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kittenmeow
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14 Jan 2009, 11:00 pm

Anyone here that can explain what exactly very mildly aspergers is? Does that mean one or two traits? Does it mean all traits but very mildly?

If you think of yourself as very mildly affected by aspergers can you explain what it means in your case?



Alisscious
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14 Jan 2009, 11:02 pm

Maybe, it is when you have aspergers, yet you are light in weight, or your soul is light? I dunno. Bye :)



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14 Jan 2009, 11:08 pm

I think it's about how much or in this case how little Asperger's affects a person.
I don't think I'm mild, so I can't really give an example.



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14 Jan 2009, 11:12 pm

I think it probably describes people with AS that can manage a job and family. Might be due to minimal symptoms, highly developed coping skills, or some mix of the two.



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14 Jan 2009, 11:12 pm

kittenmeow wrote:
Anyone here that can explain what exactly very mildly aspergers is? Does that mean one or two traits? Does it mean all traits but very mildly?

If you think of yourself as very mildly affected by aspergers can you explain what it means in your case?


I have an actual diagnosis; however, there wasn't any degree given. On the other hand, from what I have read thus far, I would say I am more on the mild side.

1 - I have a good sense of humor--though quite often it goes well beyond the appropriate limits.
2 - While I do take things literally, I often am able to distinguish between the literal understanding as opposed to the intent of the words (though not always).
3 - In most settings, I do okay socially--but I can be difficult to understand and get along with.
4 - My most difficult time exists with my wife (who is NT). This is where Asperger's fits me precisely.

Other things tend to either be controlled in some fashion, minimal or under specific situations. Such as echolalia, which I do very regularly but almost exclusively with radio and television. Because I am in a business environment (and because I have a wife) my eye contact is better--though often difficult as I feel like I don't know where to place them.

Anyway, overall I see it as mild as I am not completely impaired by it.



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14 Jan 2009, 11:44 pm

Yeah, something like that. People think I'm weird, but not dangerous. There's something about me that's different, but they don't know what it is. If they're around me long enough, they may wind up 'explaining' things to me, but it's not the number of symptoms, more the intensity of them.



15 Jan 2009, 12:05 am

You are so mild people might not even notice you have it.


I say I am very mild because I cannot relate to lot of aspies because they don't have the same problems as I have or go through the same crap they still get as adults I got as a kid. I also learned to be flexible and I can hold down a job, my sensory issues aren't bad and neither is my balance. I had friends growing up and then in the 4th grade, I started to lose them because I was starting to get rejected at school and I couldn't play with them anymore because they started to hang out and chit chat instead of play and that was boring. I have always like good surprises, and I can change my routines.


I don't get bullied in real life anymore, I haven't been bully badly since 6th grade and things got better when I got out of high school. Other adults don't make fun of me or put me down. I have only had very few problems at work.

Some people online don't believe I'm borderline but they don't know me in real life so they wouldn't know how normal I act or come off as.

I don't know how I appear to other people except "honest" "straightforward" "direct" "black and white" (I think I can see the gray areas now) but I don't know about rudeness or other.

I have been called a b***h yes but I don't know if lot of people think that. I don't know if others still think I'm different or weird. Kids are more direct than grown ups. If they don't like you, they tell you the reason why but not grown ups. They just don't say anything. It's amazing I don't get bullied at work so I must be normal enough.


But I had enough traits to be on the spectrum.



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15 Jan 2009, 12:27 am

Me currently mild:

In college, 20% more swagger
I still stim and have echolalia, but for the most part my social skills are ok.
Relationship skill still sux tho


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15 Jan 2009, 12:35 am

I have wondered what they mean by mild AS as well. When I was diagnosed with AS the therapist told me that I could undergo more evaluation to determine if I might be considered HFA. But then he pointed out that AS and HFA were often considered the same, or similar, thing. He is an Attwood type of therapist. I was diagnosed on two different criteria charts. One was the typical DSM-IV, and the other was a much more rigid and involved one---I was easily AS on both of them.

I am married and have two sons. I have been a teacher for 21 years. The first 19 years I taught high school English---pure misery to be honest with you. The students often ignored me and I misread them and pushed my narrow interests into their assignments. I never had a good evaluation. One principal tried to fire me, but I got the education association on my side and he backed down. The next principal told me I should become a librarian. The next rated me very low. And the next told me I should take the gifted program over since that teacher had moved to another position. I accepted. And in my 20th year I became the gifted intervention specialist. I now feel like I finally fit in. I have been fortunate to have held my job when I was an English teacher. By a stroke of luck, I got my continuing contract because that principal, and the board of education, failed to meet the deadline in denying my application for a continuing by the legal deadline---so by default they had to give me the continuing. After that, my teaching schedule got slimmer. I got a drama class---absolute disaster. I got a study hall. I got lunch duty. I got death threats. I got bullied---as an adult teaching English. Even though I have held a job, it was only by luck.

