angry, and feel hopeless about accomplishing my life goals if my routine was interrupted.

- I have to draw out mind maps of abstract concepts in order to break minor details down..For example..I have this absolute need to categorize every possible topic that could take place in conversation.

- As I write this, I guess I definitely function better when I feel assured I have picked up on the "hierarchy" of categories in the things that I do.

- Socializing is plain difficult.

- Affective empathy is just not there. I feel affective empathy when I think through the world "mathematically". In other words, when I can visualize how one action I perform could affect the whole world on a probabilistic or mathematical level, I feel more compassionate towards humanity. very difficult to explain.

- Relationships feel like a game to me. At one point, I had to write down the many different phases that go into making and keeping a friend. A system of sorts. I function completely by systems i've written down and memorized for myself.

- I've had to teach myself intonation and vocal expression.

- I've spent more time teaching myself how to act socially normal, than actually being social.

- I burn out very easily and feel hopeless with any sort of change in my routine at work.


I hope this gives a decent idea of what's going on. Please give me any input you may have. Thank you.

I'd say you definitely fit the Asperger's diagnosis. I myself was diagnosed 15 years ago and have many of the same character traits you listed.

Based upon your description of your personality, I would be surprised if you were not on the spectrum.

You have a lot of Autistic traits so you have made the correct decision to see an autism specialist. You should give the clinician the list of what you wrote here.