I feel like people are looking for a quick pill to take that will make them all better. So when they don’t get it, they become jerks.

Wish that happened to me. I have to clarify the REAL Avatar.

I did consider that myself. We do work on a case by case basis, and I can agree that a first time offense should be dealt with as has been done thus far. Let us take a moment to discuss it, then I will update with what we decided.

Wooooooo!

I had to explain it to my husband. :(

Nice name! Thanks!

Indeed I am in the US. In 2016, I went to the only person within 100 miles who could diagnose and she only did kids. She did not help. So last year I wanted to try again and she was still the only one we could find. I was on a wait list for a year.

This time she didn’t give me the RAADS test. She asked me a bunch of questions relating to adults. I still had to do the pattern recognition test but no numbers this time. I had to wait a month to get the results. My husband was there to help fill in the behavioral side, as I didn’t know until he told me that a lot of the stuff I do is related to autism.

In the middle of all this I discovered that the Easter Seals have the ability as well because someone my husband knows got hers through them.

Honestly it’s worth the stress and anxiety of the wait from second test to the results. I can now be confident that I am the way I am for a reason.

If you have more specific questions let me know!

I’m very interested in understanding. But I don’t want to always be the smartest person in the room. I’m already the smartest in most situations I’m in IRL. If it was always like that, I’d definitely go crazy.

Sf9 all the way!

My guess would be that with the huge amount of American males (it is a big country after all) people just assume. And women are known to care about animals more, whether that is true or not.

I’ve been called a guy before and my name doesn’t exactly strike people as male. I am female. I’ve been on the internet long enough not to care.

I would say no. Lots of the super smart people become eccentric. I suspect any smarter and they’d just end up flat crazy. Dealing with being the only one in the room who understands what you’re saying can be lonely.

I’m working with a group of people, some 10 years younger than me, who don’t really understand technology. It feels weird.

Oh so you’ve been a bowl of petunias I see

When I had kids, autism was still for boys. I think I’m in a minority though because I wanted kids a lot. So I see them as independent extensions of myself. I didn’t get the socialization issues with them, and would make a point to bring at least one kid when they got older as my support person. They didn’t know this though.

It was actually easier for me to be around other people when they were young because they gave me something to talk about.

Just a tad.

Bill and Ted

Omg

My memories have no emotion tied to them either. It’s all facts. I can remember faces but can’t read expressions.

I remember being 5 years old in my back yard wondering why I was different.

I always looked. I actually read books by a woman who worked with kids who have autism, and even wished it wasn’t just a boy thing because it sounded like me. Forgot about that until one day a few years ago I was looking at cnn.com and they had an article saying something like autism isn’t just for boys, it presents differently in girls. I read that article and cried. It all made sense.

Everything I’ve read since has just reaffirmed it, and my husband, having a normal brain and in the psychology field, took me step by step through the DSM criteria. I originally thought I had maybe 3 of the symptoms. As he went through it, he pointed out things I do that meet the criteria in every category but 2. So I can’t even trust myself to diagnose me since my brain works differently from the author.

I tried in 2016, before I met said husband. I got the dreaded social pragmatic language disorder for my trouble.

My husband and I have gone over the idea and I’m going to try again for a diagnosis. I went through autistic burnout after I was fired from yet another job and my husband has had to take care of me because I went from being a strong independent mother of two, to being unable to wear shoes because I strangle my feet with the laces. It’s been so hard to deal with this and I feel like I’m made of glass now after being steel for so long. There ARE supports for adults. Just as there are with all disabilities. Because this IS a disability. My husband works with people of all ages with various mental conditions, with autism being the most common, and naturally being an expert with it thanks to me.

So in October I will be going back to the only person within 100 miles who can diagnose me. All so if something happens to him, someone is taking care of me. Otherwise I would literally starve because I refuse to leave the house.

Also, I can trace every single bad thing that happened to me in life, and there was a lot, to an autistic trait. If I had known, or my mother had taken it seriously that I used to go scream and cry in a corner when frustrated instead of making it a somehow funny story, most of those things wouldn’t have happened.

Added! Thanks for contributing. Have you checked out alexithymia?

I don’t know how to single space here yet!