Not an Aspie or NT

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Simple. When you are doing routine things your brain can bypass those parts of the brain that handle executive function, which isn't always a good idea because, whenever you run across something that deviates even slightly from the routine executive function has to kick in, and when yours functions non-normatively, this may present a problem.

When you are stressed, your ability to cope with novel situations is impaired, and dysfunction is almost inevitable.

Niall I agree with most of what you say, but I want to add that although I understand and agree it is good to teach children and adults to have skills to fit in, up to a point, and get things done for themselves, it is a dangerous illusion---which I think you are kind of saying too---to pretend that that creates some kind of assimilation.

What I read somewhere that stuck with me is you can teach a child to answer every question correctly as part of a pragmatic language curriculum within the specific situation with a professional. Every typical child on the playground, and in the classroom, will nonetheless pick that child out as different, and deviant unless adults are willing to be and teach tolerance, and they will do so almost instantaneously!

So yes, it is a dangerous illusion to pretend that we know enough to make everyone the same, even if it were desirable. Which it is not.

Tell me, do you have any idea why people keep trying to pretend that aspiring to normal is best, rather than accepting and appreciating individual selves and differences and similarities and commonalities and things that seem they should matter more? I keep running into this, the pressure to pretend and to try to be "normal" and the effort is killing me. But to stop trying would lose me a lot, too. How do you manage this contradiction?

I find that incredibly difficult to manage. I was reading a blog post somewhere comparing trying to pass as NT as like running emulator software. It will work, to a point, but it will use massive amounts of processing power, will never work to the point where it looks exactly like what you are trying to emulate, and it's liable to crash without careful management (crash meaning shutdown or meltdown).

At one level, I think it's vitally important to try to learn some of the relevant social skills - to be able to read at least the gross nonverbal communication , for example, in order not to come across as too "creepy". If you read the core diagnostic criteria for AS, and then compare it with lists of what allistics, especially female allistics, find "creepy", you will see massive overlap. On the other hand, getting things like eye contact right is a fracking nightmare, for me at least, and that will always come across as odd. One of the things I'm finding most difficult to handle at the moment is that I have had a series of failures socially, most of it related to my inability to emulate NT nonverbal communication ("dog-talk", when I'm feeling particularly resentful). I know that the only way I'm going to get it right is to practice, but every time I practice I'm likely to make someone else uncomfortable.

Which I suppose leads me to why I think there is so much pressure to conform. Diagnosed or not, we get these messages about how important it is to fit in from an early age, and many of those now diagnosed as children are now being put through those trained seal "therapies" I mentioned (which, if the Markrams are correct, will be counterproductive). If we don't conform, the odds of us ending up single and unemployed (both things rated as very important in most NT society) are pretty high. A disproportionate number of us live with our parents as adults (and "independence" is also rated very highly) and employment rates are probably no higher than 25%.

I see very few ways of managing that. It's probably possible for most of us to learn much of the nonverbal signalling, for example, but using all of it accurately is another matter, and it takes practice, which is always going to be a damaging process. That fact alone is enough for me to want the NTs to meet us half way. My experience is that most expect us to do 95% of the work, and resent their 5%.

This seems to be the difference between everybody being different but getting along and everyone having to be like the Borg, but it's going to be hard work in the meantime. In the long run, I think it's better than an assimilationist strategy because younger generations won't have to go through some of the crap we do.

These arent exclusive to AS and most importantly they are not universal. In some psych disorders there are neural signatures. That is you could identify a schizophrenic brain from a fairly low res scan by looking t dopaminergic activity etc. 2 Autistic brains however can appear to be completely and utterly different. Theres no universality. If there were common neurological markers the process of diagnosis would have been rendered foolproof. As it is its still dominated by subjectivity on a mass blundering scale


See above



You misunderstood me. My inability to socialise isnt MY problem. Its caused by societal mores. I have plenty of socially unacceptable traits that I see no reason to change because they make me happy. Im talking about traits which make life unpleasant. My problems seeing the weorld from alternative points of view is not some kind of heroic attribute to be celebrated. Its a symptom of cognitive rigidity

Most of our social problems are symptoms of underlying dysfunctions anyway. Taking things literally, processing speech, taking things personally. There are neurological differences to explain it all/

I also believe that you speak like a beaten man. We CAN improve. In some areas i'll admit that theres little we can do but there are many aspects of our character that can be modulated to maximise our potential for happiness



More neurotypical??? Not at all. I want to be more functional this is all. As autists and people on the higher end of the spectrum we have 2 options: Attempt to fit in; Reject NT society entirely. I want to become a university lecturer and as such the latter will not get me hired for very long. I dont endear myself to people and I tend to make enemies very very easily. If I want to succeed in that world I will need to be "More NT".

Its easy to have a romantic view of this. Be yourself. Dont conform etc. These aphorisms and pithy exhortations are only useful if your place in society is secure. I dont have family and I dont have friends. I cant afford to go about making even more enemies. Perhaps you can. Thats wonderful - you're in a truly fortunate position if you can

Binaryodes: you made a mess nesting your quotes, thus putting words into my mouth.

You wrote

True, but the point about research like this is that it shows a significant tendency. I agree diagnosis is subject to massive subjectivity, but what you seem to be saying is that because it's subjective that the phenomenon doesn't exist, which seems equally faulty.





"Improve" by whose standards? Logically, this is like saying that because I can learn to swim I can become a fish. I'm a rotten swimmer, too, but that doesn't make me somehow inferior to someone who is a good swimmer, or to a fish, it just makes me less good at swimming. You speak as if happiness comes from being like everyone else. I disagree. I think it comes from being who I am. If others are going to marginalise me and discriminate against me because of that it is not because I am inferior: it is because they are bastards.

