Primordial Chaos

Back to normal, a song title, Van Hunt is the artist. :)

This is going to be a brief post, but something interesting to some of you.

So, yeah, I'm pretty severely autistic. I was told this when I got my test scores back when I was originally diagnosed. I kept being autistic to myself for a long time. I felt like I was broken, that I was a....defect. In the past two years I've really come to grips with it, and am not so ashamed, it's kind of my badge of honor at this point.

Anyways, I was going through some papers in my desk, and I found some of my original test scores, and also the retests I did recently. The scores didn't change AT ALL. I don't entirely understand how I have such control of it but yet the scores didn't change, but whatever. So, for the first time, my scores and a brief explanation. I have nothing to hide anymore.

I have 3 test results (there were a few more, but can't find them...) and these 3 are the most common tests used to gauge if you show up on the autistic spectrum.

First one is the Autism Spectrum Quotient, or ASQ. The ASQ is out of 50, the average is about 16-17, over 32 are STRONG autistic tendencies.

My score: 45/50

Next up is the Empathizing Quotient, basically how well you understand and read facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, feel empathy, the social skills autistics tend to suck at. It's out of 30, the lower the score the worse you are at empathy. Women tend to score higher than men, but both average in the mid teens or so. This is the score that shocked me the most, that I was this far off base in regards to interacting with people.

My score: 2/30

Last is the Systemizing Quotient, basically how analytical and detail oriented you are, or how much you analyze everything as parts of a system, I guess you could say. The higher the score, the more you display this autistic tendency. This also includes thinking things to death trying to find a pattern or logic in it. (This is probably one of my worst faults, really.) It's out of 80, men tend to score higher than women, engineers tend to score higher than the average regardless of their sex. Women VERY VERY rarely score high on this test. I mean fucking rarely. Engineers tend to score in the high 40s and low 50s, others about the 20-30s. Actually my score on this caused them to retest me twice, they were in fucking disbelief because, of course, I'm a female who scored high. It wasn't much of a surprise to me because I'm well aware of just how intense I analyze everything.

My score: 77/80

I do tend towards the extremes of EVERYTHING, don't I? :)

Some side info, as far as personality tests, Meyers-Briggs I'm an INTP, and out of the Director, Builder, Negotiator, and Explorer, I'm very strongly Director with some secondary Explorer. If you are not familiar with these tests and what those types mean, they have this thing called Google. :P

No wonder I'm introspective, I'm fascinating as hell. ;)

~A.