Does anyone think I have Asperger Syndrome? (Or have I gone mad)

My Aspergers my symptoms
Selectively mute (I only talk when spoken to)

Lack empathy but I do have sympathy but I have my own way of expressing it. It might seem like I’m careless

Use fake smiles to disguise I’m ok

Feeling dead inside
No dreams since I was 13

Get migraines from people’s voices

Lack guilt

Don’t know how to socialise or make or maintain friends properly or can’t start a conversation, my way of saying bye is walking away.

Can’t go outside alone without feeling overwhelmed, need someone beside me 

College classroom don’t like table layout
Eye contact is an issue

Body coordination is bad - unbalanced walking, slouching, leaning

Fidgeting with items like turning lights off and on and constantly adjusting per hour

Making schedules everyday and trying to perfect it

Physics and mathematics as daily study as It relieves me

Art - particularly drawing people, calms me down

Head jerking/ flinching

Seizures

Been like this all my life since I started nursery onwards, at home I’m perfectly fine and happiest.

I have an above average IQ

Sleep issues

Routines are important to me

What they tell me
- Asians are culturally quiet (well the ones I know are either shy or loud the shy ones still have plenty of friends and seem to understand the need to socialise, while I feel alienated, alone and misunderstood
- Girls are unlikely to have it- and they assume I have social anxiety - well guess what? Is it possible to be born with social anxiety?
- They use the male criteria to conclude whether I have Aspergers or not.
I’ve been having these issues since I was in nursery, I’ve taken anxiety medication, depressents, and other medications but non have helped me. I’m also 18, that probably why they don’t want to diagnose me.

  • Wow! All praise and understanding there then :( so sad x

  • And there lies the rub....diagnosis is one thing....strategies for moving forward.....well!....plus mopping up the internal wrangling of reviewing the past post diagnosis...in order to try and make sense of how you got where you are now. 

  • Yes I’m sure they are, I’m not looking to differentiate myself from others or anything (though I am kind of) but i want a answer to my long term suffering; something that will be a starting point to improve and understand myself more and by introducing myself to creative solutions I hope I can solve almost everything.

  • Nope it’s ok. I’m just terrible in groups so I have nothing else to say.  I’m a one on one type of person - I love meaningful solving conversations that bring out purpose and clear point and solution to problems (which people say I’m good at giving advice to others but to myself is almost impossible)

  • You're a wise old warrior. ()()()()

  • Hi spotty thank you, I feel The pain of others and that pain can cause me to regress to when I was feeling pain.

    ()()().x

    Dogsbody,we cannot save everyone,but if I can help just one person then it gives a justification for my being here.

    A big virtual group hug just for being us.()()()()()().

  • ) ( said:
    If anything my experiences have taught me to listen to others and give help and understanding to who ever I can.

    Me too.  Strangely.  Because for many years, after school, I hated people.  But now I realise that even the worst bullies are tortured people.

  • I admire all of your strength and honesty. ()()()

  • Apologies to jtk101 for taking over your post,maybe it will give you some feeling of not being so different?

    Some of us have deep issues which sometimes over ride  forum etiquette.

    I am sorry if my recollections have upset anyone but the need to unload overcomes sometimes.

    To Robert and dogsbody, we are survivors. 

    If anything my experiences have taught me to listen to others and give help and understanding to who ever I can.

    You would think we all should have become physcopaths,but we are in fact more self aware and understanding than the majority of NT people.

    Thank you for sharing even though it brought back bad memories,it helps to off load and know I wasn’t the only child who didn’t fit.

    much love to all.

  • I get that but hope you don't disappear Dogsbody.

  • The 'Social Studies' comment is very revealing.  If you don't understand what is being said, it could so easily mean that the teacher isn't making him or herself intelligible.  That was mainly my experience.  I didn't know what the f*** they were talking about for most of the time.

  • I was also born in 62.  So that report was When I was 8.

    I think my mutism was physiological not physical.

    I also had the extra problem that my parents were not English and never spoke English at home.

    So I started school 3 months late (a neighbour became concerned why I was in the garden playing alone and she registered me with the local school).

