Those extremely high-functioning?

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Are you over the HFA/Aspie line of the spectrum?
Are you so high functioning that you are basically a normal person in almost every sense (emotionally and mentally, maybe even physically?)
I'd like to know...

I don't see it as a line, though. I often point out that my internal experience has less in common with the NT public than it does with the kid having a meltdown on the floor of the produce section. I just have the resources to manage my sensory issues and feelings well enough to pass, mostly.

It makes the term autism spectrum preferable to Aspergers/autism.

Nope and I'm not trying to be.I say screw being normal and screw NT people.

I'm pretty sure I'd fit the bill of "high-functioning", and probably am not so obvious that untrained people would immediately figure me out. A key difference I think is that while I can appear fully "normal" externally (and physically, as you said), what I feel inside emotionally and mentally is clearly not. For that reason, even though I can do social functions and go out and interact with people, the fact that I get great anxiety/migraines/feel sick in social situations makes me very unwilling to do so, and that's why I almost never do. I have to be convinced that putting on my mask to go do something is worth it, and even then it's super hard and a huge effort.

How about you, GuyInABlackSuit?

ooh, isloth - that sounds just like me!

I would probably be regarded as very high functioning as I have always worked full time, can drive, and I own my own home. But I still have enormous problems with social communication to the extent that I find it almost impossible to form friendships. I still have difficulty understanding and regulating my emotions. I still have serious meltdowns when things don't go to plan. I still sound like a depressed robot when I speak. I still have major problems with being overwhelmed by heat, noise and busy, bustling places. I still get so obsessed by my interests that I forget to do other more important things.

So I don't think I am neurotypical if that is what you mean by normal and I am certainly not much like my work colleagues or most of the other people I meet.

I should mention that objectively, people regard me as a talented amateur actor. That probably figures into the Height of my Functioning.

I am a high functioning Aspie. I own and drive cars. I built my own home. I married and had two wonderful daughters and now 4 wonderful grandchildren with another on the way. I worked for 40 years and then retired. I worked my way into supervision and then management. Basically I do whatever I set my mind to. And I do not let social convention dictate my decisions. I live an adventurous life.

In 1955, Einstein passed away. A decade later in his memorial lecture delivered on 13 December 1965, at UNESCO headquarters, nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer summarized his impression of Einstein as a person: “He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness ... There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn."

That describes me. I am in my "Pleasing Four" stage of childhood development [forever young at heart] and yet stubborn as hell.

I am very high functioning. I clean my house, drive, have a job, I can take care of myself, go to the store and ask for things if I can't find it, I can talk to people and have conversations, go to places on my own, order my food, am careful with money, pay my bills. I do not need a caregiver.

I wouldn't say I'm "high-functioning" as much as I am "high-passing". The dysfunction is very real and because I blend in and present as a NT in most situations, a lot more is expected of me than what I'm capable of (and certainly not within the same time frames or sequence as NT people). It's frustrating for all parties involved and makes me feel defeated, worthless, and like a burden to those around me. It's hard to get help of any kind or even work up the courage to ask because when you blend in, its largely assumed by most that you're exaggerating or lazy or just not trying which couldn't possibly be further from the truth. As a result I've usually wound up burning the candle at both ends trying to do it all on my own and only getting actual help when I've gotten myself into an absolutely horrific life-altering situation either financially, legally, or mentally. I need to be guided through my day from beginning to end, task to task, reminded of and accompanied to all my appointments, reminded to take my meds, reminded to shower and accompanied so i don't forget to wash myself and just stand there wasting water drawing pictures with the soap scum on the tile.

Just because I can look you in the eye from years of practice, compose a sentence and carry on a conversation while smiling and laughing like everybody else and maintain a winning personality from many semesters of improv and method acting classes, it doesn't mean that I am not working a hundred times harder than you to keep my composure and not cover my ears and close my eyes and retreat to my room and just be alone with a game, cartoon, or a puzzle. Despite the fact that I've acquired these skills on my own time and spend every last drop of my mental energy to be present and social every single day to the point where I make myself sick just to please and be accepted by others, I am still seen as careless, inconsiderate, and even selfish. It confuses the f**k out of me how that happens. I will never get it.

