I was wondering if either of you were mis-diagnosed with ADD (or ADHD) prior to your diagnosis of Asperger’s?
I was misdiagnosed with ADD. It has to do with the fact that oftentimes the disorders are co-morbid, they occur with each other. It’s a pain in the ass, because they also overlap in areas, and people seem to use that as a caveat to say “Look, theese disorders are just being made up, those ‘symptoms’ are typical kid things, it’s bad parenting/letting kids run wild. The reason they overlap is so they have an excuse for any sort of bad behaviour.” The disorder’s symptoms seem to be typical behaviour, but you have to experince it to find out what it is really like.
Stammering while talking to girls(or boys): Normal.
Crying at the thought of having to talk to someone: Not normal.
That is the problem with the way people some people think. They hear “social ineptness”, they think we are just a little less outgoing than we should be, when it’s more like we have NO CLUE as what we’re supposed to do in the situation. It hurts to hear people say that our parents aren’t any good at parenting, or that we just need a good spanking.
Sorry for the ramble/rant. I’m just pissed off at people who think that way.
I seriously doubt that I have AS, but I have to say that while reading some of these posts the thought crossed my mind.
It is interesting because my own peculiarities are similar to what has been described, but not all of them. And the similarities seem to be just that, similarities. I have a hard time picking up on or understanding social cues, but on the other hand I do percieve them fairly often, just not as often as most of the people I’ve met.
Plus I had partial compex seizures as a child and I went to a neurologist. I think it’s likely he would have been able to catch it when my parents went to him to figure out what was wrong with me.
In any case, your descriptions of your problems with social interactions struck a chord. I can kind of empathize. (Though I imagine I don’t really “get it”. When I describe a seizure to someone who hasn’t had one I have no idea whthter they can even imagine what it’s like. When I talk with someone who has had seizures there is a lot that we share even if we have different types of seizures. )
Talk to me about writing. Do you find writing by hand very challenging? Is typing considerably easier? Was it hard for you to learn to type? Which would you rather do, handwrite or type?
Do you think practice with handwriting helped, or do you avoid it even now? Is there anything that made handwriting easier for you?
How about copying things? Can you copy something that someone else has written with any degree of accuracy? If not, what makes it so hard? Does the size, distance, or medium upon which it’s written make it easier/harder?
Sorry for the extreme profusion of questions, and thanks in advance for any answers. I don’t expect you to answer all of them. I’m trying to support a kid with AS who doesn’t like to write and I want to help him to do it, because he’s going to have to, according to his mom and his IEP.
Omigod. I came across this thread today, and have spent hours reading it and many, many pages that I Googled for information. It’s like someone has just explained my entire life to me, where I hadn’t a clue what was wrong before. I fit most of the criteria for a diagnosis of AS. I’ve been reading about the experiences of people with AS and in nearly every paragraph, I was able to say “yeah, that happened to me.” Now, I’m not a hypochondriac and I’m not looking for something to blame, it just seems overwhelmingly clear that this must have been the reason I grew up the way I did, and why I still have difficulties in the areas most of the case studies suggest occur in people with AS. I could give you dozens, maybe hundreds of instances where the described behaviors mirror almost exactly the things that have happened to me since I can remember.
If there had been this kind of research available in the early 1960s to deal with people - well, afflicted seems the wrong word, but if someone could have recognized these patterns as applied to my life, it could have been very different for me. All along I’ve been wondering if it was my fault that this stuff happened, and whether I was wired up wrong.
Now it’s both scary and exhilarating to learn that it’s not just me, lots of other people are going and have gone through the same thing.
I am sure I am perceived as cold and cynical and undemonstrative, and probably someone who thinks he is superior. (I don’t, I swear.) I had the few areas of extreme interest which I have parlayed into a career, luckily. I had the areas of extreme deficit, like mathematics and athletics. I always spoke in words that people didn’t understand, and was accused of reading the dictionary. I don’t know how to read body language. I never had a date in all the years I went to school, or for twenty years afterward. I was never in the mainstream of school society. The “normal” guys wouldn’t even talk to me, except to ridicule. I always wondered why nobody ever told me how to be a social person like everyone else seemed to be. I wondered why I would get punished for saying things aloud that in retrospect, you should probably only think, or at least rephrase. My best friend was somebody who had his own difficulties - a terrible stutter. He was, and still is, a great friend going on 38 years. But he’s one of only two people from my past that I am still in contact with. At 45, I have no buddies. My wife is my best friend. That’s real nice, but it’s not the same as having buddies to hang out with. In 2 1/2 years at the same job, I’ve never been invited to any social occasion, likely due to this misperception people have about the kind of person I am. I’m not unfriendly, but I haven’t got the first clue about small talk (never have), and I probably hide poorly the fact that I don’t care about your origami or archery hobbies. Even now, I am well-written but poorly-spoken. All of these are situations that I have read about in the descriptions of people who have AS.
