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Being interested in science does not mean you have Aspergers. Neither does not having certain interests like sports or clubbing. Only a minority go to clubs anyway, so I don't even see why they are the "normal"? (I'm not disputing your self-diagnosis here, just pointing out choice of hobbies have nothing to do with it.)

I have never been formally diagnosed because autism is still not a thing in Eastern Europe, but the following self-assessment leads me to believe I am:

1. Constant fear of losing my belongings like keys, which leads me to check what's in my pocket every minute or two while I'm walking.

2. Overly obsessive about following a particular "ritual" for everyday stuff like washing my car or cleaning the house. Every small spot needs to be covered every time, even if it was previously clean. Otherwise I feel uneasy for completely irrational reasons.

3. Great confusion and anxiety when things in my job or everyday life cannot be done according to my carefully crafted plan.

It's possible you're on the spectrum. I'd say whatever the case, some form of meditation/mindfulness might help with some of those issues. It helped me a lot.

Your first two symptoms are literally the textbook definition of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_d...

Number 3 may be as well; I'm not that familiar with OCD.

OCD and ADD are often nice little extras for people on the spectrum, unfortunately.

Hey, I'm not here to pass any judgement.

I recognise your symptoms as Obsessively Compulsive.

I'm one of those people who has to hide his symptoms from everyone all the time and disguise them as "oops I think I dropped my keys, I need to go in an out of this doorway 12 times whilst checking it". I waste at least an hour of my life in my OCD rituals, and I'm all too aware of how I come across, to other people as well.

Your love for quantum mechanics might just be that, your love for QM.

That sounds more like OCD. You don't observe anything like sensoric hypersensitivity? or looking at peoples lips, not the eyes, when they talk? or somewhat lack of empathy and emotions? or a strong sense for justice?

Apart from communicating with very close friends and relatives, social interaction can be quite difficult and exhausting, to the point where I self-analyse what I have previously said, and how weirdly people may have received it. Only alcohol makes me more "social" to strangers. Strong sense for justice, yes.

I find it pretty common for people to tell me I'm not on the spectrum when I reveal it, as if in 5 minutes they have a better handle on me than I do. It's helped me understand just how annoying "mansplaining" can be (even when it's done by a woman.)

> I have never been formally diagnosed

That's important though... you can feel like you have something but actually have something pretty different. I understand that it must be pretty annoying for you if you are actually diagnosed but sadly, believing an internet diagnostic is too often a pretty bad decision.

it depends on the experience of the diagnostican then, and all they can work with is what you are willing and able to tell them, no?

What I don't understand is why it matters if people believe you or not. Could you provide some insight?

no OP here, but it matters. for example, in a relationship there's guaranteed to be problems, something observed with aspies is that they are less romantic once a set goal has been reached (sounds weird, I know). if your partner does not belief or accept you, then it turns into hell, at least for me. frustrations on both sides because expectations are not met, communication problems, that not-looking-into-eyes bug, all of that could be lessened with some understanding.

I think the main point is: '[clubbing is] utterly foreign to me'

That doesn't mean you have Aspergers.

> Even to this day there are a lot of things that "normal" people do that are utterly foreign to me, like going to clubs or watching sports on TV.

I wouldn't characterize being into sports as a "normal" thing -- I have friends diagnosed on the spectrum who are utterly obsessed with sports. If you ever want a rabbit hole of statistics and details to dive into, baseball is a cornucopia.

I'm pretty sure I was on the spectrum until my mid 20s. All social interaction was very painful - I couldn't look anyone in the eye, and didn't say anything to anyone. I made weird sounds and movements that others noticed, got lost in daydreams without realizing it, bright light sensitivity, obsessed over meaningless objects and toys, etc.

Then I forced myself to travel, take lots of hallucinogens and empathogens, and do projects that involve working directly with multiple people throughout the day. It was a very painful process, but by the time I was 35 I don't think I had many symptoms left.

I do think some minor cases are highly treatable if not curable if the sufferer takes matters into their own hands.

Care to expand on the hallucinogens and empathogens? How did they benefit you?

I believe that at least for me, one of the causes of my symptoms was extreme focus on certain aspects of my reality while being completely blind to other parts.

Hallucinogens and empathogens showed me these blind spots, making me a more rounded and open person. It was sometimes extremely pleasant and sometimes so hellish I wished to leave this world. But the hellish experiences were maybe the most effective at getting me to let go of old obsessions and compulsions. I liken it to the difficult coming of age rituals that many tribal cultures subject their teenage boys to to transition them to adulthood.

One of the weird things about the DSM-IV definition of Asperger's/Autism was that it was defined by certain criteria applying during childhood.

