Here's how I was diagnosed. I was diagnosed between 6th and 7th grade when my mom said "I was acting abnormal" and she didn't know if I was being rude or if I had something wrong with me. So we were gonna take me to the doctors, but the day I was supposed to go, my great grandpa died. Then, we rescheduled it and the doctor sent me to another therapist and then we found out. I was also nonverbal until 3 years old and couldn't crawl until after I was 2.
ppppppppfeiufiofuiorjfadkfbnjkdflaosigjbkghuiafjkldjnbaghkdre: the gender and orientation questions
i was assigned female at birth and i've always liked girls a lot. i gravitate toward them. there were times i had predominantly male friends, but that was usually because they lived near me or i was too shy to talk to girls.
my orientation is asexual and bi/panromantic (although except for a couple celebrities like hugh laurie, im repulsed by men. who wouldn't be attracted to hugh laurie though?)
i'm not sure how gendered my interests are. i'm into art (which is somewhat considered feminine) and shojo manga and anything cute and girly, but i also like video games. i suppose overall i would be more 'feminine' in this regard because i'm very artsy and generally shy away from sports and tech related things.
when it comes to personal relations i'm definitely very feminine. the masculine way of approaching relation ships and emotions (keep it in, don't get too serious, don't cry, be strong) would never be something i could conform to, with my personality. i cry a lot and feel deeply for others and desire to have gentle, meaningful relationships with people.
I'm glad/not really that surprised that there's an ASD here. I personally have a few problems being a diagnosed aspie myself since my early childhood. I have ADHD as well and I know that most aspies hate change, with that being said, I act incredibly erratically if I'm not tired or are in a good mood.
There's also the socialization problems with aspergers. I won't communicate with anyone if they're not of interest but I never have trouble communicating with others. I always made sure to say what others preferred. I rarely have trouble finding a date. I was one of the most renown members of the debate team and various public speaking/civics activities in the school.
It wasn't always that way though, I was picked on constantly, stuttered as I talked, and went berserk when I couldn't think straight but as I matured I learned simply not to care and developed a quick wit. With that being said, did I "outgrow" aspergers? I hate being labelled for being an introvert with intense interests and a different level of childhood development (clumsyness was my vice).
I sometimes feel that I may have "outgrown" aspergers, but it wasn't a matter of growing to a certain age.
I worked hard to fit in, focusing on expressions, tones, suitable subjects, personal limits, until eventually I could play most social situations by ear and fit in seamlessly.
I don't know if you'd call it artificial - no more artificial than teaching yourself to play the piano, I guess. It feels natural to me to talk to people, now. I feel way more confident just from sheer practice. None of it is ingenuine.
What if there’s no better word than just not saying anything?yeah you don't outgrow these kind of things, you learn to manage them. I manage my dyslexia by being careful about my spelling and grammar and being aware of how it effects me, that doesn't mean I'm not still Dyslexic, it just means I manage my Dyslexia (occasionally not very well, as my regular spelling mistakes in other threads will prove).
I can say exactly the same with my ASD and (partly) my ADD, I manage my ASD because I've learned how to manage it. I know how social rules work and how my interaction with people should be carried out, when I'm dealing with a social situation I know how to deal with (which is most these days) I can manage it fine. Now when I'm in a social situation I don't know how to deal with I can guess my way though reasonably well, but I still don't get all the social rules and ideas naturally, I understand them via guesswork and experience.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranHas anyone else here gotten a little bit annoyed by attempts of people online to self-diagnose themselves with Aspergers? As someone who's struggled with it since childhood, it's become a bit of a pet peeve to see people online who feel like they're socially awkward or don't fit in act like they should have Aspergers.
Moreover, I'm just baffled why anyone would want to be diagnosed with it, since throughout my life it's caused a serious stigma.
People love labels as excuses.
"You are acting like a fucking cunt". "Oh it is ok because I have Aspergers. That means that if you do not tolerate me you are a miserable asshole". More prevalent over the internet for...well. A bevy of reasons.
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothesKnowing what's up with you can serve to give greater peace, or at least it did with me.
EDIT:
Also, that.
edited 12th Jun '14 3:12:38 PM by rmctagg09
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.If I may ask, what do people with aspergers/autism mean when they say that they have trouble understanding social cues and communication? Like, what are some examples? Places like Wikipedia list that as a symptom, but they don't go into as much detail as I'd like. Is it that you don't feel embarrassed or ashamed when you've made a faux pas for instance? Or that when someone frowns or uses a stern tone, you can't tell that they're displeased?
