Can you tell whether a Member is an Aspie, or not?

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I didn't question him closely about it, since I have a terrible habit of being super-curious about everything, and asking a million questions. I know that I have to control it when I'm in a "therapy" session or all I end up doing is asking the therapist about them instead of talking about what I'm supposed to be talking about. I try not to allow myself to ask any questions at all because then I have a hard time stopping myself.

He doesn't have a website or anything like that. And no, he's not Tony Attwood. I'm in the US, and I believe Attwood lives in Australia. He said (in a nutshell) that people might come in with one or two symptoms, but not have any others, and pretty much EVERYONE has at least one symptom. He said something about men coming in saying that they thought they had AS because their wives complain that they aren't emotionally connected enough, and sometimes that's just the nature of their relationship, or two incompatible people and not AS.

In my own experience, I sometimes see people think that being shy is the same thing as having AS. And my doctor said that, he said "There are people who are just shy. And there are people who are just a little eccentric, and that's all there is to it, and it's normal and it's OK." I have a bunch of questions that I really would like to ask him, but one of the foremost questions is how he determines if people have a true social deficit caused by AS, or if the social difficulties are caused by environmental factors? For example, kids who are homeschooled all their lives tend to be socially inept simply because they aren't exposed to social situations all that often. I'm planning on trying to ask him about that, and I'll let you know if he says more on the topic.

There are a lot of disorders that can be similar to some of the features of AS. And having two or more of those disorders should certainly lead one to believe that one might have AS. For example, you could have Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorderand Avoidant Personality Disorder (links are the DSM criteria, word-for-word). That would give you some signs of AS, but some of those things, especially the Avoidant Personality Disorder could be the result of environment, like serious rejection and abandonment in your past. If your father abandoned your family when you were a kid, and told you he never wanted to see you again, you'd probalby develop fears of being close to other people due to a fear of further rejection. In that case, you would exhibit social problems and a mostly solitary lifestyle, but it would be caused by an incident and not a brain structure abnormality.

Schizotypal Personality Disorder by itself can look very similar to AS. That's an odd one though, because that one has been called into question.

I think that the distinction between where you're either odd or have a diagnosable problem comes into play when it causes a significant impact on your life. That's basically what the DSM says.

EDIT: Sorry for all the words. Psychology was one of my obsessional interests when I was 12 - 13.

*nods* It's difficult to determine whether, well, whatever I would have has a significant impact. It probably has in many ways, otherwise I wouldn't be here - but I am very lucky in having a job and working environment exactly suited to my liking, etc. Also, I was a lot "odder" when I was a kid, before twelve. I don't know whether back then things had a significant impact - but my parents tended to indulge me in my interests and didn't force me into stuff. Had they done so, perhaps I would have developed more significant problems.

Do you know if there are any other disorders besides autism and AS that involve scenery issues?

There's sensory integration dysfunction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_In ... ysfunction
I think it's separate from AS because (I think) you can have it on its own.

post deleted.

Last edited by likedcalico on 08 Sep 2006, 10:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well I'm not sure if I have AS or not. I have a test result of "More NT than Aspie" when I took the Aspie quiz.

Regardless of whether I have AS or not. I still can identify with a lot of people on this message board. I know what its like to be bullied by other kids when I was growing up. I know what it is like to feel different from eveyone else. I know what it is like to feel left out. I know what it is like to feel that nobody else understands you. Whenever I talk to relatives, all they can say is "You need to be more friendlier" or "You need to get out and mingle". Sorry folks, that is just not me.

Also, I can talk about things at this message board that I absolutely cannot talk about anywhere else whether in real life or on the internet. This is one of the very few places on the internet that I can admit that I didn't lose my virginity until I was 22. And I feel comfortable admitting it here because many of us on this message board have a hard time with relationships. If I admitted something like this on an NT message board, I probably would have became the laughing stock of the message board.

I got an aspie score of only like 2 points more than the NT score, so.

My NT score was 8 points more than my Aspie score.

I could talk all day about how it screws me up, but not about what to do about it. It also comes and goes at different itensities. It's the most pervasive and persistent trait that I have.

Yeah, it's really annoying. I don't think there's anything you can do about it.

AS isn't set in stone. There isn't a gold standard of how you have to make internet postings in order to qualify as having AS. Thinking you can tell whether or not someone has AS based on what they post on an online website is absurd.

For instance, to use your example, I've been bullied a lot for rambling on and on about things of interest to me at school, at home and elsewhere, so I now force myself to simply not do it unless someone else brings something up, including on these message boards. Does that mean I don't have AS?

