Hi all,
This is my first post in this forum and potentially my first step in attempting to get some answers.
I’m male and 32 years of age. Throughout my life, I’ve often experienced little things that make me feel different to others. I’ve always had big problems in terms of my social skills, though this has always been put down to the fact I’m ‘just shy’. I’ve always had the desire to speak out and make conversation with strangers, but I just find it almost impossible and very unnatural. I work in IT and the job I have, whilst most of the time involves working alone in front of a PC screen, does sometimes involve talking to people. I intentionally try and push the boundaries of my comfort zone occasionally, to attempt to make things easier, but it never seems to get easier. A lot of this is also to try and change people’s perceptions of me, as I’ve been told I sometimes come across as very aloof. I’m a lot better at attempting brief small talk with people I know a little, but any lengthier conversations end in awkward silences and me stumbling over my words.
Over the last few years, I’ve occasionally thought that I share a few of traits that are commonly found in people with Aspergers. It was only upon researching a little more recently that I realised I share a lot more than I’d initially thought. The fact I immediately recognise a lot of the traits makes me contemplate the notion that maybe there’s more to my lack of social skills than just shyness.
Having children recently has made me reflect on certain aspects of my life, largely due to having to face difficulties I didn’t realise I had. I’ve been reading up on AS and it’s started raising a few questions in my head. I’m not sure how reliable the online tests are, but I scored 41 in the AQ Autism Test and 130 out of 200 (neurotypical score of 77 out of 200) in the Aspie Quiz.
I just wanted to share some of my traits with you to see if you recognise any of them. This list is fairly comprehensive and covers all the things that make me the person I am, including all the little quirky things. Apologies for the length of the list but if you could spare the time to consider just some of my traits and give me your honest opinion as to whether you think I should be assessed or if I’m completely barking up the wrong tree, I’d be very grateful.
Childhood
My earliest vivid memory is when I was 25 months and my brother was born. I’ve not met many people who can remember this far back.
I used to get very frustrated as a young child and used to bang my head on the floor. My Grandad put this down to my intelligence and frustration in not being able to articulate it.
I had quite severe attachment issues with my mother. I used to have nightmares about her abandoning me. Starting nursery when I was 3 was a massive problem for me and I struggled to cope with her leaving me with people I didn’t know.
I had very good language skills from an early age – I felt the need to always pronounce my words very well. If I met another child with less developed speech, I would often tutor them on how to form words correctly.
I always had very good cognitive skills.
When I started school, I used to go through phases where I just wouldn’t want to be there and I would cry at my Mum to take me home. I couldn’t find a logical explanation as to why I felt like this and to this day, I can’t understand why I had these feelings.
I became obsessed with computers from a very early age (around 5) and have remained very interested in computers and IT ever since.
I preferred to build with Lego and invent vehicles, rather than play with action figures. I had very little imagination in terms of ‘pretending’ with action figures.
I never really had a hobby and hated all sports. I had very bad co-ordination when it came to sport, unless it just involved running in a straight line which I was very good at.
I always had a desire to ‘fit in’ but never seemed to fit in with any particular group. I always felt as though I was an outsider intruding on a group. I pretty much always had a ‘best friend’ who was pretty much my only friend at the time. I sometimes tried to be part of a bigger circle of friends, but this often resulted in me growing close to one person then subsequently isolating ourselves from the others in the group. My best friends were often other children who also felt like they didn’t fit in.
I used to collect stamps and became a bit obsessive at one point. I never missed stamp club at school and spent hours upon hours categorising my stamps.
If I lost something as a child, I’d get very upset / angry and spend an unreasonable amount of time trying to find it. I lost my favourite marble from the hole in my reading bag. I was devastated and it played on my mind for a long time. I’d almost class this characteristic as a fear. I also used to hoard crisps packets / food bags / biscuit wrappers in my jacket pockets because I wouldn’t want to bin them (or at least I wanted to put them in the bin at home). Not sure why, but I think it was similar to losing things, as described above.
I was generally well behaved at school and regarded as gifted and of above average intelligence. But I hated supply teachers and would often get in trouble if we didn’t have the usual class teacher. I liked winding them up if I deemed them bad at their job or unable to keep controls of the class.
I spent a lot of my teenage years on the Internet. I also spent time building PCs and designing websites based on my interests (largely computer games). I also used to write my own computer games and would be shut away in my room for very long periods of time.
