Maybe there should be Autistic Personality Type

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Unless I've been under a rock the whole, which could be a distinct possibility, I haven't seen many individuals like you describe, at least for individuals that stick to the site anyways. I wouldn't let people who create an account just to ask 2-3 scant questions on if they might have ASD get on your nerves because that's what I think this is about.

Oh, another of these threads.
Where those who are suffering more only think that those who are constantly saying "woe is me" are the ones who truly have autism and don't want to hear from anyone who might have figured some things and are able to offer some counsel.

^^^^^This to the 10th.

A person could tick all four of those and still have significant impairment. What if they have really poor social skills, were bullied in school, and then finally met someone who liked their quirks? What if they were never able to get or keep a job, and their family only stays afloat because their partner can work? (Or maybe they're on social assistance of some kind.) What if they had a significant language delay, and even in adulthood they struggle with understanding language?

I especially don't get the 'married with children' thing. There are so many people who are first diagnosed because they had an autistic kid. They're not low functioning, but they're not extremely mildly affected either. People act like an autistic person can't possibly succeed in romance, and forget that there are people who are attracted to autistic traits. (I heard an NT woman who married an autistic guy say that one of the things that attracted her to him was his skill in math, and she found how socially awkward he was kind of endearing.) Success in romance is more about luck than skill.

Very well thought out and well put.

The only adjustment (Because it fits me specifically) is that I had early language development. A very broad vocabulary and ability to wield it with effect either negatively or positively. But, my ability to communicate my real thoughts are devastatingly horrid. It seems to be directly inverse of it's importance.

Basically, all my language skills are reactive and not proactive. And after 55 years, it has cost me three relationships with children involved, other relationships that could have been good destroyed by my inability to function in a normal way by the societal structures. And communication is at the heart of all of that.

And I am not better at it now than I was at the age of 10.

zkydz: "all my language skills are reactive and not proactive." does that mean you do not initiate conversation but respond to people talking to you?

That would be a two part answer....

1) Your question directly would be a definite yes. I cannot start conversations because the few times I have been successful, it got bad very quickly. I learned at a young age that if you initiate you have to be prepared to carry it. The only exception is when you get the blowhard that will talk you to death. I actually prefer that in a social situation. I can be bored but not carry on a conversation. It goes sour very quickly.

2) I meant that when I get overwhelmed I start to lose my ability to put words together properly or start to lose focus on things to say.

Here is an example. Was at a doctor's office today. All sorts of muck ups and they were 30 minutes late calling me for intake. They only called me when one woman noticed I was there a while and asked if I was ok because my rocking was getting bad. So thirty minutes later the doctor was asking where I was because she'd been calling me. Told her the details with times and said I was in intake. Then she says again that she had been calling me. Really wanted to say something, but not gonna insult a doctor before I know them.

BUT! less than twenty minutes later she was asking if I had communication problems. Had I been on top of things I would have pointed out that I explained with complete clarity where I was before and she ignored me and just repeated herself.

But, noooooo.... I go into some things that had led me to believe I had trouble communicating from before.

So, yeah, I prefer to not talk in social situations unless spoken to. I cannot initiate or steer a conversation. I can't read people to tell anything at all. I can only listen to the words and then sort them out during (hopefully) and will then continue sorting until something else comes along that takes priority.

Yes, there are quite a few people who come here and ask questions, wondering if they have autism. Some of them probably do, and some probably don't.

The way I see it is, these people are just trying to figure themselves out, and maybe discover why they are having trouble in certain areas of their lives. I think it's always a good idea to try to know one's self, and to try to solve one's own problems.

I haven't personally seen anyone who stated that they went to multiple doctors who told them they didn't have autism, then self-diagnosed. I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but I haven't seen it yet.

Some of my biggest problems are actually with executive functioning. I have obsessions, but they change frequently. My sensory issues are terrible, though. My meltdowns are mostly in the past.

I do have a child, and I'm not a terrible parent.

But, I am not one of those responsible, on top of things type of parents. Compared to the other moms, I'm a disaster. Luckily, my kid is really well-behaved, and remembers many of the things that I forget.

