Are highly intellectual aspies different than other aspies?

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Pushing to understand is the path to wisdom.
Keep on admitting you don't understand as long as it is not threatening your job. ( I usually find a more discrete way to understand there but make sure I do understand to do well) I looked and still look a fool when I am learning. Just decided I would rather know than pretend in many situations. Embarassed a lot, but without risks, no gain. Advantage of being older now. Most of the time I ask a stupid question or ask for an accommodation not based on Autism, but just because it makes sense, I find there were a bunch of silent people grateful because they had the same question or wanted the same thing. Just too socially conditioned to fit in so the "normal" people suffer.

I liked your question. I thought I understood too until you kept asking. I learned something from your questioning what seemed to be obvious.


and hi to skibum!

and totally agree about the danger of overclassifying and labeling. I grew up believing I was a wild animal (not alien) trapped in a human body. That story in my head made sense of the no eye contact, lack of wanting physical contact, paucity of interactions outside my family, heightened sesnses, etc. I was super powered and ignored the labels around me most of the time as a child. Employability was a dose of reality to change as a teen.
Did that story and self label allow my intellect to grow along with using my senses to my advantage? Not interpreting them as problems? And now as an adult, I find that most of what irritates many autistic people are things not healthy for anyone. Are we canaries in a coal mine?
And I have a modified story now. Ex. I love touch from those I trust or am helping. I did not overcome by an externally imposed socialization therapy. I understood by intellectualizing why I don't like touch. That allowed me with some non traditional treatments, to change if I wanted to. You force the wild animal to change your way, does not go well.

That story/ label self imposed or other imposed can determine how we develop as a person through the hard wiring thought processes in our brains.

Still early in this, but because of the way we think, we have varying abilities for various reasons to understand "other differently " wired thinkers. What many refer to as neurotypical.
We may as autistic peope all intellectualize in the strict sense as a default processing path. But that is how we learn. So by translating difficult concepts like social interactions into a logical system, more of us can benefit.

Hard wired processing path may be inborn as autism. Intellectualizing concepts. But is independent of learned knowledge, wisdom, our social interactions etc. which are heavily influenced by factors after birth.

So more useful to categorize/label things, concepts, symptoms, obstacles. Not people.

Living organisms are more complex than inorganic systems. Too many variables before even considering the spiritual component or quantum level interactions. I blend in because of factors not accounted for by all these studies.

and sorry these are long. concepts are complex and oversimplfying to 3 lines makes me feel like I said the wrong thing. still feel that with the long version. appreciate your patience. Reason I prefer in person communication to typing with 1 finger.

my keyboard is going crazy. sorry if errors.

love this! I never sat in my chair properly in school. But because there were very active troublemakers distracting the teachers, I went under the radar.
I now sit on a bouncy exercise ball at work and home. Hate chairs. And turns out a quarter of the others at work prefer it but are too afraid to get their own. They use my ball when I am not in and I often need to ask for it back when I get in.


Then turns out science says everyone's brains don't work as well in the unnatural position of the chair. Bad for the body too. Hard for boys especially. Wobble cushion good for core and developing parts of her brain while eating at the same time. Likely better for everyone.

story we tell ourselves- issue is it really autism as a sensory problem and your daughter intuitively knew a better way and is the world too much of a conformist to follow science and stop sitting in the currently designed chairs?

It sounds like you turned a frustrating situation into a major victory! I don't think any parent can hope to accomplish more than that. As an adult I can understand more clearly what my mom went through too. Kids are good at taking other people's work for granted, and making more work for parents, for sure.



Is this dislike for dangling feet a common thing? I always assumed it was just my own oddity, but it makes sense that it's not.

I feel like it's very common.

It makes you feel that you're about to tip over. And it's not comfortable, either.

it's an unstable physical situation. Being able to put your feet on the ground adds stability.

That is so true. Her clever brain was just trying to calm itself and give itself the necessary sensory feedback. Now that that is easier to obtain there is more room for other things. Same in school, now she can use a cushion and restive clay, she can focus better on her work.

It is really funny as she was cautious to bring a wobble cushion to school a first as she hasn't told many people she is an aspie and she was worried she might feel "singled out," so I bought 3 cushions for school so there would be other kids in the class using them too. They all love them and fight over them.

I hate chairs too, I would much rather stand or sit on my yoga ball!

Thanks Fern. It was last autumn during a very full on burn-out phase and it was hard to make out where it all suddenly came from. She never used to be so unsettled physically at mealtimes and as it was alongside the eruption of a lot of other challenging behaviour I guess I thought it was contrary. It was one of the things I felt I got wrong. I wasn't mean or anything but I do think I told her she would need to sit still or we would skip desert one time. Now with the hindsight of diagnosis and better understanding it all seems SO obvious but it wasn't then. It is quite unbelievable that I didn't even know the range and scope that autism encompasses, especially in girls and women, 6 months ago.

Yes, this. Ski-lifts or those type of mountain lifts are a huge problem for me. I don't like dangling either.

This is especially true for people with balance/coordination problems. Which happens pretty often within the Autistic Spectrum.

When I was a kid, I spent hours in these sorts of positions. I couldn't concentrate on anything other than just keeping myself in the seat. Forget about doing something like math sheets or whatever.

That is so interesting because I am actually better when my feet dangle and if a restaurant has high tables and chairs, I always choose them.

Nowadays, I'm better at it.

I prefer a normal-height table and chairs---but I can take a higher chair, if there's something to put your feet on other than the floor.

Otherwise, I just don't feel comfortable. But I adjust to it a little better.

Back to the question of intellectual aspies...

If I am an aspie (I doubt I will ever get diagnosed so it is guesswork - my extremely smart daughter said: If you worked out I was an aspie then I think we can feel pretty confident about you being one too!), then being intellectual has always helped me. I was always a straight A student and at least didn't have to cope with the pressure of finding school hard. I have always had this sense that I am cheating the system somehow though academically... Like I am eventually going to get caught! Even going into my Viva for my PhD I thought I would get major corrections and then I was the first person in my department to pass my PhD with no corrections.

I attack everything as something to analyse and decode and that has helped me as things that appear to come more naturally to other people are still attainable to me but with careful analysis and consideration.

I have a "processing" system which I kind of put everything that happens through and I find I often deal with challenges and disappointments better than other people around me as I am so used to putting things through my particular processing system.

Last edited by elsapelsa on 23 May 2018, 11:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting that you thought that because when I was preteen I actually thought the same thing about myself.

I think Skibum is good with this sort of thing because she's athletically-inclined, in general.

I never thought of that but you may be right about it. I actually love when I sit and my legs dangle. It makes me very relaxed, much more so than when my feet are planted on the ground and I am sitting.

Elsa just has the knack

That's all I can say.

There are, definitely, positive aspects to being neurodiverse.

Thanks. Of course it is entirely possible that I am entirely lacking in neurodiversity making me some kind of tag-along-wannabee.... The thing that goes most strongly against that though is that I met so few people who were remotely like me in life until I found this site! It was literally like turning a corner and going "Oh, that is where you all are!"