Why is As/HFA seen to be more ret*d than bipolar ppl?

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AS is just like NT without the social instinct? Are you serious!? There is sooo much more to it.

I think "ret*d" needs to be retired too. It has become insulting slang, as all words for "intellectual/cognitive disability" eventually do. However, the only people who can actually retire it are members of the medical community. As long as the term "mental retardation" is still used by them as an actual medical term and put in peoples' medical records, we are stuck with it. Hearing it used a an insult when it does appear on the medical records of some people makes it all that much meaner to those people. Their mental state is an insult. I'd love to see "intellectual/cognitive disability" take the place of "mental retardation". There is generally a many year lag between a new term for this mental state being adopted and that new term being co-opted as slang. There is precedent for this. "Idiot" and "moron" used to be medical terms and they were retired (replaced with "mental retardation") and now exist only as insults. When a term has a dual life as both a legitimate diagnosis and an insult, it is hurtful.

The best case scenario would be for people to not see less intelligence as something mockable. But the human race is a long way from that.

Retiring "ret*d" as a medical term might make us feel like we've accomplished something; but whatever new term replaces it will simply become just as pejorative, if we don't challenge the fundamental perception that the public has of people with--well, whatever they're calling it nowadays--as basically less worthwhile than everybody else, to be treated much like cute little puppies at best and never taken seriously as real people.

I know there are people who are sick of being treated that way; and I know that those of us who are autsitic without cognitive delays and have been called "ret*d" as an insult, or been treated the same way by people who thought we were, have been prompted to think about exactly why the idea of "mentally ret*d" is such an insulting one, and what it means that anybody who's perceived to be slow gets treated as less than human.

There's two ways to go about trying to solve the problem. We could try to distance ourselves, say, "Hey, we're not ret*d," and leave anybody who is in the line of fire. Rats, meet sinking ship. On the other hand, we could join up with the people they call "ret*d" in saying, "Hey, jerkass, we're people, too." Does it really matter whether you're ret*d or not? Well, socially, anyway; it matters as far as education goes; but does it matter when it comes to whether or not people respect you and treat you decently? It shouldn't.

anbuend wrote:

When it comes to my general and specific cognitive functioning and my behavior, all I have are a million theories (my own and everyone else's) and no conclusions, so one more won't hurt. Keep in mind that I have never been officially diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder unless NVLD can truly be defined as an autistic spectrum disorder. I'm sure you know that many professionals and non-professionals alike believe NVLD is one and the same with Asperger's. For now, i'll allow the jury to remain out on that though. Since NVLD isn't yet a formal DX, i've only been Dx-ed (on Axis-I at least) with either LD-NOS or Mathematics Disorder. According to the results of my neuropsych evals, I do exhibit qualitative impairments in social interactions, but do not display any of the repetitive and stereotyped behaviors, activities and interests often associated with AS. While I personally disagree with the latter, the supposed lack of AS-associated behaviors, etc....was the reason I didn't meet the diagnostic criteria for AS. Whatever the case....i'm sorry if I led you believe that my issues in regards to things like daily self-care issues aren't common enough in people with ASD. What SEEMS different to me is the REASON for these issues.
In the case of most people with ASD, the problems they have with things like daily self-care tasks seem to stem from sensory, language/communication, social, psychomotor and/or executive functioning issues. The psychological/emotional response people with ASD may encounter due to difficulties with things like daily self-care tasks seems to be a secondary and rather natural manifestations of the aforementioned primary troubles. Generally speaking, this does not seem to be case with me. With some significant exceptions, (which I will mention later) the psychological/emotional pain I encounter when facing these tasks seems to be the primary reason why I often don't complete them and in most instances, don't even initiate them.



anbuend wrote:



