Who here was officially diagnosed with autism or Asperger's?

I'm still not sure when a good time to show them is...

I guess the next time they make fun of my movements...

I think it's best to instead find a time when they're relaxed or not doing anything important, to show them. Not wait until they make fun of your Aspergers that they're making no effort to understand on their own.

My doctor's telling me that there's this weird bacterial yogurt people have been trying on people on the spectrum, and somehow they actually lose the autism diagnosis within a few months.

On the one hand, that sounds like bullshit, and even my doctor knows it. On the other hand, this doctor seems to know what he's doing more than a bunch of my other doctors, so... maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt?

That sounds to me like he's confusing anecdotes for sound medical advice to me, honestly.

Not to change the subject a bit, but I think the misdiagnosis of Aspegers is the reason why I hate the Loners Are Freaks trope so much. People assume that just because you're a loner, you automatically have the disease, which I find offensive because there are people suffering from it.

...because asperger's syndrome is a disease.

edited 17th Jul '15 1:59:18 PM by ImmortalFaust

It is actually considered a disease in the medical field.

I don't resent that.

I meant that I hate when people misuse the term to describe loners.

It isn't really a disease, as medicine defines the term.

Pretty much all the conditions on the autism spectrum are disorders, as it's a difference in how the brain is wired.

Also, the term disease has the implication that there's something wrong with the person who has it and that it needs to be cured.

Ah, I see. My mistake.

I have Aspergers, all diagnosed by a doctor and everything. I wish there was a pill I could take that could get rid of it. Especially since I didn't get my diagnosis until I was 38. Look at THAT number and tell me that that's any way near how it should have gone.

I was diagnosed with Aspergers when I was pretty young, so thankfully that entailed getting help around that time I admittedly would have needed. Didn't really know about it until maybe Jr. High or early High School though.

Oddly enough, I was actually rather okay back in Elementary school, but I think this came from both/either the teachers I had helping me and/or the school was rather small, so our peer community was a bit more familiar and tolerable with one another, and even if I was quirky I got along with everyone. It wasn't until later on that I basically got shook the hell out of that mindset once high school hit. But I suppose that's a story a lot of people tell. In any case it introduced me my own personal Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism and ended up costing me my social life a bit. I'll admit that some of it may have been my own fault, but I didn't have a lot of people to really communicate about it. Rural communities and such. But in the end my family and so forth have provided me a lot of support, and I even went into Advanced classes once I got into High School, though college lately has kinda' brought back some old issues - though I suppose that is what the counselors are for, heh. I suppose I shouldn't complain much though, I was given' a lot more lucky breaks than others have.

These days I've noted about tempering some of the tendencies: I have better control of my facial muscles, I can make eye contact better than I used to, I've been getting better at small talk, so on. That being said, it's admittedly been frustrating to not have someone to talk to about things I'm interested in, things I'm working on, so on so forth. I don't know about the others on here, but is it unusual to have a very great desire to be able to find someone to vent and share and work on ideas for various things? Nothing gives me more joy than working on personal things and/or projects and making progress, which makes it all the more buggersome that I have such seemingly irrational issues like a fear of [accidentally] being ignorant in matters I feel I should know, self-confidence/esteem issues, and perhaps most annoyingly a seeming desire to have a sort of "guide" or manual for certain things so that I am confident I am doing things correctly. Nothing irritates me as much as being unable to rationalize them away on my own, aheh.

In any case, I'd be perfectly fine with it if it wasn't for how alienated on both sides it can feel sometimes. I dunno', sometimes I feel like I'm unintentionally invoking Self-Fulfilling Prophecy when it comes to those things, even if I know personal experiences may vary among the spectrum and individuals.

edited 27th Jul '15 2:58:16 PM by StarvingGecko

I would say, not at all.

i relate to this a lot, though honestly i don't usually have a problem finding people who share my hobbies. TVT is already one such place and for other things i can go to reddit/other communities. irl it's harder but my brother likes a lot of the same things, and i actually find people who like nerdy stuff pretty often.

I have a seemingly rare form of asperger's syndrome. Basically, I have an extremely mild variant of it, but it still exists. It's like ultra-high-functioning autism, just touching the border between asperger's and non-asperger's.

In other words, I am rarely prohibited by my asperger's syndrome; I am able to fight beyond it and not let it define me. The problem is, is that it's rendered me cynical, somewhat snobby/critical and prone to random, half-a-day periods of mild depression which evaporate quickly once I've found my happy place.

I said this in the "I have no friends" thread I made (which, yes, I opened in a half-a-day period of mild depression) that I'm nerdy, and I am to an extent. However, I also said I'm not completely proud of it - that's because my asperger's syndrome has also made me more easily irritated by things such as fandoms, making me feel less connected to most self-proclaimed online nerds. However, I am still somewhat nerdy, enjoying Pokemon and other video games (driving games at the moment), having a weird love for ambient fantasy and especially progressive rock music, my favourite thing of all.

So, that's my aspergers. I'm grumpy but kind underneath, socially awkward and virtually friendless but I'm happy when I'm able to nerd out by myself. Imagine the "forever alone" face here.

I'm someone who's never been diagnosed, but have been told by my friends that I definitely have some tendancies. My Mom thought I might have had it when I was about 3, but she then decided that she thought I was "gifted" (because Moms always want to believe their kids are special super geniuses) and never sought a diagnosis. I always felt like I kind of hovered around the line, definitely having certain traits that sounded a lot like ASD, but high functioning enough that I could fake not having them, although my functioning has definitely gotten better with time.

