How did you find out about Aspergers?

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So the question is self-explanatory.

I first heard about Asperger's about six years ago from a few things I read about online. I didn't know much about it but it sounded like something that I should look into. I went to a psychiatrist to find out more and have it investigated, but I was basically told that it couldn't be case if I suspected it and had the DSM-IV definition spelled out for me...
Anyway, that was last I thought of it until this year when I came across it again and found there was a lot more information around now than before. Needless to say, my suspicion of me being an aspie are much greater than back then.

I spent year after year asking the dr's to look at my daughter's struggles and they refused. Until we landed at a naturopath who suggested a gluten free, casein free, low processed sugar diet to manage her UTI's, yeast and bowel issues. I went to a GI specialist and she asked what we were doing for her and why she was on the diet, so I explained that we were on a mission to find some answers to all her sensory needs, tantrums, GI issues, obsessions, etc and they thought we were insane.

That was when I started reading into the GFCF diet info and found Autism and Asperger's written all over the place. All of the Asperger's information rang true in our daily life and I was shocked and amazed that I had finally stumbled upon the answer! At that point, I had a child development specialist in to discuss my findings and where to go from that point and she said "nah, she doesn't have asperger's, she would be more Bill Gates" and sent us to a neurologist, who ruled autism out and suggested OCD...

which took us on a 4 year detour, but we finally landed back in the arms of Asperger's.

*sigh*

I'd heard of it before in a vague sense before, but I don't think I ever really understood what it is was until I saw the character of Jerry "Hands" Espensen on Boston Legal. Earlier this year I was playing him in an RPG (yes, I'm a geek.) and I looked up Aspergers on wiki to get a basic idea of what made him tick. And it hit me like a anvil when I read what exactly it was. But I wrote it off as unlikely. That was this spring.

Through out the summer I've improved in some ways with my Tourette's, but in some ways I seem so hopelessly out of it. Socially and emotionally, mostly. I get so tired of not understanding what people mean and always saying the wrong thing or reacting the wrong way. The title of this forum was on the wiki article and it stuck with me. So a few weeks ago I pulled the wiki article back up, started researching, and ended up here.

The more I read and discuss on here, the more I am confident that I am an Aspie. Oddly enough, it's a great thing in my eyes because it means that I'm not as crazy as I thought I was. And if I know what's wrong with me, then maybe I can adapt. I've given up being "fixed" because I'm not broken. I'm just wired different.

I heard and read about it all in the same week. I was reading "The Out of Sync Child" because I already knew my child had sensory issues and I just knew that was all that was wrong with him but school was refusing to give him OT and I didn't know what to do! There was a little paragraph in there that talked about Asperger's and it was like being hit by a rock. So of course I immediately looked it up on the internet. That same week was Thanksgiving and we went to a gathering of family and friends and one of the people there is a child psychologist and I was talking to him about my son and he watched him for awhile and talked to him some and told me it sounded like he had Asperger's. Until that week I had never even heard the word Asperger's, and then I got hit by it twice.

My psychologist introduced me to AS. I then looked it up and was amazed that other people actually had similar life experiences to what I've had. AS makes sohhh much more sense to me than the totally off-base diagnosis that a self-serving psychiatrist-bully tagged me with when I refused to work with him.

My ex has it and mentioned it. Didn't think much of it at the time other than just another label. Then I started being interested in a local man who I, for some reason, felt also had it...got a book on it called 'Loving mr spock' and ended up laughing out loud as I identified with so much of his traits.

One word: Wikipedia.

My doctor told me about it.
I had never heard of it before.

I've found out about it, when I was reading my local paper, back in 1994.

I first read about it (& it sunk in) on a Harry Potter board. I'd never heard about it before that. Quite a shock to google it & have your life flash before your eyes. I'm still on the floor.

