TaylorS

[TaylorS]

INTRODUCTION

Current Age: 21, will turn 22 in April

Sex: Male

Autistic Diagnosis: Asperger's Syndrome

Additional diagnoses: ADD-Inattentive, Social Anxiety Disorder, General Anxiety Disorder, OCD, Depression (just Dx'd)

Medical conditions: Myopia, Nystagmus, Amblyopia, Stuttering

Occupation: Cook at preschool, college student

Interests: Biochemistry, Microbiology, Paleontology, Evolutionary Biology, Neuroscience, History (especially cyclical historical trends), Philosophy, Politics, Science Fiction

Brief diagnostic history: I was Dx-ed with ADD when I was 6 and was put on Ritalin. I had an excellent, nice, and funny therapist/psychologist for people with learning disabillities named Ron when I was in elementary school. I always had social skill issues and "behavioral problems" but nobody understood much of them until I was in high school. I wasn't diagnosed with Asperger's and the rest of my mental health diagnoses until I was 15, that is because that is when I met Dr. Ron Miller, an excellent and well-respected pediatrician in the Fargo area who is very knowledgeable about learning disabilities and Autism Spectrum Disorders. Dr. Miller instantly suspected Asperger's Syndrome and so he and a very good psychologist he knew well gave me various diagnostic tests as well as an IQ test (I scored 135 on visual IQ and 98 on performance IQ) which confirmed Dr. Miller's hunch as well as the psychologist's guess that I had anxiety issues and OCD. I was then given Paxil for the anxiety and OCD. Diagnosed with Clinical Depression in February of 2008.

EDIT: added new Dx.

[TaylorS]

I was born on April 28th in 1986 at around 7:00 in the morning at St. Luke's Hospital (now MeritCare Hospital) in Fargo, North Dakota. I was 8 weeks premature (my due date was July 4th) and was in an incubator for several weeks. I was a very "colicky" baby that cried a lot. I had a history of ear infections during the first 3 years of my life, which contributed to my crying. I started walking and talking at a normal age, when I was a toddler I was "Mr. No" because "no" was my favorite word! Even in my early years I was shy and reserved, often in my own little daydream world playing with those big Legos made for little kids or stacking paper cups into pyramids. I started reading at a normal age but quickly zoomed ahead in my reading level and vocabulary. The first signs of trouble were in kindergarten, I had attention problems and liked to wander out of my desk and around the room if the teacher wasn't paying attention, and was soon diagnosed with ADD. I also had some speech issues because I had trouble with my r's and l's.

My interest in science started in 2nd grade. Every Tuesday at 10:00 my class watched a kids science show on PBS. I was "Astro Boy" or "Space Boy" for the rest of elementary school and have been an avid telescope user ever since. My teachers loved my interest in learning new things even though my behavior drove them nuts. I was especially loved by the elementary school librarian because I pretty much devoured books.

More later.

[TaylorS]

ASDs and the broader autistic phenotype run in my mother's side of the family, particularly my now deceased paternal grandfather Kennith, who was an accountant and quite good at math (being good at doing arithmetic in one's head is another thing I i inherited from my grandfather) and who I am quite sure had Asperger's, he hated changes in routine and had social issues. My mother is pretty much NT, though she does have the family math skills. I have an aunt (my mother's older sister) who has LFA. I have a great-aunt (my grandfather's younger sister) who, I'm pretty sure has AS, and, imagine that, is a retired accountant!

[TaylorS]

My problems in the social sphere were obvious since I was a kid. Most obvious was my boredom-inducing rambling on and on about my aspie obsessions, usually astronomy, space exploration, or dinosaurs when I was a kid and paleontology, phylogenetics (evolutionary trees and whatever), and theoretical physics in my teen years. Since I started college my paleontology interest has become somewhat less prominent (though is still very much there) and I became interested in philosophy, history, and, most recently, neuroscience.

I often have tone-of-voice issues that cause me a lot of embarrassment when I mistakenly think someone is talking in a belittling or condescending way towards me and then get mad at that person. I can be quite gullible and thus take a subtle sarcastic phrase, like "no, I'm going to be gone for a few hours" when the person is running outside for a second to get something, literally. I have problems with the back-and-forth pattern of a conversation, such not knowing when it is my turn to talk and thus I start talking when the other person is just stopping to think what to say. I get constantly accused of "eavesdropping on other people's conversations" when I try to join in to a conversation between two acquaintances, my co-workers or job-coaches usually, that are right by me, like when one of my job-coaches talks to the other job-coach about her recent divorce. Finally, I have a bad habit of trying to give advice to someone when that person just wants someone to listen to him/her (usually a her) complain.

I have trouble with eye contact and my eyes usually saccade back and forth between looking at someone's nose or mouth and looking to the side of the person's head.

