Maybe, I don't know. Autism is a spectrum of traits, some you may fit, some your wont. Maybe aspergers isn't quite right, maybe traits of autism may be be more on mark. It's a bit of an art, more than a science.

I love your writing, you're brilliant. Your writing is very relaxed, informal and off the cuff.

You definitely don't get any points for humility.

I think it is non-Aspie.  Personally, if you pull me away from my hyperfocused state, it is very hard for me to get back into it.

I think you may be "gifted ADHD" instead, and the Asperger could be wrong.

You sound somewhat autistic to me. Actually, you sound similar to myself in some ways - my "strongest" autistic trait is strong interests, I have only minor sensorimotor problems, and I don't have an especially hard time figuring out when to talk or interpreting facial expressions (although I suspect that I do it in a somewhat different way than a non-autistic would). There is no line between "autistic" and "non-autistic", only a large gray area. You could be "weakly autistic" (which is how I sometimes describe myself), or somewhere in that gray area. Those online quizzes aren't necessarily right.

It seems that either your ADHD messes up the online test results or you've been the 'victim' of a sort of 'fashion' among professionals to dx Asperger's if they don't know what to write down.

Even if - you're still welcome to write here.

Sounds as if that piece of information could be delivered to your son on a neat deed.

I don't know why people seem to keep insisting on this, but really I do not see why being exceptionally smart would allow you to mimic social behavior any better than an Aspie of average intelligence.

There are bright NTs who don't do too well socially.

I think your theory is incorrect.  Again, for the masses, if you happen to be very smart with Asperger's... the giftedness wouldn't necessarily compensate for social problems.  Trust me.

I have an incredibly bad sense of direction.  I am 26 and have lived in the same neighborhood my whole life, and I still cannot give anyone directions to anyone beyond a simple "go past this one light, take a left, keep going for a while" etc.  I still get lost in my own neighborhood.

I think a bad sense of direction is typical for Aspies.

I agree. There have been a number of autistic people considered to be quite intelligent who couldn't socialize for beans (possibly why we get the 'eccentric professor' stereotype). Academic skills won't do much for socialization, unless you happen to find yourself in a lot of academic clubs, where people are similarly nerdy, and because of mutual knowledge, the difference in social skills may not be so pronounced. But that's when talking about special interests, and even then you can go off on tangents and stand out from the rest.

If you hadn't known, many people with ADHD have some traits and personality characteristics that overlap with Asperger's, in the first place.  Some researchers believe ADHD may be on the autistic spectrum.

I would tend to agree with this, in some cases anyway.  

I've seen concern expressed in the media about the number of children dxed as ADHD and medicated when it may simply be the case that adults are failing to realise that children do have loads of energy and if they are denied the opportunity to run that energy off or express themselves as children should then their activities will become more destructive.  They say that children are given much less freedom these days just to be children and to enjoy unsupervised, or minimally supervised outdoor play.  Instead they are kept indoors and expected to act more like mini-adults than as children.  Medication is used to keep them placid and more controllable. Better to let them run about in the park for an afternoon and burn off all that energy!

Btw, I'm not saying this applies to all children dxed as ADHD, but quite possibly to some.

I think this is true for those who have been misdiagnosed with ADHD, while for people who the diagnosis fits probably wouldn't make any difference. Especially the school system, expects kids to have to sit still for way too long at a time.

I definitely agree with this.

On a related note, I think of myself as more of an AS/ADHD hybrid, although my ADHD is predominantly inattentive.

Oddly enough, classic ADHD meds like amphetamines overwhelm my senses, make me paranoid, euphoric, and hyper at low doses.  The effect I got from Ritalin was an absolute nightmare--the paranoia was extreme and would last for up to 5 hours.

Absolutely! There are such fascinating little details all around, there's really not enough time to investigate them all. I have always been baffled when people say that they are "bored". Of course, I think reading the cereal box for the hundredth time is still interesting, so...

I'm an AS/ADHD hybrid, too. My med experience was very different, though. I take Adderal 30mg 4x/d, and I get the classical ADHD paraxoxical effect with it - it calms me down. I was never physically hyperactive, though, just hyperactive in thought. The meds do not address the inattention, however - still as distractible as ever, just at a little slower pace.

This is another thing I wouldn't want to be "cured" of. If the "cure" is a sentence to be forever bored and to find most things uninteresting, why would I want that?

