For those with classic autism

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I feel weird on this site for similar reasons. All of my issues are related either to AS or to the clashing of my AS traits with the NT traits of everyone around me. I don't have social anxiety, and I don't seek out friendships and romantic relationships, and I don't feel lonely being alone, and I don't feel that I am missing out by not wanting to or not being able to participate much in the NT world.

Sometimes, I get the idea that I have offended people on this forum with my views that overzealous adaptation to the NT world can be damaging for autistic people, resulting in many of the comorbids that become just as problematic as the autism.

This is a good point, and one that I agree with (I think: if you meant it in the way I took it). I don't believe autistic people should have to shy away from the world, nor do I believe they should have to conform to it. The ideal world, IMO, is one where autistic people are free to be their autistic selves while being fully accepted as valuable human beings just the way they are.

Someone's gonna flip at me for saying this, but, I do believe the issue is that by acknowledging that people with classic autism have different (not worse, just different) issues, people with AS feel as if we're saying they don't have issues, when they do. They want to believe that we're all the same when we're just not.

I have no idea who has the "worse" issues. I just know that people with AS (especially the self-proclaimed "mild Aspies") deal witht the world differently than I do.

Exactly!

I don't think they are the same, just part of the same spectrum.

Not everyone with Autism feels like this? I just assumed everyone did, because I do. I don't even pretend to want to be part of anything outside of my bubble.

What if we forgot the idea of AS/HFA/LFA entirely, and asked for a new forum about non-socializing-related autism issues?

I do kind of get that it's annoying for some people that everything seems to be about socializing. I don't really see it as a big issue for me. I'm odd, I know I'm odd, but I've done enough theoretical study to know what's going on, I can communicate using language, and it works well enough for my introverted purposes. My big issues are not social; they're executive function, sensory, cognitive, information-processing issues, and a few of the more complicated ADLs.

I don't know what we'd call such a subforum, but the good, useful topics keep on getting lost among all the social stuff--which, sure, is important; but... if that's not your big issue, then it makes a lot of sense that you might feel left out.

That Aspies want to socialize and auties don't is kind of... arbitrary. There are extroverts and introverts in both groups. The only statement I'd be willing to make with any comfort is that if a person doesn't look obviously autistic, they are probably more likely to be pressured to act NT, and more likely to have it drilled into their heads that they "ought" to have friends and be normal.

If that's what you want to do, go ahead and do it, but I'm not sure it would meet my needs. But I'm just one person, so there's no reason to meet one person's needs, as long as most people's are being met.

I find many of the threads on WP are very hard to relate to and it's kind of depressing. Everyone seems to be doing much better than me.

If you work or have worked or live on your own you can't say you've got it worse than me. No matter how hard I work at it nothing will ever change.

All the advise I get is like someone is giving advice to someone with AS. It doesn't help and further depresses me.

I mean I fail to take care of myself at times and all my health issues are proof of that. My sensory issues and fear of change is intense. Anything can set me off. Yet most people don't even know what I mean when I say fear of change.

I agree. I don't think anyone said that though. I think the whole point of this entire thread has been missed and that is that there are some issues that mild AS people (who form the majority here, it seems) have that are different than some of the issues that more severe people here have. Saying that social anxiety is rare in classic autism is not the same as saying "aspies want to socialize and auties don't".

I can really relate to this thread. I have no desire whatsoever to judge people's issues because I know issues are issues to those who have them regardless of mild, moderate, severe. Still, there are mild folks here who DO have a good paying job, who DO have a husband or a wife, who DO have a family, who DO have friends (despite social anxiety and social awkwardness issues), and who CAN actually pull off occasionally normalcy. I have none of this, and I don't think it is possible for me to attain any of this. I also don't think a lot of people on here who do have these things can understand exactly where I am coming from (and vice versa, I'm sure) and how the severity of symptoms impact me on a daily basis.

It would be nice if there were a whole subforum entitled "Not Mild". Then, people who have moderate or severe issues in many areas could relate to each other about everyday issues without wading through so many threads in the general discussion.

I would start a thread called "Fzzzzzzz: How an incandescent lightbulb fried my brain for 5-7 days". Then, "There and back again: Why I can only go outside once a day every other day". Then, "Burn(out), baby, burn(out): Long-term neurological meltdown and shutdown of IAEA proportions". Then, "Human beings: The worst sensory overload evar".

But then again, such a "Not Mild" subforum might be considered too divisive.

Heh, yeah; besides, how are you supposed to figure out who's "not mild"? After all, I'm really good with language, so I'm not even affected in that area; but I utterly suck at executive function and sensory processing, so those are moderate-level issues; and of course when I'm really overwhelmed I might be considered severe just because I can't do what I can usually do... How the heck do you describe "mild" when we're not only different from each other, but different from skill to skill? That guy who doesn't have any really bad sensory problems and his major issue is that he can't find a girlfriend... maybe he also has serious problems at school because he can't get the connotations in the reading assignments no matter how hard he tries, and takes multiple choice questions so literally that he spends half the time double-checking and fails the test. I don't think you can categorize that.

I should probably remind everybody that just like it's possible to be proud of being high-functioning (whatever that means), it's also possible to be proud of being low-functioning (whatever that means)--i.e., saying, "You mild people don't know what it's like to REALLY be autistic," kind of discounting their experiences because you're "worse off" somehow. I don't think it's a conscious thing. It's more like just absorbing the idea from our culture that says that disability is bad, therefore more disability must be worse; therefore living with more disability must make you somehow more courageous (or something). But of course that's wrong; disability is neutral, and the severity of it doesn't really impact subjective quality of life.

The majority of the spectrum will be mild, just because the spectrum is the extreme end of the autism-traits bell curve, and there are more people toward the NT center than at the autistic extreme of our little section of it. Feeling outnumbered may not have anything to do with WP catering to people with less-severe autism... It may just be because mild traits are so much more likely than severe ones, so the people with the severe traits ARE outnumbered.

i think i posted this but i can find it anywhere but anyway:

isn't classic autism non-verbal with mental retardation. you do not seem non verbal to me and you have the cognitive capabilities to type.

Nope. Classic autism doesn't affect your ability to type, nor does it automatically render you non-verbal. This is just the ignorant view point of a lot of people who think that autism is the same in every person. It's a spectrum so even people with classic autism differ from one another as do people with AS.

i know that autism is a spectrum but i was referring to literature on 'classic autism'. the information that i have read suggests that they are non-verbal and have some form of mental retardation i.e. low functioning!