my opinion is that what people call aspergers and autism are:

- definitely a spectrum. it can range from severe mental disability to nearly "normal"

- seem heavily correlated to people who like to work in software, math, etc. engineers.

i would say that out of two dozen co-workers, about 95% have some degree of at least some of the symptoms you describe. we talk about this stuff and by the way, also heavily represented is adhd, depression, and social anxiety. about 50% have a good doses of one or more of those too.

i'm a little face-blind. i do words, can't visualize pictures, especially humans. sometimes i see someone and literally can't tell if it is my wife or child or not until i think about what they are wearing and how they do their hair and puzzle it out. i'm constantly confused in movies if there are two vaguely similar looking actors.

i'm no longer as anxious around new situations and new people, but i don't "like" being around people - it's work. i don't get energized by the interaction, i get worn out. i constantly have to "think" my way around interactions and responses, kinda like you said.

and i'm one of the more normal ones. :)

i think it comes with the territory of "brain work" people. to the point that it's kind of normal.

so i think, unscientifically, that your medical advice was probably spot on. you don't have autism. you have some mild symptoms of something like aspergers. it's a spectrum and you are still normal, but a little to the side toward autistic. what you describe is "mild" - that's why it's probably still in the normal range.

my wife used to work at easter-seals helping the disabled autistic kids enter into work environments. a very severely autistic person sometimes cannot communicate at all and can be so very mentally disabled they cannot even do this. a more moderate case can learn to go to work with coaching and sometimes can even become independent. you do not need a coach to teach you not to accidentally touch people in inappropriate ways or to talk to them in uncomfortable ways or to avoid having completely toddler level meltdowns because there are an odd number of M&Ms or something or to just start yelling really loud because you are excited.

for our level, it's like being left-handed. you just work differently. it's not a disability. that's the trade-of for the intelligence, detail orientation, and methodical problem solving super-skills that come with it. but i do feel that it is a related concept. you got a healthy dose of whatever it is and some poor folks sadly get way, way too much. but it is, i feel, largely the same thing.

sounds like your biggest challenge is to learn techniques to stop having outbursts. secondly, learn to empathize with your kids. i was lucky. both of my kids have the same thing. so for me, the fact that i get them is kind of an advantage. we're open about it, i teach them how to cope and how to behave. why that other person did what they did that totally flummoxed them. they are learning a lot faster and a lot younger than i did when i didn't even realize (duh!) that not everybody is like me until i was 30 or so.

advice: don't worry about it, accept it is part of how you are. even if it was named and confirmed, there's nothing that would really change. if you are struggling with anxiety or outbursts or whatever, that's what you work on until you can manage well enough. that's all they can really do in any case.