I am 17 years old and have really struggled with making friends for the majority of my life. I think I should introduce some of my issues before telling you why I think I may have them. I am very much a control freak if things don't go my way I get extremely upset and sometimes resort to anger. I hide my problems from my parents and close friends and have never told anybody about them until I got close to my partner. I have always been very 'grown up' for my age and have really grown up over the last 2 years from having friends 3-4 years older than me and being independant. I have always been a very independant person and my parents were very leniant with me. I have had anger issues my whole life and have had 'tantrums' for as long as I can remember. I have a very graphic mind and daydream whenever I am alone, and really enjoy doing so. I have very narrow interests and get extremely obsessed with learning details on certain topics, and often daydream about them. I find it difficult to do what others want to do, and my way always seems like the best way (90% of the time). An example is when I walk places with people, I become extremely uncomfortable walking the way that others want to go. In the past I have walked a seperate route just to show to them that it is quicker (it often was, unless they were out of breathe :L). I am often kept awake at night by fantasising about my 'obsession', there have been many over the years the largest one probably being MMORPG's. I have spoken in great length to my partner about what she thinks about the situation, and she says I have many of the symptoms of asburgers. Often I'll take in something she says but not think to reply which can be very upsetting and I would be upset if she did the same. She really keeps me on the straight and narrow at the moment and since I have come to the conclusion that I may be ASD she has found my ways much easier to deal with. I really think I could benefit from diagnosis and was wondering what you think?
I think I was very asburges as a child but I hid all my problems from my parens because I thought I would dissapoint them if they found out I was getting bullied and not making friends in my new school. I thought I'd outline some of my life for an understanding:
Infant (1-4):
The reason that I think I may have asberges rather than autism is that I had fine motor skills as a child, I was walking by 9 months and talking by 12 months. I had a stutter for a long time and struggled to pronounce my name as I pronounced 'C's at 'T's. I was always very logically minded and would definitely say that I have a good memory (for what I think is important). I was never interested in reading and was always interested as playing. Very little of this is from memory and this is what I heard from my parents. I also used to get tantrums if I didn't get my way, and I mean head banging on the floor tantrums...
Primary school (5-11ish):
I moved schools in Year 1 and did not fit in, I could not handle all the new people and could not make friends, I have a memory of someone in my class saying that I was the 'new kid' but I didn't make friends for the first few years. My parents were so eager for me to love the new school (much nicer area and great OFSTED reports) so I basically told them that it was good. There were about 7 kids that lived on my block that were in my year group and I didn't 'get on' with the majority of them. They all loved to play football which I was no good at, I mean I was literally the worst person in the school at football (sometimes picked last for teams, normally they would say the teams were 'full' and I would have to play alone). I had very intense interests that I would spend hours and hours obsessing over and this had remained the same to this day. I made a friend who also had very few friends and I assume may have had autism, he always isolated himself but wasn't bullied like I was (I don't think anyway). To this day we are probably the most compatible people I know (despite being completely different). I had 4 birthday parties at the Fire Museum and was completely obsessed with Fireman Sam and firefighters until I was about 7 years old. Then I began becoming obsessed with the crazes at school (crazy bones, pokemon cards, yu-gi-oh cards etc) I found that having some common ground and hobbies that were 'cool' meant I could actually talk to some people, however it often ended up in me being bullied or conned. One of my greatest social difficulties in primary school was understanding jokes and sarcasm, I could never understand what people's intensions were by what they said because they were so different. I became extremely obsessed with Runescape (an online computer game) and found that whenever I was sat in school, at home, eating dinner I would constantly be thinking about what I would do next. I often lost sleep over this and still find this an issue I have since had some extreme gaming addictions which I will mention later. In year 5/6 I began listening to very 'emo' music and began self harming, it was never anything serious because I was very succesfull academically and my thinking was that if I try hard enough and go to university then I could have money which would make me happy. I was hopeful for the future and my parents always said that the bullies would grow up and leave me alone. My parents probably saw/heard about 10-20% of the bullying I recieved because of my inability to socialise and get on with people. My parents have always been the best, most supportive parents but I often didn't tell my parents because I was scared they would tell the parents of the other kids and I would be more of a target (which happened on multiple occasions). All in all I left primary school extremely excited for secondary school because I had met my form in an induction and tried really hard to meet new people. I met quite a few people and I was not in the same form as any of the bullies from my primary school.
