How do you feel about "invisible" autistics?

Post Reply New Topic

I would say that I admire people who are autistic yet show little or no sign of it because they are obviously making a great effort to 'fit in'.

As we know, people who are on AS can suffer terribly at times and if someone announces they have a diagnosis of autism yet seem NT then we should be sympathetic to them because they have had to go through the mill a'plenty.

Even very mild autism or Asperger's can present serious problems despite such sufferers being able to function in society, so I don't think we should play down the less sever side of autism.

I hate how "mild" gets brushed off as not really any problems.

My husband passes on the surface. The crack start showing up after you are with him more than once. His cutting food into teeny tiny pieces. His Aspie monologue. His ignoring you when you talk to him because his transitioning skills are s**t. The zillion sensory issues that exhaust him. The flat affect. The utter lack of any finesse in social skills. Horrible executive functioning skills that have cost him friendships and jobs.

The never ending cycle of rejection, rejection, rejection because he doesn't fit in because he has no clue how to fit in. That leads to his anxiety and depression.

I get that he's not wearing a helmet, adult diaper, biting himself and can communicate. But there is a huge chunk of the general population who are functioning above that level. Does that mean we have no real issues to b***h about?

If autism is truly a spectrum, then anyone that gets placed anywhere on the spectrum should be recognized has having problems. If the only people "who truly have problems" are so low that they need 24 hour supportive care, maybe the diagnosis should be broken up again. Leave the diagnosis for those people, and come up for another term for the rest.

Just because you don't notice a problem from the get go with another, doesn't mean there are none.

Hear, hear, Tawaki, well said.




(Sidenote: I confess I got your name wrong ("Tanaki") in another thread, too late to edit now, sorry about that!)

These thread trouble me. They tend to foster a belief that one must have the proper pedigree to be on the spectrum. There are those who dismiss the pain and struggle of others just because they different. The diversity wars delegitimize those of us without a formal diagnosis. We are called posers by some in this community and a**holes by the rest of the world.

I am a lucky man. I came from a good family, got a good education, made a bunch of money and was able to walk away from the world at an early age. Does this remove me from the spectrum? Does my constant effort to find ways to survive in this world make me irrelevant on this site?

There are those who can find ways to pass and understand what they see. There are others all to happy to blindly go down the same old path of blaming those damn NTs, and screw you posers.

I am not trying to insult all the great insight given by people on this thread. I learn from their experiences and incorporate it into my daily life. For that, I am truly grateful.

Finding someone who can talk about Aspergers without spreading misinformation is like finding someone who is without sin.

These threads trouble me too, goatfish57. Because the starting premise is always a sweeping assumption based on...what and whom, exactly? And when people say things like "They aren't very affected and spread misinformation" -- first of all I always want to ask that person "How do you know they 'aren't very affected'?" Who exactly said that, name names. Or is it an assumption? And "misinformation" -- that depends on what is being said, exactly, and the criteria of what constitutes "misinformation."

It is misinformation for someone to say "People with Asperger's tend to be mostly red-haired and above 5'7 tall"?

Of course it is. However, does anyone see anyone saying anything that's clearly misinformation like this? I haven't seen much that would fit the term.

But is it misinformation for someone to say "Yes I get overwhelmed by noise and crowds, although I haven't been diagnosed yet"?

Not really. This person is not really saying anything radical that could completely mislead everyone seeking information.

Seriously there are an awful lot of accusations of this kind of thing based on pretty much assuming and accusing people of not being for real or not being "autistic enough"...

I think the medical profession has the attitude that people with 'mild' autism need to look after themselves because it is assumed they are able, more or less, to function in society.

But this is probably far from the truth because the nature of being autistic means it is very difficult to overcome the social barriers an autistic has to overcome in order to get some advice and help. I suppose the assumption is that because there is plenty of information on the net and in books, etc., self-help is something within reach of most autistics, but again this seems to overlook the tendency of people on the AS to stick to 'what they know' and be very reluctant to try new ways of behaving.

The attitude they have doesn't matter.

What matters is what they can prescribe as cures. Can your doctor prescribe six sessions of speech therapy and twelve sessions of occupational therapy based on a new diagnosis of Autism to someone that is 50 years old? A prescription is useless if nobody is willing to pay for it.

http://www.asha.org/Advocacy/state/Stat ... -Mandates/
Most of these mandates specify that services are for children. Good luck getting insurers to pay for services to older adults.

I relate to this so much. I always used to think I was an amazing communicator, and everyone else just sucked. Look at how CLEAR I was! Look at how UNAMBIGUOUS I was!

...

yeah. That was me, not them.

its just indicative of the way a spectrum works.

That's my point.