The literature that I was given during my diagnosis was very clear that even if all the symptoms disappeared in adulthood, you still "had it". (And of course, the doctors were all trying to give the parents hope, so, "oh, yes, it's very likely your child will have a normal adult life".)

(I'm still not 100% sure whether this also applies to the revised DSM-V definition.)

From my experience, it can definitely be learned. I went through a very deliberate process of approaching social interaction and communication skills as I would an interesting programming problem. I refined a mental model and tested it out (yes, with occasionally hilarious misfires). Thankfully none of the failures went beyond 'highly embarassing'.

It felt like most people have a social automatic pilot while I was flying entirely manually. Once I developed some models and internalised them it was as if I'd built my own approximation. It still takes a little effort to keep things level, but much less than it used to.

Nothing in your description is specific to Asperger's Syndrome. You sound like an introvert with some social anxiety, which is not a developmental disorder.

That pins down an interesting characteristic of the situation. If we manage to self-treat ourselves into passable normality, few people believe we ever had a serious problem in the first place! Or that they (with their actual serious diagnoses) could learn from those who applied self help and rational analysis to their own lives.

I actually think some people get attached to the idea of their victimhood and helplessness, and this can easily become a disincentive to making positive (and very difficult) change.

(Yes I know there is the other side of it which is real, that medical expertise can help too. But like everything else, oversimplifying into a clear binary of diagnosable vs not, is not always useful.)

I've read that there are quite a few people who sort of 'grow out' of their aspergers, often when they find a suitable partner. While obviously they might still be neurologically different, as a result the diagnosis might not strictly apply anymore.

"If we manage to self-treat ourselves into passable normality, few people believe we ever had a serious problem in the first place!"

Elaborating, I think, rather than disagreeing: Self-treating into passable normalcy is basically life. One of the characteristics you have to have in order to be diagnosed with any psychological disorder is that it has to be interfering with your life. Absolutely everybody can read the DSM and find a good half-a-dozen things they may have tendencies towards, but if it's not interfering with your life, it's not a disease/diagnosis. Liking a clean space does not mean you're on the "OSD spectrum", being a bit nervous around spiders does not mean you're on the "phobia spectrum", etc.

"Healthy" isn't a single point in psych space, if for no other reason then that there isn't a "perfectly healthy" person available to define that point for us! It also certainly isn't a well-delineated boundary, but it is clearly not a single point, and even within the space of "healthy" there is clearly a lot of diversity.

"That pins down an interesting characteristic of the situation. If we manage to self-treat ourselves into passable normality, few people believe we ever had a serious problem in the first place!"

Yes, and this is true of any mental issue. Hell, it's also true of physical ailments that don't leave obvious visible markers. Depressed? You don't seem depressed. Anxiety? You talk with people all the time. People don't always understand that this functioning is the result of a lot of invisible effort.

I'm sure that their are people out there that like to play the victim, but that doesn't mean that people's struggles aren't real.

> That pins down an interesting characteristic of the situation. If we manage to self-treat ourselves into passable normality, few people believe we ever had a serious problem in the first place!

Wow, you really hit the nail on the head with this. Just look at all the people here trying to second-guess my own self-assessment!

You should consider the possibility that I have not given a complete description of my situation in a single HN comment from which one could properly diagnose me one way or the other. Maybe the aspects of my situation that would definitively decide the question one way or the other are too painful for me to air in public even after all these years, or maybe I just don't feel like baring my soul in public. Either way, I don't really care if you want to attach the label "disorder" to it or not. All I know is that it caused me a lot of pain and anguish well into my 20s and 30s, and it took a lot of years of concerted effort to change my situation. My point is not that I want to wear the scarlet A with pride, my point is that I was able to do something about it, whatever it was, and my life is immeasurably better for having made that effort. The rest is just quibbling over terminology.

I would be interested to hear what things helped you most in changing your situation, though! I'm still at an early stage of actually 'doing' stuff to improve things, so I'd be very curious to hear what worked for you.

Mainly just making a concerted effort, when something went wrong, to go back and analyze why it went wrong and what I should have done differently. It took a lot of trial and error (like 10-20 years worth), and even today I will sometimes freeze up in social situations because all of the things I can think of to do in some situation are being flagged as "wrong" based on some prior experience.

> Mainly just making a concerted effort, when something went wrong, to go back and analyze why it went wrong and what I should have done differently. It took a lot of trial and error (like 10-20 years worth), and even today I will sometimes freeze up in social situations because all of the things I can think of to do in some situation are being flagged as "wrong" based on some prior experience.

Perhaps you should write this down as a concise theory with falsifiable predictions of what kind of social behavior people really expect.