I don't get things done that need done, I waste enormous amounts of time, I forget things, I'm not working, I never remember about school events, I sleep until the afternoon, forget to make doctor appointments, am late for everything, forget to renew my driver's license, I have no friends. I feel like I accomplish next to nothing, no matter how much I want to do. I can't even remember to take my medicine.

I think a lot of these people who are successful developed alternative methods to get things accomplished, and to deal with them. But they may still be suffering in other areas, and it just isn't obvious.

I plan on being successful no matter what, I don't care how many methods I have to learn. I hate my life as it is now.

BAP is actually really interesting to me. I think quite a few people in my family have it. BAP types of people can be much easier for me to have conversations with, because they are more direct.

If a doctor doesn't take time to even do something thorough to begin with, then yeah, I went to a different doctor. To be fair the first doctor did say it appeared like I belonged on the spectrum, but then tried to get me to use her partner, who didn't take insurance and had no plan. Just "$200.00 and hour for treatment." What?

I am married with children and grandchildren. By some standards a success.

But the other three are killing me right now. Still got turned away. So....not sure if this is relevant to your point or not. Just not real happy with doctors today.

Your personality will determine how your autism or autistic traits present themselves, it is not the other way around.

And yes pretty much everybody has at least a few autistic traits. Before everybody gets mad at me that is the reason autistics get so much s**t in all eras. Because most peoples autistic traits are few in number and mild enough so after some effort they overcome them and think it is just a matter of trying harder. Autistics can overcome them but at a huge internal price and probable eventual burnout. i do think in a radically more accepting world some Autistics would be able to be literally very high functioning without paying a severe price.

I agree with everything you say. The part I am quoting though really resonates with me. I have noticed a decline in my abilities over the last three years to deal with certain things as I can't control the overloads anymore. And the part of "just trying harder" is the biggest problem.

It was drummed into me to do that very thing at all costs. So, as things get more difficult, you try harder, the harder you try the more exhausted you get and the more exhausted you get, the more difficult things get. It's not a fun cycle.

And having spent your entire life bottling this stuff up, you just can't express what's really happening inside. Self Advocation gets difficult because you've been trained your whole life to stifle it and just try harder. And you ain't gonna get that in a 1.5 hour visit doing math problems or looking at pictures or doing patterns. I can't seem to impress on people that intellect is not the problem. And, even though I'm smart enough to work through things several times to settle in on some things, they don't even get the 'real me' during those tests because I'm all anxietied out as it is doing them.

Fair enough, but why does it bother you so much you have to bring this up all the time, when it is notoriously contentious? Why include "just come here for the drama" in the poll? Is that the reason? Why does it bother you how some unconnected person, possibly of another age group, in another country, gets defined as autistic? Why does it bother you if people with mild symptoms or those who handle things better or differently get classed as autistic too? Does that threaten you? Why do you need to divide people into ever smaller divisions? What's the real problem here?
As far as I can understand from reading these few topics, people generally object to this sort of discussion being brought up all the time in a negative way because they are perceiving it emotionally, as a personal attack on them. Are you aware that that is how it is being perceived? You appear to be invalidating something that may be profoundly affecting their experience of life. These threads often read as a competition - who is more autistic than whom, whose experience is more valid, causing others to become defensive. Again, emotional experience is not my forte, but this seems to be what I have observed in these discussions.
Since you are concerned with it bothering you, consider this - what is the outcome, ultimately, of these discussions? I doubt it's going to change the diagnostic criteria. It is not going to cure autism. It likely won't even dissuade people you perceive as undesirable or "faking" so to speak from doing so. What these discussions do have the potential to do however is alienate other people on the spectrum and stop them from accessing support and information, because they believe they will encounter this attitude, and they find it emotionally unpleasant. That is certainly the consensus of a few PMs on the subject from others. This discussion never reaches any resolution because there isn't one. All it appears to do is divide people and make some people upset. Is that a worthwhile outcome to your manner of thinking?
I'm not advocating censorship or that people shouldn't express their views here, I'm simply observing that it may be more useful to understand how people are likely to perceive this topic, and if you are concerned, perhaps phrase it in another way - for example defining and addressing your real problem, as it relates to you alone, and not making it about others.

