My son used to sit and spin the wheels of his Matchbox cars for alarmingly long amounts of time. Anything that would spin would hold his attention. Also, reflective surfaces, something I forgot to mention before. Other toy parts that captivated him included lighting-up parts (he would repetitively trip whatever mechanism would make the light-up happen, just to watch it) and things that extended, like the ladder of a toy fire truck. He would make it go up and down for long periods of time, just studying it, figuring out how it worked. He was much more interested in how toys worked than in playing with them "as intended."
I kinda get this. There is something deeply meaningful about repetitive things. I may start a thread about it, but I am having trouble putting these ideas into words right now.
This one's tricky. Pretending tends not to be something kids on the spectrum excel at, at least not early on. You got immersed moreso than other children, and didn't approach it as fiction? The kids I know on the spectrum had to be taught to pretend- we had a little dollhouse with miniature cats (one of his "restrictive interests" from an early age) that we had to teach him to pretend to feed, etc. He just wasn't interested in playing that way. He also stayed in the "parallel play" phase much longer than other children, who had moved on to cooperative play. When he started doing cooperative play he would often give himself and his playmates rigid roles. However, now he's very creative and stuff.
This is the thing that has me most convinced that I am not an Aspie. I have always had a vivid fantasy life, and my play would not have been well characterized as "parallel". Although I was quite content to play by myself, I was very good at getting other kids to join in my play. I was kind of an instigator for these things--making up games, stories, and adventures that the other kids (most frequently my younger siblings and cousins) wanted to join in on.
Even in undergrad, I convinced people who were ostensibly adults into joining in many childish activities.
On a whim, I got a group of people to track down the point of origin of a search light we saw. A couple hours later, we were crossing highways and such in the pursuit of the origin of the search light. We finally turned back, short of our goal, because one friend got the inside of his shoe ridiculously muddy and wouldn't stop complaining about it.
A roommate and I once tried to see if we could make it from one building in the quad to another on the opposite corner without ever going outside. We managed, and wanted to see how far we could go beyond that. When either a young professor or post-doc spotted us, he was rather suspicious and I thought we were in trouble (perhaps we had entered restricted areas?), but when we explained what we were doing, he actually made some suggestions for how we could get to the next building.
Also, I once told my roommate that I was claiming all the land that I encircled that he had not himself encircled and this lead to a foot race around campus.
When I say idiosyncratic, I mean more like the "threeteen, fourteen, fiveteen" things, not so much speech impediments or saying words funky. My boy treats language kind of... mathematically, if that makes sense. Like, he assumed the opposite of "messed it up" would be "messed it down." My theory is that he doesn't think in language but in pictures/spatial stuff, so he is constantly having to translate his natural visual thinking into the language the rest of us use in order to get his point across.
Yeah, I tend to find verbal thinking extremely cumbersome and limiting for most applications. I even think it is over-emphasized in schools. But I know verbal thinking has its uses, especially in communication. It's inefficiency/redundancy is perhaps its strength in this domain, though it's vagueness and arbitrariness largely neutralize this, in my opinion. As much as I would like the world-at-large to embrace more visual and mathematical forms of communication, I don't think it will happen anytime soon.
Sometimes we look at cases in our class and we're asked to diagnose them and unlike at least 90% of all students, I never made the wrong diagnosis. That's why I'm sure I'm good. Plus, I make a sport out of watching shows about people with mysterious diseases who couldn't get diagnosed for a very long time and when I see someone with complaints that could be psychological, I just NEED to diagnose them. Again, I've never been wrong. Not even when they were talking about kids with rare chromosome diseases, for example.
Believe it or not, my confidence in your abilities actually dropped with this statement. The world is full of people who once had a lucky streak and then consider it a "talent". Natural "talent" gets people as far as they can spit.
I would be fine with your diagnosis, if you gave me convincing reasons ("trust me, I'm good" is the opposite of convincing).
If someone on the internet told me "I am really good at flipping coins and making them land on heads", I would be quite skeptical. If she then related a story about how she did it 10 times in a row once, I would become even more skeptical. If she, on the other hand, explained some of her techniques, and I tried them and they worked, I would become less skeptical. Then I know her skill has a chance to be real, it has come from deliberate practice (not some magical "talent"), some of which she has let me in on.
Like I said, I don't know what you have, but if I had to pick something, it's Avoidant Personality Disorder. I'm not sure you have it, but it suits what you write the most. People with Avoidant Personality Disorder BELIEVE they have no people skills and therefore become overly self-conscious of their behavior. That's what I saw in the things you wrote: you were convinced you had no people skills and you seemed overly self-conscious of every detail of your interpersonal behavior. Anxiety in social situations, until you're certain you perform well in them: another thing that both applies to you and AvPD. You can look at the separate details you listed and look at them in every way you want, but from what I see the mechanism that drives you is the same mechanism that drives AvPD.
I am pretty sure I never stated I have "no people skills". Nor do I believe this to be a fair characterization of those on the Autism Spectrum. In fact, I am rather sure I gave examples of people skills that I have learned.
Also, I still don't teach all that well, but I am not anxious about the act of teaching. I can be anxious about understanding the material I need to teach. But, at this point, if I knew the subject matter, and were given the time to prepare the lessons, I would be willing to do it.
If I seemed reluctant to accept others' reasons for why I am not an Aspie, it was because the reasons given matched the very same stereotypes and myths that Aspies themselves were denouncing in their videos and articles (That all those within the Autism Spectrum are obviously strange, asexual, second cousins of psychopaths who don't care about others). At this point, I am pretty sure that even if I have some of the traits, pursuing an Asperger's diagnosis would not be helpful. The stigma is strong, I've learned to cope with a lot of the problems that may be associated, and I have some traits in my development that are quite atypical of those on the Autism Spectrum.
I have since looked through some other lists of diagnostic criteria, and on some lists I match better for Avoidant Personality Disorder. But at most, I met half of the things listed. If there were a "counterphobic" version of Avoidant, I think it may be a good match. There was some information I found about "Counterphobic/Analytical Avoidant Personalities" (Type II Avoidant). I'll look more into that.
I am grateful you pointed me in a direction I would not have considered. But, frankly, the repeated statements of "Trust me, I'm good," or "If forced to choose, I would choose Avoidant", without adequate explanation was frustrating.
Even if you do have a "talent" for diagnosis, I think people like me will be frustrated with the lack of
reasons given for such diagnoses.
The thing is I CAN'T diagnose you from just looking at the things you wrote. I can't see if you indeed lack interpersonal skills or if it's all just in your head. I can't see if you indeed lack empathy or if you're just overestimating it. I can't see if your body language matches the body language that's typical for people with autism. I can't see the things I need to see to draw the conclusion that you have Asperger's. The things I can see, are insecurity, feelings of being socially inadequate, anxiety and extreme self-consciousness. That led me to the idea that if I had to diagnose you, it would be AvPD or something related to social anxiety. I just put all the information I had together.
Well, I said I could do tiny chat. But I am not posting videos where you can see my face.