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Zoonic
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19 May 2009, 7:51 am

I'm diagnosed with AS since the age of 12, mainly because I had constant tantrums and acted hateful and sadistic towards teachers and other children. This drew the psychiatrist's attention to some of my other behaviours, such as having obsessive and narrow special interests.

Even as a 7 year old I was verbal and up until I got my diagnsosis and about a year or so after that, I still had NT friends. I had some NT best friends as a child who accepted me just fine. In middle-school I was fighting with everyone about everything but people my age still didn't freeze me out. I was even invited to friend's houses and we played video games and were like any kids, not as a "show him some sympathy" thing but just because no one really knew about the diagnosis back then and treated me normally, they just saw my difficult behaviour as a part of personality and most didn't seem bothered at all.

In the 8th grade I was placed in a specially planned Asperger class, with two other children who were diagnosed with AS. At this time I already had a fairly developed sense of theory of mind and I never had really distant body language or expressions. My eyes were always focused and I could interpret the body language of others quite well. However, the two others were like wax dolls in comparison. They acted weird, stared out into space with dead, unexpressive eyes, were slow and monotone in their speech and would to 99,9% of all people have come across as visibly delayed and clearly suffering from some form of retardation. Physically they reminded me a little of the people with CP-injuries I remembered from the daycare center for adults which was located in my neighbourhood.

As said above, I always had NT friends I could share thoughts, ideas and jokes with. We laughed at each other's jokes and could communicate really well even though I had weird thought patterns at times. With these new AS kids, who were supposedly "like me" I felt no response in communication. Talking to them was like throwing a rock in a pond without getting a splash or rings on the water. When they talked to me it felt like I was an object in their world and that they thought everything evolved around them, that they were the only ones who aged, that I would automatically have the same needs as them etc but mostly they just stared blankly into space with weird clown-like smirks on their wax-doll faces.

Could these people actually have been a result of the early intervention common in Sweden, high functioning autists misdiagnosed as AS? During the 90's AS was a hyper-trend in Sweden, everyone everywhere was diagnosed with it and everyone knew of an "AS kid" or a relative they could gossip about. AS is very well known to the public in Sweden but most normal people here tend to associate it with everything that is difficult or non-likeable in a person, like co-morbid personality disorders. The boys in the AS class definitely seemed autistic. I've never been patronized just by opening my mouth or by people looking at me, in fact most who see me think I'm just very intelligent and this was true even as a child. How is it that the others in my class were so totally below my level of theory of mind and ability to interact and analyze people and situations?

Is it me who was misdiagnosed? A lot speaks in favor of me having AS, but why am I so aware? Why do I have a perfectly developed theory of mind and why did I always identify closer to NT's than other aspies as well as had natural friendship relations to NT, both while growing up and in adult age?



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19 May 2009, 8:12 am

Um, yes. Some people (and even some professionals) believe that Asperger's is the only form of High Functioning Autism and that if an IQ is above 100, it must be AS.

This simply isn't true. You don't see the obsessive interests with HFA. HFA causes more of the "staring into space" effect. I know this firsthand from working as a special education teacher.

HFA's tended to be more glassy eyed and tended to stare out the window or somewhere else, while still being completely aware of what the instructor was saying.

As a person with AS, I daydreamed a lot and was inattentive. Teachers complained about it constantly. Still, I made good grades. But, I wasn't completely out of it staring in a glassy way, I don't think. But, I wasn't there to observe me!


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19 May 2009, 8:13 am

Those other kids do sound more autistic than HFA/AS... which I haven't seen any distinct differentiation between... I mean, some evaluations will say HFA has a language delay and AS doesn't, but I've run across others that state the wish for human relationships and contact determines HFA (no interest) or AS (interest). The two Dx seem to be very close. And of course it's a range anyways... and you were definitely at the other end of the range from those two others.

I also think you may have been mis-diagnosed, especially as you describe a sort of fad of AS Dx going on. Because of your ability to see and relate to others, to identify with their emotions, I think a re-evaluation might be in order.

A lot of AS can 'pass' for quite some time... I certainly did, I was just odd. But I didn't have many close friends, had passions that were much stonger than my peers, wasn't invited to parties much, never felt like I quite fit in, and have had trouble holding a job long-term as an adult... these are pretty classic symptoms for AS.

