Discussing women's symptoms, anyone borderline Aspergers?

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Abby87
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06 Jun 2016, 12:55 pm

Hi everyone, I'm Abby, I'm 28, and I'm interested in hearing from some women who have been diagnosed as an adult/or are in the process, who like me may be boderline/can just about blend in. I'd love to hear your childhood and adult symptoms? I'm 85% sure I have aspergers, and that I've been incorrectly diagnosed with bipolar type 2.

My symptoms as a child: I found everything too loud, would hardly eat, I didn't want to join in as a child, parents had to change my infant school cos there were too many children for me I cried all the time there, I settled in a smaller school, phobias were: dogs, crowds, flying, needles. I was a mute in infant school, got looked after in the playground, I had strange interests for my age like cultures, attention to detail stood out. Very creative, wrote detailled imaginative stories as a child, very good at English. Extremely low ability in maths (and still am). I was and still am obsessed with books.

Today I suffer from dips in my mood which can happen daily, I'm very creative, I have hyperfocus, I struggle relating to people and making new friends, I often say the wrong thing or something that I don't realise is not the right answer until after ive said it. I often don't get jokes or sarcasm. I also have obsessions, the culture ones are lifelong, but I have some shorter ones which I start and then suddenly without notice, I'll just go off them and onto something new. I am able to go undetected most of the time, I know people think I'm odd though because I get left out of things a lot. I cant watch horror, people or animals being hurt on tv, the news. I get deeply upset by things I see on tv/hear. Over-sensitive to emotions. The places I feel most calm is the forest (I love nature) home, and church.

I now know that aspergers presents differently in women, and that many professionals aren't aware of this so women often get misdiagnosed, and the research that made the diagnostic criteria is based on males! I have found a centre called the Lorna wing center for autism based near me in england who specialise in diagnosing women with complex presentations. I'll be self referring there soon.

anyone else got similar stories/symptoms? I'd especially like to hear from women diagnosed/going through the process later in life. Thanks!

Abby x



seaweed
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06 Jun 2016, 3:49 pm

hi abby, i'm also abby! i'm 21 and i was diagnosed with aspergers when i was 7. i "blend in" more now but when i was a kid i was more obvious. i developed skills like walking and talking normally, and i've always had above average motor skills which defies common beliefs about people on the autism spectrum, although i've informally heard that autistic women tend to have better motor function than autistic men on average. i am also disproportionately good at english--and obsessed with books--but math is a challenge for me. when i was younger i was put in advanced math programs but when i was around age 14 i started falling behind. i think this is because the advanced math programs when i was younger were geared towards intuitively understanding broad concepts and simple geometry (which was more fun than reproducing multiplication and division tables) but as the math progressed into reproducing and applying complex equations and abstract concepts i struggled. i could never finish math tests on time, and my teachers would usually comment on my awkward or inefficient process of working through a problem.

the most pronounced thing about me is my sensitivity to sound. i developed speaking skills normally but not listening skills. i could read and understand, but it was (and still is) difficult to comprehend spoken language and speak back with the correct intonation, and it took me a long time to be able to respond to a verbal task appropriately. loud, intrusive noises scare me, and my mom says that one of the big factors in her decision to get me assessed was my response to sound. i've gotten better at dealing with noises as i've gotten older, like, i don't cry about airplanes or wind anymore, but even today i'll still begin uncontrollably crying or shut down and become unresponsive if the music is too loud or the crowd is too dense...things like that. i love being underwater :P

i am a very strange person, and as a child i was very noticeably strange. i was lucky in that my mom's best friend had a son the same age as me and so i grew up with this person as an inherent friend. i won't go into questioning nature and nurture but i was never a "girly" type, and so i had trouble relating to girls my age because playing with them was boring unless it was arts and crafts or gymnastics, and i couldn't maintain friendships because my idea of interaction was based on interests and not on the person as a whole. i liked playing imaginative games in the physical landscape, but it just happened that all of the girls my age in my small town didn't enjoy playing like that and preferred to imagine household games or sit in circles and talk about things i had no interest in. it also happened that most of the boys had some kind of a grudge against girls, although i did have that one friend (and then later i found another good friend who is also a very strange person) and that was all i really wanted. i have always been socially different. impaired, as they say.

this is not to say whether i think you're on the spectrum or not, but i do see a lot similarities between my experience and yours besides just our names. i was a happy child for the most part but as i got older i started having emotional problems like most teens experience, but i have had to spend time in inpatient facilities and have also been diagnosed with bipolar II rapid cycling. however, this diagnosis has been officially disregarded in place for borderline personality disorder, which i personally reject. i've also had issues with anxiety and eating disorders, although recently i've been doing much better and feel more like how i did as a child. i also don't understand most types of jokes and sarcasm, pay close attention to detail, and hyperfocus on tasks i enjoy. long-term obsessions include fungi, slime molds, playground theory, welding/fabricating, and general art-making. i am strange, but i've found a niche in the past few years where i'm more or less socially accepted. it's normal for artists to be weird.

i have also heard that aspergers presents differently in women than in men and that most autism research has historically been focused on men. just based on what i've seen on this forum many women are diagnosed later in life or undiagnosed, and honestly if i were to be assessed now i'm not sure if i'd be diagnosed or not, because my "impairments" aren't really that impairing anymore. i function on the fringe of society and over the years i've learned how to get around some absent mental processes like appropriate conduct in necessary social interactions. i'm definitely socially different despite knowing some basic skills of social assimilation but it doesn't affect me as much as it used to. "social chameleon" is a term i've seen in the women's forum here, which i rejected at first because i am a noticeably atypical person, but i think now i understand which things about me are like this.

anyways, i hope some of this helps you and i'm sorry about the length.



Abby87
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10 Jun 2016, 4:06 pm

Hi Abby!

Thanks for the reply. Wow nice to find someone who is also obsessed with books :) Where are u from? I'm from England.

Oh wow you also are good at English but have difficulty in maths? Same, although I am extremely poor at maths, it's rather marked. I mean I cannot even do simple calculations..had to re take my maths exam upon leaving school.

Yes lots of our story sounds similar, I will definitely go for a re-assessment because I really do not believe I have bipolar II.. My parents never got me assessed because like myself, they believed that my fear and not wanting to be around people was down to my stutter (which I have had all my life, but over the last few years it ceased to be an issue for me, I no longer care about it any more). It is not until now (after completing a degree in special educational needs and working with children with autism), that I have realised after looking at the whole picture, that it is likely to be aspergers.

x



seaweed
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10 Jun 2016, 5:22 pm

i'm from the united states, and my mom's best friend was a special needs teacher in a school for deaf children. i bet she was the one who noticed it in me and gave my mom the idea to have me evaluated.
best wishes for your impending assessment! :)