Hello, Am I Autistic?

Hello :)

I have come here because over the past few weeks it has occurred to me that I might be autistic, and it's become an obsession. I would like to find out whether I am autistic, or the problems I've experinced have different explanations or causes. I can't work out if I am or if I am not. This is a long post and it is my life-story. I don't know what is or is not relevant, so I am putting everything I can think of. The reason I may seek a diagnosis of autism is because I have another mental problem, perenially recurring auditory hallucinations which are the voices of my friends and family, and in times of stress become very loud and intrusive and say cruel things, like calling me "retard, retard" over and over. It makes me very depressed when it is bad. But it occurred to me that a lot of my stress is from social and work environments and the difficulties I have with people. I also have other difficulties. For example, until last year, it never occurred to me that when I felt hungry, I was supposed to eat. This is why I think whenever I have moved away from home, I have become very underweight. I don't know this is autism, it seemed like stupidity to me. Now I eat when I'm hungry I'm much happier :)

Generally about myself: I see my emotions as shapes and colours in my body as well as feel them as sensations, the shapes, direction of movement, and colours correlate to the points of physical sensation on my body. Until two years ago I thought this was the same for everyone. I initially thought I was not autistic because I have always been highly verbal, spoke my first word at six months and was apparently capable of cogent conversation at 1 years old, but I can't recall. I can write fluently in different styles, and I can speak in different ways and manners, if I wanted I could be an actor or impressionist, but I do not like attention. I have always found social situations very difficult, cannot cope in a group or with more than one person, but I have adapted by being quiet and by drinking or drugs which numb or nullify thought. When I was younger I learned the rules of manners and etiquette and would apply them to all social situations. I am extremely intelligent and can think very very quickly, making myriad connections, but I have never been socially manipulative because it doesn't occur to me, and because I wouldn't want to manipulate people. I found philosophy much easier than understanding other people in social situations. I am not unempathic, I am extremely empathic. I have very strong emotions and always have.

I have a Master's degree with distinction in the History of Political Thought, it is the history of philosophy, the history of ideas. I studied all the great thinkers beginning with Socrates in the Western tradition. I was particularly interested in British idealism, the Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics and Epistemology. These were some of my philosophical interests during my undergraduate and MA and afterwards.

I have always lectured people on my interests and been unable to tell when they were bored, again I just thought this was normal, and is largely quite normal in an academic context. It is only after leaving University that I had difficulties because of it, and now I err on the side of caution and stay quiet or respond to questions. I don't think my social problems are anywhere near as bad as they were.

My whole life I have been called odd and strange. I have always had social difficulties but assumed that these were normal. I did not fit in naturally to groups, at about the age of 11 I began analysing in earnest social groups and their functioning, and how individuals fit into groups, so that I could fit in. This was because my mum told me I had to make friends. When I was in infants, I did play with other kids sometimes, and it was mostly Power Rangers.

Before the age of 11, I had very few friends. This was because only two children lived on my street, but I had no other friends in school (and the kids on my street were older than me.) I played alone, and would run around the perimeter of the schoolyard playing. I was playing in my imagination, all sorts of things, but to other people it looked like I was talking to my hand, and they thought I was weird and avoided me, or picked fights with me. In my first school I was in a fight almost every day. I never played football, but one time a teacher made me play, and I was really good (I had no idea how) but that was the only time I played.

I moved to a new school, and had no friends again, and would run around the outside of the yard alone in circles. I was playing Star Wars, or Wizards, or all sorts of things, very very complex, I would plot social structures of the fantasy universes I made, I was fascinated with social order, because I was also trying to make friends and work out how. Then there was a camping trip, and I went on it. It was fun. I was extremely anxious, but I mostly kept quiet, and I played cards with the other kids, I remember I had a lot of trouble learning how to play but once I could I loved it, and I kept quiet, and the other kids accepted me.

After this I was much happier. I made best friends with a boy who was very intelligent like me, he is now a geneticist at Oxford University, but it was a sort of friendship of necessity, we were both intelligent, and he was ginger.

I have been obsessed with computer games since I was very young, and I was a serious television addict. I could watch all day every day. I was intelligent because I was obsessed with Civilization II, and I read the whole Civilopedia and memorized it, and suddenly I was the best in the class at quizzes. Sometimes it got too much for me in the class, and I would put my head on the table to listen to the underwater sounds, it made everyone sound like you were underwater, and I could calm down. I was picked on for this.

