Differences between AS and PDD-NOS in all of this?

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The more I read, I see a lot of useful stuff for aspies, but it really seems like PDD-NOS or HFA's an altogether different animal - just by the mechanism that something like PDD-NOS effects social skills (less a problem of knowledge to where the barriers are much more physical/physiological than psychological).

I'm just curious on what some of you think of this. We definitely aren't all from the same cookie-cutter here and I'm not just talking personality but the whole way being on the spectrum effects us. I'd like to think there's better life strategies for PDD-NOS or HFA than just hanging back and trying to be subtly crafty (all the while hoping your neurological exterior won't fry things up) but it still feels like a bit too much dreaming on some ends and you find out pretty quickly and quite literally what you can change and what you can't.

especially as the diagnosis PDD-NOS
usually becomes parenthesizedly affixed

(including atypical autism spectrum disorder)

which turns this whole labelling-reasoning
into somewhat of a vicious circle

I understand it though, the needs are different and the means to better our lives work a lot differently. For instance it seems like someone who literally just lacks knowledge, when that is the case, can make leaps and bounds once they make it (its kind of like going from underachieving to more normal levels).

When a person has already exhausted that option and are hitting a glass ceiling of sorts set by their neurology and genetics - it puts them in a place where they need a much different plan of how to either get around that ceiling or adapt around or through it. My reason for bringing this up, maybe I'm not reading all posts as in-depth as I could (I do try) but I don't see this aspect talked about nearly as much as alpha-guides. Not that the alpha-guides or self-help guides can't benefit a lot of people, but I know there are a lot of people still running into dynamics non-applicable to that and it seems like when I do bring them up from time to time - 2 or 3 posts and it sinks to the bottom. I don't know if the lack of response is due to a perceived lack of answers or if a lot of people really can't relate - I don't get enough feedback to clear that up. Still, the fact that its a non-existing dialog next to the kind of childish 'pitty me' stuff on one end or the alpha guides on the other is really sad; I really hope people aren't this dead to introspect.

Too bad these threads never go anywhere. I've tried in the past too and never seem to get much response. I wish someone had some insight, because that neurological glass wall that keeps me from connecting with people around me on any meaningful level... the outer side of me always projecting the appearance of disinterest or aloofness... is another thing that's been driving me crazy lately.

I always thought that it would be harder for the AS individuals to buck up in life, due to general awareness and knowledge of everything. You know what they say, ignorance is bliss!

Just to clarify... what Techstepgenr8tion and I are referring to is people like ourselves who seem to fit the overall HFA profile better than AS, and we're the ones who have too much knowledge, awareness, etc. We're painfully aware of social dynamics, how we're projecting ourselves and how other people are perceiving us, yet there seems to be a barrier of some sort preventing us from putting the knowledge to use and changing our outward behaviour, mannerisms, presence, etc the way we'd like to. (To grossly overgeneralize), we've always kinda pegged the AS group as the ones who get to be blissfully unaware of certain social dynamics. And of course it might not even be a defining difference between AS/HFA-PDD, it could be some other kind of subtype within the spectrum. Who knows... But you're right though - labels aside, it's definitely harder for the people with too much awareness and knowledge to buck up when there's neurological barriers holding you back from using the knowledge. That's why we're looking for insight on how to get around those barriers. Advice anyone??

I've really come to the conclusion not to expect much, if anything, from people. We're probably 3rd or 4th order oddities for either being this way or alternatively for being self-aware of it. Either way it really doesn't matter; just that if we keep this thread going will probably have at least 2 or 3 people come in here and accuse us of being self-absorbed, 2 or 3 people who'll accuse us of being egotistical for thinking we know something they don't, and maybe another few who'll tell us that we're over-thinking things or that we're being deeper than we need to be (??? had someone on Hangout say that and I still have no idea what the hell that's supposed to mean). Sometimes in that regard, when there's no quality responses I'm almost happier seeing it float to the bottom with 0 replies rather than having it and myself dragged to star chamber court.

