[Majekyll]

I'm a fifteen year old female whose been homeschooled her whole life. I've never had friends and the very idea seems almost fantastical. I've always felt like I was born in the wrong universe and never really understood myself, but I found out about aspergers while I was learning about psychology and the likes and I realized I myself might have it.

Once I decided to go with my parents and my two younger sibllings up to this cabin. All I could do was follow them around, I had no privacy because there was only two rooms and our parents were sleeping in the other room and I felt anxious and uncomfortable the whole time. I had a panic attack while up there. It was too much change and not enough privacy for me and I had to leave within two days.

When I was younger, I had a certain chair that I sat on at a certain place at the table. Once my brother decided to sit there and not move off my seat and I had a complete meltdown about it. A similar story is when my Mom realized I wasn't playing with some of my stuffed animals anymore so she threw them away, I had a meltdown that time too. She was right, I never played with the toys, but I didn't want them to leave regardless. I was scared of the dark while I was younger so I'd keep the lights on and I kept the lights on till I was twelve even though I had long since stopped being afraid of the dark, I only stopped because my Mom made me.

I have a lot of anxiety and a need to be in control, though I'm almost completely codependent of my parents during social situations. I've been told I'm too blunt, hurtful and insensitive, but I don't mean to be and don't notice it. I'm absolutely terrible at interpreting other's body language and the tone in your voice has to be really obvious for me to detect sarcasm. I take things literally more often than I want to admit. Eye-contact is really hard and annoying. I feel most comfortable around people in smaller groups, preferably one on one, who are either younger or older than me. I don't even feel comfortable while around my own family I see everyday and feel most safe in my room, alone.

When I become obsessed with something, I become extremely obsessed! It's as though nothing can possibly compare to my obsession and nothing else seems to matter and I need to catalogue as much information and gather as many facts as I can and learn as much as I can about this interest. I will go on and on about it and think about it all day without getting tired.

I have many symptoms of OCD such as incessant and uncontrollable thought, impulsive and repetitive actions, a need for things to be a certain way, a constant hoarder-like need to keep useless junk such as a dirty rock that I see while on a walk and need for no apparent reason, I'm a huge perfectionist, etcetera...

I have a hard time understanding my own emotions, but I feel like I'm still an extremely emotional person, because I feel things very intensely. I just have a hard time deciphering what my feelings mean exactly. I constantly think things like: "Am I sad? Huh. That's weird."

My sense of smell is so great, I can smell things just by thinking about them and it causes me to stay away from certain people or things because I'll look at them and smell something bad or they might just smell anyway.

I often notice changes in things and people and notice patterns that no one else seems to notice, which can be a little annoying.

I learn things very fast, but only if I learn them by seeing and sometimes doing them. A board game instructions manual and saying "Go left, take a turn, go right, forward, turn left, go backward..." is too much to process and makes things seem really confusing.

I'm terrible at multitasking, it gives me a headache and feels too confusing and greatly overwhelms me. I need to be able to do things my own way and at my own pace for things to actually work.

I have a vast and vivid imagination that I've probably been living in longer than I've been living in the 'real world'. I often forget that what I'm imagining in my own personal worlds isn't actually real.

I have this peculiar aptitude for remembering dates, off the top of my head I can tell you Disney's 'Pocahantas' was made in 1995 and the newer 'Mummy' movie was made in 1999 and Disney's 'The Great Mouse Detective' was made in 1986 and John Lennon was born in 1940, 'Star Trek' started in 1966 and Jack Nicholson's birthday is on April 22 (I remembered the last one because that's my birthday). I haven't seen either of the movies I mentioned in perhaps two years.

I do the thing that female aspie's are supposedly prone to do in which I will act like a character from a T.V. show or movie or book or just someone I like and respect, without even noticing for a long while. I had a Mr. Spock phase for quite a while.

I probably haven't mentioned all the symptoms I have, so I hope this was enough for you people to at least tell me what I probably have. Thank you for taking the time to read through this.

[Skeezyks]

Hello Majekyll: Thanks for sharing your experiences. We here on PC are not in a position to diagnose you. This is something that needs to be done by a mental health professional. If you're not already seeing someone, hopefully you can make arrangements to do so. And of course reading other posts in the Autism and Asperger's Syndrome forum, & continuing to post here, will help too. Good luck!

[Talthybius]

Asperger's is just a label.

There are certainly people that when they go through the labeling process, the label they get is Asperger's. You may be one of those people. You may not be.

I think the way you focus on how you remember dates, your sense of smell, etc, those are not important.

Say you have Asperger's, I would be more focused on the challenges to come. I think for all people, when you become an adult you will face challenges you won't realize you are facing until you are already past them.

I think most people would benefit from going through their teenage and young adult stage of life being more conscious about the depth of the social interactions, friendships, romantic endeavours they experience.

I think that people are prone to act according to the label they have once they get a label. You can change who you are on the surface. Deep inside, maybe not. But who you are deep inside doesn't matter to most people.

Just don't think that because you have Asperger's, you shouldn't even try anymore to socialize with people your own age.

[Majekyll]

Originally Posted by Talthybius

Asperger's is just a label.

There are certainly people that when they go through the labeling process, the label they get is Asperger's. You may be one of those people. You may not be.

I think the way you focus on how you remember dates, your sense of smell, etc, those are not important.

Say you have Asperger's, I would be more focused on the challenges to come. I think for all people, when you become an adult you will face challenges you won't realize you are facing until you are already past them.

I think most people would benefit from going through their teenage and young adult stage of life being more conscious about the depth of the social interactions, friendships, romantic endeavours they experience.

I think that people are prone to act according to the label they have once they get a label. You can change who you are on the surface. Deep inside, maybe not. But who you are deep inside doesn't matter to most people.

Just don't think that because you have Asperger's, you shouldn't even try anymore to socialize with people your own age.

I've never been able to interact with people my own ways regardless. But, of course, I know not to change who I am based off a label. I just want to know if there's a way I can understand myself better and learn from that and maybe someday learn how to be okay with that. Thanks for the advice.