aspergers and HFA

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Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 5:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm trying to imagine what that's like but I think I got a pretty good idea of it - with a twist, I guess.

I have an official diagnosis of AS but I don't fit all of the necessary criteria of AS and should have been diagnosed with another ASD. I remember that when I first started reading through forums for "aspies" about five years ago, I struggled to relate to a lot of things people described about their childhoods, their experiences during teenagers years even and I also couldn't relate to a lot of the strengths and presentations stereotypically related to AS.

So, I tried hard identifying typical and stereotypical traits and experiences often connected to AS at first but ultimately that endeavour failed and fitting in that way wasn't going to work. In my particular case, I found that I fare a lot better with ignoring specific diagnostic labels when dealing with autistic kids during my job and all kinds of people online. If somebody poses a question saying it's for those with AS or for those with classical but the question is about something perfectly normal to all of the spectrum I'll just answer it if I feel like it. Why allow someone's opinion or lack of knowledge limit me in connecting to others on the spectrum?

But it is much harder to deal with and point out that I do not have AS when I'm dealing with people and professionals who have the oddest opinions about the spectrum. Or when I'm dealing with someone who thinks I absolutely must have AS because a diagnosis must always be correct and that I therefore cannot have some of the autistic symptoms I have.

I still don't relate to having "Asperger's syndrome" mainly because I don't have AS but I feel just fine around here. If anything, it's the content of some topics about issues and abilities that puts me off sometimes and makes me feel like the odd one out for being more severe or being milder. I think others feel like that too sometimes though.

Asperger's was added to the DSM in the 1990's. Sure, it existed but you couldn't be diagnosed with it.

Last edited by pensieve on 18 Dec 2011, 6:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I am sorry about the neglect. Obviously PDD-NOS is autism, and a significant number of people diagnosed with PDD-NOS fall into three categories:

* Should have been diagnosed with autism
* Should have been diagnosed with AS
* Only has two of the three categories of impairments (Social and one of the other two), and meets the criteria for PDD-NOS, which is still part of the autistic spectrum (also called pervasive developmental disorders - PDD).

And of course there is childhood disintegrative disorder, which is separate in some way I do not understand from the idea of autism, but displays many of the same features.

People seem to want a solid set of categories here, that because they were described as diagnostic entities that they must be real things that serve as valid distinctions rather than, as is stated in the ASD DSM-V rationale, "carving a meat loaf at the joints."

And as per the link I posted earlier in this thread, what you are diagnosed with often depends on where you go to be diagnosed. I, personally, do not see the point of maintaining these distinctions or trying to say that this part of the spectrum or that part of the spectrum is not really autism. After all, Asperger's patients would have fit right in with Kanner's patients (per reading their case studies), and some of Kanner's patients would have fit right in with Asperger's patients.

Interesting bit, too: Apparently, the original concept of autism is what some people here call "high functioning autism." The addition of "low functioning autism" to the spectrum in - I think, the 1950s? - was pretty controversial, as people viewed it as expanding the diagnosis too much. It's strange how over time, "LFA" became the definition of "classic autism" while "HFA" is viewed as something different from "classic autism," despite not having been perceived as long.



I still don't.



I've had no support until the past year, which was also the period during which I was diagnosed. If I had seen someone as a child, I might have been diagnosed as autistic. I did fit the DSM-III criteria for autism at the time it came out (1980?) but was already 11 years old.

Then again, because I spoke early, I might not have been diagnosed at all, despite meeting enough of the criteria. Because for some reason, even though there are multiple criteria which can meet the requirements for diagnosis, people believe "autism = speech delay or nonverbal," which is perhaps why Lorna Wing was pushing for the inclusion of an AS diagnosis - to catch those autistic people who were not being diagnosed because of assumptions that even Kanner's research did not support.

Also, I don't think everyone who comes here can be described as "high functioning" and some people object to functioning labels at all because they imply things about either having or lacking skills based on which label is applied to them.

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Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 5:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

It was a typo.
I'm certain it was added in the 90's. Maybe they were trying to diagnose it in the 80's before it was an official DSM dx.

Some people distinguish AS as a special condition that they have without them being autistic or disabled. I don't know why. As far as I know, AS is based on the work of Hans Asperger, who worked on autism with autistic children.

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Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 5:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

This was a very convenient development for NTs to disregard all the attempted communications of all autistic people. The "LFAs" are just "empty fortresses" and therefore not people. The "HFAs" are not autistic and therefore just @$$hats.

Well, everyone knows that "autistic" is loaded with negative stereotypes, like the child everyone loves to mention who sits in the corner banging their head. No one with Asperger's would ever behave like that (except when they do, and some do). And "Asperger's" is a well-loved label, right? After all, there isn't an entire forum on the internet where the regulars have developed an entire spectrum of insults based on Asperger's (such as "sperg lord" or "sperging"). Probably more than one, but that one is among the biggest. And it's not like the idea that people fake having Asperger's so they can be jerks without consequence has penetrated the internet so deeply you can find it without even trying, even though claiming Asperger's after people decide you're a jerk will usually make things worse.

Besides, all Aspies are geniuses (except when they aren't) and have above average intelligence (except studies don't really support this).

All of the above is very sarcastic. Which is to say that some of what I wrote is the opposite of the truth - once you get out of Aspergian ideas of Aspie superiority and elitism, you find that many people are just as likely to view Aspies as "ret*d" as they are to view people diagnosed with autism as such.

Exactly. If you can communicate, you're not really autistic. Not like the ones who suffer, who are categorized as being unable to communicate and thus can be tokenized indefinitely.

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Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 5:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

Every time someone brings this up I get the feeling that someone's saying, without saying, that people with Asperger's are better than people with autistic disorder. Maybe I'm just being hypersensitive, but I don't like the feeling behind these posts. Like, "Let's get one thing straight, I may be different but I'm GOOD different, not BAD different like those autistics!"

And I'll repeat myself for the hundredth time...

What is it about me that you so fear to be associated with? I'm pretty, I'm very smart, and I have lots of friends. I'm clean, I dress well if slightly quirkily, and I'm generally pretty accepting of other people. What is it about me that's so awful? I'm a person too, and I have feelings and whatnot (GASP- the "MFA" has feelings?!) and it upsets me when people act like they don't want to associate with me.

Anyway, that might not be the message the OP was trying to send, but that's kind of how it came across.

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Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 5:34 am, edited 3 times in total.

Yeah, I don't really spend much energy worrying about that particular community, except as an example of things that occasionally annoy me. The medical community can be far more frustrating. It does seem like more and more get it right, but there are still some vocal professionals who are quite mired in their particular ways of getting it wrong.

I think those two posts are more sarcasm than I've used for the entire year preceding.



I get that feeling too. I don't think you're being hypersensitive.



It seems that this consideration rarely, if ever, comes to mind. When the diatribes about how awful it is to combine AS with autism and PDD-NOS come up, it's all about how awful it is to be seen as autistic, and hardly a thought given for what it is like for people who are labeled as autistic to be seen that way.

I don't know what the OP was thinking, but what you said does happen pretty frequently.

I would be a Ma'am But you're welcome.

Thanks, Verdandi, for affirming my concerns.