I realize that this is purely speculation on my part, but it does explain an awful lot. You know, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. Would there be any point in going to a doctor for a diagnosis? Is there any treatment? Is there any social or professional stigma attached to heing “labelled” as a person with AS?
I hope I haven’t turned everybody off with my rant here, but it’s like a piece of the puzzle has fallen into place. I need to learn more about this, and I welcome anyone’s thoughts and opinions.
Do Aspies function better in low context cultures like in Germany or the US than high context cultures like in Japan? Or is context not that related to reading peoples feelings?
Your story sounds much like a fellow I’ve met through a local Autism/Asperger’s support group - was in his 50s before he got a diagnosis, had had much trouble as a child and young adult, etc. I think a lot of Aspies (and/or their families) have one of those “lightbulb moments” when they first hear about Asperger’s - and realize that this describes their life so well.
I don’t think there’s any overwhelming reason to get diagnosed just to have a diagnosis. Soundsl like you’re coping “well enough” to be able to hold down a job, find a wife, etc. so there aren’t any issues with needing to prove a condition for, say, disability purposes. For myself, simply knowing about this condition (and I’m not full-blown Aspie, just have lots of tendencies plus a definitely-Aspie son) helps me understand so much. I don’t need a label.
However - if you want to seek counselling with a psychologist anyway, s/he would presumably be able to dx you as appropriate. And if you want to seek medical options for some of the treatable issues (I’m thinking if you have any problems with anxiety, depression etc. which are common enough in Aspies) then having a correct label might be helpful there.
I want to thank you for responding. A little while later, I saw a thread in the pit complaining about people who say they think they have Asperger’s, in order to blame something on their lack of social skills. I was dreading that someone might then rip me to shreds. Thank you for not doing it.
I guess I don’t really need to go and get a diagnosis, because, as you say, I am coping well enough. I had to learn to cope, I didn’t have a choice. I could not let myself go around being an emotional invalid, I really had to get my sht together to get where I am now. I found the right woman, and when it looked like she wanted to marry me, I resolved to do whatever it takes to become the kind of person worthy of someone’s wanting to spend all their time with me. And I have to keep doing it every day without stopping, because if I fck it up, it all goes away and I lose everything. And I am too old to lose everything again. So I do it. It’s been almost six years, and it appears to be working.
But my wife has noticed some of my tendencies to be slightly rude to people sometimes, when that is the last of my intentions. After I showed her this thread and some of the webpages, she said she understood some things about me better, and she agreed that AS is possibly an explanation, although we can’t be positive without tests. I wouldn’t purposely insult anyone to their face, just sometimes I make observations that are taken the wrong way, and people wonder why I’m such an asshole. It’s not that my observations are ludicrous; they are true, but phrased in such a way that people mistake what I might think is ironic or humorous for negativity or even pomposity. I’m sorry that’s how I make them feel. It doesn’t happen with everyone, of course, but it seems some people are more prone than others to perceived insult.
I’ve often wondered if I was depressed. I really don’t know, maybe I am and have been so for so long it seems normal - or maybe not. I haven’t ever been suicidal, or woke up saying that I couldn’t do this for one more day. On the contrary, I want to be here tomorrow because my wife loves me, and I have the job I always wanted. I have things to look forward to. So no matter whether I have anything you could call ‘a condition’, I’m doing the best job of living that I can because I have to. I copped out for a long time, but I can’t do it anymore. I owe it to my wife, and myself.
Well, the information that I’ve read does seem to explain a lot of things to me, so now I have some idea that something else could have been at work all along. Otherwise, why would any of these things concern me? I don’t imagine that other people go around thinking about this stuff all the time.
I appreciate that you took the initiative to reply to my post. This has certainly been an eye opener!