Is it worth being tested to confirm diagnosis?
Well, I've been tested a lot because I have such a difficult time intergrating. I've never really been able to connect to other people, or understand emotions fully unless they relate to animals, especially dogs. My mom's been reading up on Asperger Syndrome and it sounds like me to a tee. My question is, is it worth going to see someone to be tested and officially diagnosed? How would that benifit me? If teachers were notified, would I benefit from them knowing what's up with me? Could I possible benefit without knowing "officially"? Bedsides, aren't all people just looking to explain away everything, even if they don't understand it? Did anyone see Over The Hedge, the scene with the hedge where they felt better just naming the strange object?
Well, here are some things from Wikipedia about Aspergers, things that are exactly what I feel are in bold:
Quote:
Originally Posted by wiki
1. Difficulty reading the social and emotional messages in the eyes - People with AS don't look at eyes often, and when they do, they can't read them. [I once slapped my mother for her making me look her in the eyes]
2. Making literal interpretation - AS individuals have trouble interpreting colloquialisms, sarcasm, and metaphors.
3. Being considered disrespectful and rude - prone to egocentric behavior, individuals with Asperger's miss cues and warning signs that this behavior is inappropriate.
4. Honesty and deception - children with Asperger's are often considered "too honest" and have difficulty being deceptive, even at the expense of hurting someone's feelings.
5. Becoming aware of making social errors - as children with Asperger's mature, and become aware of their inability to connect, their fear of making a social mistake, and their self-criticism when they do so, can lead to social phobia.
6. A sense of paranoia - because of their inability to connect, persons with Asperger's have trouble distinguishing the difference between the deliberate or accidental actions of others, which can in turn lead to a feeling of paranoia.
7. Managing conflict - being unable to understand other points of view can lead to inflexibility and an inability to negotiate conflict resolution. Once the conflict is resolved, remorse may not be evident.
8. Awareness of hurting the feelings of others - a lack of empathy often leads to unintentionally offensive or insensitive behaviors.
9. Repairing someone's feelings - lacking intuition about the feelings of others, people with AS have little understanding of how to console someone or how to make them feel better.
10. Recognizing signs of boredom - inability to understand other people's interests can lead AS persons to be inattentive to others. Conversely, people with AS often fail to notice when others are uninterested.
11. Introspection and self-consciousness - individuals with AS have difficulty understanding their own feelings or their impact on the feelings of other people.
12. Clothing and personal hygiene - people with AS tend to be less affected by peer pressure than others. As a result, they often do what is comfortable and are unconcerned about their impact on others.
13. Reciprocal love and grief - since people with AS have difficulty emotionally, their expressions of affection and grief are often short and weak.
14. Understanding of embarrassment and faux pas - although persons with AS have an intellectual understanding of embarrassment and faux pas, they are unable to grasp concepts on an emotional level.
15. Coping with criticism - people with AS are compelled to correct mistakes, even when they are made by someone in a position of authority, such as a teacher. For this reason, they can be unwittingly offensive. [I've gotten in big trouble with teachers for talking back]
16. Speed and quality of social processing - because they respond through reasoning and not intuition, AS individuals tend to process social information more slowly than the norm, leading to uncomfortable pauses or delays in response. This means that although the AS individual will tend to make a more reasoned and balanced understanding and/or decision, it can lead to the AS individual being told to use their 'common sense' to solve problems, a concept they cannot understand or use in the way a neurotypical person can.
17. Exhaustion - as people with AS begin to understand theory of mind, they must make a deliberate effort to process social information. This often leads to mental exhaustion. [BIG TIME!]
More stuff from Wiki
Some other typical behaviors are echolalia, the repetition or echoing of verbal utterances made by another person, and palilalia, the repetition of one's own words.- I repeate everything I hear over again in my head if that is what this means
People with AS typically have a highly pedantic way of speaking, using a far more formal language register than appropriate for a context. A five-year-old child with this condition may regularly speak in language that could easily have come from a university textbook, especially concerning his or her special area of interest.
AS in children can involve an intense and obsessive level of focus on things of interest, many of which are those of ordinary children. The difference in children with AS is the unusual intensity of said interest.[38] Some have suggested that these "obsessions" are essentially arbitrary and lacking in any real meaning or context; however, researchers note that these "obsessions" typically focus on the mechanical (how things work) as opposed to the psychological (how people work)- this would be the Dover catalouges, but especially the animals.
remarkably good memory for trivial facts - seems the only thing I can remember well
People with AS may have little patience for things outside these narrow interests. In school, they may be perceived as highly intelligent underachievers or overachievers, clearly capable of outperforming their peers in their field of interest, yet persistently unmotivated to do regular homework assignments (sometimes even in their areas of interest). yes. If even genetics is taught in school it's sometimes less interesting than when I do it on my own.
The combination of social problems and intense interests can lead to unusual behavior, such as greeting a stranger by launching into a lengthy monologue about a special interest rather than introducing oneself in the socially accepted way - I always wondered why I seemed very shy and very talkative at the same time. I do this a lot.
Some people with AS experience varying degrees of sensory overload and are extremely sensitive to touch, smells, sounds, tastes, and sights. They may prefer soft clothing, familiar scents, or certain foods. Some may even be pathologically sensitive to loud noises (as some people with AS have hyperacusis), strong smells, or dislike being touched; for example, certain children with AS exhibit a strong dislike of having their head touched or their hair disturbed while others like to be touched but dislike loud noises. Sensory overload may exacerbate problems faced by such children at school, where levels of noise in the classroom can become intolerable for them.[41] Some are unable to block out certain repetitive stimuli, such as the constant ticking of a clock. Whereas most children stop registering this sound after a short time and can hear it only if they consciously attend to it, a child with AS can become distracted, agitated, or even (in cases where the child has problems with regulating emotions such as anger) aggressive if the sound persists.[45]
Strip-lighting, and computer monitors at low refresh rates (either of which may often be encountered in schools) can be very disturbing visual stimuli for AS people, contributing to otherwise inexplicable headaches, bad moods and agitation.[46]
Asperger tendencies can lead, in both children and adults, to mental overload situations which in turn cause tantrums, meltdowns or other communication shutdowns.[48] AS people can also have challenges with rage, and with emotional self-regulation.[49] -especially gum chewing :mad: :mad: I HATE IT! anything when I get nervous like durring a test can do it though. The only thing that can help me overcome it so far is listening to music like Enya though headphones.
Sorry for such a long post, I just had to get it out to SOMEONE. Does it sound like I DO have it?
