Expert: Valerie Herskowitz - 7/3/2011

Question
Hi Valerie
I have been wondering for a while whether or not it is possible that i could be mildly autistic and I am currently having some difficulties that have made me consider pursuing an official diagnosis.  I am hoping you will be able to give me an indication as to whether or not it would be worthwhile going to my primary healthcare practitioner to seek a formal opinion. I am currently 27 years old.
The symptoms which make me suspicious are as follows:
1) I have an obsessive compulsion to touch things, everything, objects, animals, people, I never feel like I can fully understand something or be connected to something/someone unless I have physical contact.
2) I cannot understand emotions that I don't feel myself, particularly with regards to romantic relationships. I find the thought of them boring and far too much hard work and cannot feel sympathy for anyone that is emotionally affected by a break-up or argument with a significant other for long periods.  I am totally unable to understand the logic behind the emotions.  This is just one example, there are several others I could share if you wish.
3) I engage in what I believe to be stimming behaviour, people often think I'm not listening to them because i am simultaneously shredding paper or tapping my fingers or making a fuss of the nearest dog.  I am listening, I just cant stand to be doing nothing physically.
4) I become obsessed by things easily, for example if I like a TV program I immediately want to know everything about it, cast names, background stories, where it's filmed, I want to read all the spoilers, watch the outtakes on youtube and will spend hours researching these completely inconsequential facts without realising how much time I've wasted. I also become obsessive about things being exactly right, for example sometimes there are old labels stuck to some of the pallets at work, most people just rip off as much as necessary so it isn't confused with the new one, I have to get every last tiny bit of the old label off, and have spent up to an hour doing so with one pallet (which really did annoy my boss!).
5) I can memorize long strings of numbers or letters without thinking about it and have a photographic memory in other respects as well, I can tell you five years later the exact words and phrases used in a given conversation if that conversation was of any importance to me.
6) I have never been able to forge long term friendships easily.  I am often confused as to the social appropriateness of the things I say and do and this gets worse in situations I find stressful such as meeting large numbers of new people.  The more stressed out I get the louder I get and the more I say things that are completely random and out of context.
7) when I have a point to make I get extremely stressed if I am not able to make it.  If the conversation naturally moves on and the thing I was going to say becomes irrelevant I find it hard to follow the rest of the conversation because my mind keeps drawing back to the thing that I didn't get an opportunity to say.  When I feel strongly about something I will make the same point over and over again.  Even when someone has resorted to simply making insulting statements I will persist with factual and unemotional statements, despite it being obvious to everybody else at that point that I am talking to a brick wall.  I find it hard to understand when someone cannot follow a logical train of thought.
8) I have come to realise that some of my emotions are particularly child-like and my emotional intelligence is not very high.  For example when meeting new people I will subconsciously base whether or not I like them on superficial things like appearance.  When I get attached to someone it is in the way a child does, I idolize that person and again become a little obsessive, I want to be as close to them as possible, and am ridiculously pleased at any small sign of favour.  Obviously this in turn makes it harder to form social relationships.  
9) Conversely I have always been a straight A student, obtained a 1st class honours degree and have a higher academic intelligence than most people I know. This disparity between social intelligence and academic intelligence is one of the things that first led me to believe I could be autistic.
10) I always do things in the same order and the same way and can become stressed if that isn't possible.  For example I always do my food shopping on a monday night after work and find public holidays hard to cope with because the shops are shut by the time I finish work. Things also have to be done in the correct way, if someone has started one of my tasks at work and hasn't set out the information in the same format as I like to do it then I have to start over, I cant just use the format they've started with for that day.

Sorry about the essay, do these things sound like it is worth making an appointment with a specialist or do I just need to stop being paranoid and get on with things?

thank you
Sarah

Answer
Hi Sarah

Though I am not allowed to diagnose (only doctors and psychologists can do that), it does appear that you do have several characteristics associated with Asperger's Syndrome which is in the autism spectrum.

The question of whether you should see a professional or not is really based on whether you feel having a diagnosis would enhance your life. Some people feel that they need to have a diagnosis to fully understand themselves. Others do not.

Whether you do seek out a diagnosis, I recommend that you analyze the things that you mention above and ask yourself if any of them cause you to have less than what you want out of life. If so, then perhaps seeking out a professional to help you deal with some of these things. I am especially referring to the compulsive behaviors that you mention. There are some wonderful behavioral psychologists who work with compulsive behaviors (known as OCD's).

Let me know how it goes