Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm a 32yo guy with Asperger's, I've always picked up on things more than I think "normal" people do but recently I've become even more aware of this. This could be a tap dripping in another room, the smell of burning that everyone else has totally missed, the werid noise coming from their car engine, the text that's out of alignment in a presentation by a pixel from one page to the next, the bad calculation on a page etc. These things stand out to me like a foghorn, the smell of an open sewer or a big flashing light and bug the hell out of me, I want to fix them even though to everyone else they don't even register. If I'm not careful these things can annoy me until I can fix them.
Does anyone else suffer with the same thing and have you found any suitable coping mechanisms to stop caring about fixing these things if it's not really within your remit?
Absolutely! My big things are spellings - I can spot a misspelling a mile off. And car number plates - I don't do it consciously but I seem to be a mine of useless information, including car reg numbers. If I see a car I've seen before, whether hours or years later, I can tell whoever is with me where I saw it last or where it is parked when not used. I can also spot if a car seems to be following me for some reason.