Do you stim? At all? I only do it sometimes...
Perseveration? When I don't feel heard, I'll repeat my point over and over til I get verbal acknowledgement.
You say you make eye contact... when you're speaking or just when the other is talking? I tend not to look at another when I am talking.
Do you have a couple of unusually absorbing passions?
Do you find the task more interesting than the people you are doing it with?
Is your mind caught by detail? Is it filmographic... do you think in pictures?



Zoonic
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19 May 2009, 8:31 am

DonkeyBuster wrote:
Do you stim? At all? I only do it sometimes...
Perseveration? When I don't feel heard, I'll repeat my point over and over til I get verbal acknowledgement.
You say you make eye contact... when you're speaking or just when the other is talking? I tend not to look at another when I am talking.
Do you have a couple of unusually absorbing passions?
Do you find the task more interesting than the people you are doing it with?
Is your mind caught by detail? Is it filmographic... do you think in pictures?


It all fits me quite well and implies that I have AS. I feel in a way that I do have AS but I also feel that I'm an empathic and psychologically minded person. The two sets of traits contradict each other. This is why I feel caught in the middle without being able to identify with any group. My AS tendencies make me feel different from NT people but my empathic ability and theory of mind makes me feel like an aspie who has woken up from his Matrix dream and see the world for what it is.



DonkeyBuster
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19 May 2009, 8:59 am

Have you ever gotten outside confirmation of your empathic abilities and theory of mind?

I hear a lot of talk around (not just here) about how empathic folks feel themselves to be and often I think it is just flat out projection. Because I work with animals, I see this mis-identification a lot.

I was talking with my partner this morning about those Aspies that feel so empathically overwhelmed in a crowd... is it necessarily true or are they just projecting their own emotional chaos onto others?



Zoonic
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19 May 2009, 9:05 am

DonkeyBuster wrote:
Have you ever gotten outside confirmation of your empathic abilities and theory of mind?

I hear a lot of talk around (not just here) about how empathic folks feel themselves to be and often I think it is just flat out projection. Because I work with animals, I see this mis-identification a lot.

I was talking with my partner this morning about those Aspies that feel so empathically overwhelmed in a crowd... is it necessarily true or are they just projecting their own emotional chaos onto others?


Yes, people have commented on my ability to understand foreign cultures, social patterns, psychological issues and to profile people and empathically "feel" what type of person they are. I can easily associate someone's personality with various facial expressions. I have this match-making ability where I can sense someones romantic needs and people have several times commented about my high level of insight and understanding of the human mind.

I don't sympathize with people just because I know they are in pain. At times I can be completely devoid of empathy, for example I usually feel nothing when hearing about terror victims or other things like that. I feel like I wouldn't even care if I was unharmed in the middle of a terror bombing while others were dying around me. In this way I definitely lack "empathy" or whatever you want to call it but I still have this strong intuitive feeling for who people are, what their true face is, what their needs are etc. I can sometimes sense people having dark secrets and even use logical deduction to understand what those secrets are. If someone has sexual issues for example, I sense it and sometimes I can locate the problem by analyzing people's behaviour and how they interact with others, reading their faces, tone of voice etc... I can easily sense most people's level of self-esteem and I can to a degree understand how they view themselves and what their own self-image, healthy, ignorant or distorted, looks like.



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19 May 2009, 9:14 am

I was diagnosed with AS then it was changed to HFA. Wasn't really given any reasons though I think one of them was language delay. I have a high IQ but I cannot function very well at all on my own.


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19 May 2009, 9:50 am

I think this whole "people with AS don't have empathy" thing is flat out wrong, and it's a dangerous stereotype. Everyone has problems empathizing somewhere, and it has to do with your own life situation and perceptions varying from others. Since all of us (in the world) are quite different, we can more closely empathize with people we have more in common with, and empathize less with people we have less in common with.

It may be more accurate to say that, since the AS experience is markedly different than the NT experience, people who aren't on the spectrum don't feel like people with AS empathize with them. And that may very well be true. As life situations are more similar, however (such as on WP), the empathy becomes readily apparent. People with AS also get a bad rap for this because they don't often express this well to others, and this is perceived by the rest of the world as unempathetic.


