Aspies For Freedom

Hello fellow AFF members,

as you can see I am fairly new here, though I have been lurking quite some time now reading through many threads, and found this to be a friendly, interesting and very active place.
Inspired by similar posts (which I read with big interest) I decided to write about me.

So, I'm a German in the mid thirties, living my own life, means I live alone, have a good job with even being responsible for a small office - nothing I really would have to complain about
Yet - I always knew that there were certain things about me which left me puzzled.
Normally I am rather a self-therapist, means whenever I feel depressed or anything I "contemplate" about it, find the cause and eliminate it or work on it. I never felt like talking to anybody else about my very private "little problems". Those "certain things", though, always perplexed me, traits that seem to make me different to anybody I know and I could contemplate as much as I wanted I never figured any reasonable explanation or way out.

So - what are they ?
- socialising: I never had many friends, at times if any. I remember having my first friend at the age of about 10 or 11, before that I preferably spent my time on my own or went with my older brother and his friends. There was no reason to be sad about that, I did not miss anything, time spent on my own was best spent time anyway. During school time and university there were always a few friends around and I did meet them relatively often. But since I started working it's getting worse again - escpecially during the past 6 or so years. Unlike most other people hanging around with friends is not relaxing or vitalising for me by any means, it's exhausting, hard work. Meeting one or two persons at a time is OK, going to parties with a lot of people and even more conversation is one hell. Same applies to regular contact by phone - I don't have any problems with phone conversations per se, but having to spend my valuable time just chatting about every day life is absolutely meaningless for me. In order to stay in contact people have to call me, otherwise the contact will be lost (and that happend many times and still happens).

- conversation: I remember I refused to talk to anybody I didn't know until I entered school, people said something to me and I just stared because I didn't know what to say.
It always has been and still is very difficult and hard work for me to keep conversations running. It can be easier with very good friends and about topics which meet my very special interests, and it can be impossible when it comes to small talk like conversations and situations where more people talk at the same time. I could sit right besides somebody, but when there is a lot of other chat around I am simply unable to understand
what this person is saying. Another problem is that if a conversation is not meeting my interest my attention tends to drift away, back to my own thoughts and interests and I end up saying nothing, just staring somewhere and possibly still having the grin in my face although the topic has changed to something serious (which of course I did not realise).

- focus/drifting: complicated - somehow they belong together although their interaction can be quite different If I'm focussing one of my special interests it gets my full attention, no reason for drifting away (I'm at home one could say ), if there is any disturbance it can drive me mad. Something I'm not interested in can hardly get my focus, I'm easily drifting away into my very own internal world. Sometimes simple things can catch my focus (could be a surface, colour, layout, sound) and I end up drifting to nowhere, just staring at, listening to or sensing it (guess that must be the strangest looking situations if anybody could see me ).

- obsessive interests: have been part of my life as long as I can remember back. As a little child other boys in my age played moon station or submarine, adventures in far away and dangerous locations, I rather spent my time designing moon stations, deep ocean stations, space stations. I painted detailed construction plans of such facilities - crew accomodation, supply chains, waste management and recycling... maps have been and still are a fascinating subject, today my interests are aviation (flightplans, aircraft types), astronomy, exobiology, transportation chains (air, sea, truck, train, no matter) - some of them are more or less always there, some rather rotating, all of them obsessive.

- being on my own: most important thing in my life - the only way to relax actually. The in my opinion strangest thing I almost always do when I'm on my own is having discussions in my head, discussion about topics of my interest, conversations of the past and possible future conversations, presentations about topics of my special interests, things I recently learned explained to a virtual audience in my head.

To sum it up - strange behaviours I never could get sorted out.

So how did I get here ? Recently I saw a TV documentary about autism, no Aspergers, rather about low functioning autism and savants. Fascinated by that subject I went online and did some research about autism, and once I read a site about Aspergers I was nothing less than
overwhelmed - suddenly there was a possible answer to those huge questionmarks I always had about myself !
Am I an Aspie ?
I took one of the tests - more for fun actually - and scored 35 of 50.
Couple of days later I took the Aspie Quiz: 161 of 200 Aspie, 45 of 200 non-autism !
What the ... ?!? Am I an Aspie ?!?
Now - a couple of weeks later after lots of thinking and further reading, the answer is "possibly yes - possibly no". And I think it does actually not really matter - I know that I am substantially different from the "average" human being, I know my strengths and I know my shortcomings - and I have learned to control my shortcomings in a way that I can be very successful in a job I love and not to look awkward to anybody else (or as rarely as possible ). And now I have learned that I am definitely not alone with my oddities - and that feels good - no matter how one would like to name it :-)

Sorry for letting this post grow to such an extent, got rather an essay than a post :-) - I hope somebody still will read it and still has enough energy to comment :-)

Cheers

Welcome to the board!

