I think I might have been wrong...

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I thought for sure I had AS. I was almost certain. I'm really not so sure anymore. I do in fact meet the criteria, so why am I beginning to change my mind?

I've been doing quite a lot of research in the past few days. When I was in elementary school, I was not considered to be disabled or to have a disorder. I was considered "gifted." I was comprehending literature that was far above my grade level. I had (and still have) an intuitive understanding of mathematics and it's applications in the real world. I had actually made a few friends, most of which had abilities similar to that of my own.

Now, lets get one thing straight. I'm definitely not the most outgoing person in the world. All of my friends have been extroverts who confronted me, and not the other way around. But that actually has nothing to do with AS. Aspies are socially inept, not necessarily introverts. With that in mind, am I actually socially inept? Maybe slightly, but not enough to be classified as "significantly impaired." I'm really just introverted.

Don't get me wrong, I still have poor social skills, just not in the typical aspie way. I actually don't lack empathy and I can read facial expressions well enough, yet I am socially isolated. Why? Because I'm a TI-89 living in a box full of TI-83's, if you get my analogy. I can have a two way conversation with people. It's just that I can only do it with other people who think like I do. Unfortunately, they are hard to find.

It doesn't just end there. I have a sense of humor and an understanding of sarcasm and figurative language (usually). I am not prone to extreme anxiety and panic attacks. I have never had meltdowns. My interests, while intense, are not nearly as narrow as many aspies. My understanding of the material I learn is not just rote memorization, like many aspies. In fact, my memory is at around average; it is my comprehension that is far above that.

While, from a distance, this does sound like AS. But when put under a microscope, I think the answer becomes clear. I'm just more intelligent than most people, that's all. That doesn't mean life is all that great for me, though. Like I said, I still have social issues, the cause is just different.

I previously thought that I was twice exceptional. After quite a bit of introspection, this isn't the case. My behavior is very typical of a smart, introverted guy; much more so than that of an aspie. There really aren't a lot of differences between me and regular "gifted" people.

And, just for references:

http://www.suite101.com/content/highly- ... nal-a71678

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/eric/fact/asperger.pdf

Gifted kids definitely can look like aspies, and both normal aspies and 2e kids can look like just gifted kids. If you end up thinking you only qualify for gifted, its at least understandable why you were confused. I was one of those kids who they never realized that I had aspergers because of my giftedness hiding it, while truthfully I was a 2e kid.

From my point of view - those links do make some generalizations about 2e kids that I've not seen true - I've not seen rote memorization over understanding at all in any of the people who I know who'd be considered 2e (including myself). All of us have been people who aren't okay with just knowing, we want to understand deeply and completely. We don't want to memorize information, we want to know all the information about our special interests.

The socially isolated vs. socially inept is worth looking at - 2e kids can have some of the effects that a gifted kid has, but its not at all enough to overcome the impairment - while I functioned better with people who were older than me, it wasn't enough to make me understand what they were thinking (though I could understand that they had their own thoughts, because logically they'd have their own thoughts as they had gone through a different set of experiences than me). I understood that I was different, didn't understand why. I built my entire life around logic - while I have strong emotions, I don't understand them, and what other people are feeling often end up being thought of logically as well.


Gifted vs. Aspie vs. 2e is something that people really do need to look into, because it is really easy to mistake what category people fall into. As someone who wasn't diagnosed as a kid, because people assumed it was only giftedness, I can see places where my life could have easily been improved. My boyfriend was viewed as only autistic when he went to preschool, rather than 2e, and it similarly didn't work for him at all - though in his case his parents recognized that he was 2e and pulled him out and homeschooled him.

I suppose it's still possible that I'm 2e, but I'm thinking that most of my awkwardness comes from giftedness itself, and not necessarily AS. Gifted + BAP seems to be most accurate. I can't believe it's taken me this long to realize it, but it seems rather obvious now.

There is no finite line between AS and non-AS. It's a spectrum, right? There is only an artificial line drawn for diagnostic and insurance purposes.

One can be "slightly" AS to a certain degree: have some mild symptoms but not disabling ones. Both introversion and giftedness are spectrums too. In fact you could be any combination of them. You could be 75% gifted, 15% introverted, and 10% Aspergers to account for all of your personality traits, for example. And all of those lines can become very fuzzy, with complicated and non-binary webs of causes, effects, and associated feedback loops. You can be a very complex person who defies binary labels.

This is an interesting debate because my parents are convinced that I am simply gifted rather than that I have Asperger's. They do not exclude each other. Both are possible.

I think you put too much stress on the rote memorisation and social ineptness parts. Let's not forget that Aspie social behaviour is classified as "active but odd," which implies that, given the right person, an Aspie may still be social.

Your doubts were my doubts SammichEater. You named pretty much all of them. But something prevents me from functioning "normally." And the autism spectrum is a box of assorted traits that explains this. Some of what I find in that box anyway.

One difference: I now have general anxiety. But this only emerged a couple years ago.

I find it rather amusing (but in a non-amusing way) that it ALWAYS seems that when someone is not even diagnosed with AS comes to the conclusion that they do not have AS, everyone here seems to try and convince them otherwise. As is always said, people often know themselves more than we do. BAP is quite logical--a few AS traits, but not enough to qualify for diagnosis. Anyway, I am not saying Sammich does or does not have AS. What I am saying that if he is able to function, does not believe he has it, and does not have a diagnosis that he is going against, I cannot see why anyone would try to convince him that he is wrong. That makes no sense. And if he does have difficulty functioning due to traits that could be seen as autistic, even if mildly so, then he should go get a professional evaluation rather than mindlessly follow the coercion of complete strangers on an anonymous public forum.