    So I started school, not understanding any thing that was being said to me.  And it was absolute hell.  I didn't communicate or play with other children.  At break time I was alone often crying.  And for some unknown reason I just didn't speak at all at school for the first 3 years or so.

  • I think I need to be profoundly quiet on the subject now.  I've said my piece of it.

  • You and the others are so quietly profound. It's very affecting. 

  • Robert I was born in 62 your report is pretty much like mine, I have little memory of first school of infants,nine memories so exact and all bad,One was me sat in a class,staring at a black board,trembling as I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I couldn’t hold a pencil,I had no understanding of a letter, as the class came to an end the Male teacher walked up behind my seat and bellowed in my ear” you boy are a waste of my time,you don’t want to learn and spend all your time daydreaming and staring out of the window, you will sit here until you have copied what is on the board,you will not be going outside to play”.

    I sat there shaking and crying,I tried to hold the pencil, I looked at the scribbled mess but as hard as I tried I could not make my scratches look like the scribbles in front of me.

    He came back to me,looked at my paper,snatched it off the desk and shouted” you haven’t even tried,he ranted and shook me so much I wet myself. He then told me to get out.

    I walked out crying with wet shorts,the children outside laughed at me for wetting myself.Another lady teacher saw me and said go to the staff room. I took that long walk in front of everybody, I was told to find some spare clothes and get changed,my things were put in a brown paper bag for me to take home.

    I cannot say if I was mute,I know I always had cotton wool in my ears and had constant ear ache. My only space in class was sat under a table, I was left alone there and didn’t interact with the other children. My other memories are of me at the other end of the class away from the group,allowed to just play on my own.

    can I ask you a seriouse question? Could I have been mute and not remember it.Could I have been so low functioning and not known?

    my only memories are shortly after starting middle school,again more mental abuse by teachers shouting, I had dyslexia but that was not considered a thing back then.

    I am 55 now and Male.I only found out about autism recently. It explains my entire life.i am self diagnosed.

    Most of my memories of being young were me and mum always being together,but never my siblings? They must have been at school.

    we all showed those evil teachers,we are here now making sure these horror stories are known and hopefully helping others that are lost right now.

  • I was never beaten up by my classmates.  Just shunned because I never played, made small talk or communicated.  Because I didn't know how.

    I discovered 40 years later, that I started school 3 months late because my parents didn't know how to register me with a school (and my mother had other excuses).

    At the age of five, my knowledge of spoken English was ZERO.  So I just kept quiet and didn't talk.

    My partial deafness was solved when I was ten and had my ears examined in hospital and they discovered a small piece of newspaper covered in earwax totally blocking my ear canal.

  • Same here, Robert123.  Beaten by teachers.  Beaten by 'fellow' pupils.  For 11 years, until I was beaten up so badly I was hospitalised.  My life should have turned me into a psychopath.  When I got my degree, I sent it to my old school with a photocopied middle finger for them to swivel on.  I wish to redact that entire period of my life.  But I can't.  It's with me every day.

    The kids I can forgive, because kids are evil and cruel creatures in the main.  The teachers?  They should be lined up against a wall.  Because they knew what they were doing, and were old enough to know better.

  • You were never physically beaten!  Lucky you.

    I went to school in the 1960s.  Autism was unknown, and for the first three years.  I  was beaten every day at school, sometimes two or three times a day, by the teachers for not paying attention or answering when spoken to.  

    They knew my problems.   I was mute and partially deaf.  But no help was given.  I've managed to find my oldest school report.  Here is a redacted version.

  • I understand that.  My life is almost meaningless to me now.  I go through the routines of sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat, work.  And I seem to be surrounded by 'normal' people who are looking for every opportunity to get out of their heads.  Which makes me think I'm at least lucky to have my imagination to escape into.  Everyone else seems to just have soap operas and 'Game of Thrones'.  Or drugs.

  • The part I auditioned for was given to some other person,I got the part of,normal mr average,leading an average life but with insufficient make up costumes or lines that made sense,I had to literally be mr average but create the other characters as and when they were needed,

    I have ended up as lead character in a role I didn’t want.