girl aspries- LESS triad? how does it work?? weird.

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enid
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10 May 2010, 5:04 am

ok, so I dont fully get this. im aspie, but I also have the girl aspie thing of being over emotional about myself AND about others.
so how does this contradiction work out?

broadly speaking girl aspies are different from guy aspies. girl asperger's seems to have the triad of imparements as a less dominent factor- but the triad is considered to be the dominant feature of asperger's. so how does it work out that we can still have asperger's if we don't have the most overriding symptom, or have it less. I'm not suggesting we don't have it, I'm just wondering, really!
opinions?



ToughDiamond
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10 May 2010, 5:19 am

I can't solve the conundrum, but I can bring in a couple of observations that might help make a start:

1. AS has been likened to being excessively male in some respects. If that's the case, Aspie girls would tend to occupy the middle ground between girlie and macho, while Aspie males would be at the "extreme-boy" end of the continuum, so Aspie boys and girls would indeed be rather different animals.

2. It's been said that Aspie girls are generally under-diagnosed. So possibly being female tends to put the client outside the classical diagnostic criteria?

I guess what all this is pointing to is that the diagnostic criteria are rather male-centred.



LipstickKiller
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10 May 2010, 5:29 am

I'm a typical girl aspie in many senses but I do have the triad. I guess what makes me a girly aspie are for example:

I can cosplay as NT if I want to, as long as I'm not with a group of people my own age.

My special interests growing up were animals (horses in particular), mythology and the 19th century.

I've always watched people closely and learned to imitate them and also to a certain extent to read them. I can read people decently as long as I'm not actually involved in the interaction.

I'm sometimes hypersensitive to other people's mood. I can't predict them and I can't relate to them, but sometimes it's like they're transferred to me, which is very uncomfortable because I can't always tell whether it's my own emotion or somebody else's.

I know there are other things but right now my kids are ripping up papers on the floor so I have to get going.



Villette
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10 May 2010, 5:42 am

Realativity. NT guys have a higher autistic quotient so Aspie guys too have higher AQ. NT girls have lower AQ so Aspie girls have lower AQ. It's your relation to those of your gender I think. Also it's uncommon for girls to be over-unsocial unlike guys so the criteria is less extreme. But it's true many are undiagnosed.

Women have higher verbal IQ. Men have higher mathematical IQ. (In general). I'm not being sexist. So female Aspies may prefer books and "affectionate" related interests e.g. animals. Anime is a more common interest.

Lipstick killer: Perhaps your AS is milder? Bipolar is associated with AS, and strangely enough artists and better than AS social skills. Ironically I too was mad over Victorian literature. I used to analyse old sentences at age 15, semi-subconsciously.



LipstickKiller
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10 May 2010, 5:58 am

Villette: milder than what?

I would say that my impairments are mild compared to the overall population of aspies. I wouldn't say that my AS is mild, but rather that through a combination of genes, luck and survival instincts I've learned to compensate and managed to avoid situations that would have caused my AS to become a real issue. I can exemplify if you want. Basically I under-perform at life and relationships compared to any NT with the same intelligence, social background and education.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I do meet the triad of impairments. At the final session of my evaluation my psychologist detailed to me exactly how. He said the two main reasons why my AS hasn't become apparent is because I have no learning disabilities, good verbal skills and the "advantage" of being a girl.



jamesongerbil
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10 May 2010, 8:15 am

I don't know what this "over-emotion" you speak of is. I tend to feel things in a binary way: like or nothing. Or, dislike. That's more like triarny, haha. But my dislike becomes strong oftentimes. Mostly I feel pretty neutral. As for "macho," are you referring to Baron-Cohen's empathizing-systematizing brain idea? If so, I am more masculine than Chuck Norris. But, yeah, I have learned to imitate, like a parrot. It's gotten me into trouble sometimes, but not often. I can't even read people in movies, though I am slowly picking up on body language with the help of my translator-boyfriend. But, like females, I do get obsessions with animals, particularly the gerbil. But, I have also been obsessed with math/science type things, as well, and books, too. I am definitely more verbal, but I worked to become more mathematical, since there is so much cool stuff in math, and now there is only a slight difference between the two. I really like algebra and calculus, not really keen on geometry. On the other hand, I can barely ignore it when someone is standing next to me.

Quote:
I'm sometimes hypersensitive to other people's mood. I can't predict them and I can't relate to them, but sometimes it's like they're transferred to me, which is very uncomfortable because I can't always tell whether it's my own emotion or somebody else's.
I experience this. It is really bad, esp if there's a lot of tension.

To generalize...too much information to generalize. I see the triad on this website.
I am pretty bad, except with changes in routine. It may cause me levels of discomfort, and I like my routine if its self-imposed, but I am not so bad with changing it.

I expect I evaded dx, well it is pretty obvious to most people that aren't used to me, my parents weren't keen on "fixing" me, or anything, so I was never dx'd. Then, it got to be all too much when I moved out, so I had to figure out what was wrong with me.



wendigopsychosis
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10 May 2010, 8:28 am

As a girl aspie, I can say that I have the "triad" just as much as say, my boyfriend. I've just been forced to learn to hide it better, because people expect it from boys to be anti-social and eccentric, but as a girl, I found that people simply seem put off by me if I exhibit these qualities.
I've noticed, of all the aspies I know, girls seem to be better at hiding it.


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