My first ‘proper’ girlfriend didn’t materialise until I was 16. I was besotted by her and unfortunately let my GCSEs suffer a little as she was a massive distraction for me. When we broke up, I took it very badly and struggled to accept the fact we were no longer together. I obsessed over the fact that it was inevitable that we would get back together, although this did not happen.
Early Adulthood
I left university a couple of months after starting, due to finding it difficult to make friends. I felt very low during this time and missed my old life and family massively. I did attend a different university a year later, but already had friends there as the university was situated in my home town. This made the whole thing a little less daunting, although I still had problems making friends initially. I was lucky in that one girl invited me into her circle of friends. I think she probably felt a little sorry for me as I was evidently shy. I remained in this circle of friends for around a year before I eventually developing a strong platonic friendship with a member of the group. We then split from the wider group due to different module choices. The girl I used to hang around with did have friends, but I did resent her spending time with them during the normal university day, largely due to jealousy I think. I hardly ever socialised outside of the typical university day.
I met my wife on a dating site. I didn’t have the confidence to start talking to girls in person. Whilst it was still quite scary, the fact I’d spoke to her on the Internet quite a bit beforehand made me feel considerably more at ease.
We got married a few years back and until quite recently, spent much of our married life trying to conceive. We went through a very stressful period of fertility treatment. During this time, I spent most of the time bottling up my emotions and then having meltdowns, whereby something would trigger me to get very angry and lose my temper and then get upset. Whilst I tried to be supportive to my wife, I’d often find myself trying to be overly positive and not really having much empathy for her and what she was going through. Thankfully, we were finally blessed with beautiful twin boys last year.
Now / General Traits
I hate social situations, particularly parties and social work events. I’ll avoid these at any cost. My wife dislikes how I don’t like parties and often thinks I come across rude or aloof as I generally don’t talk to people. I like the idea of getting involved with conversations but I just can’t do it with people I don’t know. I find it pretty much impossible to start conversations with strangers. If I do manage to start a conversation, I struggle to keep it going which makes things very awkward. I apparently come across as disinterested sometimes. I do worry that people think I’m chipping in at the wrong time or commenting on something that I shouldn’t be commenting.
I have a Facebook profile but never communicate with anyone on Facebook. You’d think my interest in IT would mean I’d be an avid user when you take into account its’ popularity. However, the social aspect just doesn’t appeal to me.
I get very easily distracted at work – if I’m not heavily into a project I’m currently working on, I find it almost impossible to start new pieces of work, unless a deadline is looming. I get easily sidetracked (have spent a good few hours typing this list instead of working!)
I hate dancing as I can’t dance and worry about looking very silly.
My ideal evening after my sons have gone to bed would be to play on my Xbox. Due to having young twins, I find that getting on my Xbox to play games nowadays is very difficult. If I don’t play on my Xbox to relax, I often find myself very stressed and unable to relax for very long periods of time.
I find books very difficult to become interested in. The only books I can read are on subjects I’m exceptionally interested in. In my adult life, I’ve only read three books and they were all non-fiction. I could never bring myself to read any fiction.
I love watching TV, the core of what I watch being soaps. I’ve watched soaps avidly since a child. I often bore my wife about future plotlines or past stories – she watches soaps but really doesn’t care too much about future plotlines. I also like shows such as Doctor Who and love all the Star Wars films.
I have a fascination with lights / colour. Our baby monitor cycles through different colours and I could watch it for hours. I often ‘play with light’ with my hands to make it refract in different ways.
When lying in bed, I sometimes trace the lines of the room with my fingers in the air i.e. following the lines where the ceiling meets the wall. I don’t do this intentionally, but my wife often catches me doing it and makes me aware of it, which makes me stop. I’ve been doing this since I was a child.
I’m constantly making verbal noises, such as raspberries, clicking sounds or dripping taps. Sometimes I don’t even realise I’m doing it until my wife points it out to me. I spend hours doing this with my children. I also do impressions of celebrities.
If a topic comes up in conversation and seems interesting, I’ll have the urge to visit Wikipedia on my phone or work PC to find out as much as possible about it, often abandoning whatever I’m doing at the time. I probably visit Wikipedia 10 – 15 times a day on average to find more information on something.