Yeah... I still keep holding out hope that with so many people on this forum, there's gotta be someone somewhere who can relate. Doesn't look like it's gonna happen though.

The bigger the forum the more proof I'm afraid.

Perhaps you are just unable to react accordingly to your desired level due to psycho-somatic brain disregulation? When in moments of queue, or our personal limelight if you will, we tend to get "jostled" by our outside stimuli, and wreck the glory of our preconceived actions. I took some acting classes in college and guess what: nothing improved.

I'd say it's idiosyncratic snap-fu judgement on most of our parts that get in our way. Traumas that may have existed in our minds and thought to be exorcized can and will inhibit us profoundly when we exercise our daily routines. Why? Because we aren't masters of fluid social-dynamics.

Now if you could break outta the mold and pull a Johnny Depp, please divulge your secrets upon me.

Sorry, but I really don't understand the terms PDD-NOS or HFA. I know that all aspies differ in the spectrum but that's about it.

Well, to help break the esoterics this is something neongrl and I have talked about for a long time. I myself went on a self-help binge back in 1999 or 2000 (all the way through 2005 or 2006), did everything I could to completely overcome everything that I felt was holding me back, I guess just find out how physically neurological this is. Neongrl has worked in a home for LFA's for years and has overtime noticed a lot of parallels between it, AS, and HFA/PDD-NOS. When we talk about the differences between AS and HFA/PDD NOS we're going off the difference that we tend to see with LFA's, the fact that they seem like very psychologically normal and even socially cogniscient - just that they're bodies and nervous systems do anything but work for them in the capacities that their minds can work.

When thinking of people who seem like they have purely AS traits, that seems to me like obsessions, the little professor approach, people who care much less about being eccentric because they are wrapped in that world and do like it there - they really can't relate to any of the sorts of restrictions quite often that I mentioned above. On the other hand, I see where a lot of people at least seem to have more of a light dusting of LFA effects rather than having the more typical aspie traits - the people who on here at least many would wonder how they're not NT or at least see that they're not obsessed about much, they seem pretty well balanced, just that they don't really go much of anywhere like their counterparts - and I think mostly because they hit a brick wall that, which effectively in many respects in life sort of swallows their egos for better or worse (the tendency in the dating world is worse).

Another thing we've noticed; whether its aspie/NT tests, emotional quotient tests, autistic quotient or systematic quotient tests; some people here and at other places - who know that they're on the spectrum, consistently score NT. I won't debate the possibility that maybe some are but I don't think its most. These are, again, people who are a bit more like NTs in bottles - more autistic in my estimates than aspie but just in subtle enough ways where their functioning levels have them thrown in the same grouping.

Its true though, when people have milder cases of all this, nurture and just general personality and emotional choices could have some sway in this. Still, no matter who we are or what we're surrounded by, what can take off from within us if nurtured or what can't is really not something we choose as much. I think the shape of the container in that regard sort of makes the difference.



Well, I hope that at least helps to explain it. I won't pretend its true certainty, its the observations from a couple people who really can't get much feedback at all from most people we meet (and strangely the people who have been able to relate to these sorts of struggles, and us ironically, have quite often been more on that side of things - to anyone else we're just speaking Greek for the most part).

If it's any consolation I still think you are more aware of it than most and it should make things typically easier for you. Perhaps you are just getting older and getting more burnt out of having to refresh yourself to the event of meeting new people. I've learned a lot from purposely burning bridges and maintaining a low profile. Now I just make my own priorities, not based on familial ideas, or social standards. I sorta want to be a vagrant in a way, and pick 'happenstance of necessity' to deal with the cultural minutiae that it is. I don't know, perhaps I've given up in a way...

I think on this angle its more existential depression. I'm not one who's easily given to just accepting fate, especially when I don't like what it implies.

You niche is out there somewhere, man. Don't give up. Maybe you should consider writing for the New Yorker, you have a nack at communicating?

Maybe maybe not, we're guided by our desires as well as what a lot of the prospects indicate just based on who else they draw and what the political, social, and demographic realities are.