[DanaC]

You certainly did Jarvio.

I think one of the things that makes it a bit too easy for people to suggest that it is really just ordinary stuff that most of us have...is that, when reading most of the descriptions of what ASDs are like, we often see snippets to which we can relate. Many people have difficulty trusting that they have locked the door, or blown out the candles, or unplugged the iron, or whatever. We feel the need to check, for what seems like many times, but in reality may be just 2 or 3 times.

We've all experienced feeling like we have to adopt a persona in certain social situations, but though it may feel like we've played that role throughout the engagement, thinking back, we'll then find that there were also times we relaxed into the conversation and forgot to monitor what we were doing and how we were interacting.

But the scale and intensity is different. And also the critical mass of all these factors.

So people say, oh come on now, that's just shyness, by that definition I must have Aspergers, without really understanding the difference between experiencing some elements and living inside those elements.