[TaylorS]

One thing that can drive me absolutely crazy is that I often comprehend spoken language poorly if I'm not paying close attention to what someone is saying, the most common example is a tendency to "spoonerize" things I hear, so "go put bowls on the carts" becomes perceived as "go butt polls on the hearts".

Loud, high-pitched sounds, especially if they are squeaky sounds, are annoying for most people but for me such sounds can be quite painful. I have issues with wearing synthetic fabrics, especially polyester, they are horribly scratchy; I prefer soft natural fibers, especially stuff that feels like velvet. I have no problem with typical levels of background noise, including talking, but if a particular conversation sticks out from the rest it can be very irritating. Another irritating thing is repetitive sounds like people tapping pencils on desks. Certain smells, mostly strong perfumes and wet-moldy-musty smells, can make me very nauseous.

[TaylorS]

Two common labels given to me are "brutally honest" and "principled." In most normal situations it is extremely difficult for me to lie, even if it is a white lie. The only exception to this is when my anxiety causes me to lie to get out of, postpone, or prevent a situation I don't like, often with me concocting elaborate stories to make the lies convincing. When I was a kid I often got in trouble with authority figures for disobeying rules I didn't like and then at the same time was teased as a tattle-tale and a teacher's pet by my peers for sticking to the rules I liked with absolute strictness and when my brutal honestly led me to tell the teacher when someone was being bad.

A big problem I have is with multitasking, I have enormous trouble with trying to go back and forth between 2 or more tasks without getting screwed up or forgetting something or going into sensory overload, and then I get totally enraged when I get accused of being lazy or slacking off because I'm not multitasking, and thus a meltdown is triggered. This is a huge issue for me at work, especially because one of my job-coaches just doesn't get my AS and interprets my meltdowns as willful refusal to work. Related to but distinct from from problems with multitasking is my attention problems, since my problems at multitasking seem to partially stem from my attention issues. I have great trouble with concentrating on tedious work, which is why my math grades were poor in school even though I am good at math. I have mild Obsessive-Compulsive traits, mostly consisting of disturbing, uncomfortable, and disagreeable thoughts that can pop into my head, that contribute to my attention issues, since such thoughts usually pop up when I'm doing something tedious. These thoughts are usually about some existential issue, fear of a relative dying, inappropriate sexual thoughts, and fears of getting bitten by bitting insects. I also have a few mild compulsive checking behaviors revolve around my door being locked, my alarm clock being set, about having my keys on me, and my oven being off.

[TaylorS]

For most of my childhood most of my problems were attributed as ADD (which I was Dx'd with in 1992, when I was 6). I have taken Ritalin ever since then. Little changed until 2001 when my HMO changed my doctor to Dr. Ron Miller, a pediatrician who is well-respected in the Fargo area who specializes in kids and teens with ASDs, NVLD, ADHD, and learning disabilities like Dyslexia. He instantly suspected I had either Asperger's or NVLD. A year and battery of diagnostic tests later Dr. Miller and a psychologist officially diagnosed me with Asperger's, OCD, and Social Anxiety Disorder long with my Dx of ADD-I. The diagnosis was a huge help because my parents and my Special Ed adviser then knew that my behavior problems were from my AS, not from willful non-compliance and laziness.

[TaylorS]

I have three major talents:

1. An intuitive ability to see connections between facts and ideas
When I see an interesting fact, idea, concept, or theory I have this eerie ability to see intuitively how such information is related to stuff I already know, even if the connections are not immediately obvious to most people. My mind thusly recognizes no strict demarcations between different fields of study.

2. Visualization
I can visualize things in my head exceptionally well, either as realistic images or as 3-D simulation-like mental "diagrams." This is huge reason why I love biology and paleontology so much, I can easily visualize concepts like, say, the different forms of speciation; and I can easily visualize the anatomy and appearance of an extinct creature just by looking at the fossils.

3. Mental Arithmetic
As I have mentioned in other threads, I am very good at doing arithmetic in my head.

[TaylorS]

I am very sensitive to being touched lightly, though oddly more firm things like hugs and handshakes does not bother me. People always like to give me a bad time for how ticklish I am, just a brief touch to my neck is enough to start me giggling uncontrollably. My skin also gets really itchy if it's touched lightly. Clothes, though, tend to not bother me as they do most aspies, though certain fabrics, most of them plastic-based ones, make me very itchy. The fabrics I like best are suede leather (real or artificial) like on my computer chair and this super-soft velvety-feeling fabric in my pajamas-shirt. and Another thing that drives me nuts is my hair, I need it short otherwise it will make my forehead and neck itchy. Facial hair is another thing that makes me itch and so I keep myself clean-cut.