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Zoonic
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19 May 2009, 10:13 am

I empathize more with for example ADHD people than with aspies, even though I don't have ADHD. Especially those who get violent outbursts and have tantrums.

Other aspies generally just annoy me. I find aspie behaviour provocative and annoying but I find ADHD behaviour, which annoys all NT's and makes them yell "shut up mongo!!", as something I can sympathize with. I had a few ADHD friends over the years as well who were naturally drawn to me, we were like two elements combining and making a whole. I feel "complete" when around some ADHD people.

When I noticed ADHD-type people being angry or bullied by the group I always stood up for them but when it comes to other aspies I have participated in bullying of them myself, kind of.



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19 May 2009, 10:34 am

The examples you gave sound like people with AS, but as does the example you give of yourself.

Asperger's, and its umbrella category "ASD", isn't a single clinical entity, even within the same labels; it is confusing. People wonder why there's so many cases of Autism and Asperger's nowadays; it's because the category is broader than the initial accounts by Kanner and Asperger, which diagnosis was based on (something funny, Asperger had people with what's commonly called "LFA" today in addition to those with AS and several with HFA, and all of Kanner's original patients had "HFA", barring one who had the common presentation of AS).

It's kinda like "cancer"; you can have such in so many areas, and depending on the area you have such, this will dictate how you manifest in symptoms/traits. ASD is within the brain, and if you are affected more in the amygdala, you'll probably show more obsessive behaviour and anxiety than someone without.

This is why it's erroneous in many ways to identify with others with the same label, whether they have AS or Profound Autism; identifying with yourself once you've been assessed is the most realistic approach, as you'll never find someone with the same label who's exactly like you.

People with Simple Schizophrenia behave closer to me than someone with AS, for example.



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19 May 2009, 10:38 am

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people have commented on my ability to understand foreign cultures, social patterns, psychological issues and to profile people and empathically "feel" what type of person they are. I can easily associate someone's personality with various facial expressions.


I don't think this is what is meant by empathy... the dictionary describes it as the capacity to PARTICIPATE in another's feelings... feeling emotionally moved by their state.

I don't get that feeling from you at all. Being an accurate judge of character is not entering into the emotional state of the other person.

In fact, nothing you described really seems particularly empathetic by this definition.

This ability to have unusual insight might very well be due to your lack of empathy... your observational skills are not clouded by extraneous data. I think this is why ASD folks can be so good at working with animals... we actually see them where they are, rather than soil them with our 'human' projections.

I know I rarely enter into or participate in another's emotions; I can detect (I read voice tone, so it has to be spoken; I don't pick up many non-verbal cues) and respond appropriately, but 'feel their pain'... nah. If I were in the midst of a bombing, I would naturally respond with my full compassionate ability, and actually maybe better able to because of the lack of emotional entanglement.

Maybe you're just moderately affected with AS, and totally head-F'd by being labelled and shunted off to a low-function group?



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19 May 2009, 10:42 am

Honestly speaking if you can read body language and facial expressions, and have good theory of mind, I am not sure you have AS or really any PDD.

In fact, you sound very bipolar. They have very focused special interests, but have NT traits, especially with regards to social interaction, and sometimes they are better than most NT at reading things.

And no offense, you sound like a total bully. Calling your classmates glassy eyed dolls is not nice.

For me, there is two types of empathy, knowing what the other person is thinking, and feeling the emotions of other people. For most aspies the first is hard, it is theory of mind issues, and the second, i think most people on the spectrum are extremely sensitive too.



Zoonic
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19 May 2009, 10:44 am

Danielismyname wrote:
The examples you gave sound like people with AS, but as does the example you give of yourself.

Asperger's, and its umbrella category "ASD", isn't a single clinical entity, even within the same labels; it is confusing. People wonder why there's so many cases of Autism and Asperger's nowadays; it's because the category is broader than the initial accounts by Kanner and Asperger, which diagnosis was based on (something funny, Asperger had people with what's commonly called "LFA" today in addition to those with AS and several with HFA, and all of Kanner's original patients had "HFA", barring one who had the common presentation of AS).

