New and undiagnosed

[GuzziHero]

Hi all,

 

I'm Guzzi (I hate my real name) and I have problems. I've had them for years, I have assessed myself and how I act over and over again and never come up with an answer to my questions. Questions like "Why do I try to be so nice to everyone but never get respect?", "Why am I so obsessed with routine and get so anxious when forced out of it?" and mainly "Why am I so goddamned STUPID?".

 

I did an online Autism Quotient test, and scored 44.

 

Now I feel like I am on the verge of a breakthrough, to finally understand what my issue is.

 

Going back a bit, the problems I have always have suffered are largely social and almost equally stress. When the two combined at high school, I put myself in hospital a few times with stomach illnesses that could never be explained but which I realised later in life were most likely caused by stress.

 

My problem is that I have routines, schedules. I will be an hour early rather than a minute late. Everything I do, I have to allocate blocks of time for and panic if I overrun. Anything, even stupidly small things like heading out on a motorbike ride, has to be planned to an exacting standard, which of course I rarely manage to achieve. I stress myself easily, I get scatterbrained, I think so much I lose my bearings and usually get angry and damage things when I do. I am obsessed with order, putting things into specific places or combinations. I get testy if I see my friend make a cup of coffee in the wrong way (coffee then sugar then milk then water), or if he leaves something in the wrong place.

 

I make friends easily, but always try too hard to please, and simply cannot bear it when someone thinks I am lying, or simply doesnt like me. I am honest to a fault (it sometimes IS a fault), and no matter how much I try I just can't say the right things, and have massive difficulty picking up nuances in speech or catching on to comments. Sometimes, I feel like I am (and I hate the word) mentally retarded... like someone could say something to me and I only understand it 10 minutes later.

 

Doing anything which is out of the ordinary frustrates me. Not that I dont like doing it, but I always get SOMETHING wrong. I know what I am doing but it just doesnt 'click'. Case in point: I was fitting the front forks to a motorbike and managed to first forgot to fit the indicator brackets that MUST go on before the forks are all the way in... then I fitted them and they were on the wrong sides. At times like that I get angry and how stupid I must be.

 

Numbers. Dear god, the numbers. Obsessed with my bank balances (I shouldnt worry, I'm fine but still...), always calculating how much some purchase will take out of them. All sorts of numbers. I can remember the reg plate of a car my dad scrapped 25 years ago but can't remember the names of my work colleagues. I enjoy seeing sequenced numbers come round on my odometer or clock (12:34 is my favourite time of the day). And I count letters. On street signs, car bumper stickers... everything.. and then arrange them into groups of 3,4,5 etc. Prime numbers are bad, they annoy me, so I sometimes sneakily add parentheses etc to make them 'right'.

 

But then I took that AQ test and started reading. I think I may finally have started to understand WHY I am the way I am. Even having a possible name for it has helped me. Of course, being unable to keep secrets, I feel like I need to explain it to everyone I meet and have found that a few others noticed something about me, but didnt really get what.

 

I guess my questions to end this thread are... Am I on the right track? Might I have Aspergers, or something else? Am I really just an imbecile?

 

Thanks for reading.

[Fried_frog]

Guzzi,

 

I feel the same as you about a lot of the things you have mentioned. I'm immediately 100% angry if someone uses or touches a new thing that i have bought first. Or if someone touches my computer screen to point at something, i feel like screaming.

I don't understand a lot of social nuances either, i never assume anything (things have to be said explicitly)and i don't know what is appropriate to tell people, which can sometimes make my partner very angry with me!

 

These things don't make you stupid. Don't let anyone tell you so.

 

Have you talked to your GP or local ASD charity about this? My GP tried to tell me off with 'OCD', so i went to the ASD charity here and i am awaiting on an appointment with their staff.

 

All the best,

 

Kat

Edited December 2, 2010 by Fried_frog

[Tally]

Hi Guzzi, and welcome to the forum.

 

I had a similar realisation to you a few years ago now.

 

Asperger's certainly sounds like a possibility.

 

It sounds like you may have a bit of OCD as well. This is pretty common in Asperger's, and we tend to be quite obsessive even if it hasn't crossed the line and started to interfere with daily life. The good news about OCD is that it can be treatable, so if it's causing you a real problem it might be possible to ease it a bit. OCD does not sound like all of the problem though, it would not cause the social difficulties you're also having.

[GuzziHero]

Thank you for your welcomes!

 

I haven't spoken to anyone professional about this yet. The very concept of autism or something like it has only been in my mind a few weeks since I did that AQ test. I don't really know where to start but I will browse this forum well and see what I can search out

 

What annoys me about it all is that my mother used to work at a charity playscheme for the mentally handicapped. Why didnt she see it? If I knew then what I know now, things could have been very different for me

[Kathryn]

Welcome GuzziHero - I hope you find the answers you're looking for.

 

Regarding your last point - don't be too hard on your mum. It's not always easy to spot something in your own child - and ASD comes in all shapes and sizes, so even knowing one child with ASD doesn't necessarily guarantee you'll recognise it in another. My daughter was diagnosed relatively late (at 15) and we always wondered why we, her mum and dad, (specialist subjects: psychology and linguistics respectively)- didn't pick it up earlier - apart from a general feeling that she was different. I think that you tend to accept your children for who they are and take any quirks as part of their personality. In my case I blamed my own parenting - wrongly- for a lot of my daughter's difficulties. ASD didn't suggest itself till much later. The only child with ASD I knowingly encountered was a two year old boy who used to strip off and run around naked at the toddler group - well my daughter wasn't like that at all, so I would never have made any connection.

 

K x

[GuzziHero]

Thats fair enough Thanks for that!