Washing up baby bottles must be done in a logical way, i.e. wash all the bottles, then all the teats, then the teat rims, then put the teats in the teat rims and organise on the draining board. My wife does not do this which often infuriates me and I feel my blood pressure increasing.
Computer programming is my vocation. It gives me the opportunity to be very logical and make technical things work without having to talk to too many people.
I sometimes find it difficult to empathise with people and can’t understand why other people are often very negative – this sometimes comes across as being positive and optimistic but can be mistaken for lack of caring.
I will make eye contact naturally with people I know very well. Eye contact with friends is a little more difficult. I try to make eye contact with people I don’t know but find this very unnatural and uncomfortable.
I love spoonerisms – switching the letters of words around. Like chish and fips! I often do this without thinking, usually in the right context (i.e. when at home) but sometimes inappropriately (albeit unintentionally) during informal conversations at work.
People at work have considered me aloof at times. In business meetings, I rarely speak up, unless there are a small number of people in the meeting and the subject of the meeting is something I’m directly involved with. If the subject of the meeting is something I’m interested in, providing there are only a small number of people, I will talk fairly confidently for a long period of time. I really have to concentrate not to interrupt other people when they talk in these situations and sometimes struggle to decipher exactly when I should speak. Not speaking up in meetings does go against me and is often raised as an issue in annual performance meetings.
My eyes are very sensitive to sunlight, which has resulted in early crow’s feet due to squinting.
When I’m exceptionally tired, I sometimes blink very harshly, almost giving the appearance of me screwing my eyes up, but very quickly. I think I used to do this more when I was younger.
I get my haircut as infrequently as possible, as making conversation with the person cutting my hair is often very difficult.
I like rough routine (my disorganisation in the morning often ruins this) but a major change to my routine is not good e.g. when my wife kindly provides me with unexpected ironing! This often makes me lose my temper, even though the implications of running 5 minutes later won’t really make a huge difference.
I hoard stuff, although I think I’m a lot better than I used to be. I find it difficult to part with computer components. My garage is full from floor to ceiling of stuff I can’t currently bring myself to part with.
Bad drivers make me very cross. On the whole, I am a very calm person. But if someone is in the wrong lane on a roundabout and then cuts me up and doesn’t indicate as they should, I get very, very angry. This happened to me once and my foot was shaking so much that I could barely keep it on the accelerator.
I love computer games, particularly vast virtual worlds I can explore or games where I can become very efficient at doing something, such as Call of Duty. I love games with lots of content that can be explored.
I love my TV and my Xbox. I get angry when my sons play with them or hit them. I know they’re only babies, but it still makes me unreasonably cross, even though I try to not let it bother me.
If I’ve got a lot of feelings bottled up, this will often result in explosions. These happen much more when I’m tired. Having small children that wake up during the middle of the night means I’m a lot more tired nowadays, so my wife sees me losing my temper a lot more. She has commented that the extent to wish I lose my temper is often completely out of context and over the top.
If I am going through a stressful period, either at work or at home, I’ll often lose my temper over the most trivial things. I can be happy and calm one minute, then something as trivial as knocking something unbreakable off the draining board will often get me instantly very cross and result in me throwing it across the kitchen. In retrospect I can see no logical reason for doing this, but at the time the impulse to do this is uncontrollable.
I’m obsessed with deodorant. I never forgot to put it on. But I keep a spare one in my bag just in case I do one day. If deodorant builds up in my clothes over time (which it does, even if washed), then I can’t wear them again because they smell funny. My wife often dismisses this.
I’m very good at hearing quiet noises when I’m awake. But I’m very good at not hearing loud noises when I’m asleep (apparently!).
I’m rubbish at multitasking – particularly when I’m on the phone having a conversation and my wife is trying to have another conversation with me.
I twist and crack my fingers far too often – most of the time, I don’t realise I’m doing it. I do it more when I’m stressed too.
I often speak far too loudly (when my sons are asleep) or far too quietly (to the point of mumbling).
I once completed a psychometric test for an interview. I was described as a ‘genius’ for achieving 88% when the next best person got 61% and they had a degree in mathematics. The test was based primarily on pattern, logic and sequence.
You may have noticed – I like writing lists…lots of lists! It helps me organised things in my head. Wunderlist is the best app ever invented for mobile phones!
I would love you hear your opinions / views and am very interested in any similar experiences you may have had.
Thanks for taking the time to read. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
Jimmy