Could you elaborate?

One thing I learned only post-diagnosis is that all the stuff I thought I did to figure out how to fit in, in hindsight, was extremely scattershot and not very rational. A lot of the lessons I never learned as well as I thought I did.

These days I try to be more methodical (keeping logs, lists of lessons, etc), in part because I'm allowing myself to lean more into my 'nature', and it's already proven effective.

> Could you elaborate?

It is not completely obvious to me what kind of elaboration you desire. So if my longer explanation here misses the point this is probably the reason. :-)

In your trial to find out the strange rules of society you surely made unwillingly lots of accidental experiments that often went wrong. At the end you probably developed some kind of theory of how humans seem to behave, where each rule that you developed is backed up by evidence from an accidental experiment.

If you are interested in history of physics, you surely are aware that developing even what is called "classical mechanics" (I don't even want to start with electromagnetism, relativity or quantum physics) was a lifetime work of many generations of scientists. What a waste of time would it have been if everyone of them had to start from point 0.

So you accidentally have developed something that might be a start of some kind of theory of how people/society really behave(s) (rather think of pre-Newton physics, e.g. Galilei already found out that (ignoring air resistance) the falling time is independent of the mass and the falling time increases by square root of the height; of course where these "strange" laws with strong experimental evidence come from needed the invention of calculus).

So back to "What a waste of time would it have been if everyone of them had to start from point 0.". What a waste of time is it when people all the time had to derive all those laws to which "ordinary" people in society behave (and cannot explain why) from ground up.

So document the rules about people/society/... that you found out and document the experimental evidence that gives strong evidence to you that these rules that you state do indeed hold (a scientific theory is worth nothing if it is not accompanied by a proper documentation of the experimental evidence for it).

Perhaps (if it not embarrassing to you) it is a good idea to use tools that the web provides (e.g. some kind of wiki or Github) so that other people can cross-check your theories, validate your evidence or present counter-theories which also explain your experimental evidence.

You are in a very early phase in a theory of the hidden rules of society (as I told: think where Galilei was in terms of classical mechanics), so this means you probably have to consider lots of frustrating foundational questions. So you are perhaps a true pioneer. But I believe it is worth it, because this might enable researchers who work in AI better understand humans/society.

Well, here's a first cut:

1. Smiling and making eye contact are both HUGE levers (but you have to be careful not to overdo it). (And an interesting thing about smiling is that it has a reverse-feedback effect: if you smile, it actually makes you feel happier.)

2. What you wear matters. It shouldn't, but it does. Read "Dress for success."

3. Spend more time listening than talking. Ask more questions than you answer, even if you know all the answers. The object of the game is not to show off how much you know, it is to provide others with opportunities to show off how much they know.

4. Help with the grunt work even when you think it is beneath you.

5. Con't complain. Ever. About anything. (This is just a first-order approximation. There are situations under which it's OK to complain, but that's an advanced course :-) And this is one of the few situations where erring on one extreme will not get you into trouble. To the contrary, if you cement a reputation as someone who never complains even when you have good cause to, people will like you more. I'm personally still working on this one.)

This really resonates with me. I consider myself to be on the spectrum, as does my wife, and I am frequently only a passive participant in social functions because I've learned that most of my normal interactions are "wrong" so I just watch and wait until we can leave.

You should consider the possibility that:

A. You asserted that you had Asperger's and then proceeded to explain why you believe that. Forgive me for then expecting your explanation to actually have something to do with Asperger's and not be a list of generic personality traits. Read your other comments--I'm obviously not the only one who thought so.

B. Your "pain and anguish" is not relevant to the fact of whether or not you have Asperger's. Social anxiety causes pain and anguish.

C. People "do something" about social anxiety all the time, as they should. Good for them and good for you. Really. I still don't see what that has to do with Asperger's syndrome.

D. Pointing out that a common personality trait is not a brain disorder is not "quibbling over terminology".

E. No offense was intended.

I was only diagnosed at around 30, and so I also just kind of figured out how to 'pass for normal'.

One of my biggest frustrations when I talk about this stuff is that people will 1) insist I'm not autistic, as a compliment of sorts, 2) insist I'm not autistic as a sort of attack/defense, lest I 'use' it to victimize myself, or 3) start treating me like a 'broken' person and assigning all 'oddness' to aspergers.

At first this really bothered me, as I was also trying figure out myself what this diagnosis meant, either taking it too seriously, or forgetting that this rather massive piece of lifelong puzzle had now fallen into place, and dealing with the consequences (some bad, some very good).