In comprehensive I again had no friends, but I was the first boy to play Pokemon Cards, and I was obsessed with them, and I was like the Pokemon King. I didn't know anything about them, but everyone would come to me to ask about Pokemon Cards, and I would watch the games and things. I didn't understand it at the time, but I liked being the authority on Pokemon, and I learned all about them.

I also had braces, and I would not change my hair so that it was fashionable, I couldn't face the change. I thought this was why I had no friends, because in year 9 my braces came off, and my aunty convinced me to change my hair, and I got it spikey and with blonde bits, and in the meantime I had started watching Kerrang. I had seen all of Dragonball Z so many times, so I turned to Kerrang one day, and then that was it, all I did was watch music videos after school, until someone else wanted the TV. I got really into rock music, and I wore a black hoodie, and all of a sudden I was cool and had friends. I still had no idea with social interactions and people found me odd. But in the meantime I had made new friends, and I started to go out with them after school to places. It was mostly always terrifying but I had a lot of fun and saw new things, I was always all the time trying to work out how the social groups worked, but I was only a boy and I couldn't really.

Then I went on to study politics, sociology and history, they were all very easy, then politics undergraduate, also very easy, and then my MA in intellectual history, this was more difficult but I had the highest mark, beating people from Oxbridge and so on.

The end of university was cataclysmic for me. I began hearing voices, which I had forgotten about, and I became extremely depressed. It took a long time to recover. The voices have never gone away again. After university, I worked in a kitchen as a pot washer, and it took me a long time to learn but I really enjoyed the job. Then I worked in a chemist shop, and I hated it. I liked learning about the drugs, but I couldn't deal very with customers. After that I became an EFL teacher and went to Vietnam. This was the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. I went alone, and it was the first time I had lived more than two hours from my house. I cried a lot. It was torture. It was also an incredible experience, that I would never ever repeat, but I am glad I had.

I am not, from my research, typically autistic. I like people. I love people often very intensely, and I want to be friends with them. I am fine socialising with one person, or two people if I know them well. It is groups, wth so many things happening and no way I can keep track that I can't cope. In university I was quite social and had a group of friends, but coped because I drank extremely heavily. I could not socialise sober, and I still can't. I became dependant on alcohol and have had to give it up. Since I stopped drinking, I have had two social engagements. Even with a lot of alcohol, large group socialising could be terrifying and difficult. Once I have a group of friends, I am generally ok and not anxious, but still awkward.

I dont know if I am autistic, but I find a lot of things most people have no difficulty with extremely stressful. When I was 14, which is the earliest I remember the voices, I tried to commit suicide. It was a serious attempt with the intention of my death, after I'd become very depressed. I thought I was going mad and was terrified of being put in an asylum, so I told noone. I had one visit from a psychiatric nurse and I told him everything is fine, and after that me and my family forgot all about it.

If you met me, you may think I am odd, but I think I'm quite good at social interaction now and would not really be distinguishable. I'm funny and I make jokes, which I also spent a lot of my life learning to do, and I like making people laugh. But this is in some ways worse than if I appeared more odd when you first met me, because the difficulties I have are quite subtle now. I can't give an accurate picture because I have essentially stopped socialising, except on a MUSH (a multiplayer text based internet programming game) I have played since I was young.

When I was younger, I took most things literally, everyone called me gullible all the time. I would fall for the simplest tricks. I felt stupid, but I don't really conceive of people lying. If I know someone is a liar, I can observe them closely and cross-reference their statements with my knowledge to check for truth validity (now) but when I was younger obviously I couldn't, and believed everyone by default.

I always hated change (I don't hate anything now, but change still upsets me. I live with my nan, and she has a compulsion to move furniture an ornaments, and the shock of everything being different and not in its place always really upset me, and still upsets me.

I don't know if I'm autistic and I'd like some help. If I am, I don't think it is debilitating, except I have reduced my life to what's manageable. I did the test twice, about a week apart, once as a list and once as individual questions, and I got 34. The second time I was sure my answers were not autistic and my score would be lower.

Because the voices and the depression became too much, I now chant Om Mani Padme Hum in my head quite a lot of the time. This works really well for me, and I have moved home and eat properly, and I'm much happier. I don't want to waste the doctor's time, but I think if I suffer hallucinations under stress which then compounds my stress, if the cause or root of my stress might be autistic patterns of thought or behaviour in a world in which I can't cope, then it might be relevant. Sorry for such a long post, I still don't understand what autism is really. A lot of my life seems to make sense in the context of autism, but some parts do not obviously, and I am worried I am colouring my analysis with confirmation bias, and my social isolation and consequent behaviours have another cause. So I'd just like to hear your thoughts, if any of this accords with your life or experiences :)