I mean, a lot of our ability to understand social cues is based on learning and pattern recognition, since what is acceptable varies depending on culture—much of it isn't so much natural or instinctive. Children for instance, make faux pas's all the time—they violate someone's personal space, act rudely or whatnot, and the negative feedback they get over time teaches them how to act. Are people with autism just unable to pick up on these feedback patterns?
One possible example that might work is looking at girls—when I was in junior high, I always tried to hide whenever I copped a glance at women, and I felt awkward when on occasion, our eyes met. So would someone with aspergers/autism just keep staring even after the girl noticed you without feeling uncomfortable about being caught?
For a less scandalous example, what about in conversation? Like in conversation, if it gets to the point where I'm expected to say something, I feel obligated to make at least some kind of response, because otherwise I'd feel incredibly awkward and ashamed to ignore them. So would an autistic person just not realize that people are regarding them with anticipation to take part in the conversation and just stand there? Or am I looking at it wrong?
I'm just asking out of curiosity—it's not my intention to sound demeaning to anyone—tell me if I am, it's more that it's not as easy as I thought to wrap my head around the concept.
They never travel alone.
Well, one thing they commonly do on tests is put a picture of a boy's head surrounded by four candy bars, which asks "which candy bar does the boy want?"
Most people will look to see what direction the boy's eyes are facing to determine which one he wants. Someone with autism, however, would have a harder time picking up on that.
To give a couple of examples from my own life. In a social party situation it's not appropriate to discuss certain topics about how you're having difficult in your personal life, I not knowing this bought one of these topics up, everyone body else new the social rule that said that's not a thing to bring up in that situation, I was completely unaware until someone actually said "Silas that's not think to discuss in this kind of situation" at which point I shut up. Or other examples, I tend to talk a lot, ow my natural assumption is that should someone want to say something themselves or is board they will say so and end the conversation, apparently that's not true, I need to be monitoring them for certain social cues that indicate such things and then respond to such cues.
As for self-diagnosis, I don't mind it, now using a diagnosis (self given or not) as an excess to be an asshole annoys me greatly, but that's because the person is being an asshole.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranNow, the thing is, I've learned to function fairly well socially. It's more that it's effort and requires a lot of learning of individual cases; I'm not good at learning from one circumstance and translating it to others. Especially since the rules generally make little sense and are thus not intuitive to me.
I also get easily socially confused and overloaded and "shut down". I tend toward a lot of anxiety about cues and hints.
A brighter future for a darker age.Hmm. It seems like it'd be harder to pick up on someone having aspergers as they got older. Like that candy bar test for example—it might work on a three year old with the disorder, but I would assume the same person at 20 (assuming he's high-functioning) would easily solve the test, probably without thinking any more about it than a person without the condition. Am I incorrect in my assumption?
Are there perhaps certain cues—facial expressions or parts of facial expressions, tones of voice or whatnot, that people with aspergers/autism can never truly develop a mental or social reflex in response to no matter what their age is? (then again, maybe this is kind of a dumb question to ask, because if someone never notices a certain cue in the first place, then they probably can't identify it because they don't know it's there...)
They never travel alone.I'd say that over time those who are capable of learning to function well in society tend to get better at it, so that's at least partly true. Plus, for one thing, the stereotype of an autistic / asperger's person is young; for another, the older you get the less the pressures to conform in some ways.
(I'm 41, FYI)
A brighter future for a darker age.Something I usually have to make an effort to do is small talk. Usually after social situations I'm left kind of exhausted because I have to consciously make an effort to present an amiable persona instead of sitting around doing my own thing, which my mom calls 'antisocial'. Anyone experience something similar?
Admittedly I haven't been extensively tested either recently or when I was young, so I might not be the best example. But for me, I mean I understand social cues for the most part, but dealing with them on a daily basis is something of an effort, to the point where I just need to be on my own to recharge after a while. It's probably in part a normal introverted personality, but I've also read about how even among people with Asperger's who have learned how to socialize, the process can still be actually physically exhausting.