Secondary school (11-15):
Secondary school was definitely a better experience, I found the lessons enjoyable and enjoyed learning about areas that I was interested in (academia still a key interest). Throughout secondary school I had a group of 'friends', I spent time with them but often felt unwanted. People from my primary school and some of their new friends still gave me trouble through secondary school, my self esteam was much better from making new friends so I took it better than before. I could be quite a difficult person to be around (on reflection) I often took sarcasm seriously and could sometimes make a quick response that would make me look like a complete arsehole, but to me it just seemed like me not getting it. I have also never enjoyed the same things as other people. Popular culture is too generic for me, it is made to be simple and accessible to everyone. I like detailed knowledge and do not enjoy things like the X-Factor and popular music. Academically I was well off and found school a breeze, I was often called a 'boffin' and was often made fun of by people who were failing (jokes on them now). One problem I had was that I would always overthink things, I would plan out the exact way that the day would happen, and when expectation didn't match reality it would be quite upsetting. I would often leave thinking that people didn't enjoy my company and didn't want to see me again but that was not always the case. I struggle reading facial expressions and often found it hard to sociolise and know when to reply in conversation (especially on the phone). I think that secondary school was good for me because I had good friendships and some girlfriends (never went that well or lasted for long). Despite making progress with social interaction I really came out feeling like a crap person. I had no self esteem and often hated myself for trying so hard to make friends but still coming out with very very few. To this day I always have a small group of friends, but I am now okay and happy with this.
Sixth form/present (16-17):
I got a girlfriend near the start of sixth form, she was an extremely close friend that I had spent a ridiculous amount of time beforehand. I knew that if I was getting into a relationship then I would need to be close and care for them a lot before getting properly attatched. We have been together 14 months and we are a great couple, she has really been my saviour when it comes to self esteem. She suffers from depression but I am often able to put her needs before mine (I pretty much never do this). It has been spending 14 months (we have only had 7 days where we have not been together at some point) that has made me realise my real issues. I have had lots of issues that didn't make me think I was asburges/autistic. These have been recent school issues (I'm not going to uni anymore so I really have no interest in school other than business/economics). In the morning if things don't go well (missing hairbrush, oversleep, no towel etc) then I will get very angry, and this is the same in any situation. I have put myself in hospital (smashed an aftershave bottle on my head and cut two fingers badly) and often hit myself in the head, I have quite a hard punch and often can give myself bad headaches. I manage to control my anger enough so that I do not hurt my girlfriend. Most people keep their distance when I am angry, I have had 'tantrums' my whole life and I have been having some therapy for this (after hospital incident). My most recent obsession has been the weight training and my diet. Over half term I spent 2 hours every day training at the gym and when I had to go back to school and give that up I found it impossible. When I missed my training supplements and couldn't get protein shakes when my body needed them most I would get angry and on one occasion almost had a panic attack from losing both of my protein shakers. I literally missed 4 days of school because I wanted to go to the gym (I told myself this was not why). I recently made a website and fb page and it was going really well with over 5000 followers in a month, however it became more important to me than school, especially since I could make a living from a popular website so I told myself that this was how I was going to live my life. At this time my dad was living away from home and I had the house to myself (with my girlfriend) 5 nights a week. He has now moved back to help me with my study when my parents found out that I had been missing school (for almost 2 years they didn't find out that I had about a 65-70% attendance. I think I will manage to finish school because if I looked back and regretted not finishing (only 9 weeks left) I know it would kill me. The chance of regret has been the only reason of me continuing with school for about 6 months (along with my dad not letting me do this).
I have spent the last 2 days non-stop researching asburges and autism and have spent pretty much every waking moment thinking about this. I think a diagnosis could really help me, my girlfriend and close friends + family really understand why I can be such a control freak and why I have anger issues. I know you're probably bored out of your skulls if you've read this much but I needed to explain as much as I could. Also would this document be good enough to give to a GP? I think I would much prefer to give a written piece that talk to a stranger about it, the reason that I find my current therapist easy to talk to is because he's down to earth (and my auntie's partner) and I can do it an a home environment.
Thank you for your time and I hope that I can get this done quickly.
Wow I just checked and that's 2206 words!
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I get distracted extremely easily and can leave the room to do/get 1 thing and do/come back with more. When on the computer I often have around 20 tabs open and often go off on a tangent. I should probably also mention that I wet the bed until ab out 8/9, maybe even older.