My current diagnosis is Asperger's, but I'm not sure

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I have many of the symptoms, but can't really figure out whether anything in my life falls under "Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities." I was wondering if anyone could explain this criterion, preferably with examples other than the classic intensely focused narrow interest.

I take it you don't stim, i.e do repetitive movements with your hand/arms or rock your body.
Do you need things to always be the same or find yourself doing the same things everyday? Do you have a routine?

Not sure if I can help much since I've not been officially diagnosed yet, but as far as I understand it the "Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behaviour, interests and activities" description refers to much more than just focussed narrow interest.

In my case, I don't have that intensely focussed narrow interest (actually I can, but I have plenty of interests!). But what I do show (and I recognise it, although I can't seem to change it) is repetitive and restricted behaviour, i.e. routines, and I often feel very bad when something happens that breaks my routine.

For instance, my waking-up during weekdays always happen the same way: each step must take approximately the same time and all must happen in the same order, or I will feel annoyed. The only thing that changes each day is what I actually eat for breakfast, and that's only because I take a conscious decision on what I'm going to eat the day before. The routine is actually so strong that even when I wake up late I can't bring myself to do things faster to get to work on time. And when something happens that breaks the routine I can easily lose track of what I was doing and won't feel right for the rest of the day.

I have plenty other routines like that, for various things I often do. My husband pointed out to me that when I decide to go to the computer, for instance, he knows it immediately, before I mention it to him, because I have a very specific routine that I follow before leaving the room.

I believe these are typically what is meant by "Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behaviour, interests and activities": Routines, that you are not always aware of, and that you can't easily deviate from.

Thank you both.

I don't think I'm prone to unusual repetitive motions - maybe pacing when I'm nervous, or in elementary school for a while a habit of banging my head against the wall when I was mad at myself?

As to routines, I generally dislike having my day scheduled. I'd have to ask my parents if they've noticed predictable patterns leading to particular actions, but if there are any I'm unaware. I do make detailed plans for dealing with things I have to do, particularly if they're stressful, and I can get quite upset if a plan is interrupted or otherwise fails to happen successfully.

The last part sounds like AS. The head banging possibly. Pacing can sort of be a stim. I'd say mild AS at best.

So you're diagnosed? What type of questions did you have to answer?

The doctor's I had stressed the fact that your interest needs to be obsessive. It usually is with me. I went on SSRI's for awhile and that went away but then it came back. The doctor's also seem to ask about how I communicate with other people and about how I was in childhood.

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well done.

Depends on why did you get diagnosed as aspergers. Sometimes, I hear in this forum that psychologists seem to be confusing aspergers to something else or having people who actually make erroneous assumptions, so be open-minded to that possibility. Why did you get it? While I"m not against psychologists' diagnose or anything, sometime a label wouldn't work for someone.

The story of my life.

Question is though for me-- when is this textbook pathological and when is this functional?
-I'm guessing that this changes directions with an ever new replacing interest.

-I'm guessing that since this replaces/displaces 'people interest' than this could be a sign of AS?

What if the above but your're still functional. i.e. work fine and do other fine things? Is it not AS then?

Where is the distinction or boundry?

Anyone?

If you have all of the traits of AS and are judged not to be sufficiently impaired by a professional, you won't get the label. Basically you are likely on the spectrum but have learned to cope. BUt of course professionals will have different standards for "impairment' and you'll get different opinions from different people.

I suspect I have AS. There is often a genetic link that can be observed on one side of the family. That's true with my uncles and father. Not one of them would be diagnosible with AS but all three have various fragments (sometimes many) of autistic behavior. My father has 80% of it, his brothers have maybe 50% of it. Though one of his brothers is a strange loner who fits the pattern of chronic unemployment. The other has a degree and is underemployed in blue collar work. My father expresses the most traits but is the more successful brother.