In school I was not bullied as so many AS children are. Why? Because my Dad taught at the school and the kids knew that and were afraid of him. I was also the tallest in the class. Again---luck.

Many children with AS have trouble settling down. I usually didn't---although there was a time in second grade where I often got out of my seat and ran to the cardboard log cabin so that I could hide in it. The reason I was more settled down? Probably because of my allergies and the fact that I took Benadryl every morning and night---that sedates you. Teachers did say that I daydreamed a lot and stared out the window frequently.

So I ask myself, am I mild AS. My answer is, "I don't think so." Luck has allowed me the fortune of success. Had I had the average luck of this world, I would have lost my job, and been bullied in school, and had discipline issues in school.

In school I was thought of as weird. At recess I would walk the perimeter of the fence and tennis courts over and over again by myself. I also did this with our yard at my home. When kids would call my house to ask if I wanted to play with them, I said I didn't want to. As a result, kids quit calling me. I had one close friend in grade school and middle school and that was it. I was basically a loner. In high school after school, I went home and played the organ for hours with the door closed in my own secluded world of my room.

I cannot stand physical contact. I have no idea how I have managed to have two sons. Now that I have two sons, ages 7 and 12, I don't know how to play with them. It is just too awkward. I am undergoing counseling for this. The best I can do so far is to engage in discussion with them on their interests. I do go camping with them every summer. But let's face it---this is sad.

I think another way to guage the severity of AS is to look at the narrow interests. My interests still rule a huge part of my life. I still daydream about them. I research them to extreme. And I collect stuff related to them to extreme. I like Christmas trees, so I usually put up 35 Christmas trees in our house (ranging from about 4 feet to 9 feet). I have over 300 HO scale models for my train layout. I have 30 electronic keyboards, 4 organs, and two pianos. I have a room full of magic tricks and stage illusions. I have over a dozen mountain dulcimers, and three hammered dulcimers. I often get quite interested in ancient Indian cultures of Ohio. I have seven notebooks filled to the maximum on printouts on them. I must have thousands of printed out documents on this culture. If my interests were taken away from me, I would probably die---literally. I seriously feel I would get so depressed that I would...well, I don't want to talk about it. I hope that I always remain passionate about my interests.

So for anyone trying to determine if they have mild AS or average AS, look at my example. For someone to look at my overall life and career without penetrating the surface of it, I would seem quite normal wouldn't I. I have had held a job for 21 years, I have been married to the same woman for 19 years. And I have two sons. But when you look beneath the surface, you will find a much different perspective. I only dated the woman that became my wife because it was a blind date. I was a senior on my first date, and I educated my date on the history of the roller coaster that night. Following dates with her involved my showing her my endless collection of house plan books. I have no idea why she ever stayed with me. I finally proposed to her after seven years of dating. Had that blind date not been arranged, I think I would still be living at home with my parents. Actually, the house I chose to buy for my wife and I is only a half mile from my parents. To have moved further away I feel would have been traumatic for me. In college, even though the university was an hour and a half away, I refused to stay on campus, so I drove to it and from it every day---talk about miles.

So after wondering the same thing, am I mild AS? Well, as you can probably see, I don't think so---I feel like I am very AS.



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15 Jan 2009, 12:49 am

I think its when you can function ok in normal society and not really stand out but your still not completely normal but pretty close to.

Im not quite sure what my degree of aspergers is but this psych that I saw year ago thought I was moderate to severe aspergers, I strongly disagreed with him because I used to be in a aspergers social skills group for you people which his and I was the only person there from out of state(for college). Im situation where I have to mostly self reliant, and most of the people in my group were pretty high functioning. I was in a lot of unfavorable situations for an aspie. I think Im more on the milder side, not very very mild, but like in between mild and moderate.
I have almost no sensory issues, only mild sound sensativity, I think my old roommate had more sensory issues then i did and shes NT.
I do mildly stim, often times not much more when normal people figit.
My problems are almost all social. I take people too literally, I have problems with greeting people properly, making eyecontact, meeting new people and breaking the ice with people has been my hardest problem.



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15 Jan 2009, 1:14 am

princesseli wrote:
I think its when you can function ok in normal society and not really stand out but your still not completely normal but pretty close to.............I have almost no sensory issues, only mild sound sensativity, I think my old roommate had more sensory issues then i did and shes NT.
I do mildly stim, often times not much more when normal people figit.


