10 Jun 2012, 12:28 pm
10 Jun 2012, 1:40 pm
pokerface wrote:
Not being able to filter information is just one aspect of aspergers. It doesn't cover the whole condition.
Tuttle wrote:
I've described my AS to people before as saying the central component seems to be a lack of filtering. It's an incomplete description, but in my case it seems to be the central part of it.
Yeap. It doesn't explain the whole Asperger, but it describes very well how I feel a part of it. I was talking in this same forum with another person who had similar symptoms to me. He was diagnosed with ADHD too (whose symptoms in adults overlap some Asperger ones). I was just googling now for 'brain+filter' and I come to this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7132829.stm, related to ADHD too. So it looks like if you have Asperger and filtering problems, you should have some ADHD symptoms too, that's true in my case. It's like a nowhere land between AS and ADHD. Or perhaps it's a subgroup inside AS that's close to ADHD and where lack of filtering is a very important part of it.
There's many different Aspergers, and there's not a clear classification of them (besides the thinking in pictures-words-and so thing or the hight-low functionning).
OliveOilMom wrote:
My flapping of hands and waving arms and jumping is not in any way an AS symptom. It's pretty much part of something that ladies in the Deep South sometimes do to show that we are excited or high spirited or perky or whatever we want to show that we are at the moment. It's usually accompanied by loud exclamations of excitement. You can usually always observe this behavior at college football teams in the stands of whichever team scored, down here. Many, many of us Southern ladies don't give a rats hind end about football, but when watching the game with our men we certainly act like we do. You can also observe it when someone tells her close friend or family member that she's getting married/pregnant/asked to go out with a popular guy/made cheerleader or any number of those types of things. The display of excitement usually ends with both ladies jumping and doing the arm movements, then putting their hands over their mouths and making even louder noises of joy, and then a spontaneous hug and possibly crying. That's not AS at all.
Yeap. I know what you're talking about. Though, to be honest, I thought it was an stereotype from american movies!! !
In Europe is all about looking self-confident, smart and cool. Men and women. Even in College. When people see all those cheerleader scenes, they ask themselves: 'but is this real? they really volonteer for that?' 
OliveOilMom wrote:
I wasn't dx'd until my 40's and it's only been a few years. I always thought that anything I did that was odd was just something I did that was odd. Never gave it much thought. It was only after being dx'd that I started noticing things and putting them together. Even now, at 48, I'm still noticing things and will have a little "aha moment" when I see that my reactions etc aren't exactly like someone elses and I figure out why and it's linked to the AS. Not all my oddities are linked to AS, some are just personality quirks, like everyone. But I can see my own a lot now. I don't notice them that much in others, possibly because it's still fairly new to me. If someone is quiet and withdrawn or seems uncomfortable, I usually either think "shy" or in some instances "just peculiar". It's only hours or days later that it might hit me that the person may have had AS. I guess thats a drawback of being dx'd late in life. 
Same feeling. I shaked my leg my whole life when I needed to relax: odd or AS?. I developped it because a very practical reason: I can sit down to work, shake my leg as much as I want and nobody will notice. It's just about keeping appearances. And when I stand up, I just lift slightly one foot, so I need to keep balance. Focusing on keeping balance is relaxing too (though is just the opposite of stimming, that involves mouvement). I always thought on it as something odd, nothing more. The problem here is that I don't know how a NT person feels: up to what point can he avoid doing a similar mouvement?. I can't avoid it (well, I can, of course, but it's really uncomfortable, that's because I use a 'discreet' way) .
I would like to live as a NT person for a day. It has to be a curious experience.
10 Jun 2012, 11:18 pm