Ninja'd, but yeah, I think that's the point I was trying to make about myself too. It's likely also a major contributing factor why working retail can be utter hell for me.
edited 12th Jun '14 6:20:06 PM by CombatC122
I often make an effort to try to sit across from people at meals rather than always eating alone like I normally would. This morning, I went up to someone and said hi and asked if he minded that I sat there. Without even saying anything, he just got up and moved to a different table. It makes me wonder if he was Aspie too.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
Fantasy writer turned Filmmaker.
@Vellup: I've found that it's hard for me to talk about something that doesn't fit into one of my interests. For example, sports: if somebody brings it up, I'm likely to steer the conversation to something related-but-different. Like how I think American Football is just armored chess or ritualized combat (and that's all I'll say about it; just an example).
And yeah, you hit the nail on the head: It's hard to comment on something if you aren't aware it exists.
Actual Filmmaker trying to earn a Creator page. Gleahan and the Knaves of Industry — available now on streaming and blu-ray.The most recent theories in psychology is that emotions, as most of us experience them, consist of a generalized sort of internal mental excitation or stimulation that we detect via cues from our body- that is we learn to recognize the signs that we are experiencing an emotion, and we also learn how to label these emotional states depending upon the context. This happens first at a sub-conscious level, then after a micro-second delay, we consciously experience the emotion. First our brain sees a bear, then we feel excited, then we consciously notice the bear, then we realize that we are terrified. By then we are already running away.
We also learn to detect emotional states in other people, mostly through their non-verbal body language, which we also detect initially at a sub-conscious level. First our brain sees someone flirting with us, then we feel excited, then we consciously realize realize that someone is flirting with us, then we feel attracted to them. By then our body has already responded.
That's the normal case. People with HFA will have trouble at every stage of this process. The HFA brain will lag at noticing the sub-conscious cues, hence little or no emotional excitation will occur, this lack of signals will prevent the HFA person from seeking an explanation of whatever reduced excitation is occurring, hence no emotional state is processed. HFA should be relatively poor at recognizing their own emotional states. The brain sees the bear, but fails to register it immediately, and fear is greatly reduced, or delayed.
This interferes with recognizing emotion in others as well. The flirting person is never noticed, no automatic responses are sent back, by the time conscious thought catches to up to what is happening, the other person has stopped flirting.
That's the theory, anyway. The empirical evidence hasn't quite caught up, so we dont know for sure if this is what's happening. Best model I've seen so far, though.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
Reading tropes such as You Know What You Did
Has anyone else here gotten a little bit annoyed by attempts of people online to self-diagnose themselves with Aspergers?
Oh yeah. It's not a Berserk Button for me but I mean c'mon. How is that relevant? How does that justify their actions? As well as being offensive those who do suffer from autism related depression are able to keep themselves in check, what's the excuse of those who don't and can't?
If I may ask, what do people with aspergers/autism mean when they say that they have trouble understanding social cues and communication?
You mean things like eye contact? Not getting close? Seeming to tune out? I'll try and address these. For the first to those with aspergers they can actually find eye contact painful, same with noise of a particular tone or pitch or when they are bombarded with people or information. For the second to me it's something of a fear, I tend not to want to say or do something to hurt others unless that was the intent, though others may think differently. For the third I would attribute this as everything said is getting through and as well as processing the information it's taken very much on board. The Iris Group currently tear arsing in Iraq for example, most would think it is a concern, someone with autism may look at the big picture, the small picture, and everything in between, maybe out of fear or concern but I would suggest more to gather as much information as they can to understand it, hence why they may shut down.
For a little more detail say the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Just using me as an example when it is brought up I take into account the cost, what I know of it, it's proposed capabilities, it's drawbacks, the problems it's had, I draw on it's portrayal in games and how I found it, how I found other planes, I think about the armament and air force of other countries and who might be considered a threat, whether Australia who wants to purchase them can afford it, if it might be used to help bolster boarder security and stop the boats as the Liberals really want to do (probably not a realistic thought but I give it anyway even if to dismiss it,) what measures they are taking to afford it, ect, ect. And in doing so I miss what is being said or the point as a whole.
Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours

No sodding idea. I certainly end up 'sounding' like a father every so often, but that's because my best friend is like a little sister to me and I've on multiple occasions said something along the lines of "my little girl doesn't need me anymore, she's got her man to help her with her problems and keep her safe".
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran