Lotte

Hello everyone, I’m new to using forums, so I hope I am posting this in the right area! I have a friend who is quite mature, nearly fifty, and I’m inclined to think that he may have Asperger’s Syndrome. I am fairly sure that he has never heard of AS and subsequently I doubt that he’d have been considered for an assessment as a child. I feel that if I were to talk to him about AS, he’d perhaps develop a better understanding of himself. From time to time, he falls into a depression, mainly caused by his low self-esteem, and I think his shyness and social awkwardness frustrate him. But what is holding me back from suggesting he seek an assessment is my doubt – to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never met anyone else with AS, so I can’t help but think I may be trying to read into his behaviour. Nevertheless I am fairly sure that his behaviour suggests AS. Here are some of the noticeable characteristics of his behaviour: - He can’t abide anything or anyone breaking his routine, and he finds it very hard to adapt to change. If something spontaneous should happen, it proves emotionally distressing/overwhelming for him, and the same sort of emotions seem to arise when he’s in unfamiliar places – especially those with a high number of people. His distress usually manifests itself as a sort of ‘restrained, aimless aggression/anger’, or alternatively he becomes very introverted. - He is overly sensitive to noise. Background conversation that is just mildly noisy, for instance, can prove bothersome. Sometimes he can also be very sensitive to touch too. - He doesn’t seem to naturally know how to initiate physical contact. For example, he’ll try to pat someone’s shoulder, yet there’s always a sort of awkwardness to it. - His eye for detail and being thorough is stunning, which is obviously great for his work, yet this also manifests itself in a somewhat pedantic fashion. He will always try and gear conversation to one of his ‘specialist areas’, and when he is talking about such a subject, he can talk quite confidently for hours, and yet he never really seems to ‘connect’ with the person he’s talking with. He tends not to make a great deal of eye contact (when he is talking to someone, he won’t look directly at them – his eyes seem to glaze over and look into the distance), or when he does it seems overly deliberate. There is a bit of a bizarre paradox with this, because he could easily address a whole auditorium if he were talking about one of his favourite subjects, and yet he is otherwise painfully shy. - His use of language tends to be quite formal and although it can be elaborate, it rarely seems ‘imaginative’ or even eloquent. In fact, he can sound quite blunt at times. - Finally, he just doesn’t seem to be able to emotionally relate to people. In short, unless someone tells him directly (bluntly, without subtle wording) what they are feeling, he simply can’t guess or work it out by subtext. And even then, he can be very stubborn and can’t see other people’s perspectives; for instance, if someone tells him that he’s been rude and explains coherently why that appears so, he will adamantly refuse to believe them. He doesn’t know how to offer emotional support, because he simply can’t relate to the person who needs the support. He sometimes appears a little emotionally stunted and fickle, but at the same time he can be a little possessive over people and is a little bit too quick to develop attachments to people. What is probably most problematic about his behaviour is that he doesn’t seem to recognise clearly what is and isn’t socially acceptable and he’s all too quick to trust in people. Although he’s very intelligent, there is this odd sort of naivety about him and he can be easily manipulated. Does anyone else think this sounds like Asperger’s? In fact, is it really plausible that he could have gotten to nearly fifty years of age without a doctor sending him for an assessment? When growing up, he was always considered a little socially odd, but it seems as if no one’s ever thought of his awkwardness as being an indicator of anything else…