Psychologist specialized in giftedness stereotyping AS?

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Most often, if a person who appears to be high functioning tells someone else they are on the autism spectrum, they are not met with shameful judgment so much as disbelief and denial, often to the point of mockery.

This happens to me quite often lol

More importantly, do you understand what I'm saying now?

I think I understood what you meant to start with, but was trying to lighten up the atmosphere a little (probably the wrong way ... as I usually do) because I don't want this conversation to become aggressive ... maybe it is me who wasn't clear in my reply.

From what I understand, you were saying AS explains everything about you that you thought was not exactly the "norm", while not all your "traits or issues" were explained by the description/characteristics of gifted children.

However some characteristics that you may have considered typically AS because they are among the "symptoms" of AS (and vice versa, traits of gifted children because they were among the "symptoms" - I mean before you were diagnosed), were not necessary due to AS ... I am not sure if I am being clear here. For example, lets say you have difficulty communicating with others ... it could be an AS trait, but it could also very well be a NT trait due to social anxiety, also I don't think social skills are necessarily developped automatically even by NT children, Evan for example, I don't know if you have seen the interview with him where the journalist asks him to spell a word, but his reactions are not those of a typical NT with good social skills, nor can it be attributed to a high IQ or giftedness (in my opinion at least) but this doesn't mean that he has AS, it could be due to the fact that he is home-schooled and doesn't see many other children or even adults, it could also be due to simply being nervous because he was on TV ... but it could also be due to AS. But this could be difficult to diagnose if the psychologist is not experienced with ASD, the gifted children specialist would be no better at diagnosing AS then any other psychologist who doesn't have experience with AS.

Also the main reason for my original post was that I strongly disliked how the psychologist was stereotyping AS, imagine you are a parent and you see his description of Asperger (which may be taken very seriously because he is a psychologist) ... if your child doesn't have the characteristics he describes, unless you are a very curious and well informed person, you would automatically think your child can't have Aspergers since he/she doesn't fit the traits he describes, and if he actually believes these stereotypes I'm sorry but he could very well mis-diagnose children who indeed have Aspergers.

I don't like it when people mess with me like that.



Yes, the wrong way. I wasn't feeling aggressive before, but now I feel lied to and played like a game and now I *do* feel aggressive so I have to stop participating in this thread now. I'll be removing the reply notification so I can get some distance and cool down.

I was being honest and I told you the truth, that I often don't explain myself correctly (its a f**** struggle in my life, to be misunderstood and/or not to explain what I mean correctly), and you take this as "being played"? well sorry you took it that way, I definitely didn't "play" you, I don't have this "talent", I was hoping that admitting my own shortcomings would relax the atmosphere because I was beginning to feel the conversation was becoming a little bit antagonist and stressing.

And it is you who misunderstood my reply to your other message, and then thought you had to explain in a different way, I did understand what you meant and I did reply accordingly, but you thought that I didn't understand what you meant because I mentioned that you probably didn't have All the traits or characteristics of AS.

I am totally surprised by your reaction, thinking I played you, whew if you knew me you would never think something like that of me.

I don't play people.

I very much agree with you.

And since you are here I finally get the chance to tell you how much I liked your story here http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com/30335.html it is really very good!

It´s possible you´ve left this thread and are not reading this, but I´m going to try to answer it anyway.

I realize that what I wrote before was seeing it from my perspective only- (a mistake I make often). Now that you write it that way, I can understand that if I knew nothing about AS, and read these articles, I would also wonder if I might not be gifted....it does describe sensory issues very well, which I have. However, it does not describe everything; and since I knew about the traits of AS first, before I knew about the traits of being gifted, it seems painfully obvious, now, that I am not gifted. (I consider myself of normal intelligence anyway, so that pretty much rules that out). I guess it seems more obvious now because I had that information first, is what I´m saying. If I didn´t know about AS, it might be different.

And according to the book I started to read about giftedness, there were other factors that normally don´t quite fit with AS. The author claimed that gifted people multi task well, and that many of them describe the world as "moving too slow"- (whereas I have the opposite problem ) She also claims that gifted people are good communicators. There was even a section where she claimed that gifted people can "read" people very well. I would hope that a doctor diagnosing children or adults would have a good enough knowledge about whatever it is they specialize in, along with similar and overlap syndromes, to avoid making diagnostic mistakes. I don´t expect the layperson to have that knowledge....that is why we go to doctors in the first place. Unfortunately, it looks like even the knowledge of some doctors may be too one-sided.

Yeah she probably did ... and wrongly accused me of something I don't think I could do even if I tried, I have been upset about this since.

I had a lot of teachers slap that "gifted" label on me over the years. I didn't have any interest in their expectations. It just sounded like an excuse to make me do more work. Of course nobody had heard of Asperger's then. I was just the weird kid that talked like a walking encyclopedia and cried when something upset him. People like labels and the "gifted" label fit me best. I learned to dislike the "gifted" label, because it changed the way other kids treated me (and not for the better), and made the teachers expect me to do more than the other kids (which I viewed as unfair).

I was in a gifted students program when I was in elementary school. I didn't get along any better with them than I did with the normal kids. I remember thinking they were less annoying and more polite, but not particularly more interesting than other kids. I frustrated the teacher because I wasn't any more interested in the stuff they did than I was in normal school. Actually, I was less interested, because it was harder and I was told things like "you can do as much or as little as you want", which I took literally to mean I should do whatever I wanted, so I read Garfield books and stuff about dinosaurs. Needless to say, I didn't last real long in the gifted students class.

I think it was just a misunderstanding. She might feel sensitive about things that have happened in the past- (we probably all have difficult histories ). I see this kind of thing happening to myself at times; if I don´t quite understand an interaction, I assume the worst, based on past history. I´m not saying this is definitely what happened here, but it could be possible.

Yes it was definitely a misunderstanding. I don't know why she reacted like that, maybe past experiences like you said, or maybe she thought I was lying, I just said that I often don't explain clearly and am often misunderstood (which is true), and I also told her the truth when I explained the reason why I mentioned this shortcoming/issue of mine, that I was feeling the conversation was becoming somewhat antagonist, like arguing for the sake of arguing, and I thought it would make the "atmosphere" less tense if I admitted that sometimes I have trouble explaining whatever I am trying to explain clearly ... I'm not even sure if I am making myself clear right now.

This is just one more time for me where someone totally misunderstands something I said, that's what happens if I try to "lighten the atmosphere", or be funny, or whatever.

I just wish she would understand that many of us here are on the spectrum, and some of us are not too good with social skills (including me obviously). And I was very upset to be accused of playing someone, I don't do that, and I don't think I could even if I tried, its the other way around, I am the one who gets played because I am too naive.

And thanks for addressing the issue Morgana, I really appreciate.