DSM5 ASD "Essentially Everyone Gets In"

Post Reply New Topic

I talk a lot about my interests.

I've learned to mitigate it a bit, but it still gets away from me. It's not as if I don't enjoy it, but it can interfere with other things. Like therapy.

Same here, and Dillogic describes a similar hyperlexia pattern in recent discussions. I've often look up the definitions of words I use on google to understand what they mean, always thankful when they end up making sense in the context I use them in.

I loved spelling words, and could read extremely fast when motivated, but the reading comprehension part of testing was extremely difficult. I can get motivated to respond to conversation about facts and figures, but I don't think I could blog, because that requires initiating a conversation. When I initiate a post here, it is usually motivated from a response I made to someone else.

I suppose it's part of the rote memory, where one sees it used in context somewhere else and uses it again, sometimes surprised to see it coming up on the screen.

What's interesting for me is when I am typing there is a pedantic like voice in my head, but when I speak in real life, which is rare now and was much more often in the distant past, it is usually in accommodation to who I am around.

When I read the things other people write I always imagine a different voice for each person I am reading. I never imagine a pedantic voice for them, but I can only imagine that some of them likely do speak pedantically in real life. Ari Ne'eman is an excellent example of someone who speaks pedantically, in real life.

I wonder sometimes if it is just all an advanced form of echolalia. Which in that case I suppose I might have been a parrot in a previous life. Between TV, the radio, work and thousands of people, there were certainly more than enough voices to learn by rote memory and provide again sometime in the future..

I remember one person on the spectrum telling me how much trouble they had watching TV, because they couldn't figure out who they were suppose to identify with. That's kind of interesting given the factors of hyperlexia, rote memory, and echolalia.

Some nicknames bothered me, especially when someone was called grandpa, or ma. I literally could not call them that, no matter if everyone else in the room called them that. I could not separate the fact in my mind that I would not literally be addressing them as my grandpa or ma.

I like one-way conversations in which I am not the one doing the talking. I annoy my mother by asking her to "tell me something", by which I mean that I want her to monologue about something interesting to me and me to listen and not have to talk back. Occasionally, I monologue to her about something interesting to me, but it's never a topic that she wants to hear about.

Since I dont' have pedantic speech, I don't sound smart like most people in academia.

I think all teachers have to be pretty good speakers. My college work was directed at teaching, but it was impossible without the ability to speak well. I was always in awe of people that could talk in paragraphs. And, it was interesting to me, that some of the best speakers I knew at work, who could express emotion just the right ways to keep people engaged, actually had symptoms of dyslexia and had much difficulty in writing. I think in some ways hyperlexia might be the opposite of dyslexia.

I always figured since I made good grades in school, that I would one day learn to speak like that. I ended up mostly listening, which wasn't too hard because I was around people usually eager to speak, hundreds of people a day for two decades. After two decades it started to hurt my head to hear people speak, I suppose my file cabinets were eventually filled. I can imagine that people that do the speaking might end up with less headaches..

I don’t have pedantic speech either and I’ve never been an AS-type lecturer. I generally don’t talk about my interests and I don’t have an innate desire to share them. Those of my interests that I clearly perceive as manifestations of autism in me are nonfactual - things I like being immersed in. Therefore many of my interests are already in their nature unshareable. I am also very interested in numerous and variating factual topics, but I perceive them as normal interests. My interests as a child were objects, things or patterns – not like dinosaurs, trains or history, but plain and seemingly random objects or things.

I probably didn’t contribute anything to this discussion, but given the chance, I want to wish a very Merry Christmas to all of you blessed with this spacy oddity.

Last edited by VisInsita on 23 Dec 2012, 6:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

The DSM 5's changes were all misled.

I do that sort of thing too! Generally its making my boyfriend explain whatever tech project he's working on to me. I like hearing about what other people are interested in.

Thank you. That was my first good laugh of the week.

I don't sound smart either. Although I've become much better at speaking over the decades, I still have issues with it, especially speaking publicly. I'm prone to stutter, speak fast, not articulate well. I often don't know what to say as my head virtually gets empty in the most important moments. In my life I was always more the listening type than the speaking type. I liked to hear people who in my opinion were smart and knew many interesting things, theories and facts. For perhaps too much time I falsely assumed that people who can talk more fluently than I and can say smart things and facts seemingly with ease are indeed smarter than me. Now I know that my mind works differently and some of my perceived handicaps are due to having autistic traits.

I was never a little professor. I was speech delayed and had a low verbal IQ. When I got older, I started to talk about my obsessions but I wasn't an expert on them because I didn't read about them, only talked about it and day dreamed about it. Then when I was ten, I started to read about them. I used to just talk about my interests and got a little pedantic and now I don't talk about them anymore except for to my husband. I have been told I am pedantic or technical with my words because I like to be exact so I am picky about words. even I find myself correcting my boss at work like telling him "that's not empty." One time when the spray thing was almost empty because I knew someone else was using it so I knew there wouldn't be any more the next day so I put a note on it saying "Almost empty" and left it at his office door. The next day my boss told me it's now almost full. He was being pedantic too.

At the time of my diagnoses, I was between autistic and Asperger's meaning I didn't fit into either one but I was on the spectrum but it was still mild. I would say I still am and I don't liked boxes because everyone is different. No one will fit into a box specifically. I even see anxiety boxes and I don't fit into either one but I still have an anxiety disorder. I have questioned rather I had that too or not because the symptoms didn't match so it must be anxiety disorder NOS. My mom told me it's because I never hold it in and I let it all out with my meltdowns and outbursts so I never get sick from it like my husband does.

It also took me most of my life to figure out that talking good does not equal smart or knowledgeable. Many people talk good, but they don't really know what they are talking about.

I hope Canada, Australia and New Zealand block the release of the DSM 5 in their countries.

I am so happy I don't have to tell people I have "assburgers" anymore! such an awkward word, so awkward and hard to get around. I usually just say that I have "assburgers" in a joking manner. It's a desperate attempt to get over the humiliation of the term. It's humiliating to the tenth degree and there's not way around it.

Really I am glad that word is history...ASD is so much better sounding.

Merging autism and having levels of functioning makes a lot of sense.

Thank you for rational minds and logical people. it's funny over a year ago I was wishing the term Asperger's was erased from the world...

And no this isn't just a ignorant knee jerk reaction of a post...I have gone over the new criteria and the reasoning behind it and it all makes sense, they did a great job.

you know something, you're not even acknowledging the others who have aspergers who love having it. you only say it helps you, when in fact, you don't know about the others.

http://www.change.org/petitions/dsm-5-c ... -the-dsm-5