To me, the distinction is: I can talk about my interests, or rather, monologue about them. I can go on at length and in great detail about them. Switch the topic to, say, the weather, and I barely know how to respond. I mean, like "Nice weather we're having today." And I have some scripted responses, but usually I don't even bother to reach for those. I just can't muster any care to talk about the weather, or what someone did today, or whatever. I know how to ask people about these things, but I really don't listen unless it's someone important to me, and perhaps what they're talking about relates to my interests. Like my niece told me about her psych teacher the other day. She mentioned how he told his class not to use "schizophrenic" to refer to "multiple personalities," at which point I kind of monologued at my niece about dissociative identity disorder.

So if it's an interest, I can't really hold a decent conversation with give and take because I just want to tell people about them. I'm able to fake this to a certain extent with people who share my interests but I probably spend more time waiting to speak than listening.

If it's not an interest, I can't really hold a conversation at all because I do not care at all for making conversation out of trivial subjects. I'm able to fake this to a certain extent because I have memorized scripted responses that I know people tend to expect, but it is still almost painful to have that conversation, and sometimes I don't even bother (which probably means people think I'm rude, but really I just don't have the energy).

I can hold conversations that have a purpose if they are not directly my special interest, too. I can call my bank and deal with bank stuff (like getting a replacement ATM card) and I can deal with my case worker because I need to work with her to get my benefits.

Leaving the tornado infodump because it is sublime.

This is AS V. ^^You don't need to see a doc. for confirmation.

With myself though, being an ever experimenter at heart, a tinkerer with questions. I'm interested to know why you see it that way and why I may see it slightly askew. I'll listen rather than monologue. If I do talk it's an educational slant. I may small talk a little and gripe about the weather or high gas prices and this is reciprocal, as they gripe and may add some news to it and I chew it.

I do the above as in explore the world with questions by research , but as my wife says, " everything you do does not include people, no one is included--and this is not normal."

To me it's always been normal. I've never known another way .

Last edited by Mdyar on 10 Feb 2011, 6:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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I kind of do a mix of your post, and the one above. I'll question people occasionally, just to see what they reply... Not necessarily interested in their actual answer, just to see their train of thought. But, my partner noticed that when I do talk to others, I go on and on about unrelated topics that no one cares about, which leaves people awkwardly just sitting there nodding their head or ignoring me.

Prime example is when I was at a festival, I sat down with a greyhound adoption lady and while I was petting their greyhound, I ended up going on a monologue about my dog, and training dogs in general. I went on for about 15 minutes or so probably, before my partner came and pulled me away- I guess he noticed the lady was bored and uninterested while I was sitting there rambling away unaware that she didn't care.

On the other hand, I'll sometimes just...not say a word. When I do talk to someone I usually feel very anxious, I'm fidgety and I struggle to do some of the basic things like eye contact, gesturing, or understanding their body language.

As a funny side note, when I was about 6 I wrote a whole paper about plate tectonics and how the earth shifting causes earthquakes and how earthquakes cause tsunami, and then went into detail about the richter scale and how it measures the intensity of an earthquake. I was quite the odd kid. (My interest has shifted from earthquakes to lightning/thunderstorms now,and medical related things).

One thing that some people are concerned about is that AS may be over-diagnosed in some age groups, because of deficiencies in the current system. Say you have a student who needs special treatment, who does not have AS, but who has a number of the traits of AS. Such a student may be diagnosed with AS, because they don't fit into any other diagnostic category, and because the alternative may be to deny needed treatment.

Exactly why I tend to bring up things like schizoid personality, schizoaffective, and other labels that can be similar to AS or confused to AS especially to those under 18 and symptoms of the first two can really show at high school while the diagnoses of those personalities can start at 16 (more appropriate age than 18) in europe unlike in the United States system. They should really lower the diagnosable age just for the solely reason that sometimes the symptoms seems somewhat showing that they're not functional around people and yet they can't match a label due to the restriction so therefore, some teenage loners who are actually into SPD category are stuck with the label aspergers until they're 18. There's also some few studies about teenagers and certain condition which states that they can either be schizoid or aspergers.