Confused about symptoms. Help?

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Hello Folks,

I am new to all of this. I had never heard of Asperger's Syndrome until I met a lady who said her son had it. I looked it up on Wikipedia and kind of freaked out a bit. A lot of what they were talking about there sounded like me. Particularly, the mind-blindness and difficulties with social interaction. In addition to some of the other symptoms.

However, I do not have all of the classic symptoms. I don't have any stims. I am not that physically coordinated but I can play guitar. I don't really want to be alone, but with my social skills it is often easier than being reminded that I don't "get it" and end up being pushed to the outside again. I don't have a particular sensitivity to light or noise (although I can't sleep when the upstairs neighbors want to play their sub woofer at night).

So, anybody here ever hear of anything like this?

A number of people here play the guitar at least two from memory are officially diagnosed with aspergers. Technically if your missing one criteria for an aspergers diagnoses you can be diagnosed with PDD-NOS.

Take some of the online tests:

http://aq.server8.org/
http://www.pttools.co.uk/asc/asc_wp2.php
http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

Rockandblues,

Stims may be subtle and infrequent, or not appear at all.

The lack of coordination is overblown. It usually doesn't affect things like playing a guitar. HECK, I probably learned the guitar faster than most, and once played ok.

There have been many times I would have WELCOMED companionship. If I could pay and get it, I would, but you can't actually influence a person by paying money, it just isn't the same.

The sensitivity to light/noise can be subtle also, or just the opposite. With me, light is not NEARLY as bad as it used to be. I used to abandon areas with neon, and hate flourescents. NOW, I really just dislike them. As for sound? I hate LOUD sounds, but it isn't obvious how I differ from others unless it is pretty loud. I also hate certain frequencies others don't seem to mind, but they don't often happen. BTW HATE above often means physical PAIN! BTW I ALSO handle certain types of pain(Like skin damage), cold, etc... REALLY well.

You may think you don't have stims but you probably do, you just never looked at them that way. Over time people can develop stims that don't stand out as too odd in "normal" company. When I started looking into this for myself I didn't think I had stims....then I remembered my obsessive pacing, the tunes constantly running through my head, some of my childhood habits like constant nose picking (and frequent nighttime nose bleeds) and the way I used to click my teeth rhythmically, banging out tunes, so I thought. (one of the scenes I remember from my time with a child psychiatrist or child therapist or whatever he was at Yale Child Guidance in '61 or '62 was tapping on my teeth for him so he could hear it.....that was when he showed me that I did too have an imagination, something I somehow doubted) I used to pace around the room while talking to my mother, which drove her crazy but it was pretty hard to talk to her without pacing. Now when I am talking with my kids they tell me to stop twiddling my thumbs, jeez!

My doctor has agreed to refer me to a specialist for diagnosis, though he is skeptical, if fact he thinks I'm a silly hypocondriac at this point, and who knows? I'm at least a neighbor if not a full fledged member. Actually, I may look nt on the surface, especially to a doctor who doesn't actually see that much of me....

anyway, if you feel like you belong you belong! welcome to wp!

and while there may be advantages to acting sort of np amongst nps if you can pull it off, there are also advantages to being yourself whenever you can. for one thing, while i may lack for company sometimes, most of the time i love being alone, just me and my record player in my painting studio.

Okay, I took the three tests recommended.

The first one gave me an "AQ score" of 38.

The second I was unable to read. I did not see any lines other than the outlines?

The third said my "Aspie score" was 96 out of 200. My "neurotypical (non-autistic) score" was 79 out of 200. According to this, I don't fit in anywhere. Oh well, story of my life.

I hadn't seen the aq test before. I got a 35.
The only stims I seem to have are pacing, and sometimes tapping my foot or fingers. My ex-girlfriend used to tease me that it was impossible for me to sit without some part of my body moving.
Some of those tests have ambiguous questions so it is hard to answer them correctly. For instance, one asks if peple tell you that you talk about the same things all the time. The people I talk to are either too polite to tell me, or they just know me so well that they don't bother, but I know I tell them the same things or at least the same narrow range of topics all the time. So, should I answer "no" since no one tells me, or "yes" because I do but they just aren't telling me?
Another amiguous one is if you can tell if the person you are talking to is bored; I think it would be better to ask if that person is interested, since I think I lose their interest in the first 10 seconds and they all look bored whenever I talk.

My sensitivity to light and sound are not as great as my taste/smell/tactile sensitivies.

And there's definitely plenty of musical auties out there, quite a few who play guitar too I'm sure.

The thing is, is that "autism" doesn't just stop at a diagnosis. It's a complex group of traits, with ranges of severity, and while the phenotypes (genetic expression) may be different, the genotypes can still be autistic. Which is how you get a range from "severely autistic" (debate about "severe" at a later date) ranging up to an undiagnosable but definitely present "Broader Autistic Phenotype" (BAP).

Best thing is look back at your own family. You're bound to see similar traits. ASCs aren't random single mutations. They're genes which are part and parcel of the human continuum, so you're going to see people with greater and less collections of these traits. It's pretty easy to tell whether someone has "autism" genes there. But the real difficulty is figuring out if their phenotype is enough for a diagnosis. You may be somewhere in that gray borderland region.

On a side note while you're researching ASCs, try not to take the written materials out there too strictly. There is no single behavior that every autistic person has, so just because you might not do "this" or "that", don't put a blanket wash on it and conclude you're not at all autistic. It's taken me a fair amount of time since my self-dx and eventual dx to figure that out. Books, articles, they all generalize behavioral traits too much and don't really understand how to communicate the underlying issues.

Some of those underlying issues as I see them are:

1. an excitable brain-- as in neuronally (this can lead to traits of anxiety, OCD, tics, seizures, etc.)
2. intelligence and special abilities to varying degrees, especially those in the HFA or Aspergers ranges
3. Weak Central Coherence (also known as a Local Processing Bias)

And there are also some endocrine and immune issues that may occur more frequently in ASCs/BAPs.

Not everyone diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome show the same symptoms. That's what is meant by being on the Spectrum.
It is believed that Bill Gates has Asperger's Syndrome and parents with alot of money to address his needs!
Also, Albert Einstein is believed to have had Asperger's Syndrome, too!

Thank you all, for the advice and thoughts. I am going to stick around and see if I can learn to deal with things better.

I have no plans to go to a professional. Most of my money is going to bills and guitars.

Yeah, I can rattle off a whole lotta facts about guitars and whatnot. That whole thing of not knowing when to shut up. That's me. It doesn't help that I ramble when I am nervous. Like when people want to make small talk, for instance.

On the other hand, it works to my advantage for nosy folks I don't want to talk to or deal with. Experience has shown that if I ramble on about something they don't particularly care about, like guitars, they will go away. Unfortunately, it works the same for women, too.