I'm also more ashamed of myself than a lot of other people appear to be on this website. Therefore, I don't talk about a lot of my social problems like others do. I have school and medical documents detailing these problems, so they obviously exist, yet I CHOOSE not to write about most of them because I still feel shame over them. Explain to me how, reading a piece of text I type, you would be able to know this and determine whether or not I have AS?

Normal Psychologists can't even diagnose AS in person, it is left up to a specialist. Thinking that you, who (I'm assuming) has no psychology training whatsoever, can read static text and tell whether someone has AS or not is ridiculous. How a lot of people, AS or no AS, act is based not only on their neurological state, but also on their environment and the events of their life, which quite obviously vary widely among all people with AS.

Nevermind the fact that there are varying severities of the disorder.

If someone is posting here but doesn't have AS, it doesn't necessarily mean they are pretending. A lot of people come here looking for information because they THINK they have AS. Of course some of the people that think they have AS are going to end up not having it (I have yet to be dx'd, so I could be one of them).

And last but not least, does it really even matter if someone is introverted and all of the other AS goodies because they have AS, or if it is because they were abused let's say? If they fit in here and contribute and make friends, should they not be allowed in anyways? There is no notice that I'm aware of that bans NT's. In-fact, to my knowledge, this site is also for people that have Autism, ADD and ADHD.

This isn't really my place to say anything, but are you really sure that is the kind of information you want to be posting online. I hope you have an account with imageshack so that you can delete those, because I wouldn't recommend leaving them online.

Well when it comes to trolls, most of them are probably liars, just like any other website on the internet. People with too much time on their hands.



Exactly. I forgot to put this in my last post. This site is also for Family Members of people with AS. Another reason NT's are certainly welcome here. And if people on this site start prying into other peoples' lives just to see whether they are "faking" or not, it will make a lot of other people uncomfortable and they may leave.



I often re-read my posts 10 or 15 times to make them sound less aspie-like, because I'm used to doing that when sending emails to most people. I doubt I seem like much of an aspie, and I'm sure it is the same as many other people. I sometimes ramble on for 3 or 4 paragraphs about something I'm interested in, then re-read my post, realize I'm rambling and delete those paragraphs before submitting the post.



Chances are this does happen. However, what should Wrongplanet do, require proof of diagnosis before allowing people to set up accounts? This site would become a lot less useful to people who think they might have it but aren't sure should Wrongplanet decide to do something like that.



Of course you are.



Or perhaps most of the NT's are here for perfectly valid reasons, such as having a relative with AS?

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Anyways, even if I end up not having AS, I'm still going to be coming here. I was diagnosed with "Anxiety Disorder NOS" when I was 7 or 8, so I clearly have some degree of problems, and I enjoy coming here and like (most of) the people. A witch-hunt would be utterly pointless.

There's been several interesting points raised here. I'd like to add a little about doctors/diagnosis.

I don't mean any disrespect to Mnemosyne or her doctor, who may well be excellent. However, there are an awful lot of doctors (in the UK) who are frankly incompetent.

People die every year from serious illnesses going unnoticed/misdiagnosed by their doctors.

My Aunt, for example went to her doctor on several occasions, and and was fobbed off, told she was a hypochondriac. Eventually she was diagnosed with liver cancer, but by then it was too late and she suffered immensely before she passed away.

A lady I met at a playgroup had a baby girl who used to get sick a lot and was very thin, she was referred to a paediatrician who told her that 'all babies get sick after meals, there's nothing wrong'. She (wisely) ignored his advise and paid to see a Great Ormand Street Hospital consultant. There she was told that her daughter had kidney failure and would have died in 24 hours had she not brought her in. (She is still very ill and needs a transplant when she's old enough)

I could rant about this for quite some time as half my family has been affected by incompetent doctors.

The first paediatrician that my son was referred to saw him for about 15 minutes and said that he was absolutely delightful, nothing wrong with him. As far as my GP was concerned, this man was a consultant paediatrician, I was just a first time Mum, and I was obviously wrong. Case closed. Well my son is delightful, but at three and a half he was also non-verbal, doubly incontinent and had such a wide range of strange behaviours that the postman could probably have diagnosed him. Luckily for us, his speech therapist referred him to a child development centre, where he was seen by a team of specialists over a number of sessions and diagnosed with ASD.

If my son had not had speech problems, he would never have been seen by the CDC. Personally I believe that a lot of AS cases go unnoticed because of this.

So there's my experience of doctors.

With regard to people 'sounding' AS or not. In the comfort of their own room, with peace and quiet and all the time in the world to edit posts, I do not see why anyone should 'sound' AS. My problems are in the 'real world'.

What about literal thinking or mind blindness, anyone know of other disorders that encompass them?