I've just joined this community as I only recently thought that I might have Asperger's Syndrome. Although, I'm very confused as to whether I do or not.
I rarely go to see my doctor for anything and anytime I do I am always concerned that he is going to think that I am just a hypochondriac or a timewaster. I'm trying to avoid going to see him, so I thought I'd try and gauge what other people are going through.
I did some of the online tests for AS and I scored 32 on one and 33 on two others – which I believe is borderline.
To be honest, I never really thought I was different until recently when I was talking to my friend about how frustrated I get when the other people in my work “staple things incorrectly”. He kind of laughed at me as apparantly other people don’t have a specific way of stapling… he also doesn’t have a colour-coding system for how to eat his Smarties – that’s not “normal” either?
I don’t make friends easily, and I prefer to have a few close friends rather than be in a large social group. My friends and family know that I am not good in social situations like parties, but I always thought that it was purely social anxiety. Even when going out to meet with my friends I can get pretty worked up.
I’ve never been good with social interactions and I find forming close relationships difficult. People tend to think of me as aloof.
I find verbal comunication difficult and prefer to “talk” to people via text or email. However, when I email people they have a tendancy to run on and on (like this post).
I don’t like spontieity. If I am making plans I want to know what is happening well in advance. I feel more comfortable with routines – and get unsettled when they are disrupted.
When people make jokes around me I have a tendancy to take them litterally.
I constantly misunderstand peoples gestures towards me.
I am very good at remembering birthday and numbers, but I’m not great with remembering names.
I have what is refered to as a "filmographic memory". I have the ability to recall full conversations I have had with people years ago - not every conversation though, just some and they can be quite random memories, and I see memories as moving images full of detail.
I can be quite obsessive about a new subject for a short space of time, before I get bored of it.
I follow rules carefully and feel frustrated when I see others not doing so – for example, if a sign says keep your feet off the seats, why should other people think it’s ok to put their feet up?
But from my reading I would say that there are some of the more prominent symptoms that I don’t have… such as the physical things. I’m not especially clumsy of have unusual posture.
Although I sometimes struggle to understand what other people mean, I don’t feel that I lack empathy for others.
I don’t think of myself as having a limited range of interests. I am interested in a large number of topics – so much so that I am an expert in nothing, but pride myself in having a small amount of knowledge in many subjects.
And I am honest to a fault. I lost a very close friend for ten months because of this. During this time I regularly emailed him and he never replied. Only now that I am considering myself to have AS, and that I simply don’t understand people do I realise that him ignoring me all that time was his way of replying. I didn’t get it and kept harassing him.
Amazingly we are now speaking again, but obviously I’m finding comunicating with him difficult. I want to clear the air but he just says we should “let it go”, which isn’t something I feel comfortable doing as I can't read between the lines and work out what happened. He was pretty upset with me and I can’t work out why he started talking to me again.
And having read over that last few sentences, I see I also have a tendancy to go off at a tangent.