I never found out about it. I was never told by any doctors about it. I was never even consulted I might have it. I was only tld I have it by my mother. But she never told me what it was. I wished she sat down and explained to me what it was and maybe buy me a book about it to read it or hand me an article about it or have me read information about it printed from the internet. Instead she left me assuming what it was and kept telling me how my brain works differently and how I need more information to understand things because I couldn't understand verbal comands. "Beth, do the dishes," and I would just stand there not knowing what I am supposed to do. What about them? How am I supposed to do them? I would need more instructions, steps by steps. I was also told I have a different learning style and I kept being told "That's part of Asperger's." and I be clueless still because what I was doing seemed normal and I couldn't understand what was so different. My mother just had to wait two years before she finally pulled out a bunch of papers on AS printed from the internet from 1998 and gave them to me to read. She even had a page printed off about NVLD and a few on autism but most of them was on AS. It helped me understood it more and understand me more about myself and why it was hard for me to make friends, being literal and troubles understanding jokes and sarcasm is indeed part of AS, lot of aspies want to have friends and that was indeed me and they will follow instructions on the paper and that was also me. The information about it was different back then but a lot has changed since then. Now its about we have no interest in friends instead of lot of us want to have friends but don't know how to make them or keep them. Now it's all about good with computers and into electronics and all. Back then it was all about what our difficulties were but it said the postive side like we will follow instructions on papers. But back when I read about it I didn't even realize I had problems with reading body language and picking up on people's feelings etc. until I was in my late teens. It was thanks to my shrink and to other people from what they told me. They tell me how I made them feel and I would be shocked they felt that way and I didn't even know it. I can remember saying to my shrink that NTs expect me to read their minds instead of telling metheir feelings and he told me I don't pick up on their cues or read their body language or emotions. Amazing how oblivious I was to my traits. But I was in denial back then and blamed it on NTs instead. I didn't believe in mind reading back then until I read an article about it.

It was mentioned in a fanfiction I was reading about 3 years ago and I had no idea what Asperger's was so I looked it up on Wikipedia.

It was first suggested to me by a support worker from an organisation in the UK called MIND - who are a mental health charity.

I had gone to visit them because despite anti-depressants, tranquilizers, years of counselling and diagnoses of depression and GAD, I wasn't feeling any better and was struggling more and more to understand the world and to cope with day to day things.

The support worker said that it sounded like I had Asperger Syndrome and gave me some really good information on it. I read the description - and it was like reading about myself.

After 2 years of wrestling witht he National Health Service, I finally got a formal diagnosis.

I watched a documentary on it - Luke Jackson (UK). At the time I thought "that could be me" but I figured as he was mildly younger than I was and got diagnosed so early on that if I had it I would've been diagnosed, because surely my mum cared about me enough to warrant it. I figured wrong. I also talked myself out of the suggestion when I got told off for being a hypochondriac (I had been poring through a medical dictionary for years and getting obsessed with it, I didn't think I had any of the diseases, I just wanted to know about them).

Then, years later on a night out, I met Macbeth. As I got drunker and drunker, my history came pouring out and he asked me if I had ever been tested for Asperger's. He was officially diagnosed and explained why he thought I had it. And then, as they say, the rest is history!

It was a little bit of my own research and what a friend told me. I think she found it interesting that I told her right off the bat that I was insensitive, and I suppose it's unusual for someone to admit that they're insensitive because they probably wouldn't know it, but another friend made me realize that when I asked her about it. I had to tell her I wouldn't be offended if she told me, and I wasn't really. While I was studying a physiology course, I think the topic of autism came up briefly, but I found it interesting because the traits that were described closely matched my personality. So I looked it up, and found that I had much in common with other people who had autism. I left that for awhile because I had more things to worry about than whether or not I had autism, and then when I later met my friend, and she observed me for awhile, she suggested that I perhaps might have Asperger's syndrome, and to look it up. After reading some of its symptoms, most of which match mine, I'm fairly sure I have AS.

I work in a group home, and a few years ago I was working in a home taking care of an autistic man. I could see SO much of myself in him - he was like a 'lower-functioning' version of me. There was lots of info on autism in the home, including stuff on the higher functioning end of the spectrum and that's where I read about AS for the first time. All my life I knew I was different and this was finally the answer to all that.