Adult Aspie????

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I am 33 years old and have managed to be reasonably successful in my life. I am married with one son, am a manager at work and get by pretty well.

However, I've always been considered a little "odd" by pretty much everyone who gets to know me. Some people like this "oddness" and others don't know what to make of it.

A while ago I ran across that test in Wired magazine about geek syndrome and took it. According to that test I might have borderline AS. I started reading the description of AS and was struck by how many of the symptoms seemed to apply to me. I took some other online tests and they all pointed to me having AS (these ones said "most likely" as opposed to "borderline". My MBTI from 1994 was INTP, I took an online test again today and it still came up INTP and I have come across several articles (most prominently Wikipedia) that associates the INTP type with AS.

The one thing that I couldn't fit in was an intense interest in a small number of subjects until...ouch. I've always been interested in religion, Christianity in particular, and met my wife at a church. I don't pray, don't attend church anymore but always considered myself religious...

...After contemplating these test results for a couple of days I came to an unexpected and somewhat mind-shattering realization that I am not religious but have an extremely intense interest in church history and theology. I have books and books and books on these two subjects that I read all of the time and over and over again. I have almost no other books on anything (a couple on politics and some magazines on computers). This has been going on for at least 16 years.

It has reached a ridiculous point where in order to discuss these subjects with other people who study them (some with degrees) that I frequently have to explain some concepts that they don't know about in order for me to be able to express my ideas to them.

I can zone out for hours at a time and contemplate these things in my head and when I do so I lose track of what is happening around me. I've learned to position myself at my work computer a specific way so that if someone comes into my office it looks like I am concentrating on work.

I annoy my wife and son to no end because they can sit a talk to me but...nobody is home, and they tell me to snap out of it and then have to tell me what they said again (and in all honesty, sometimes I just go back right away and they have to snap be back out of it and tell me a third time).

The controller at the company I work for drives home the same way I do and traffic is really, really slow. She said she has tried to drive behind me (I didn't notice) but that I must be the most patient person on the planet because I'll just sit in slow traffic and make no attempt to move into a faster lane (that is because I am lost in thought and not overly aware (or even care) that I am in the slow lane).

However, on my way to work it is imperative for me to get their by 8:00am no matter what and I really, really, hate taking any route but the one I take.

This past week I have been in almost continual "mind roleplaying" about a woman at work. Is it lust? No (that would involve being touched), it is that she read the Da Vinci Code and is now convince that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a kid. But more that that, I was reading movie reviews of it and came across the Priory of Sion which I know was a hoax created by Pierre Plantard and which he used to bolster his bogus claims to be the king of France.

Why does she need to know this? She doesn't. But I have this truth drive in my that insists that I correct the situation (btw, that does not mean replacing it with "orthodox" christianity but simply what we have in the historical record regarding this...which is basically nothing).

I hate fiction and haven't even read the book, but when I started to see the works quoted in his "research" I immediately recognized them.

My right leg shakes constantly when I am working or thinking (it is shaking now) and I don't notice that it does that. People get upset with me when they are on a couch with me because I end up shaking the whole thing. My wife complains about me at night because if it.

I try to avoid eye contact but since taking these AS tests I have been trying to analyze how much time other people keep eye contact so I can attempt to emulate them. So far, I have not been able to determine a specific time limit as different people seem to make contact for different periods of time. I am thinking maybe in another couple of weeks I will be able to determine an average in seconds and then keep track of it.

At the present time, I have no friends. When the last one left town 2 years ago I was happy to have more time for myself and never replaced him. My wife, son and my parents are enough for me.

I have often heard speculation that Bill Gates has AS. I saw an interview with him today on TV and was amazed at his posture, use of his hands, vacant expression on his face and his use of language...very similar to my own.

I was walking down the hall at work recently and this one woman said "he looks really mad". In reality, I was lost in thought and didn't even notice her or the people she was talking to until I heard that. I quickly put a smile on my face and just said I was lost in thought...now I wonder if I am walking around looking angry all of the time.

I'm not convinced I have AS and will not seek a professional opinion. However, I am somewhat haunted by the thought that this does answer a lot of questions. It was not recognized as anything when I was in school so no diagnosis was possible at the time.

Any thoughts on the above would be appreciated.

sorry, didn't mean to make this a book.

no need to apologize. You're just trying to find some answers.

Yup, you seem to have a few aspie qualities there. Stick around; AS or not – you'll probably find a lot of support and advice in any case. I hope you enjoy your time at wrongplanet, and I wish you good luck in the search for some answers.

Last edited by alexa232 on 22 May 2006, 12:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No worries on the book...we all do that here (and then apologize for it). Good thing were a group that generally likes a lot of information.