I'm an AS/ADHD hybrid, too. My med experience was very different, though. I take Adderal 30mg 4x/d, and I get the classical ADHD paraxoxical effect with it - it calms me down. I was never physically hyperactive, though, just hyperactive in thought. The meds do not address the inattention, however - still as distractible as ever, just at a little slower pace.

This is another thing I wouldn't want to be "cured" of. If the "cure" is a sentence to be forever bored and to find most things uninteresting, why would I want that?

I don't quite understand you guys... I find a lot of things boring.  However I can entertain myself in my own head a lot, so I can see where you get the "ADHD kids entertain themselves better than NTs" etc... but some things are so boring and uninteresting to me, I cannot retain basic information about such topics.  Hence, the extreme difficulty I had in school... if I felt a topic was boring, I wouldn't learn anything.

Perhaps it is that the things which interest me, interest me MUCH more than the average person.  But the effect must be similar for things that bore me.  I do notice that I am drawn to examine as much visual stimuli in the environment as I can, I am always turning my head everywhere I go and "notice" more.

Question for outsidelookingin: why do you suppose that some people with inattentive ADHD (like me) don't get the paradoxical calming effect?  Could it perhaps be related to some physiological reason; perhaps an inherited sensitivity to the stimulant class of drugs, something like that?

Because my sensitivity to stimulants is unusual:  I get euphoric from average doses of caffeine.  Even just 10mg of Ritalin/Dexedrine is overpowering and not very calming at all, in fact it became dangerous for my health eventually.  But that's another story.

Is hyperfocussing a common Aspie trait? You are the first I see mentioning it and I find this quite peculiar since I do it almost always whenever I have to do something I suck at or whenever I want to perform better than usual. And yeah, it sometimes takes a lot of preparation and can easily be messed up by disturbances.

In a word:  Yes.

Cool

Just a few weeks ago you reached the conclusion that you "don't think" you have Asperger's.  What made you change your mind, apart from whatever discussion you had with your parents?

I find I can write fairly well about myself--introspection comes easy.  About other people and trying to show empathy and concern for them, a lot harder.  It just "doesn't feel right."  I don't often know where to begin.  I have a lot of trouble seeing things from another person's perspective, basically.

About what others think:  I can't figure out what people are thinking, either, but I do care what they think about *me.*  Because I don't want to embarrass myself and say the wrong thing, or be seen as an idiot.  If I'm not careful, I can say weird or stupid things, and I don't want to give that impression to people.  So I overthink things and analyze everything so I'm able to say the "proper" thing in social interactions, and this causes a lot of anxiety.  It can be excruciating, the amount of "extra" thinking I have to do to stay on course.

But trust me, if I didn't do the "heavy analysis" in social interaction, I wouldn't have an autopilot to rely on and my "mask" would disappear.  You can see the anxiety that comes from this.

None of those rule out Asperger Syndrome.
Making eye contact, rudimentary social understanding, etc indicate better social skills than the stereotype of Asperger Syndrome, but if you still have social impairment you'd just be mild AS.
I've found (from personal experience) that it's hard to self-assess social skills. Have you tried filling out an online test with someone else who knows you well? You might find you've been underestimating how autistic you are.
On the other hand, autistic traits are common in ADHD. In addition to inattentiveness, hyperfocusing on an area of interest can be seen in ADHD. The big difference is that social problems for ADHDers are caused by inattentiveness or impulsiveness, not lack of understanding.
If you're not AS, you are probably gifted/ADHD, as someone else suggested.

Some behaviour which is due to being an Aspie might be interpreted as being a symptom of anxiety, I think.

I've come to the conclusion that's where I am, in the gray area.  Sometimes I wish I was just one or the other.

You could check out the official diagnostic criteria. Keep in mind that to say "yes" to a symptom you have to have it in a significant way--something that you have to work around somehow, or something that interferes with your life, or something you do a lot more, worse, or less than other people. There's a gray area between autism and not-autism that describes a lot of people with autistic traits who aren't quite autistic...

Anyway, welcome

Which official diagnostic criteria are you referring to, here?  DSM, ICD10, etc etc...

I was directionless even before Garcia died.

You scored higher than I did, and I scored 162/200 aspie.

Why would you consider yourself decidedly off the spectrum, and in a gray area instead?