Reaction #2 was surprisingly common and painful, especially from people that I didn't expect it from. I'd feel hurt because it never crossed my mind to 'excuse' myself. Even though I do think it provides a legitimate 'explanation' for past behavior that I felt, and sometimes still feel, deeply ashamed or embarrassed about. A certain amount of self-acceptance and forgiveness, I think, is crucial for many people who are on the spectrum, because they often deal with severe social anxiety to begin with, and the tendency to obsess/ruminate does not go well with guilt and embarrassment over the past.

The way I see it now, or try to, is that we're all (people in general) just too inclined to overvalue labels, in particular in the field of mental health, and as a result either reject them entirely, or let them form a wedge between 'the real us' and 'the disability/disorder'. When of course in reality such a distinction is not always very useful outside of the realm of the profession (whether diagnosis or therapy).

Normalizing these kinds of labels, without ignoring them entirely of course, strikes me as a very good development. The more we accept that we're all different/weird/'disordered' in various ways, but that some of us suffer more from this difference than others, the better we can actually come to positive outcomes, whether that means changing society, changing or coping through therapy, or the use of medication.

"Autism" is simply a label for a certain basket of personality characteristics that tend to occur together. It's scientifically interesting but not very relevant to daily life -- especially on the milder end where there's less predictive power (in more severe autism, seeing one symptom makes it likely that you'll see other symptoms, so you can correctly plan to encounter them).

The label itself doesn't provide more meaning than whatever individual specific characteristics a person exhibits to what extents.

At least over here, one of the requirements for diagnosis is that it impacts your life negatively enough to benefit from being labeled and receiving treatment. What makes you think this is not the case?

There are disorders besides ASD, that share or overlap in some of the traits, and also cause distress.

My point is that the individual symptoms -- such behavioral rigidity and slow processing of sensory inputs -- can be treated appropriately (accommodations and therapy) without regard for whether they are "autism". It's not like "arm pain" -> "x-ray shows broken bone" -> "put a cast on it"

This is the viewpoint most similar to mine. Sometimes I relate strongly to the complaints of people identifying with ASD, and sometimes not. I have some of the traits to an extreme, and am utterly lacking in other traits deemed central to diagnosis. I didn't have any developmental problems besides socializing - in fact I was precocious about everything. My father is textbook ASD, but nobody else in the family is. We're just all introverted, geeky, oversensitive, and both over-empathetic and a little misanthropic. What to do? I consider the traits by themselves instead of labeled clusters of traits.

> Even to this day there are a lot of things that "normal" people do that are utterly foreign to me, like going to clubs or watching sports on TV. My idea of a good time is reading up on quantum mechanics or the ordinal hierarchy.

These are not signs of Asperger’s.

This is the exact feeling I get, for some things I just don't get why most people do that. I realise that for some people it may be hard to cope with or people might be intolerant or ignorant, and not to put those on the spectrum down or anything but I kind of think that everyone is on "the spectrum" with "normal" people just on one far side of it, it's just another part of being human. Someone I know very well is definitely Asperger's based on what I know and I have read, yet he was never diagnosed and would be offended if he had some label attached to them, and whilst he is terrible in social situations, he is completely independent and has always managed to hold down a job. I think in a way a diagnosis is a bad thing, if it then means that person is coddled for want of a better word.

While I think you have a point, I really, really dislike the conclusion, as I've seen and experienced the harm it causes.

While I'm sure there are cases where the person diagnosed is coddled (and this is something to keep an eye on), there are many more cases where there's a real problem, and the lack of a diagnosis or the lack of accepting that the (un)diagnosed simply has limitations is a big part of the problem.

It's a bit like the attitude that welfare is a bad thing because some people are lazy. I'd argue that, provided we can afford it as a society (and we can), if even one out of ten people is helped, the other nine can scam their way into welfare all they want.

Yeah true. I guess it's a wide spectrum, and it depends on what effect the condition has. I guess I mainly said that with regard to more milder symptoms, where that person would be fine but are in a sense held back by the diagnosis.

That I completely agree with. After being diagnosed, for quite a bit of time I could not think of anything else, felt more anxious and weird, and tried even harder to 'hide' my quirks.

Over time I realized a lot of those quirks are not so weird, or at least not weirder than those of 'normal' people.

In fact, this is one reason why, as I understand it, adult aspies are sometimes warned that they might not want a proper diagnosis, as it can have a severe negative effect (even if just self-worth), and there's not much that can be done to 'solve' the problem.

I still remember the feeling of confusion and depression growing up and watching people form relationships, going to parties and doing small talk while I wasn't able to figure out these things that are usually taken for granted. I think my life would have been much better if somebody had recognized this and helped me to function in social life. There are social skills that can be learned with enough practice. It won't be as intuitive as for most "normal" people but it's often possible to function well enough.