It's so easy to identify what I'm supposed to be doing in retro but unfortunately time travel is not an available public service at this time. I almost never know what anybody is trying to tell me until I've had hours to mull it over. I'm full of fear all the time that I'm gonna f**k up and make somebody upset for what feels like simply existing, although I know there must be more to it but I will never know because people who you've offended and are angry at you are not likely to have the patience to calmly and clearly explain your transgressions so that you can learn. Rather, they choose to not speak to you and start excluding you from anything they can get away with and treat you like you're a plague-carrying rat in their home that they aren't allowed to kill. Like Cinderella but less human and your prince is an animal too but in the form of an emotional support Pit Bull who really gets it because hardly anybody takes the time to understand them for who they truly are and love them and guide them so that they can prove that they are better than that because it's impossible for most folks to see past the stigma of a breed. We're birds of a feather. Except one's a dog and the other isn't exactly sure, but I'm certainly not an earthling.

In some ways I'm so high functioning it is obvious I'm not normal.

I don't know. Where do you draw the line?

"Maybe even physically"? Autism itself does not affect physicality, as long as one doesn't have other conditions, they is physically normal.

I believe my functioning is as "high" as it could: I have a job I enjoy doing, I'm married to a man I love, I do all the adult stuff I need to do and when I need mental health help can I find it myself, evaluate wheather it is really helpful, and pay for it. Many NTs I know are not quite as high functioning in these terms.
And all the time I am weird, strange, whatever, loud and proud. I can mask it if I want to (like going through security on an airport - you are not bothered if you appear "normal" enough) but most of the time I choose to be myself and function in the society as an excentric.

As others in this thread have said, I too am high functioning. Once I stopped drinking 29 years ago and started getting my s**t together I have been able to grow emotionally and deal with a bunch of stuff. I have only recently been diagnosed and boy did the lights go on!

Let me explain. I am very high functioning in that I have learned how to fit in, hold down a job, finally learned to have a relationship; but this awful anxiety inside never left me no matter how much counselling and therapy I had. Social situations were really hard work and I felt exhausted from the trying and incredibly lonely and sad at my failures to 'connect'. Not only that but I was always very good at my job but could not get past the barrier of being comfortable working with other people. I could never explain my solutions to problems even though my solutions worked, and eventually my workmates would arrive at the conclusions I had drawn in minutes. So at work I have been hated occasionally, mistrusted often, and by and large avoided. I usually changed jobs frequently, 4 years seems to have been my upper limit. I attended NA for my addiction for 25 years, but at that point I looked around the rooms at the people I had been sharing my recovery with all this time and realised that there was not one person who I could call a friend, who would visit me when I had a serious accident and was laid up for 6 months (example of what actually happened).

I had tried really hard to appear to fit in, but I just did not. Then came my diagnosis. It all made sense. Instead of feeling bad I felt jubilant, I felt free! I didn't have to pretend any more, the very effort was stressful and exhausting. I am actually very OK with who I am. I have a very different brain, not Einstein or anything like that but I can do all manner of things. Physically I am hopelessly uncoordinated and I will always be socially reclusive, but thats OK.

I discovered this website and the wonderful and interesting people here who are ...my kind of people. Of course there are political and religious differences - but I don't really care, opinions are just opinions. What does matter is that people here do understand this condition of ours - in its varying degrees/spectrum. We are not the same at all but in a way we are. We all know what it is like to struggle in the world.

I am high functioning.Most of the people I met call me weird cause I can't talk like them. I am very logical and I always try to solve my problems on my own . I dont care about peoples what they say or do to me cause im going to live my life my way on my own. My biggest sensory issue is smell. I can't bear too foul or too good smell.I am a teenager and I usually through fits , tantrum and frequent meltdowns when thing doesn't go the way o wanted at any unexpected turn of events . i guess i am giving my parents quite a hard time.

Please define "High Functioning", "Normal", and how/where to "Draw the Line" between them.