You either cough up the money for private treatment or accept you will have to fend for yourself. Here in the UK it's not easy to get an official diagnosis and it's obvious why: the NHS are obliged to offer 'official' autistics services and support which cost money and in view of the way NHS mental services in the UK have been starved of funds for years they are not going to hand out diagnosis easily unless they are dealing with pretty bad cases, particulary with children.

This means there will still be many cases where the person concerned needs support but isn't entitled to it.

Unfortunately, there are probably quite a few cases of people going for years without being diagnosed due to a failure on the part of medical practitioners to identify autistic traits and by the time a person does realize they may be on the AS and receive a proper diagnosis they may have reached a fairly mature stage of life. They may well have adopted coping mechanisms over the years with which to manage their traits but had they been identified at a much earlier stage would, doubtless, have benefited greatly by it.

By this stage they may well be 'left out to dry' by the medical services involved because the individual seems to be 'coping' well enough.

Either way, you are on your own.

by definition, yes. it gets slightly more complicated though because it's not a simple linear scale. some people are clearly recognizable as autistic to anyone acquainted with autism, but do just fine nonetheless. some people are not easily recognizable as autistic even by people you would expect to be familiar with autism, but have serious psych issues and can't hold down a job anyway and so on. so there's little correlation between visible implications and the entirety of all implications of autism for any given person. which can be very confusing, and that's something that not everybody is aware of and that not everybody takes into account when comparing themselves to other people

i think that when there's something that feels like a ball and chain dragging you down your whole life all the time, it's easy to fall into the trap of believing that anyone who doesn't suffer from that particular problem is better off than you, especially when whatever other problems the other person does suffer from are less visible. it's not something to be encouraged (it's bad for anyone's self-esteem anyway. it's just like comparing yourself in the morning to a photoshopped model. oranges and apples), but i think it's understandable, and i think everybody suffers from that effect to an extent

think of facebook, for instance. everybody's life is happy and full and interesting and exciting on facebook, even if in reality their job sucks, they're fighting with their spouse and so on. and i do think most people get depressed at least to an extent because of that dissonance, because their daily life is not as pretty as other people's facebook

Based on what has gone on here in the the past negative assumptions about intent are natural, but making assumption about somebody's assumptions is not a good thing

I think some people forget the internal struggle that goes on inside the minds and hearts of the invisibles. They are better at hiding it, that's true, but it is there.

This is (maybe?) even tougher for those who spend most of their lives undiagnosed and unaware of the autism versus the invisibles who did get diagnosed early. As an earlier poster said, our autistic traits are not invisible, they are just mislabeled as being something else by NT's and, in the undiagnosed, by ourselves. Smart, stuck up, shy, mean, aggressive, argumentative, blunt, poor people skills, being a b***h or a**hole, etc. etc..

Usually we are semi-oblivious to the fact we are thought of this way or even have a problem until it explodes in our face by losing jobs, customers, friends etc.. Even then we tend to think it was the other persons fault, not ours.

Invisible I may be, but my struggle has been and is very real. Attitudes that we are somehow not entitled to say we are on the spectrum because we haven't met some arbritrary measure of suffering that someone else thinks is the right amount make being autistic even harder.

Enough people in our lives already deny our diagnosis when we finally do get diagnosed, and we already have spent enough time doubting ourselves, self recriminating ourselves and in some cases maybe even questioning our very sanity before we got the diagnosis without other autistics invalidating us or telling us we are not worthy.

Ok, so a bit of a rant there ... personal experience

ASPartOfMe, you don't think a statement like "I do sometimes get annoyed due to the fact that they arent affected very much" is an assumption?

Saying outright "they don't get affected very much" about someone the OP is labelling an "invisible" autistic who, again I quote "doesn't seem to be affected" is pretty much definitive of an assumption.

If someone walks up to me and says "You don't get affected that much by your autism," wooh that's about as much a complete assumption based on nothing as it can get.

And you're saying I'm making assumptions about the OP's assumptions? Thanks for the support. It's pretty clear cut to me.

Every time someone comes on here and makes sweeping statements, invalidating other people's diagnoses without ever having met those people or gotten closer to anything about what really goes on in their lives, those are assumptions of the utmost kind.

People make that brand of assumption around here on a regular basis -- one person making posts about high functioning people having it easy or the fact that someone got married and got a job must surely mean there is something wrong with their diagnosis/the clinician can't be an expert....these are pretty clearly the definition of "an assumption."

Because the person posting that kind of stuff -- the stuff this thread started with, had actually no true information at all about the person they're thinking of.

I'm not sure why you're picking holes in that; it's one of the clearer things about any of this.

there's all that, but i think the main point here is that the op lacked understanding about something, and apparently recognized that it was something to be probed and questioned, and then asked others in good faith about it, simply stating their own sentiment while at it (with an implied assumption, but not an implied intent, i believe). which, unless proven otherwise, i see as a constructive thing to do, and i imagine the op has a better understanding now than they did before. well, i know i have a better understanding of this now than i did before