Recovery claims and other ponderings

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She can take her voice, elsewhere.

Great response Willard, do you think a slightly better outcome is possible if the child was unconditionally loved, and, instead of being browbeaten, made his own mind to fit in better with society? at, say 15 or 16, the child looks around and says "I want to be part of all that, I'm going to pick someone out and act just like them"

Sure at first, he is just chameleon-mimicing, but after learning the rules of "the game" couldn't he integrate his real personality back in, plugging things back in where he now knows they should go? For example not giving up his autistic actions that give him comfort, but practicing them in his own time, the way people meditate and have their 'me' time.

I'm also not talking about acheiving the same career stability, success, relationships as a neurotypical, but better. All of those musicians that people say are autistic come to mind. They make their lives fit them, do it their way, eccentricities intact. They played "their game" and beat them at it.

Also, I will never use the word 'recover' here again, it inevitably leads to angry discussion of McCarthy and her son. I feel bad for that kid when he gets a little older 'thanks, mom'.

There are probably more of us than most people realize. I suspect that most are sub-clinical or have become sub-clinical as they have gotten older. (A clinical definition of autism is defined by impairment, so it's possible to be diagnosable at one stage of one's life and not be diagnosable at another.)

I don't know if it was a case of overcoming symptoms for me, exactly, but I can tell you that some of the more unpleasant traits faded towards the end of high school. For instance, loud sounds don't bother me any more, and clothing tags don't itch like they used to. I couldn't possibly tell you why these things faded for me but got worse for others during adolescence. I was probably developing both conscious and unconscious coping mechanisms... that and I probably had fewer symptoms to deal with.

I'm a very effective adult, I'd say, and I'm certainly not usually encumbered by the autistic traits I have. I've learned to live in such a way as to turn my thought process, approach, and outlook on life into advantages. Am I lucky? Absolutely.

I'm not diagnosed, by the way, though I have a strong suspicion I would have been as a kid were they doing such things back then. My teachers certainly identified me as unusual (in both good and bad terms), but I never had behavioral problems in class or at home (I suspect in part because of my strong respect for rules). You string enough of your traits together, you read other people's experiences here, you do a lot of research, and it becomes fairly obvious. I still have my doubts, of course, but I think that many people do (even the diagnosed).

Wow, fiddlerpianist, I had to re-read your post 3 times. It applies verbatim to me, and like you said, probably to more people than you might think.

A couple of questions, what do others in your life think? Parents, or spouse, if you're married, close friends?

I'm not sure what you mean by what they think, so I will answer this from a few different perspectives.

I don't tell people anything about the spectrum, mostly because it's really not helpful. The friends I have mentioned it to are very skeptical. "But you're nothing like the people with AS that I know, so I really doubt you have it." Or, "You're super nice and approachable. I don't see how you could possibly think you're autistic." If anything comes up about differences, I'm more likely to talk about it general terms... neurology differences, thought process, cognitive approach, etc. That goes over much better and doesn't bring along predominant connotations the world has about the term autism.

By extension, there's no real point in telling my family. My mother always called me "unique" and stayed away from terms such as "unusual" or "weird." Growing up, she stuck up for me to the utmost, more than I ever realized until recently. She never saw anything as being "wrong" with me, just that I was different. So I'm already fully accepted; I have nothing to prove to her. Bringing a term that has a disorder associated with it I'm sure she wouldn't take kindly to. She always attributed my differences to me being a natural born musician. So did I, in fact, until recently.

I first found out about the autistic spectrum from my wife. We have a friend of the family with two kids (twins) on the spectrum. Before they were diagnosed, she described some of the sensory issues they were having. I told her that I didn't think those things were anything to worry about, that they were just a part of growing up. After staring at me for a moment, she basically suggested that I probably had, at some level, something in common with them. She then had to put up with 5-6 months of my obsessive research about the spectrum until I settled in with the conclusions that I now have about myself.

So my wife knows. We mostly joke about when I'm being particularly dense, literal, or otherwise oblivious. "Honey, you're Asperger's is flaring up again," she'll say.

I get the feeling that most people can almost immediately tell that I'm different, but probably just attribute this to general eccentricity. Also, people seem to cut musicians more slack for being eccentric than other parts of the population. For instance, I refuse to listen to hold music on our conference call system at work because I find it disturbing to my mental state. I will repeatedly dial into the call and hang up until the call has been opened. I have told my co-workers that I do this, and it's clear that they think it's a bit weird, but they basically just shrug it off. To a certain degree I think people find me a bit intriguing. I don't seem to scare people off, which is a problem that many people seem to have here at WP. I don't think I have the "aspie stare," and I certainly have learned enough about social reciprocation over the course of my life to be reasonably decent at it. I wasn't always like that, though.

Growing up, I was off in my own little musical world. When I was 2, I would sit for hours in my room and play a little electric organ that my mom had bought at a garage sale. I hardly noticed my peers until junior high school... when the bullies descended. Seventh grade was the absolute worst, but that's true for a lot of kids. Things got better, thank goodness. I found my niche and hit my stride somewhere around 11th grade.

Wow... bringing this all up again really brings my doubts about being the spectrum back to the forefront. I have so few problems related to the traits that I probably look like a poser on this forum. Then again, when it comes to cognitive style, approach to life, thought process, I feel very much at home reading people's posts. I've also been told by several that I my writing style on the forum strikes them as autistic (though I'm not really sure what that means). I've also been told directly that an absence of problems from the traits really has nothing to do with whether I am autistic. I do believe this, but sometimes it's hard to because it seems like most everyone here has significant problems. Then again, this is a support forum. It's going to naturally draw more people that need more support.

Again, fiddler, thanks for this, I am still in the midst of my 'obsessive research', and also settling on my own conclusions.

I also feel on the fence like you do, I know what I've been through, but to meet me now, most people would think of me as a 'poser' as well, just finding a way of commiserating with my son. I see so much of me in him, and maybe in a way I am the best person to guide him through this.

You can't "recover", really; autism is hard-wired by the age of one (and quite possibly before birth).

But you can "lose your diagnosis".

There's a difference.

Okay, you know how, to diagnose a pervasive developmental disorder, there's a criterion in the list that reads something like this?--

That is the relevant phrase. You can't diagnose a PDD without there being a "clinically significant impairment". In general, that means some level of disability, though it can be quite mild, and can disappear in the right environment.

If you have someone diagnosed with some kind of autism--usually it's someone with a mild impairment to begin with, such as Asperger's diagnosed in childhood--who has learned a lot of skills to compensate, eventually he may not need any outside help, nor use more effort using those skills than the typical person would in the same situation. At that point, where there is no longer any "clinically significant impairment", that person can no longer be diagnosed with autism. So he has "lost his diagnosis".

(It is important to note that people who spend all their effort to look typical and burn out at the end of a day, a week or even a decade, are still "significantly impaired", just as someone who can walk but only does so with great effort is still considered to have a physical impairment.)

The upshot of all of this is that you have a person who is neurologically autistic, quite probably culturally autistic, and thinks differently from the people around him. He may behave differently, too, but if he does, it doesn't interfere with his ability to socialize. He's probably independent, but he's probably spent a longer time than most people learning the skills for it. He's probably had the experience of life on the outside of mainstream society by virtue of having a neurology that doesn't pick up social signals, or maybe because society simply didn't accept him.

So, you do not have someone who is identical to a neurotypical person. His experiences of the world are different; his past is different. He probably seems somewhat eccentric. This non-diagnosable autistic person is still autistic, but he cannot be diagnosed with autism because autism does not cause an impairment for him.