It's kinda like "cancer"; you can have such in so many areas, and depending on the area you have such, this will dictate how you manifest in symptoms/traits. ASD is within the brain, and if you are affected more in the amygdala, you'll probably show more obsessive behaviour and anxiety than someone without.

This is why it's erroneous in many ways to identify with others with the same label, whether they have AS or Profound Autism; identifying with yourself once you've been assessed is the most realistic approach, as you'll never find someone with the same label who's exactly like you.

People with Simple Schizophrenia behave closer to me than someone with AS, for example.


Then why do WP, psychologists and many aspies promote aspie community? I was damaged by being placed together with other aspies. It backfired horrendously.

Why are gullible parents of AS children brainwashed into thinking that all aspies are meant to travel to space in a pink rocket Bill Gates and Einstein built? Why do people believe it's good in general to lump people together like that? Why do people buy all this crap about aspies being happy as long as they get to be with other aspies? I think it's just a way of trying to find identity and security. It's a lie. Of course I have my own lies which make me happy but I never forcefully labeled others or demanded that they should be like me in order to sustain this lie. The asperger "community" on the other hand, raped me and my self image in order to sustain its' own lie. There's an idea about "anyone who doesn't assimilate is in denial" among the majority of aspies it seems.



Last edited by Zoonic on 19 May 2009, 10:59 am, edited 5 times in total.

Zoonic
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19 May 2009, 10:50 am

starygrrl wrote:
Honestly speaking if you can read body language and facial expressions, and have good theory of mind, I am not sure you have AS or really any PDD.

In fact, you sound very bipolar. They have very focused special interests, but have NT traits, especially with regards to social interaction, and sometimes they are better than most NT at reading things.

And no offense, you sound like a total bully. Calling your classmates glassy eyed dolls is not nice.

For me, there is two types of empathy, knowing what the other person is thinking, and feeling the emotions of other people. For most aspies the first is hard, it is theory of mind issues, and the second, i think most people on the spectrum are extremely sensitive too.


I have bipolar tendencies along with other personality disorders and a psychiatrist even suggested that I should try lithium, but I don't want to because it gives, in most cases, severe acne and I'm very conscious about the way I look.

For me knowing what others feel is much easier than feeling what they feel. I can understand but I can't share. Of course I still have moments, with NT people mostly, where we see something out of the ordinary like for example an extremely funny dressed person, and look each other in the eyes and laugh without a word being spoken. Because we thought of the same thing and had the same feeling.

I'm angry with the medical expertise because they have no answer to why I am the way I am. There must be a lot they don't know.
"You have AS that's why" is not a satisfying explanation. It does not explain ME.



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19 May 2009, 12:09 pm

I've been "diagnosed" by some professionals (those who work around children) as having Aspergers. However most come top the conclusion that I'm MFA to HFA.


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19 May 2009, 12:32 pm

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why did I always identify closer to NT's than other aspies as well as had natural friendship relations to NT, both while growing up and in adult age?


I don't think you connect better with NT's, i think you connect better with certain personality traits. Statistically speaking, there is a probability for someone to have said personality traits. There is also a 1 in 150 probability of someone being on the spectrum. The chances of you meeting someone with the right personality traits AND being on the spectrum is incredibly low indeed. I dont think you've been misdiagnosed.

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I think this whole "people with AS don't have empathy" thing is flat out wrong, and it's a dangerous stereotype.


So you believe you don't lack empathy, so automatically everyone on the autism spectrum doesn't lack it? You say everyone is different, you suggest to embrace difference, yet your statement comes from an assumption we're all the same as you? I'm sorry, but it's your stereotyping that is dangerous and it's that kind of belief that leads to people recieving the wrong kind of help.

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This is why it's erroneous in many ways to identify with others with the same label, whether they have AS or Profound Autism; identifying with yourself once you've been assessed is the most realistic approach, as you'll never find someone with the same label who's exactly like you.


If only more people could realise this.

Quote:
I have bipolar tendencies along with other personality disorders

Quote:
I'm angry with the medical expertise because they have no answer to why I am the way I am.


For the record, in this post at least, you are displaying numerous narcissistic/borderline traits. You more than likely have a cluster B personality, cluster B personalities are easily confused with bipolar personalities. I won't claim you have a disorder because i don't know you well enough to know if your personality impairs you.