My AS traits

I'm having a really hard time now since I've finished school in 2014. Back then I actually thought that school was my problem and everything will turn out great after I reach the age of 18. I'm 21 now and things just start to hit me harder and harder. Nothing turned out as I expected, I'm stuck now. I've been already writing about my stuff in some other threads like http://forums.psychcentral.com/bipol...-long-one.html (I'm not diagnosed with bipolar, but this was mostly about this Xanax thing) or on PTSD forums about me recently being rejected by the society again etc, but now I need to discuss something else.

I've been doing some tests on Aspergers, the results were very high which surprised me. The thing is, that it's time to get another doctor's evaluation and I don't know, whether I should visit a "standard" doc (i've had 4 already and they weren't much help) or try to find someone who's specialised in autism spectrum and things like that (which is not that easy). I'm also afraid that I will only make a fool of myself if I chose the second option.

I've been lately thinking a lot about my childhood. I always feel there is something missing about it. Like someone just didn't notice something very important (okay, my family was never very concerned with me because they themselves have some huge issues.) I was actually thinking a lot about the possibility of my father and his father having some autistic traits. But it's just too hard for me to describe in writing.

Sure thing is that I wasn't taught how to function properly among others. But there are also some weird behaviours and thought patterns I once considered normal, but then learned they weren't. I'm not gonna write about all of them, just the ones I consider very non-neurotypical.

When my parents hear the neighbour kid crying, they sometimes admit that they never had that kind of problems with me. I was a really, really quiet child. Didn't cry at the dentist, rarely cried at all.

For as far as I remember, I never had a proper sense of self. For a long time I didn't know what I liked, at primary school for example, I was obsessed with the way other girls dressed, talked, with how they rooms were decorated etc and wished to copy them. To this time, I do not have my own handwriting. I never had. I just try to copy the ones I saw and liked (it was actually my obsession, i had to re-write stuff a lot, I'm diagnosed with OCD and had many funny traits like that in childhood). I was empty when it came to "style" or favourite things. I still kinda am. There was always some person or even fictional character that I was inspired with that I would follow while developing my looks etc. I would always second guess my choices and thoughts.

Same thing happened when I was having this self-called manic episode at 16/17, when I was running crazy on Xanax and Zoloft. I just kind of decided that smoking, heavy drinking, acting risky, loud and being shocking and engaging into weird sexual stuff I never managed to feel pleasure about will finally get people to like me (though i never had a "proper", "full" sex with a man, to be honest). So I really managed to get a wide circle of people around me, mostly by playing a crazy butch lesbian and actually they were some really popular people, but then it was a long and not especially pleasurable story (Well, I finally cut off most of them because I struggled very much with dealing with them, there are just few people I'm ocasionally in touch with). That thing with shocking people and sex and stuff was actually me following what I've seen or heard from some people at that time (I've been in this internet friendship circle back then, there were some women with really wild imagination: but they cut me off after I started doing that crazy stuff they've been talking about in real life). When I looked back and everything I've done, when I considered how other people reacted to it...well, I still feel very ashamed about it. Especially that most of the friendships I've made at that time were only build on me acting like a clown and pretend to be the person who can do anything and everyone laughs about her and still nobody respects her. It's a long story, actually.

I couldn't keep friendships even when I was like 13 or 15 because I would always start to be obsessive about something, mostly some problems I had (which always seemed to others as me complaining all the time, but I just couldn't deal with the tension) and get very emotional over irrational stuff and other people couldn't stand it.

When it comes to emotions, I kind of...feel in words, as weird as it sounds. I don't naturally understand what I'm feeling, I need to work it out into some definition.

I have an incredible long term memory, unlike other people.