I do see this as mild AS. Those are good examples. As far as normal society for me, I can get by a bit, but I really have no friends. I have to really work to socialize. And then I am very awkward. My wife just tells me to stay home now when there is some party. So at a social event, I do stand out because I am so terribly awkward. Once, when I was in school, I went to a Sweet 16 type of birthday party and was so awkward that I went in with the adults in another room and played piano all evening.

As far as sensory issues---I am bad. I hate certain noises, especially loud noises. If I am exposed to enough of the wrong type of noises---I nearly lose it completely. I hate bright lights. My wife tells waiters in restaurants to go to a booth away from bright lights.

And for stimming---I stim so much with thumb popping and finger flapping that the top layers of skin stay permanently worn off two of my fingers. I do other stims too that must look odd.



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15 Jan 2009, 3:57 am

I had a neurologist I went to visit recently tell me I appear only mildly affected. My psychiatrist said I appeared mild because of my high intelligence (not trying to sound arrogant here) but I know he’s wrong about that. I’ve now met many aspies and there are some who are just as (or more) intelligent than me but who are also clearly more disabled socially.

Personally I don’t consider myself mild. I became extremely self conscious as I grew older so I now have a very good sense of what not to do in social situations if I don’t want to come off as a complete weirdo. My main problem is that I haven’t really learned the right things to do. I don’t take many risks.

The other reason I can’t consider myself mild is due to my co-morbid problems, mostly depression/bipolar and some stuff that probably falls under the symptomology umbrella of “executive dysfunction”. These symptoms are almost more disabling than the ASD social issues, though I feel that all my problems somehow have roots in the same place. Depression makes me constantly retract into my shell so I go through long periods of little social interaction. Then the lack of practice hurts me.

I had pretty bad sensory issues when I was younger but those have mostly cleared up.



15 Jan 2009, 5:00 am

It's about the Aspergers itself that makes it mild. If you have other conditions like Bipolar or depression, anxiety, it will make it seem like it's worse but it's not because it's your other conditions.



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15 Jan 2009, 5:36 am

I have difficulties socially but I can do it. I find it harder than many, I get confused easily, I sometimes don't realise when someone's joking and I get tired very quickly from it, sometimes needing a long recovery period. But it wouldn't be seen as 'qualitative impairment'.

I also do not have a 'special interest', i.e. I have no restricted and repetitive interests and behaviour. I have interests which come on strongly and then disappear, but I'm not very good at them and I don't spend hours completely absorbed in them. They tend to repeat themselves, for example I liked heraldry, went on a 'learning spree' then that faded and I liked buses and photographed them and wrote down fleet numbers etc. That died down again and the heraldry interest came back strongly again (I'd always liked it, but the bus interest overrode it). But it's not obsessive in the Asperger syndrome sense of the word.


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15 Jan 2009, 6:59 am

I consider myself an ADHDer with mild AS symptoms. I function pretty well in society although my executive dysfunction is rather severe. I am socially rather inept, either scaring people off with too much random talk or just by not paying any attention to them. I'm spaced out a lot and I can't concentrate much on group conversations. actually, I can't concentrate on them at all.

as to sensory issues- mine are quite mild. they get more noticeable in the summer (I strongly dislike sun and heat and humidity) but most of the time it's not THAT bad.

I'm not really big on routines either. I have to have a plan for everything and always need stuff organised my way, but that's about it. I do hate change that I have no control over though, most of my anxiety comes from that.

I have very few friends and very little desire for human contact. I'm quite overwhelmed already now when all my friends have new partners and there's always new people around when we meet. so I try to limit socialising because it makes my anxiety increase.

my special interests definitely take up a load of my time. I could probably look for a job much more effectively if I wasn't so concearned about the stuff that I just have to do, and that would probably seem pointless to a NT. I spend hours cataloging stuff and making iTunes playlists and tags and so on.

I stim quite a lot but in a way that doesn't make me stand out that much. people just assume I'm nervous (I'm not) because I bite my lip a lot, tap my fingers, bite my knuckles, just move around a lot.

and I am a total utter fail in relationships.

but to sum up- I don't think I'm that much affected. if you'd remove the executive dysfunction I would've been pretty happy with my life as it is.


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15 Jan 2009, 9:37 am

I'd say those with mild aspergers pretty much can blend into society normally and most people might not even know there is anything wrong with that person. I knew a person with aspergers that I never thought would have it in school. He had a lot of friends, was funny and confident and had quite a few girlfriends like a normal person which is hard to say about most people with aspergers. He'd also use to hug people all the time which I found rather strange and very non-asperger like. Still, he was diagnosed with it years ago. My social skills are 10 times worse then his and he's the one who was diagnosed with it instead of me, ironic.