How Would You Define Severe or Mild Aspergers?

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How Would You Define Severe or Mild Aspergers?

What is severe Asperger's Syndrome to you?:

What is mild Asperger's Syndrome to you?:

I hate this question. I am 'functional', but often severely depressed. This depression is directly related to my inability (as of yet at least) to interact with the world on a meaningful level (i.e. a level meaningful to me). Most of what defines me is unseen and perfectly fits the cliche of autism as a person locked inside themselves screaming to get out. But I am 'wicked smart' according to someone I recently was talking to. So I have this tool for muddling through - I apply my 'wicked smarts' to navigating a world that seems at times insane to me. It gets me through. By metrics that measure severity in terms of function in daily life, I am not severely autistic. But if I commit suicide because I am so depressed and the root cause of that depression is my autism, wouldn't that demonstrate that my so called 'high functioning, mild autism' is nothing but an illusion and that autism has severely affected me? Clearly, suicide is not an option, and an especially poor method for demonstrating the severity of autism within me. But measuring the depth and breadth of autism within the structure of my consciousness based on if I can wipe my own ass or not really misses the mark.

Just my opinion.

To put it more simply, just because I don't bang my head against the wall doesn't mean I don't want to. It just takes a serious amount of effort to 'not go there', so to speak. And the energy it takes to not go there has to be taken from efforts to go other, more productive places.

My head therapist officially put down on government papers that I have profound mental health issues.

I can't even begin to explain how it might differ from mild aspergers, or how my daily life might be different, but when I look back on my life what comes to mind is the numbing sound of static in my head, a constant chattering white noise that affects me, I can't verbalise nor type it, just that I am one thing and you are something else.

I have no idea what my therapist is writing down about me, as I haven't looked.

When I was assessed for disability, the psych who saw me called me an "obvious case" and evaluated me as "unemployable."

Oh and:

The only reason I have not been spending this much energy on this kind of thing is that I have ended up in a place where stress on me is generally fairly low, but it still happens at least 1-2 times a week. When it hits it is so violent and intense, and the idea of giving in to it feels like it would be such a relief...and the one time I remember that I actually did, it actually was.

All these years in high stress situations I'd get that urge and have to fight it off.

I suppose you could define it by support levels--needing little or no support, or only under extraordinary circumstances; versus needing regular support (weekly or daily); versus needing intensive daily support...

The actual traits necessitating this would vary, though. And the case would vary depending on the person and their circumstances.

This is not entirely valid either. My support comes entirely from my wife. Remove her from the picture and I would quickly regress. I would become a slob, eat the same thing all the time, withdraw from everything, etc etc. But because she doesn't have MSW in her title, just 'wife', I am not receiving support, I am just married and doing fine.

Don't get me wrong. There is some merit to considering severity as a function of life skills and need for support. The level of support I get from my wife keeps me in the world at large. This is not attainable by some no matter how much support they get. I am actually a good example of what can happen with good support whether professional or not. I am also a good example of what happens when someone such as myself does not get support and intervention at an early age. The issues surrounding autism has created huge amounts of stress in my marriage and life, much of which could have been avoided with a better understanding of just WTF was going on.

Sometimes I do bang my head on the wall, but I usually regret it because it hurts.......but yeah sometimes even if I put all my effort into not taking things that far its not enough to completely prevent it. So maybe the potential brain damage I could suffer from banging my head against the wall a few too many times when i get really angry would qualify me as having severe aspergers.

Family support counts.

I notice support has been mentioned.......and the way I see it though I am what is considered high functioning I guess but it feels pretty severe and people throughout my life have always known there is something 'odd' about me and it has caused me an unbelievable amount of pain and certianly never helped with the depression or anxiety. I mean I was an outcast even into highschool......during a lock down where a girl I knew in my school was shot another student said to me that she was suprised I was not the psycho with the gun.....then in the months following that ordeal not a single person asked me if I was doing ok and it was not even that in itself that bothered me it was that people where going out of their way to be nice to others to honor this girls memory or whatever and I was still treated like a shadow. I do not think that helped my mental state and then of course a couple years later the PTSD really hits me I wonder why.

So I don't want to get off topic but my point is, even when one might need support that does not mean they will get it.....so I don't think its the fairest mesurement of how severe someone has aspergers. Not to mention there are those like me that don't desire such support anymore either I mean yes with support I could become a productive member of society quite easily. But after all of that I see no reason to live life on other peoples terms even if it it would help me.