I will now mention the "significant expections" I was referring to in the previous paragraph. Like enough people with ASD, (and in terms of visual-spatial deficits, i'd say people with AS/NVLD in particular) I have problems with countless tasks involving visual-spatial skills, particularily when these tasks involve a psychomotor component. So with that in mind, this is a major reason why I have problems flossing my teeth, and to a much lesser extent, brushing them. I am 40 y/o old and i've yet to master flossing no matter how many times both my parents and dental hygienists have shown me how to do it. I don't even bother trying anymore, because it's just too difficult and frustrating for me. While i'm much better at brushing, I don't even seem to be able to do that perfectly. However, I can do it well enough and I STILL brush much less than I should simply because I can't stand doing it. You might ask why I can't stand doing it. Well...it has nothing to do with finding the taste of the toothpaste unpleasant, the sensation of the brush, etc. During the times when i'm dealing with alot of depression, (which has been the better part of my adult life and much of my childhood) the psychic pain I feel is SO intense that I can barely stand being awake and conscious. When my mind is ENGAGED in, for want of an optimal term here, some "escapist" activity or thought, the pain is simply LESS intense and therefore relatively more tolerable. My mind seems COMPARATIVELY engaged and diverted from my psychological/emotional pain when i'm watching TV, reading, surfing the web, replying to a post on WP, playing video games, etc....The second I try to disengage by doing something like brushing my teeth, the psychic pain becomes overwhelming and all-but unbearable. In short, EVERY activity aside from the "escapist" types I mentioned seems to maximize my psychological anguish when i'm depressed. During the times when I haven't FELT depressed, things seem somewhat different but certainly not entirely so. And here's when things become even more odd in fact. Many of the activities I find to be MOST intolerable (again...strictly psychologically speaking) when I AM depressed become fairly easy when i'm NOT feeling depressed. Things like grocery shopping, banking, paying bills, buying clothes, etc.....But I STILL neglect the things I find comparatively easier when I am depressed. Things like brushing my teeth, maintaing a healthy diet and bathing. Now surely my resistance to these particular things is exacerbated when i'm depressed. And it's exacerbated because my mind is disengaged when brushing, trying to prepare meals/eating, bathing, etc....and i'm far more focused on my psychic pain then when i'm watching an episode of Law and Order or something. When i'm not feeling depressed, these activities just seem intolerably tedious and boring. Needless to say, I wind up eating eventually or I wouldn't be alive. But I procrastinate and often put off ALL of these things until the last possible moment. Sometimes I don't eat for days when i'm feeling depressed. Sometimes I don't brush my teeth or bathe for weeks whether i'm feeling depressed or not. As shameful as all this is to admit, it's been part of my modus operandi since childhood.

I was Dx-ed with Schizotypal personality disorder on four out the five neuropsych evals i've had. Some psychologists believe SPD is actually a form of mild schizophrenia. Whether it is or not....I certainly seem to display many, if not all, of the "negative" symptoms of schizophrenia which is why I think "Simple Schizophrenia"...aka...."Simple Deteriorative Disorder" might apply in my case. I suppose it's worth mentioning that anxiety is just as much of a problem for me, from the emotional standpoint alone of course, as depression, even when i'm NOT feeling depressed. Even during the times when I felt my best ( i.e....free of the hopelessness, despair, the feelings which tell me i'm more inferior in every way to every other human who has ever lived, etc....ad infinitum) the ANXIETY I feel when attempting to floss my teeth (and a million other visual spatial and/or psychomotor tasks) is too frustrating to bear. I've tried countless meds (not to mention talk therapy) over the years and nothing seemed to lessen either my depression or anxiety one bit. One psychiatrist prescribed Zyprexa because she felt I was exhibiting some psychotic signs which manifested from severe anxiety and panic attacks. Zyprexa is a pretty strong CNS depressant and even the smallest dose would knock me out cold for at least 12 hours. All in all, it seems fair to say I deal with alot of "psychological inertia". Maybe this can be truly defined as the type of autistic inertia you're referring to and I just perceive it otherwise. All I know is that my emotional problems seem to be the greater cause of my problems with things like daily self-care tasks. While the psychomotor, visual-spatial, social and executive functioning issues contribute to SOME significant problems I have with such tasks (like flossing my teeth and that's really the only thing in terms of daily self-care tasks in which my psychomotor/visual-spatial deficits play a a major role) I just can't see any reason to believe these things are the major contributing factor. Now I do believe my problems with executive functioning make it difficult for me to maintain a healthy diet (after all, that involves planning, organizing, strategizing, logisitics, problem-solving, etc....), I really don't think they impede my ability to PREPARE meals or eat per se.

anbuend wrote:




I would not dispute this. All i'm saying is that the CAUSES for my problems with things like daily self-care tasks seem alot different than other people with ASD. As i've already tried to demonstrate, the causes are similar in some aspects of daily self-care tasks, etc...But my emotional reactions TO THESE TASKS seems to BE the cause of these problems in most instances. Believe me, I would likely feel better about myself (at least to some degree) if I thought these problems were directly related to how my brain is wired. In that case, I would have little or no control over them. The only slight consolation I have in this respect is the fact that I lean towards a "hard" deterministic view of life. That is....I really find it hard to believe that humans have some quality which could TRULY be defined as "free will".

In other words, I DO believe the seemingly causative emotional reactions to these things are due to the way my brain is wired. Now I think some genuine element of "free will" MIGHT be involved in terms of what WE DO about our emotional/psychological problems. But if all our attempts at treating them through medications, therapies, etc....fail, then I don't believe we can just "will" them away. I don't recall ever "willing" my depression away in my life. It just sort of disappeared on it's own even when the circumstances of my life remained the same. The external circumstances of my life have never been dramatically different or "better" in terms of how I would personally define "better". Nonetheless....my depression went into hibernation mode for several years during my adult life. I am far more perplexed by the times I haven't felt depressed, since I had as many reasons to be depressed as I do during my darkest periods. I just seem to operate solely on the "pleasure principle". The less emotionally/intellectually pleasant I find a task, the more tedious and boring it is to me, the less I want to do it no matter how vital it is. When a task disengages my mind during times of depression, the psychic pain that comes as result of that disengagement is intolerable. All this doesn't just seem to be an autistic problem, rather, it appears to be a human problem in general. I'm sure many people don't find things like brushing their teeth and exercising especially pleasant, but they manage to do these things on a regular basis anyway. I, on the other hand, do not. All this makes me feel inexpressibly horrible about myself in spite of my determinism.


anbuend wrote:




You may be quite correct here, but this would strike me as highly incongruous if it's accurate. This reminds me of what Noam Chomsky once said when discussing his inability to understand the Marxist (actually this concept was developed by Engels, but no matter) concept of Dialectics. I might as well quote him directly to make it easier on myself:

"I mean, it's possible that these fields are beyond me, maybe I'm not smart enough or something. But that would have kind of a funny conclusion-it's nothing to do with me. That would mean that somehow in these domains people have been able to create something that's more complex than physics and mathematics-because those are subjects I think I could get to understand. And I just don't believe that, frankly: I don't believe that literary theorists or Marxian philosophers have advanced to some new intellectual level that transcends century after century of hard intellectual work".

I feel I have good insight into my problems insofar as they mirror the common NVLD characterisitcs as well as those that are usually present in the other mental disorders i've been diagnosed with. Now I don't have good insight (and neither does anyone else) into the far more severe learning (even if these learning problems are attributable to the NVLD syndrome and nothing else, I don't have good insight into why they SEEM so EXTREME in terms of NVLD-related learning problems) and memory problems I believe I have, but that's a whole other story. Even my psychologists claimed that my insight into my problems appears to be quite good. Thus....I really don't understand why "the mechanics of autism" you speak of would be so elusive to me. I'll tell you story here in order to illustrate the capacity for self-insight I believe I have. In a sense, I was self-diagnosed with NVLD when I was 14 years old. I never even heard the term non-verbal learning disability until I was 23. One day, I was reading a Random house encyclopedia my grandfather had at his house. Even at this age, (and long before) I knew there was something amiss with my brain and I was constantly seeking answers. Therefore, I was reading the entries in this encyclopedia about psychological disorders. The characteristics of one particular "disorder" really stood out and it was a major "Aha"! !! moment in my life. This so-called disorder was known as, "Immature-Inadequate personality disorder" and I guess some psychologists at the time the encyclopedia was published (probably 30 years ago or more) believed it was a valid personality disorder. The characteristics of this disorder were very similar, if not identical, to those we now associate with NVLD and AS. So I thought...."This is it!! !...I likely have an immature-inadequate personality disorder"! !! In spite of the fact that this alledged disorder was never (to the best of my knowledge at least) a formally/APA-accepted Dx, I continued to believe it fit me to a T. After my second neuropsych eval 12 years ago, the administering psychologist gave me a copy of Dr. Byron Rourke's "Nonverbal Learning Disabilites, the Syndrome and the Model". Between the time I first read about this "Immature-Inadequate" PD in the encyclopedia and the time I read Rourke's book, I heard little else about I-I PD. The following is from the Rourke book in question:

"Children and adolescents whose clinical pictures bear a striking resemblance to the social and behavioral characteristics of the NLD child include children with Turner's syndrome, Asperger's syndrome, Williams syndrome, Fragile-X syndrome and the so-called "inadequate-immature" delinquent described by Quay (1972)"

Now i'm not sure what Rourke is talking about in respect to the similar social and behavioral characteristics between people with William's syndrome and NLD/AS. While people with WS often exhibit an NLD-like "scatter" profile on IQ tests, it is usually very extreme since most, if not all, people with WS are in the MR range. But the SOCIAL and BEHAVIORAL characterisitcs themselves common in William's sydrome people seem almost diametrically opposite to those often associated with AS and "higher-functioning" (in terms of IQ at least) people with NVLD. In any event....I think I knew quite alot about myself at a very young age. So while i'm sure I could be missing quite a bit in terms of the "mechanics of autism" and how these dynamics manifest themselves in me, I don't understand why they would be so elusive to me when other aspects about myself (which don't seem any less difficult to grasp than the "mechanics of autism") were not. I don't know....maybe it's some weird compartmentalization on my part.....maybe it's a million things. In short.....you may be spot on here, you might be partially correct, or you may be entirely wrong. I have NO insight into that really. I know I have some extremely odd (I would say about as idiosyncratic as they come) ways of thinking about , perceiving and responding to, both myself and the world. But I do try my best to deal strictly within the realms of reality when it comes to all things. This means that I may not perceiving reality very well due to all these things which may grossly distort my view. That's precisely why I don't just sit here and stew in my own juices but instead try to seek further insight from intelligent people like yourself. I'm sorry if it seems like i'm disputing your ideas here, i'm really not. I just tend to question EVERYTHING, even my own most deeply-held ideas. The only thing I claim to be CERTAIN of is my own ignorance.


anbuend wrote:



I must admit to being at somewhat of a loss here. Can you give me some specific examples of when seemed like I believe my "Horus language" is different from people using "autism language"? The unknown properties in my brain include much of what i've written about in this post (and elsewhere) and the learning/memory problems I believe I have which seem too extreme and rare for ASD/NVLD people within my IQ ranges and measured memory abilities. Beyond these....I feel I have much in common with other Aspies/NLD-ers in terms of my social-emotional, psychomotor, executive functioning and perceptual problems. It's just that the latter problems have been FAR less disabling and torturous for me than the learning/memory problems and the emotional agony that has emnated from them whether they're real or at least partially, imagined.


anbuend wrote:




I've believed I was "really weird" since as far back as I can remember. I have believed i'm nothing like anyone else on this earth for most of my 40 years. Considering I was the ultimate outcast, "the last one picked on the team" and all that in Kindergarten and Elementary school, maybe these self-perceptions aren't all that difficult to understand. I know many other people with ASD/NVLD have dealt with exactly the same thing though. So again...it's more the exceptional and "occult" ( "occult" to all the neuropsych evals i've had) learning/memory I believe I have that make me feel so "weird" these days. But I still have some reasons to believe I have grossly exagerrated these learning/memory problems for some god-awful reason. My IQ and memory tests results are among these reasons. This is not to say I don't have a learning disability AT ALL, but maybe, just maybe, i've made a mountain out of a molehill where that's concerned.


anbuend wrote:



Well....I was told I fit the general pattern of NVLD when I was 23.....17 years ago. The psychologists didn't tell me much about it though, but to be fair to them, I didn't bother to ask them to. I was just too depressed at the time to really care and for whatever reason, I just didn't want to think about it at all. It was overwhelming and my IQ results on this first neuropsych eval I ever had were the lowest I have obtained. I just basically said, "well, i'm stupid and there's not much I can do about it" and fell into even a deeper depression as a result. A few years later, I decided to move in with my mother who was living thousands of miles away in the state I remain in to this day. I felt the move would represent a fresh start and a second chance in life. I enrolled in college at 26 and pretty much tried to forget all about the learning disability I was told I had three years before. That worked well enough for a spell and I was relatively happy and hopeful for the first time in my adult life. I felt I could achieve my dreams of becoming a psychologist or a marine biologist (I was undecided about all that) until I hit math and all subjects related to it. Not long after I started to notice how my memory SEEMED to work no matter what the subject (I have discussed that before and maybe i'll discuss it in more detail in another post since I now believe it's the most serious problem in my life and always has been) and everything went downhill from there.The rest is history and it would serve no purpose to share it here and now. I've said quite a bit for now anyway and I think i'll just stop now and wait for any reply you might have. I can neither take nor leave anything you said 100% either way. I'm just on the fence about everything in my microcosm right now and god only knows if i'll ever fall off of it. I would very much like to discuss the specifics of the learning/memory problems I believe I have with you if you'd be willing to do that.
It's not just mere curiosity which motivates this either. Even at my fairly advanced age of 40, I would love nothing more than to go back to college and obtain at least a BA/BS degree in something (psychology would be my first choice, but career-wise, it wouldn't be unless I actually plan on going beyond a BS/BA in psych) and if i'm going to do this, I want to start attending classes very soon (no later than Jan 2011.) Thus, i'd like to have as much insight as I can get in regards to what i'm up against (if anything more serious than my LD diagnosis already suggests) in terms of these possible learning/memory problems before making a decision about college. Ok....nuff' said for now....sorry!! !

Your own sister? That's just messed up. I know things like that go on, but still it sucks.

my mum used to say I was mad and "abnormal." I don't mind if she merely made a truthful statement, but she made it sound like a bad thing. My friends used to deny I was "weird". They were trying to be nice, but I prefer truthfulness.

Yes that and 'you're adopted'. My siblings were horrible to me, especially since I was undiagnosed but still much more different to them.
I saved all my meltdowns for that sister alone. Then she would call me psycho. And my mother wonders why I'm still having problems with her? She was so manipulative. She made the rest of the family think she was this little angel and I was making up stories about how she used to kick me and try to make me bleed.
Oh well, it's over. Although the family still doesn't believe me.

Because most people have no idea what autism actually is.