An uneven cognitive profile and fragile self worth

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My off-the-wall guess is that you are intelligent. But due to one or more adverse conditions your intelligence will dramatically degrades at times. These conditions may be your state of stress, side effects of medication, lack of sleep, sickness or infections, etc.

On the WAIS (Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale), I scored above average on all the verbal tests, average in social skills and abominably on the block design test, with a big zero. The tester was really nasty about it, swiping the blocks off the desk and saying, "Well, obviously that's not one of your strengths." Obviously, indeed! I got no help at all! This was the woman who, ironically, made referrals for the Disabled Student Services. If I had a problem, I needed help, not condescending attitudes.

<70 on the non-verbal tests I've tried, > 140 on the verbal .

If you repeat the test and come up with very different scores each time, then that would be the cause.

Aspies will score high is some area and poorly in others. Sometimes the scores in certain areas may be off the charts. That is the way we are built. But repeated tests results should be somewhat consistent for each element.

On verbally based tests, I score between 130 and 150. On performance tests, I do terrible. I wonder how I ever learned anything involving spatial skills. How did I learn to play tennis or drive a car when the tests showed I was obviously incapable of doing anything of that type? I was told I would never do anything, so why try?

Sounds like bad advice. I have driven a car for over 50 years. I have driven around a million miles so far. It has become an almost automatic function. Practice makes perfect. My skills are still improving the more I drive. Just the other day I was driving and I saw a blur, my foot went off the gas and onto the brake. My eyes focused on the blur. It was a deer. I pressed on the brake just hard enough to come to a complete stop a foot from the deer. My eyes looked into the rear view mirror and gaged the movements of the truck behind me, to make sure it was also slowing down. Automatic reactions in a blink of the eye.

Two of the senses are involved. These are proprioception and vestibular. Those with proprioceptive hyposensitivity have difficulty knowing where their bodies are in space and are often unaware of their own body sensations, for example, they may not feel hunger. They bump into objects and people stumble frequently and have tendency to fall. They have a weak grasp and drop things.

The vestibular system is a complex sense that provides a perception of bodily position, motion, and gravity. It
Imbalance, stumbling, difficulty walking straight or when turning.
* Clumsiness or difficulty with coordination. This can lead to tripping in hallway, and our inability to play sports
* Tendency to look downward to confirm the location of the ground.
* Tendency to touch or hold onto something when standing, or to touch or hold the head while seated
* Can cause one to be “gravitationally insecure” – anxious if their feet leave the ground. This can produce an extremely uncomfortable feeling when upside down which can result in terror when riding a roller coaster in an amusement park, terror when trapped in a moving elevator, and fear of flying on an airplane, or skydiving
* Disoriented after spinning, jumping or running
* Carsickness, motion sickness, and nausea

In many cases, these senses can be improved by exercise. For example sports like gymnastics, swimming, wrestling can improve these skills. For me the best tool that help me was hanging from monkey bars and swinging like a monkey for hours and hours during recess in elementary school.

I'm definitely not dumb but I am defective when it comes to living life

^That puts it well.

When I underwent a neuropsychology examination years ago they administered parts of the WAIS-IV and other tests to me. For the most part my scores were either extremely high or shockingly low. I topped out at 99.6% and bottomed out at 3%.

The surprising thing for me was how poor my processing speed was and that it was expected that people would have developed strategies for some of the puzzles. I kind of just impulsively did the puzzles without thinking.

I had thought I was good at organizing information but in the tests I was horrible at it. (Granted, it wasn't like they let me spend 15 minutes to think things through.) Turns out I was getting through in life because while I was poor at organizing or prioritizing, I was ridiculously good at recall memory. Reminded me of growing up and being surprised at my peers being able to finish books for class so quickly (compared to my snail's pace).

All the emotional, social and social tests that they gave me (TASIT)? I knew I wasn't good at those but I didn't think I was as terrible as the results showed.

These tests were how they ended up diagnosing me with Asperger's and another condition and I was 33 at the time. I don't know if all the things I was awesome at were baked in with the autism or if they were finely honed as compensating skills. Probably both.

It kind of sucks knowing that there are skills and abilities that most people have and take for granted while you've been developing coping mechanisms your whole life for and will never intrinsically get.