Differences between mild Aspergers and severe Autism?

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Yes, it definitely goes way back. I was thinking of what I've come across in the past few months.

Similar attacks on Michelle Dawson are described here: http://www.autistics.org/library/ (just page 3/4 of the way down or text search for "Michelle"). They were about ABA, which goes back to parents and functioning labels used to silence.

The autism experts will tell you another thing because they probably don't have autism and so can't really relate enough to it to see how symptoms and the severities can be split all across the spectrum.
But really medical professionals judge by what they see. So a really severely autistic that is non-verbal and needs to be taken care of will have low functioning autism. There's no way they have Asperger's. Basically they stereotype.

I'm not judging anyone here, I'm saying this is how the severity of autism is judged in the medical world. You probably feel the need to argue your point across because you can pick it all apart but thing is NT's don't see things like that.

Also here:

http://www.autreat.com/History_of_ANI.html

I remember one person who was involved in that (can't remember who) saying that they were at a conference and had a parent tell them they couldn't possibly be like the parent's autistic child because the child headbangs and so forth. And then the same autistic person got a call from management of the hotel later to say the neighbor was being disturbed by loud noise -- which was caused by the exact same autistic person slamming their head on the wall after a really overloading day.

Anyway I'm sorry for sort of losing my cool earlier. I just was blindsided by that description in a way that I haven't been in a long time.

Don't have time to read the entire thread, but since this topic has come up again, here's a video for ya that might be helpful:

http://www.vimeo.com/12901883

The boy who made that video defies at least as many HF/LF stereotypes as I do. (I know him.)

Definitely. I have met him last summer. Although I don't know him too well, I have heard his story.

Well I'm like a NT then, because I don't fully understand about other people on the spectrum. I've never met another Aspie before, hence I don't no any different to myself.

I don't uncontrollably hit myself in the head. Sometimes I hit myself once in the head when I am angry with myself, because I hate my brain so much. But I've never had people holding me down or anything.

By the way, my brother's NT friend once was hitting himself in the head when he was depressed. He as also a bit drunk. I saw it.

Okay? I don't hit myself in the head either, but I used to bite myself, dig my fingernails into my skin as hard as I could, peel skin off the palms of my hands, chew my fingernails down to the quick and draw blood, and other relatively mild forms of self-harm. Not in the same category, obviously, and no one had to hold me down, but it's hard for me to see some kind of sharp distinct line that you can draw anywhere and say "this is where they are completely different from you." Obviously, they are different, but just as obviously to me, there are often commonalities.

There's a reason people say "If you've met one autistic, you've met one autistic." You can't expect that everyone will have the same traits, and not having a particular trait doesn't mean you're NT, it just means you don't have that trait. It also means you can't say "This trait belongs over here and that trait belongs over there" because the borders are quite fuzzy and some people are diagnosed as Asperger's simply because they had no speech delay, despite fitting the criteria for autism or PDD-NOS (which is clearly autistic, but not directly fitting the autism diagnosis). Also, some people who fit the criteria for autism or PDD-NOS at an earlier age are diagnosed as Asperger's simply because they're adults and appear to function well, whether or not they had speech delays.



Once? Okay... Is this one of those "NTs do these things too?" comments? Because doing it once isn't symptomatic, and self-injury isn't restricted to autistic people.

This may be a bit off topic, but, what makes autistic people prone to head banging? I have an urge to bang my head against something sometimes but I usually just hit it against something like a pillow or hit my head with my hand.

I definitively think that it hurts so I don't really want to do it. Maybe everybody gets the urge to and it hurting defers them?

As for mild vs. severe, I think a large part of it is all based on people's perceptions of communication ability in a normal manner. I even put people in such categories of low functioning or high functioning and I don't know why I do it. It just seems like how they meet society's demands and how they appear to others is a large part of it.

This topic is like a huge wall of text to me so I'm bolding parts of my post and if this has already been answered, I apologize.

Personally, I understand quite well why someone would hit their head, I just don't do it myself and never have. That's not to say I've never hit myself, or even that I've never compulsively hit myself a whole lot, but I've never done it to my head. I wonder how much what seems like a huge dichotomy comes down to tiny differences in level of overload, willpower, priorities, other coping mechanisms... and by adulthood, not even that, but just what habits you've gotten into.

Unfortunately, head-banging is done for reasons as diverse as self-injury and stimming in general; so I don't think that's a question you could really answer. Any number of things could make somebody prone to it. Better to look at it case-by-case and try to determine why a particular person is prone to self-injury.

Personally, my tendency to hurt myself comes mostly from my discovery very early in life that I could think better and handle stress better when my fight-or-flight system was activated. In order to try to meet the demands of the NT world, I regularly forced myself into overdrive, sometimes using physical injury to do it. Burnout was the natural result, but it worked temporarily.

I hit my head when I have a meltdown. It does make the anger subside. I also sometimes have no feeling in my head and hitting it doesn't hurt. Same with other parts of my body. I just become physically numb.

I don't hit my head, it's more my face I hit, and only once during a meltdown. Sometimes it's to let others know that I am angry with myself. But I don't do it several times. And it does hurt. I've given myself a black eye before by hitting myself right on the bone under my eye. It really hurt. I done that because I felt angry with myself for not outgrowing certain things what most people outgrow by the age of 8. For example, I still don't know how to behave normally in public, and I thought I had learnt all the ''invisible rules'' by now, until my mum told me that I do this and do that in the street. My actions have calmed down now - when I was an older child, about 13 or 14 years old, I used to stamp by feet and pull my own hair if a baby started crying in restaurants. I don't do that anymore, and I don't even react anymore. I just quietly sigh inwardly, and not where it shows to the obvious to other people.
But apparently I keep saying embarrassing things loudly in public, and it makes my mum feel embarrassed to be with me. When she told me this at home, I did smack myself in the face and yell, ''what the f**k is the matter with me?! !! Why don't my f*****g brain know what I am doing?! !! Now I'm the village idiot!! !'' And then I cried, angrily. My mum had to calm me down by saying that I am not the village idiot at all, and that there are people who do far more embarrassing things than me.

I do hate my brain with a vengance.

I love your new signature!

It's really frustrating when you're trying so hard and yet you just keep embarrassing yourself. You're not alone in suffering that, trust me.

I'm NOT saying that NTs exhibit symptoms in a way we do. I found this little quote what somebody else had wrote on an unrelated thread to this, but it does fit in with what I'm trying to say (although what I'm trying to say may not match the title of this thread.) Here goes:-

ASD traits are not traits unique to only ASD individuals. They are human traits, often taken to an extreme, that when grouped together in one individual usually indicates an ASD. NTs may stim, feel anxiety in social situations, have black and white thinking, be literal thinkers, have narrow focused interests, have language delays, etc. NTs may grow out of their traits, or may continue to exhibit them throughout their life. The main difference is that NTs dont exhibit all or most of the traits concurrently like autistics do, and often not to the same degree.

That has made me feel better about AS. I have seen people who are not on the spectrum exhibit Aspie traits, even though they are 100% NT. It confuses me too. It makes me so confused that I'm beginning to wonder that this confusion is causing me to hate being me so much. It is all caused by confusion.

To be perfectly honest, the paragraph views autism as a group of traits you show, rather than as a way of thinking, making it way off. But never mind.

Your theory that you're feeling bad because you're confused is interesting. I suppose this is confusing...