Are you AS or MILD AS?

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Joined: 4 Jul 2008
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20 Apr 2010, 10:38 am

I'd call myself mild. In fact, I've been questioning my diagnosis (I was diagnosed young, without my opinion on the matter ever being asked..) but I've decided it's irrelevant as there's certainly something different (in others or myself, depending on the point of view).

It is my understanding that someone is payed to keep track of my educational progress... I'm not too fond of being an unnecessary burden on the state.

anbuend
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20 Apr 2010, 11:01 am

Blindspot149 wrote:

I think that in some cases the term 'mild' relates to how we (think we) manage to cope despite this;

Some of the factors that perhaps imply reasonably good coping abilities include, amongst other things:

1. Not being non-verbal
2. Having a 'job'
3. Having a job that actually pays you money
4. Having a job that pays you enough to live on
5. Being able to drive a vehicle (automatic or otherwise

) although not necessarily enjoying driving

6. Living independently
7. Having a business
8. Having some friends :!:

Hmm. It's normal for people with AS not to be nonverbal. It's very rare (although despite that I've met a few) for an AS person to be nonverbal at all. So being nonverbal or not wouldn't differentiate between regular AS and mild AS.

Having friends, even though it's in the diagnostic criteria, is one of those things that bothers me when used to measure how autistic someone is. Because it is so very dependent on how the people around someone behave. If they are very autistic-friendly, understanding, and willing to put in most of the effort of maintaining a friendship, then someone may have way more friends than someone else who is more able to make friends the typical way but is around people unwilling to cut them any slack.

The other thing is we don't know what autism is. Of that list the only thing I have is friends. If we don't know what autism is... what if being more autistic made your life skills better? (Not a totally impossible thing. In some studies the more measurable autistic traits people have when young the better the outcome, according to a couple people I know.) What if then I'm more mildly autistic than you are? We just don't know.

But I still can't get myself to fill in a poll that doesn't have an option for me. It's not that I believe in the autism/AS division, it's that even so when they're collapsed into one it's not AS that they're all called. So I feel like I'd be contributing to inaccurate results if I filled it in.

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Callista
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20 Apr 2010, 12:40 pm

jametto wrote:

Sorry just a general question.

I was diagnosed with AS, but it isn't what I'd call reliable, the guy couldn't figure it out and he had to keep evaluating me over a 14 month period, I saw him on at least 20 separate occassions. Before I even met him he suspected me of aspergers. I took Iq tests and tests over this period of time.

Well anyway I was finally labelled with borderline as, he said I was basically as far as you could get to being on the edge of the spectrum, and said it was very very mild.
I've been researching it a lot lately and am not really sure if it's AS, I definitely have something though.

Can you be labelled AS if you have no routines or rituals and have a wide range of interests? When I was young I still had wide interests but I was obssessive with a certain few.
Never had routnies though.

My symptoms are the direct opposite of the AS routine/interests symptoms. It's just I've heard you need these symptoms to be labelled AS.
Is anyone here like that?

You can be given the AS diagnosis without either routines/rituals or obsessive interests. That part of the criteria only requires you to have either routines/rituals, obsessive interests, stims, or "preoccupation with parts of objects" (which for a little kid would be taking things apart or concentrating on small parts of a toy rather than all of it; but which for older people just means a very, very detail-oriented information-processing style... good for paying attention to details; bad if you want to see the big picture).

Here, I took out some of the doctorspeak from the AS criteria; maybe this'll help:

Quote:

Simplified AS criteria:

To be diagnosed AS, you must fulfill all of these five requirements:

1. You have problems with socialization that show up as at least two things on the following list:
-----You're really bad at using (or don't use) gestures, eye contact, body language, etc.
-----You're really bad at making friends your own age
-----You don't seek out contact with other people to share your achievements or interests
-----You don't mirror other people's emotions well, or don't keep up your end of a friendship

2. You show at least one of these behaviors:
-----Special interests, unusual in that they're either very intense or very narrowly focused
-----Sticking to strict routines that most people would consider "nonfunctional"
-----Repetitive physical behavior, like rocking, flapping, foot-tapping, etc. a lot more than most people
-----Focus on the details of objects, like parts of a toy; or focus on the details to the exclusion of the big picture

3. You are significantly impaired--have problems more than most people can be expected to have--in your social life, at work, or in some other important part of your life.

4. You have no speech delay--you used single words by age two and phrases by age three to communicate your own thoughts.

5. You don't have any developmental delay except in the area of socialization. Developmental delay means being far behind the average at doing things like taking care of yourself, learning the skills that most kids learn, etc. You were curious about your environment as a child, rather than being withdrawn.

If you fulfill all five criteria, then you can be diagnosed with Asperger's.

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Blindspot149
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21 Apr 2010, 8:22 am

Callista wrote:

Can you be labelled AS if you have no routines or rituals and have a wide range of interests? When I was young I still had wide interests but I was obssessive with a certain few.
Never had routnies though.

Hi Callista, haven't seen you for a while, but then, I haven't been on here much either

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Last edited by Blindspot149 on 22 Apr 2010, 12:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

Kajjie
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21 Apr 2010, 3:33 pm

I can't really judge how badly I'm affected. I was not diagnosed until age 18 and many people said I wasn't impaired so this would imply I'm mildly affected, but when I was diagnosed I was said to have many more of the diagnostic criteria than are necessary for a diagnosis. From my understanding, I actually meet the DSM criteria for autism, rather than Asperger's Syndrome, although I am diagnosed with the latter.

jametto- I have a diagnosis and do not have routines. However, if there is a set routine (for example, a school timetable), I get upset if it changes unexpectedly. But I understand it's possible to be autistic without any routines or similar things.

Callista - as for removing doctor speak - the 'bad at using gestures, eye contact, body language' - it might be worth clarifying that 'using' in this sense means not only doing these things yourself, but understanding others' body language and facial expressions. (I did not understand this initially).
The 'peer-to-peer relationships appropriate to developmental level', in my diagnosis, was not only used to refer to making friends, but also acquaintances and boyfriends/girlfriends. I have never had a romantic relationship and I would have little idea of how to do such a thing and I have no interest in it, and this is not 'appropriate' for a 19 year old. I have had success with making friends but until very recently it was rare for me to speak to anyone who was not a family member of one of my 4 friends, and so I also fail(ed) at having friends and acquaintances in the way that others do.

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Last edited by Kajjie on 22 Apr 2010, 2:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

Callista
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21 Apr 2010, 8:03 pm

Bit of confusion--the original question on routines was jametto's; I think the quote tags got mixed up in there somewhere.

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Kajjie
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22 Apr 2010, 2:44 am

Callista wrote:

Bit of confusion--the original question on routines was jametto's; I think the quote tags got mixed up in there somewhere.

Ah, sorry I'll fix that. I did wonder why you were asking if you knew the criteria!

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jametto
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22 Apr 2010, 6:22 am

Thanks Ladies.

Interesting I scored 3, but not by much, if I stretched my symptoms out even the tiniest bit I could score 5, the criteria isn't really as black and white as I thought.
Still probably have AS though as there are a lot more things relative to AS than the things on that list.

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