I have problems that are mentioned in the definition of non verbal learning disorder. I have a high verbal intelligence (mostly in my native language, which is not English) yet I'm slower than most people in tasks that require good motor skills and visual spatial abilites. I had an extremely hard time learning to drive (and I'm too afraid to do it even after passing my exam at almost 10th attempt) and I'm totally mathematically blind, which made me fail my finals two times, though I was considered one of the brightest students at my school (I have a special talent in writing essays, I was the best at Polish, have a wide knowledge about art and many other things, just because I memorize most of the things I read about, I was also the best at foreign languages. Language and vocabulary is definitely my thing, yet I never received any help with learning other things because of this. People believe that if you are verbally talented, you cannot have a learning disability and you are nothing but lazy).

I have a hard time reading fiction, because I cannot visualize characters and action. This is something I've noticed when I was 11.

I've always loved to categorize things. As a child, I didn't just enjoy having the toy, I needed to plan and dream about getting all of the toys from the particular series. Like there is My Little Pony and each pony has a different colour and I would look at all of them for hours and planning to get each one of them.

It's also difficult for me to recognize faces in the street. Or notice people at all. I used to get in trouble because of that. Usually because I didn't say "good morning" to my teacher or some kid's parent. Even now I can walk by some person I know and still I don't notice the face. It can be embarassing when someone 40 year older than you needs to say "hi" first.

When it comes to looking into the eyes of another person, I can control it pretty well until I get emotional. I always concentrate very much about it since one of my mother's old friends made this remark about it and told me that I seem insincere and fake.

I can't dance and the way I walk or run was told to be weird by some people.

This one actually makes me pretty sad: People often define me as having a bad, mean character. I thought once that I control how people see me, but well, no. For a very long time I didn't really know that I seem to be a mean person to so many people so often. I had this situation once when I was speaking in English to some Greek guys on the street, they needed an information about one place and suddenly they admitted that I seem very rude. And then this girl that was with me was like "oh, she's like that" and I was like...AHA. I was trying to be nice and help them, but fine. Yet often people used to laugh at me when I wasn't trying to be funny.

But on the other hand, I often speak about others in a very strict manner and that caused me trouble a few times.

I have trouble with verbal anger since I was a child. I actually remember some strong outbursts of frustration when I was like 5 or more and then I even used to destroy my stuff.

I didn't like other children as a child, I prefered toys. My family was actually very angry with my mother because I always had extreme troubles with sharing my toys and was talking negative things about other family children.

I was actually so used to particular toys at kindergarden that I would steal them for summer break or longer.

I'm also diagnosed with GAD, OCD, Panic disorder and depression. I deal with severe meltdowns since childhood. At 11 I begun to be obsessed with psychology and psychiatry: at the age of 12 I actually asked my parents to get me a psychiatric evaluation and therapy. It was always my idea first. Kinda unusual as for a child. Did I ever even have a childhood?

I get easily overwhelmed with people or social situations. I used to work in a local shop, I was often the only person to run it, there were so many people coming there, often wanted to have a chat...It was so exhausting, sometimes each person that would open the door and come in was making me so so irritable. I was working there for almost a year and kept making the same stupid mistakes. I had this young, nice boss and yet I always felt nervous when talking to him or any other person I knew there. And I would speak everything that comes to my mind, often too private or overwhelming for him.

It wasn't that bad with my female co-worker, she was actually the kind of person that would always bring me some delicious piece of cake or give me a gift for Christmas (of course I didn't come up with that idea...) and yet I could not stop being so rigid, so tense . There were also other women - working in shops nearby - coming to us, joking etc and they seemed to despise me.

I also hate to be touched unless I decide to. And I usually decide to do it to wrong people, in wrong situations and for too long (Bad memories about that...)

My boundaries are pretty messed up and it took me a long time and some bad experience to get to know this fact.

I had tics as a child and still sometimes do.

I'm very sensitive to noises. I can't physically stand some of them.

I judge people by my sense of fairness, it usually wins over emotions.

I have a hard time dealing with my emotions and regulating them. They seem to be stronger than in an average person.

I'm extremely perfectionistic. I have a poor judgment over what things are more important than the others, because everything seems important (it's funny, but i can spend so much time creating my Instagram portfolio it's crazy, as if my life depends on it)

I could never "just do" anything, I need to put my thoughts into everything, I'm always in a state of weird self awareness.

Anxiety and anger rule my life. I have a low tolerance for frustration. It also got me into trouble a few times. I respond really badly to rejection of any kind or to being undervalued. When I had trouble at school because I couldn't pass my Maths class even though I've spent so much money on private teachers and was a good student, well, I was really acting crazy then. People around me couldn't stand me. Same thing was with my driving licence.

I have a long history of emotional abuse and bullying.

I actually stopped going out, don't have any friends anymore because I feel so tired of feeling this shame and that I don't fit in. Last year I found out that people really do not care much about me and do not treat me right and vice versa. Even my family seems to be tired of me. I always tried to change and be someone else, but that doesn't work, obviously.

I also remember that as a child I had this symptom of OCD due to which many clothing textures made me extremely uncomfortable. It's the first memory of me being really weird actually.

Hi, Wdr3.
I am not diagnosed with autism or Aspergers.
I can relate well to certain points here.
I know mimicry and the chameleon complex all to well.
Actually, I exhibit pretty much everything you described. I however, do not have tics. I have stims. I also have a great imagination and am artistically and musically gifted. I don't read because it is not stimulating enough to keep me sitting in one spot.
Are you nearing the end/and or have been done with high school now? That is when people suffering from the social problems of Aspergers/autism have a prominent decrease in there social lives.

Thank you for your reply.
I finished high school two years ago, but I still have one final exam to pass. I was working for a year after graduating, it was very stressful. Now I don't have a job, can't go to uni until I pass algebra (I take it on Thursday for the third time). People I used to hang out with, well, they moved away and I stopped going outside and I'm pretty isolated. I went back to the depression, OCD and constant worrying about being schizophrenic. I only talk to my parents now.

I also remember one another thing from my childhood- I was not only really quiet/didn't cry most of the time, but never really talked to anyone even if I was suffering. When I was in primary school and broke my hand on my way there, I didn't told anyone until it got really bad. I've spent the whole day at school like nothing has happened. The same thing goes with other things.

I had this intrusive thought today that reminded me of another thing- I lack inhibition. I always considered this as a feature of my meds induced manic states, but when I really think about it, I've been having it before taking anything and I still do. It's not that I completely lack it, for example: I know for sure that I don't ever want to do drugs and I actually knew - for a short amount of time - people who were drug addicts, surrounding themselves with lots of stuff and yet I NEVER even tried to take anything, no matter what. The same goes for having sex with men, although I've been participating in a weird, possibly dangerous and completely thoughtless sexual acts at some point in my life.

Yet, what I mean by lacking inhibition is that:

As a kid, I would kick other kids and talk very nasty stuff, whatever came to my mind.
I would have severe rage outbursts with destroying my stuff etc.

I've been in trouble at school for shouting at people, screaming and swearing a lot. For example, I was frustrated after an exam, so I went outside and - not noticing that there are teachers standing close to me - was like "FU*K, WHAT KIND OF S*IT WAS THAT?? SCREW THIS, THEY'RE FU*CKED UP". Well, that didn't make a good impression, especially that I'm a girl. I'm trying to control this stuff NOW, but it was bad at some point. I've been also making some random, nasty comments to people I know, before I even think that it could hurt them. Very inappropriate. My language can still be pretty bad in some situations.

Another one is pretty embarassing, but - apart from engaging into some weird sexual stuff when I was about 17 and was never able to take pleasure from it - I have this thing with lacking inhibition in showing my body off. I have some pretty nasty memories from parties (That's why I probably don't drink anymore and don't attend them) including this. This was actually what my intrusive thought was about (,,What if I go crazy and take off my clothes and go outside...")

Especially when I drink the borders between my ideas and making them real are, well, almost nonexistent. Actually I would consider some of my sexual behaviour very compulsive (I also have sexual intrusive thoughts but the trouble is they don't always make me scared or uneasy. I generally have some sex related issues which is strange, because I don't have any "normal" sex life- that would require some social skills)

I also have dermatillomania.