Growing up I had a lot of sensory issues. Like, if a place was too loud or had too many flashing lights, I had to leave (one time I almost threw up from over-stimulation at my friend's "cosmic bowling" party, and left 10 minutes in). I also cut all the tags out of my clothes and wore my socks inside out because I hated the way the seam felt (if I had to wear socks, which I almost never did, because the socks bothered me unless they felt exactly even—the same reason why I never pulled my hair back). I also didn't like to be touched, unless it was someone I was extremely comfortable with, like my Mom (I once overheard another parent asking my mom it I was abused when I was younger due to my level of discomfort, but that was something that had NEVER happened).

I've always been socially awkward, but I know that socially awkward does not ASD make. I know I couldn't always read people that well when I was younger and had the "little professor" affect (my uncle used to make fun of how much I said "actually").

The thing that sometimes makes me doubt that I have ASD at all is that most kids with ASD (from what I've read) were more interested in "object toys" than "people toys", whereas I was always interested in people toys (dolls, action figures), almost to the exclusion of everything else. But people have always been my biggest interest—not in a "social butterfly" sort of way, but in a "robot who wants to be a real boy" sort of way...(although I read that kids with ASD tended to play with toys in the same way every time, and I would yell at my mom for "playing it wrong" and take the toy away when she played a doll of figure with the wrong personality)

As I've gotten older, I've spent a lot of effort learning how to read and understand people. I think a lot of people can just do this naturally or intuitively, but for me I basically studied how to be The Social Expert, the way one would study an academic field. Learning to talk to someone is like learning a language or a video game's control scheme—when they do X it means Y—this facial expression is the angry one, this is the happy one. Pretty much the worst thing someone can do to me in an argument is stonewall me and then not tell me how they're feeling, because if my general translation guide doesn't work, than I get really nervous, and start second guessing my observations...

The sensory issues never really left, but I learned a lot of workarounds—like if you wear ballet flats all the time, no one will ask you to wear socks, and gaucho pants and skirts don't constrain your legs. I don't generally have anxiety attacks from loud places anymore (although there have been exceptions), but there are times I've considered pretending to take up smoking (probably with a flavor-only filled vaporizer) so I have an excuse to take 5 minutes outside to calm down, without having to tell everyone that I need to get out of the loud.

In a way my sensory issues today are the most noticeable in crowded restaurants. At home I can eat a whole pizza if I'm hungry enough, but at a loud, crowded restaurant (particularly one with dark, uneven lighting), I very often have to get a to-go box because that over-stimulation makes it hard to eat.

The thing that got me thinking about ASD recently is that I've read about several products designed for people with ASD (specifically weighted blankets and silicon chew necklaces), and my response was "I want all of these things, where have they been all my life."

I kind of feel bad self-diagnosing, because I'm always afraid that I'm some how minimizing the experience of people who have really been diagnosed...

I guess, what I'm wondering is, for people who have been diagnosed with ASD, are these things that sound like symptoms, or are they not?

Speaking as both someone diagnosed with autism at age 3, and as someone who's been doing a ton of reading about it, oh yes, you definitely have it from the sound of what I'm reading. As in, I see no way you could not have it from the sound of all that.

Of course, self-diagnosis is a problem. It may be necessary if you can't get a professional diagnosis, but if you can get one, that's best.

As for you just being "gifted", well, one of the articles I read about a month ago said that somewhere around 7% of kids who are labeled "gifted" also qualify as "disabled". It's possible to be both at the same time, and many people just can't get their heads around that. It should be obvious that people are capable of being good at one thing and bad at another, that they can have an "imbalanced" brain that results in great skills in one way but major difficulty another. I mean, duh! But a lot of people just wonder, "How can you be both smart and mentally challenged at the same time? They're opposites!"

In elementary school, kids called me both smart and retarded. Sometimes the same kids. I didn't understand either label at the time, but many could see it.

Anyway, I'm convinced you'd have been labeled with Aspergers back when that term was still used, and would be considered to have autism now.

I have been dealing with autism myself for quite a while.

I remember during my elementary years I either whispered (Pre-K to Kindergarten) or just hardly spoke if at all (1st to 3rd grade). Many kids thought I was shy (in fact I think I was!). I used to have those psychiatrist appointments; at least he was nice.

I didn't think that I was even aware of it until in junior high, when the school's speech pathologist told me. My condition is high-functioning autism: I can function normally in most cases, but I'm quite the introvert, and socializing has its awkward moments. Sometimes, either something's hard to say or I just trip over my own words.

edited 13th Sep '15 8:48:32 PM by Berrenta

Edited by IsaacTheRed on Feb 18th 2021 at 5:06:14 PM

"Painful procedures"? That sounds horrible. Could you tell us about them, or are they too painful to bring up?

Edited by IsaacTheRed on Feb 18th 2021 at 5:06:36 PM

Holy shit, that's quite an experience (and not in a good way).

I remember being disturbed by some of the things at the institute (or whatever you'd call it) for autistics when I was a kid, but it wasn't physical in any way. But it felt "wrong" to me somehow, instinctively.

Edited by IsaacTheRed on Feb 18th 2021 at 5:06:44 PM

I'm glad that we're starting to see more editorials saying that the autistic way of thinking isn't bad, just different. I mean, editorials by non-autistics. That's pretty important.

Not all autistics can "pass", and for many that can, faking it takes up so much energy that it takes away from their ability to think and be creative and so on.

Do you feel that it's good that you can "pass"? Do you think that something got taken away in the process, or is totally natural for you with no downsides? I've heard arguments from multiple sides, and it can be a contentious issue.

Edited by IsaacTheRed on Aug 1st 2023 at 10:47:12 AM