Sounds like AS to me. I'm 26 years old and discovered that I very very likely have AS about 6 months ago. When reading your post, your interest in religion etc reminds me of a guy that I've been seeing lately. He has a very similar interest and I'm almost positive he's got AS too.

Once you realize what everybody else but you does, only then do you realize how "odd" you appear to others. It makes me self consious sometimes, but it also gives you a tool to correct any strange behaviors. Don't worry about your obbsessive interest. For those with AS, it's part of who we are.

Yeah, you do sound like you have many of the traits. I'm a little younger than you but I found out in much of a similar way. I've never been one to think I had anything, in fact I have tried to remain pretty skeptical. The only way I knew I was going to know for myself (diagnosis or not) would be meeting someone with AS. So I happened upon a local group in a search for a specialist I could talk to about AS. So I decided to go meet this group.

All skepticizm went right out the window when I met the first person with AS. I had known all my life that I was different, and I had been in a perpetual search for someone like me hoping that they had the answers. When I saw that first person I knew right away. It was uncanny; the way he carried himself, the way he scanned the room when he first walked in, everything about his body language and facial expression. Since then I've completely accepted it, and I'm currently seeing a specialist about a diagnosis.

When I read the first few paragraphs of the original post, I thought "Are you ME?"

Yeah not to worry on the book but if you make it larger I could set you up with some publishers. I'm glad you're seeking answers.

Thanks for all of the replies, I actually felt quite a bit better finally making a post like that.

To be able to observe others with it would be helpful, I might check into that.

You sound like a smarter, abler version of me!

I just turned 38 back in March. I was not diagnosed with AS until I was 36. After I found out I had AS, looking back it explained alot of things about stuff that happened in my past. Personally I don't try to be like NT's. I am who I am, if they don't like me or think i'm strange because of my AS, it is thy're problem.

Self-dx'd for six years but always knew something was wrong. I do try to be like NTs on the surface up to a point but don't try to change essentially who I am. Now that I understand AS I know that's impossible and am not sure I'd want to anyway. I only want to be cured enough that NTs can relate to me better.

One of the best things about AS I've read is something I saw on an AS LiveJournal that explained that traditional talk therapy often doesn't work and that what traditional psychotherapists see as (for NTs) maladaptive behaviour (our obsessions and routines) are in fact our coping and survival skills and so the goal of therapy for us is to learn to 'optimise' them to best get along with NTs but not to try to suppress them (which will only make our condition worse).

You sound very Aspie to me. I do the 'switch off' thing, often walking around the shopping centre or waiting on the station or whatever. My mind is elsewhere completely and I'll have people say hi to me and not even register it till they say it again.

The other day I got told by a member of the public not to look so cross about something - I didn't even realise I was *lol*. I tend to use the 'lost in thought' or 'on another planet today' excuses a lot too, because it's just so much easier than trying to explain anything else.

I was diagnosed last year - I'm 24 now.

You have a lot of positives. You have a job and you have a family. You can drive. You're fairly independant. I often wonder if being forced to grow up 'NT' even if you are not is the reason some people are so well adjusted, actually. I know that I consider it the case for me - that till last year I didn't know I was Aspie, so I just worked really hard to 'hide' from people that I saw things differently.

Finding out I was Aspie made me much happier - to finally understand myself and be understood *lol*.

Apple

I 'zone out' (do the 'switch off' thing) too and probably do look cross without meaning to!

As for being forced to 'grow up NT', yes and no. Yes in that completely isolating an AS child and not teaching him how to get along with NTs will ruin him and no, forcing an AS child into NT school, social and work situations without any support or prep work at all is cruel (you're being set up to fail) and like what I and some others here grew up with: essentially being told by your parents that they hated you for being that way and wished you were somebody else.

I was extremely fortunate in high school. They were running a test program for students who learned well on their own. While that was clearly not me, because I would spend hours thinking about what I wanted to think about and not what I needed to, the test to get into the program picked up the same traits the MBTI and AS tests do and I got in.

The program was structured so that you would attend class on Monday, get your weekly assignments and then go do the work and research by yourself for the rest of the week.

I did very little of the work I was assigned and did poorly in general, however, the school graded on the bell-curve system and that pushed my marks over the fail line and allowed me to pass and obtain my high school diploma.

My teachers and guidance councillors always said I could do better if I just applied myself.

Thinking about this with the understanding that I might have AS makes my memories of high school even more disturbing than I originally thought. From about grade 7 on things were really tough on me.

Assuming that I have AS, growing up at a time when it was not recognized was really rough on my self-esteem but it also removed any potential crutch that I could have leaned on when things got tough. If I had known, things would have probably been easier for me in the short term but I wonder if I would have got to where I am today.

I mean, I thought I was normal and just not clued in so I kept trying. If someone had told me I wasn't I might not have tried as hard as I did.

Ditto

Apple