Do you feel there's still ways to improve your situation in this regard?

> Even to this day there are a lot of things that "normal" people do that are utterly foreign to me, like going to clubs

I understand that a lot of people who go clubbing actually don't like it, but they're under the false impression that's what people their age do to have fun and they need to participate to meet people, etc.

So normal person == enthusiastic clubber is false.

> watching sports on TV

I personally don't watch sports, but I think the people who enjoy watching them tend to have grown up with them and have a much greater knowledge and appreciation for the game than those who don't. If you don't understand what's going on, a random televised game is very much like watching mediocre language sitcom in a language you don't understand. Not knowing the language of the show doesn't make you less "normal."

I'm so ridiculously far from "enthusiastic clubber" it's not even funny. I don't even know how to go through the motions. All of the social interaction skills I've learned in the past N years all require that I be able to talk to the person I'm interacting with and hear what they say. That's not possible in a club, at least not for me (one of the problems I have is being able to follow a conversation in the face of any background noise, so in a club it's completely hopeless). I am (or was, back when I tried it) completely rudderless in a club.

With respect to sports, I actually do enjoy watching the odd sporting event now and again. What is actually foreign to me is caring about who wins.

> My idea of a good time is reading up on quantum mechanics or the ordinal hierarchy.

Haha, same here!! Does it mean I might be an "Aspie" too???

Deep interest about any topic which is considered "uninteresting" or "impractical" by "normal" people. Might be the history of a particular aircraft, or a car, or an event in the distant past. Your brain is consumed by it for completely irrational reasons and you feel obliged to dig even deeper.

One thing that I'd say makes it more specifically an 'aspie' thing is that it's often obsessive to the unhealthy point of severely neglecting other aspects of life, and it can be weirdly temporary. Something like being into sudoku's for weeks on end, and then entirely forgetting about it afterwards.

An interest in geeky things in and of itself is not diagnostic of Aspergers. What matters more is if you have trouble with interpersonal relationships, which I definitely did growing up. Things are much better nowadays, but it took a lot of hard work to get from A to B.

This reads just like a person who felt normal social awkwardness in their youth, not a person that actually has some form of Autism.

My social skills were dreadful until I had some psychotherapy in my teens, but even now they aren't that great. And same as with OP, a lot of things that 'normal' people like are foreign to me - clubbing, watching sports on TV. I'll also add to this list - alcohol, smoking, nearly all TV series / shows.

But I never thought I'm 'on a spectrum'. Since heterosexuality is also completely foreign to me - I just assumed I'm a minority in most other areas too ;-) I had to have a long adjustment to the idea that despite being a part of a persecuted minority - there's nothing wrong with me. It's the society that is the problem - not me. Being in a majority is not a proof of a validity of your views - it is just an easier way of living, because you don't have to think about anything. And once you do that mental adjustment once - it is easy to apply elsewhere. I think that watching TV is a waste of time, I'd rather read a book - so what? I'll politely nod when someone is excited about yet another insufferable TV hit series, just as I will politely nod when they are talking about their heterosexual marriage / kids / suburban utopia. I don't have any desire to join in.

>when I was a kid, I was completely oblivious to the fact that my peers were agents in their own right, with thoughts and preferences and hopes and dreams that might be different from my own. That, I am now given to understand, is the hallmark of autism spectrum disorders.

I don't have any diagnosis of autism, so it might just simply be that I was a huge jerk for the first 20 or so years of my life. It may have been the consequence of developing academic skills several years ahead of other children my age (this too is a circumstance that must inevitably affect the developing mind). My experiences studying and traveling internationally as an adult were invaluable, forcing me to perceive and then confront this shortcoming in my own personality. When I discovered that many things I assumed were invariant bedrock assertions in fact vary greatly among other people, it was like I had to recreate my concept of others and self from the ground up to reconcile what I'd seen with my life experience to that point.

I think I still approach social interactions analytically (coping) rather than intuitively but at least I've learned not to be so much of a jerk to others, or at the very least to be conscious of it and apologize when I am.

I don’t think I associate those hobbies (or lack thereof) with any sort of condition. I’ve seen many people in different boats or take and do not take interest in them.

You just enjoy other things than some other people enjoy. That doesn't make you sick or non-normal.

That's interesting I went to a seminar on Neuro Diversity last week and it's estimated that 10-15% of the population is ND (aspergers being one aspect of ND)

Its also more common in industries that most of the HN commentators work in as is the film tv and theatre industry

Not wanting to go to clubs or watch sports on TV doesn't mean you have Aspergers, nor does enjoying science reading.