Hey there, everyone. I hope this is the correct place to be doing this kind of thing - if not, I'd appreciate someone letting me know. In the meantime, bear with me.
My name is AJ - I'm nineteen, and from early childhood I've been dealing with some kind of psychiatric illness or disorder that has had a dramatic (nearly crippling) effect on my social development, though recently I've begun having doubts as to exactly what, and I'm hoping someone around here can lend me a hand pinning it down. I'm not looking for a professional diagnosis, obviously, but having a more educated or experienced opinion than my own would be very helpful.
Though I don't remember it clearly myself, my mother tells me that when I was a young child I was very precocious (her word), but had extreme difficulty relating to people my own age (which remains the case to this day). I would often fail to understand what others were trying to communicate to me, which would cause me to become frustrated to the point of lashing out; teasing in particular was guaranteed to make me cry, as I never understood that the person did not, in fact, mean what they were saying or doing, and I wanted them to stop. I tried to make friends, but was often labeled as 'weird' by other kids, and never understood why. At this age I don't believe I had the crippling level of social anxiety that would characterize my adolesence; my guess is that that came later once I'd had a little over a decade to associate social interaction with embarassing misunderstandings or humiliation.
I was first taken to a psychiatrist when I was about nine, because my mother feared I had inherited Bipolar Disorder from her. I still go to the psychiatrist I've been going to for most of the ten years since then, though I'll likely have to change soon because he only works with children and adolescents - I'm not looking forward to it, as I've come to trust him. He initially diagnosed me with a cocktail of Bipolar Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which still provides an explanation for a decent number of my symptoms, but far from all of them. My current medications keep me from having free-floating depression or anxiety, but I still experience both when confronted with something that causes them, which I'll get into later.
From my pre-teenhood onward my difficulty interacting with others became crippling to the point of dysfunction. As one might expect, the social stumbling I experience became less acceptable than it was when I was a young child, less excusable, and it was the increasingly disapproving reactions of others that started to really keep me from living a fulfilling life. This also coincided with my parents' divorce, and later my father's remarriage to a woman who was extremely intolerant of my oddities and reacted to them harshly. We get along very well now, but that was a very long, difficult road that required a lot of compromise and learning on both our parts. Again, more on that later. My point is that it was a time of extreme change for me, and change has always been frightening and overwhelming for me - even now, when my mom is considering selling the house she's owned since the divorce for something much smaller and more manageable. It's a good decision, hardly something to be scared of, but as I'm still living with her while I attend the university, the possibility of such an upset in my routine raises the hair on the back of my neck.
The last three years have brought a gradual but great amount of improvement for me; I'm relatively happy and I function very well, which I managed by taking it upon myself to learn more about what I'm feeling, make my own decisions, and settle into the identity I'm most comfortable with, rather than the one that I think will make people like me, as I tried to do in highschool. However, I feel far from normal, and recent research into ASD's has both startled and vaguely unsettled me with how relatable all its personal accounts are. Aside from the above, here is why;
I tend to satisfy my need for social interaction almost solely within my family - that is, my mother and little brother, whom I am very comfortable with. They don't bother me if I don't look at them while I'm talking to them, they know about my interests and don't mind that I don't like to share overmuch, and they're generally glad to talk when I want to talk and let me be quiet and alone when I want that instead (though my mother often complains that I don't understand her sarcasm). My mom asks me now and then if I feel lonely, as I have no other friends in town and only really leave the house to go to class; she's very extroverted and needs frequent and varied social interaction to feel happy, and I understand her projecting her own needs on me, but I really don't feel lonely at all. I'm very content with my routine and my interests and my own level of interaction.
I have a small number of intense interests, one in particular which, if I let it, would dominate my entire life - and nearly does anyway, I should add. I love writing; I do it for hours every day, and when I can't be writing I'm usually thinking about what I'll write when I'm in a position to do so again. If I don't have another task or person actively holding my attention, that's where my mind will be. My strong interest in reading is actually what's helped me get a stronger grasp on gestures, facial expressions, and emotions; I learned from living in various characters' heads what they meant when they said or did certain things, how they interpreted what other people did, etc. It was amazingly helpful. My other interests, handily enough, include psychiatry; I can spend hours looking up articles on it. Dogs come in shortly after that - I can understand and relate to them so much better than I can with humans. I call my Boston Terrier my best friend, and that's honestly true.
Loud or clamorous noises and crowds overwhelm me to the point where I can't fully function, and intensity and quality of light has a marked effect on my mood. My mom knows not to turn on a certain light in the living room because it "feels wrong" to me, though I let her sometimes without complaining - part of becoming more functional, I've found, is learning to compromise what makes me comfortable occasionally to accomodate other people. When I'm just thinking I am always twirling my hair, chewing my nails, picking scabs or biting my lip, but those just seem like typical habits to me. What really seems like stereotypies is what I do when I'm anxious, angry, overwhelmed, or scared; I contort my fingers and rotate my wrist repetitively. I can physically stop myself if I really try, but it feels wrong to do so, and the moment I stop thinking about it I'll do it again. When I see something "wrong" I have to roll my eyes back in my head and click my tongue, as if "deleting' it. I find both of these things very soothing, though they annoy my mother immensely.
There are a couple of things that make me doubt enough to avoid a tentative self-diagnosis, however. One of these is that I am capable of making eye contact; I don't like to, preferring to look at a person's nose, chin, over their shoulder, or away from them entirely if I can, but if I'm in a calm mood I can easily look them in the eye for a few seconds and smile to let them know that I'm listening. Prolonged eye contact just doesn't work, but depending on how relaxed I am I can do it off and on. Sometimes I stare, but not always. Additionally, I've managed at this point to get a grasp of facial expressions and tones of voice; I had to teach myself to do it, but I can smile and frown and vary my tone appropriately. I tend to say certain words exactly the same way every time (such as the way I greet people or say thank you), but it seems to come out sounding normal and even charming, based on the reactions I get.
Essentially, my doubt here is that my condition "isn't severe enough", like the way I am is somehow invalidated because other people have it worse, and that those people would feel insulted if I tried to claim to be like them. It feels very similar to the period of doubt I had before confidently classifying myself as transexual, because my mother and others, even myself, said that I "wasn't masculine enough". As if I couldn't identify as male just because I have no interest in sports or cars, because I don't feel comfortable in an assertive posture or with a "masculine" walk. Not even biological males all adhere to a certain standard of masculinity - I know that now, and I've settled happily and comfortably into a transexual identity, but somehow this feels different.
I don't WANT to be on the spectrum, because it's just insulting to the people who had a medical condition to want it like it's something trendy and cool, but it would explain a lot about me that I've never been able to neatly classify before. It would explain why I can't just "get over" my need for rituals, my objection to irrational things, or my obsessively intense interests because someone says I should be able to. I think it might help me justify these parts of myself with the rest of my identity, but I'm afraid to talk to my mother about it or to ask my psychiatrist for his opinion just yet. I feel like because they've both thought of me as bipolar and obsessive compulse all my life they'll be unwilling to amend their opinion. My mother would almost certainly think I was just trying to get attention or find some sort of excuse to hide behind in the future. I want none of those things - I'm just curious, I just want to know.
In conclusion, what do the rest of you think? Do I sound like I land somewhere on the autism spectrum?
EDIT;; As an afternote, I had no delay during infancy in learning to speak, and no issue with cognitive development.