Ugh I hate functioning labels. But when I hear mild Asperger's, I picture someone who can be normal and can control all their aspie traits and can easily make friends and easily have relationships and not struggle in school and not need much accommodations. They can control their obsessions by not making them a must and having them come first, they do all the important stuff first and then do those in their spare time. Also they have a easier time learning to cope and adapt and their social skills are not that much impaired nor are they too much literal or have too much issues with reading between the lines. They are able to cope and deal with change and keep their meltdowns inside them and their anxiety.

But I know this isn't always true for all mild aspies. I have some parts of me that are not mild such as my learning differences because I needed help to get through school and I did have lot of meltdowns and bad anxiety. But my anxiety has gotten better.

Relationships are very hard for me and according to what I read in my DX papers about me when I got DXd. It appears my social skills were very bad and the worse of my AS because my psychiatrist seemed more concerned about them than about my obsessions and anxiety and me having issues with change and the stimming. I know I was very naive then. People even thought I was faking it (online I mean) but I am sure kids thought that in real life too.


Severe AS, I picture someone who can't work and is always doing their obsessions/special interests and that is all they can ever talk about. Nothing else. But I know this isn't true because I have known a couple severe aspies and they talk about different stuff. Plus one of them isn't literal as I am. I don't know about the other one but he doesn't think he has AS and that he is severely autistic.


This reminds me, I was in a stressful situation yesterday at work and I felt like flapping my hands in the air but instead I sat on them. I don't like to embarrass myself so it forces me to control my stims. I have done head banging before when I be that frustrated. But knowing how I can injure myself, it gives me control.

And I have needed support like from school and my parents. But I can take care of myself fine. See I'm still mild. I've been called moderate but they must have their own definition of mild. I just figure they have never seen another aspie that is worse than me so they wouldn't even think I'm mild. I used to not think I was mild either because I had so little of it, then why all the struggles in school, why am I struggling to be normal and trying to fit in? Why is school work so hard? Why am I being treated different so much? So of course how could I think my problems were little? I just didn't know what real AS was or the real struggles. I was just suffering from ignorance and people. Plus I had low self esteem then because of people. So trying to convince me then I was normal didn't help. I think that is why lot of autistic people don't see themselves as normal because of their low self esteem. So trying to convince them won't help. My mom used to make me say five positive things about myself when I put myself down but the thing was I never meant them. I just did it to get it over with. Then one day it came to me, the high self esteem and I just all of a sudden started to see things different and realized I was normal. I started to think "Oh everyone does this." I then started to hate things being blamed on my AS because what's the difference between a normal person doing it and me? I felt discriminated for it. Other people do it, oh it's not big deal, I do it, oh it's the Asperger's. But thank goodness it stopped, maybe my family just keeps it to themselves or it could have been ignorance on my teachers' part and school counselor. After all people do like to blame things on a label so they can use someone's label as a scapegoat just like those people do on ASPartners.

First post so bear with me...
I am trying to figure out what life would be like if I could access that serious amount of energy it takes to 'not go there', as wavefreak58 put it, and instead use this energy in "more productive places". The thing is, I'm not sure what those productive places are for me, because I have spent so much time and energy just trying not to go there.

I've found that the less energy you spend suppressing autistic traits, the more energy you can spend pursuing your goals. The odd result of this is that in general, the more productive I am, the more autistic I seem to others! So in reality, the person who can easily pass for NT may be capable of less actual work than the person who can be identified by totally untrained people as obviously autistic.

It's not a reliable relationship, though; in general, "how autistic you seem" just doesn't seem to have an extremely strong relationship with "how much you can do for yourself". And on top of that, "how much you can do for yourself" doesn't have much relationship with what your best skills are and how they compare to NT average.

That's part of why functioning labels are so bogus. They're based entirely on how autistic you seem to a doctor. But that isn't strongly related to how independent you are; and how independent you are isn't strongly related to how much you contribute to society. And even if there were a relationship, decent support can still completely change everything involved.

Someone who can't drive.


Someone who can.

Guess that settles it. I'm severe.

That's just my idiosyncratic way of looking at it because I can drive. Maybe there's one thing we can do and we can use that to define ourselves as mild. Doesn't have to be driving. It can be anything.