Yes, big text posts don't get alot of replies usually. I think you could be more or less aspie, but I agree with you that there's no need for an hysteria about it as you do know yourself. I did find myself familiar in many aspects of your story.

Hi,

Nobody online can 'diagnose' you, and it sounds like you still have a lot to soak up on the subject, but I'm sure you'll find a lot here that will be familiar to you. I don't know if you are actually seeking diagnosis or not, but there is quite a bit of a support network out there in Germany.

A few links I'd recommend are: http://www.aspiana.de/, http://www.asperger-forum.de/, http://www.aspergia.de/ and http://aspieforum.de/forum/

@erkolos: thanks for the welcome I know - longish posts don't find too much attraction, and made it already shorter than it originally was - I cut out those stims and routines, as well as traits that do not play a big role in my life any more, such as eye contact and non verbal skills since I guess I learned a lot in those areas and can use them pretty well nowadays.

@noetic: thanks for the links - well appreciated. Indeed it looks that there still is a lot to read about that subject - not sure if I ever would go for a diagnosis, though. From what I understand till now I guess I definitely have some autistic traits, but if that qualifies me as an NT with some Aspie traits or an Aspie with some NT traits makes actually no difference, but it gives me some different viewpoints on my personality, and this is what it's all about for me.

I spend a lot of time in an internal world too, often staring at something or otherwise sensing something as if I hadn't a thought in my head, when actually what I'm staring at is inspiring my daydreaming.  I can sit in front of a fan, for example, just feeling the draft and getting  pleasantly chilled, and that chilly sensation is like a coccoon for my mind, it makes me feel insulated while I think.

I do that too!  I sometimes narrate inside my head, as if I were writing an article; I also have monologues, dialogues, interviews and even comedy routines in my mind.  I can do this alone OR when I am at work and not involved in any "real" conversations.   

WELCOME TO AFF, ALEX01!

Hello, I just signed up here today. This is the first thread I have read. I need to say this - oh my god, yes yes! I do this too. I don't think I could stay sane without it. It means much more to me than 'real' converstaion. I can't remember a time in my life when that was not important to me. And I can remember back to age 3 or so. Probably predates my actual ability to speak (hard to judge, but I am fairly certain that I could "speak in my head" long before I could actually speak verbally.)

If someone comes in and attempts to speak to me when I am doing this, I feel as if they have interrupted a real conversation, or areinterrupting a real lecture, and get very annoyed at what I perceive as their rudeness.

It's bad enough that I often (before I learned to control it in my late teens/early 20's) had a habit of referring to myself in the first person plural. (ie: "we" instead of "i")

Anyway, like the original poster, I have no official diagnosis. Just took the ASPie quiz, and got 167/200 aspie and 39/200 NT.

Many other things have just "clicked" in all the reading that I have just started doing on this topic. Tics, hand flapping and other stimming (never knew it was called that before today - it was always just "one of those weird things I do with my hands"), spontaneously blurting out words or phrases that I have just read (it's fun being a passenger while i'm driving - you get treated to a narration of road signs and license plates at varying intervals and volumes depending on my stress level - if some one cuts me off I typically react by screaming out their license number <G>

How do I go about finding a doctor that can diagnose whether or not I truly am an aspie? What irks me is I have been to many psychiatrists over the years, and none ever seemed to think of any autism spectrum disorder.

Very interesting post, read the whole thing in spite of its length. Rather than watching a TV documentary, I had my "What the *$%!!" moment when I read a newspaper article about Aspie over breakfast 4 years ago.

To me you sound like an Aspie.

I would also ask:
1. Have ever stimmed? Hand flap, rock, etc?
2. Fascinated by rotating objects?

LR

@couldbecousin: thanks for the welcome .... "as if I were writing an article" describes it pretty well

@Sean: I had a good laugh regarding that screaming somebodies licence number Licence numbers usually also tend to attract my attention - and I do that as well from time to time, or rather build phantasy words out of the letters and numbers and use them as ugly swear words against those drivers Good that I'm usually alone in my car

@gemtnt: did you go for a diagnosis after your *$%!!" moment (as you describe it ) or do you consider yourself as self diagnosed ?
I never thought about stimming until the moment when colleagues imitated me as I was sitting on the phone and slightly slapping my ruler against my bald head - in a slow rhythm, about once every second. From that point I realised that I indeed do that pretty often, with a ruler, pen, fingers ... especially when I'm on the phone, I guess that's somehow relaxing in certain situations ?
I couldn't say that I have a special fascination for rotating objects ...

I'm constantly flapping my legs back and forth, People have made fun out of me for rocking backwards and forwards like a mentle patient, It's just comfortable to be moving instead of still, I feel like I'm going to burst else.