newly diagnosed, bit of a shocker

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So, my whole life I suffered from "excessive emotion" as it was described. Told "i analyze everything too much" in the hospital (incarcerated for depression, anxiety, and recently, mania) it is only after my own initiative in the medical procedure that my secret emotionless inner child was discovered. Apparently my childhood self was decidedly autistic (never seemed to recognize or display emotion, took everything literally, engaged in bizarre behavior), and it was only after I turned 21 and something in my head clicked that this same complete lack of empathy for those arround me resurfaced.

People just seem foolish, even slavish. Sometimes I feel like one of the only people around me capable of exercising will power. It is a bit frightening but in a wonderful way. I am having all sorts of fantastic and horrible childhood memories. A lifelong history of verbal abuse on the part of my mother, and emotional neglect on the part of my father.


What's your story, when did you find out about your asperger's? I think it indicates more of a gift than a curse. I think what it really is is the ability to see beyond the mundane in life, to see into the infinite. It is only since I accepted this as a gift rather than a curse that the beauty of my own life has opened up to me, even though I am convinced I have every physical disease I read about. I actually suffer from arthritis. I had shingles in 12th grade. My bones always hurt. But I am happier than I've ever been.


BTW I want to clarify. When I say Asperger's, I really don't believe "Asperger's" is actually a developmental disorder. I actually think it is the result of a mind hellbent on order from earliest childhood. This obsession with the ideal is what causes the mind to develop so abnormally.

The only disorder is that the autism spectrum culture needs to be accepted.

My husband and I used to call ourselves and people we recognised like us as Misfit Toys, then we had a profoundly autistic daughter. We noticed that there was a lot about her that we shared, except that she was far more disabled from anxiety and input than we were.

Then we had a son who was not developing like other kids. The school finally decided that he was autistic, too, even though he was a lot more like my husband and me than he was like my daughter. When he was diagnosed, we realized that our whole extended family wasn't crazy. We were all on the spectrum!

I never even heard of AS until recently. Pure coincidence stumbling upon the term, and when I first looked it up, some of it seemed to really apply to me. This scared me, though while I knew I wasn't normal, I didn't want to actually not be. So I pushed the idea back into the recesses of my mind.

A person very close to me, who recently discovered and related to AS, insisted I look into it further.
And when I did, all the things in me that I could explain/couldn't explain, seemed to click. I have no official diagnosis, and probably won't for a while as I have no idea to go about doing that, and things I don't know how to do petrify me.

But still, after being here for a little while and observing others and their ways, and how for the what seems like the first time finally being able to relate to them...I have no doubts.

I discovered AS, while researching 'savant syndrome'. I have alot of similarities to savant syndrome but, it wasn't an exact match. That's when I found a description of AS, and its symptoms. Finally, an exact match. Right then, I knew exactly who I was. That knowledge helped me tremendously, and I'm now a better person, because of it. I believe that in order to fix a problem(any type), you first have to know it's cause. Now, I know the cause, and I'll probably spend the rest of my life, working on my problems.

At least now, I know where to start.

I discovered AS after working at a summer camp for kids with disabilities. I spent most of the summer with kids who needed more supervision ( lower functioning or E/B disorders). One session i worked with the higher functioning crowd and clicked with a kid with AS. His record said he was very touch aversive, so when he decided to hug me and the rest of the consolers good bye on the last day, his mom was almost in tears.

I saw a lot of me in him, ex we both like to spin ( i got to spin in a public setting for the first time in like 12 years yay!). After the summer ended i looked up more on AS and eventually found this place.

I hear that the kid might be coming to a respite this spring ( respite = weekend were family drops kid off and kid spends weekend at camp having fun), hope i work it.

Also after i started working at teh camp, my mom told me my cousin had been diag PDD-NOS 2 years earlier ( i had lived about 360miles away for the previous 2 years so i was out of the loop). The cousin that i had already felt was a lot like me, like the fact that at just about every family gathering we both have our " special meals" that we eat instead of the food served ( me: cheese sandwich, him: hot dog w/o the roll).

In fact before this summer i had no idea what autism was, now I am going to school to be a special ed teacher!

My son got diagnosed with it after they picked up some things at the school.

The teachers had met me and said "the apple never falls far from the tree"

When reading up on it, my wife said - "this is about you" - so I read the aspergers book - it was all about me.

We then asked the paediatrician about me and got a pretty much on-the-spot diagnosis. I'm fairly obviously aspie I guess.

I found out about aspergers from my mother.

My grandmother was watching a tv show one day about teaching kids good manners. There was a little girl on there with aspergers. She rang up my mother while the tv was on and said..."Turn to channel 1, theres a girl on there with something called aspergers syndrome who is nearly exactly like your daughter was at that age,".

My mother told me the next day that she thinks I have something called asperger syndrome and is going to book an appointment to see if I can get diagnosed. Sure enough, I was diagnosed.

I was diagnosed with AS when I was 16 by a pediatrician who works with kids and teens with ADD, learning disabilities, and developmental disorders. He said my obsessive interests, my trouble with socializing and communication, my sensory sensitivities, my clumsiness, and my auditory processing issues were dead giveaways for AS.