I agree with this.

I personally do not understand the obsession people have doubting whether people who post here are "worthy" enough to have a label applied to them. I am waiting for this thread to degenerate into a discussion on the merits of self-diagnosis. LOL

BTW - I think about this stuff quite differently. I basically assume that anyone who frequents WP to likely be > 2 standard deviations from normal. A reasonable goal should be, in my opinion, to help others adapt to that reality.

I voted yes, but while I definitely want an identity label for this sort of thing, it's for entirely different reasons.

Here's my attempt to explain why I think all the angry people are angry:

You keep talking about "the over diagnoses problem." The "yes" option on the poll has those exact words. If there is an over-diagnosis problem, that means there are people who have a diagnosis but shouldn't. Your first sentence references a controversy on this site between people of different functioning levels*. You mention that there are folks on this site who are high functioning to the point that they don't even seem disabled. It's pretty clear that you think (a) some of the people who are diagnosed with ASD who shouldn't be, because of how high-functioning they are, (b) those people are numerous enough to be a "problem," (c) some of the people on this site are in that category. If that's not what you meant to say, you mistyped (repeatedly), because after rereading a few times, I can't find any other interpretation of what you wrote.

You specified that this new label only applies to people who aren't impaired, which I'd normally agree with, but since you already specified that that you're talking about people who are currently diagnosed (or misdiagnosed or self-diagnosed) with autism, it just magnifies the "sh!t-stirring."

There is no over-diagnosis problem. Could it cause a problem for ASD folks if there was widespread over-diagnosis of ASD? Yes. Could insincere self-diagnosis (analogy: the way people joke about being OCD because they like things tidy, and they don't even think they have a disorder) cause problems for people who actually have ASD, because it trivializes the impairments of ASD in the minds of the general public? Yes. Are there some people who are misdiagnosed with ASD when they should be diagnosed with something else? Probably. Are there some people who are diagnosed with ASD, when they shouldn't be diagnosed with anything, because of the unreasonable pathologization of normal personality traits? Maybe. But those circumstances are incredibly rare, especially the last one. It's not anywhere near widespread enough to cause a problem for the ASD community. (It's a problem for those individuals who suffer a misdiagnosis, but their circumstances are so varied we probably shouldn't try to speculate on what would solve their problem.) In fact, autism is currently so stigmatized, it doesn't even have the problem of insincere self-diagnosis that OCD and ADHD have.

The people on this site, even the highest functioning ones, tend to be pretty darn impaired. Even most of the people who consider autism to be some kind of gift or neutral difference seem to feel that way because they consider their impairments to be part of their personality (they consider BAP and ASD to be the same), or because they consider their impairments and their talents inseparable, not because they don't have impairments. This is especially true of the people who were formally diagnosed, since, regardless of their own opinion, they had to have a certain level of impairment to get diagnosed. (I've heard that, once upon a time, Asperger's didn't have "clinically significant impairments" in the diagnostic criteria, but the most recent revision of the DSM4 does.)

If the very highest functioning level that currently qualifies for a diagnosis no longer did, that would really screw over the types people who are currently just barely impaired enough for a diagnosis. It would be the same crappy business-as-usual situation for the types of people who are impaired but not impaired enough for a diagnosis. So those types of people, and anyone who sympathizes with them, are going to be pretty ticked by any suggestion that ASD should be diagnosed less.

(*Also, if the controversy you're referring to is topics like "is autism gonna get so bad eventually" and especially "'You can't be autistic, you can speak/write/have a job,'" those aren't even a controversy between high-functioning and low-functioning people. It was a controversy between people who think it's A-OK to give unsolicited expressions of doubt regarding the legitimacy of other people's diagnoses and people who think that's pretty darn rude even on a generalized category level.)

I was going go on a spiel about the pros of a BAP-like identity label, but this post got pretty long , so maybe tomorrow.

It could be taken into consideration that myself and the OP are simply teenagers trying to sort things out.

You know maybe seeing it more that way instead of some adults becoming completely hysterical and totally flipping out on us.

Last edited by EzraS on 11 Feb 2016, 2:24 am, edited 1 time in total.