There may well still be things I can learn that will enable me to better relate to allistics, but they will take practice and hard work, and I will run the risk of making someone else uncomfortable every time I make the attempt. If the allistics and the curebies hate me for it, that is their failing, not mine, even if they will make it my problem.



As it happens, my position is incredibly insecure, and I have come to my views on the subject as a result of endless effort and routine rejection. I have no family and very few friends. I have no hope of becoming a lecturer. In present NT society they expect us to "assimilate or be destroyed", as someone put it on another thread the other day. I know this. The problem is that if we cave in to this every aspie coming after us will have to make the same impossible decision, leaving us open to the likes of Auti$m $queaks and their eugenics policies.

I'm not talking about making enemies. I'm talking about self-advocacy, and an acknowledgement that I am different. I will deal with the fact that they are not like me, just as I will deal with the fact that a schizophrenic is not like me, and I will try to moderate some of those differences, but I do expect the same damn courtesy.

Autism is a spectrum which means that it isnt a single disorder but rather a continuum of neurotypes and neural correlates producing a comparatively narrow set of behaviours. This is what im saying. As such defining oneself as autistic is like defining oneself as neurotypical. Its not EXACTLY the same mind - but the range of behaviours thinking styles and neurological configurations is similar.

The other point is that all psychological conditions are fabricated insofar as psychs arbitrailty group behavioural characteristics. We could just as easily create entirely new spectra and continuums based on differing criteria.




All im trying to say is that there are aspects of the autistic neurotype that are dysfunctional. Its a disorder. I dont buy into the idea that autism is somehow just a difference. There are some extremely severe cognitive and neurologicla dysfunctions inherent to the condition that render life on the spectrum painful. These arent just a result of an NT world. Meltdowns Shutdowns Emotional/Sensory overload and all the comorbid conditions that present in individuals can render life exceptionally differnt. Even if autists were the majority our neurology would still rack us synapse to dendrite at every turn.

Imrpovement is about "Maximising ones potential for happiness" as I stated. The standards are our own. Ive already made it abundantly clear that im not advocating that we become more NT. Its about curbing the traits which make our lives harder. The effort is for my own wellbeing and noone else's.




Agreed

Fair enough, but in this case there are known differences in neurology underlying those behaviours, allowing us to make a classification - a loose classification, and a flawed classification (both false positives and false negatives, it's true), but still a classification. As a naturalist, that's all classifications are - you can find typical examples, but it's very grey around the edges.



I think this goes to the root of why we disagree. Okay, we have meltdowns (well, most of us do, and I certainly do). What causes meltdowns? The short answer is overstimulation. Why are we overstimulated? Because allistic-designed environments are overstimulating. How do we cut down on meltdowns? The trait can't be curbed. Cut down on the stimulation and provide places where aspies can get away from the stimulation. In the same way I think it's reasonable to have pedestrian crossings that beep when it is safe to cross a road and put in tactile paving so that blind people can find the crossing in the first place, and to cut down on strobing lights so that epileptics have fewer seizures.

The list could go on. Stimming is basically harmless, but it makes many allistics uncomfortable. Should we stop stimming (increasing the likelihood of a meltdown), or should we get allistics to accept that some people stim and neither it nor they are dangerous? Should we try to learn as much of their nonverbal communication as possible? Yes, probably, but they need to understand that we are not always going to get it right, some of us find it harder to learn than others, and that emulator software is as buggy as a nest of cockroaches.

Ah but youve picked the environmental response examples to the exclusion of the internally generated ones. An autistic world would have to be wrapped in cotton wool to be suitable. My misophonia is triggered by somerthing as innocuous as a housemate singing or a classmate breathing too heavily. My emotional overloads and sensory overloads are also caused by a diverse range of things.

Cognitive rigidity is not a positive trait. Difficulty adapting to change. Prospagnosia. You also didnt mention the many comorbid conditions.
My opinion is that AS is part difference part disorder. Neurotypicals fare better because they are more adaptive. A successful society has to be built on fluid change. A society created and run by autistics would probably be far less accepting of difference than youd expect. Just look at the obsession with "Professional diagnosis" that abounds here. Then theres the hammer and tong devotion to the NT Aspie dichotomy. Aspies here stereotype Nt's just as much as they us. Ezra mentioned how he went to an ASD school and did not observe that autists were some sort of rarefied tier of humanity. They were just as likely to bully and posture. Yet there is a tendency to laud autists as being a better class of human

Ugh I sound like im attacking autists. This is not my intention. I just think its dangerous to treat ASD's as pure difference. People on the spectrum do themselves a gross disservice by doing this as NT's then have an excuse to discriminate - nay they have a mandate to discirminate as the super evolved ape mindset that is admittedly more prevalent amongst their ranks dictates that difference = danger

Another reason why I'm questioning my diagnosis is because I rarely experience sensory overload. I only get sensory overload if I'm very tired or I have a bad headache.

For what they're worth, my scores on online quizes indicate that. On the quiz that said autism starts with a score of 32 or above, I scored 31.

On the test that allows for 200 points on each side, NT and Aspie, I scored just about right down the middle on both. The graphic that the quiz produces using the numerical values obtained from the quiz answers made something that looked REALLY strange, obviously not NT, but not Autistic either.



My therapist asked me what I thought that meant. I suggested "definite austistic elements, but high functioning?"

He said "Very high functioning", and yet still confirms months later he believes I'm on the spectrum.

Yeah, I know the quizes are only indicative, not diagnostic, and that they can be wrong (Alex Plank says he scored as an NT).

Still, when my suspicions and those of professionals are supported by the quiz results...

The difficult part is that despite what coping mechanisms I've developed, I still don't understand some simple things like how to form normal, involved friendships. And the worse part is that I can see it, see what others have, and know that how they achieve it is a total mystery to me. It's royally frustrating.