What do you call it when your AS symptoms are no longer...

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What do you call it when your AS symptoms are no longer "clinically significant impairments in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning"? The DSM requires this for clinical diagnosis.

Are you cured?

Were you misdiagnosed?

AS in remission?

Something else?

Comedic answers welcome, but I am interested to know what people actually think about this.

well I find when I'm alone and there is nobody to point out that I'm symptomatic then there is no problem. so the obvious solution is to avoid anyone who can point out symptoms.

It means you are sufficiently wealthy, good looking, and gifted for people to overlook your obvious deficiencies!

Delusional.

Actually, AS is simply a learning disability. We may be socially slow, but its possible to learn what we need to.

Answer: That you got the pros and not the cons of autism in the given contexts.

Now answering your other questions:

1. If you mean by cured you do not fit the label anymore, yes. Cured as in a flu that where you have recovered from, no.

2. It is a possibility, ask for a second opinion or even a third in the matter to be sure.

3. At the most you found a workaround, aware or unaware

4. *Whatever you might think of autism, it ain't all problems, it has advantages too!
*The words that you use to describe autism, it sound like you are talking about a disease (cured, remission) Autism isn't a disease that you catch, it's a state of being - you are born with it = genetics.
!With the big exception of autistic behaviour for example in Autistiform (autistic beheaviour for awhile, after traumatic situations)and post-natal brain damage!

If I would be re-diagnosed I would probably fit the diagnosis for someone autistic, on the other hand as a child (+/- 9y) I was diagnosed with Classic Autism, later when I was 19 it became PDD-NOS, now I would probably not fit the diagnostic result of someone with autism.
Simply because my parents at early age took alot of trouble to make sure i'd manage in life on my own, later I worked alot on it myself at the latter age.


I am getting the impression that you are struggling with the possibility of having autism or you have been recently diagnosed with a form of autism in which you don't recognize yourself.
Before you get hypochondriac on things you've read on the net. I advise you to let a professional look into it, or three, to be sure.

I hope it helps!

Cheerfully,
Wallourdes

Me, I would just say the same thing, makes it less confusing for me.

I don't know if it also counts for the UK?

I guess you'd be the same as my brother. He is as aspie as I am. However he has a well paid job, many friends and a family. So he doesn't meet the criteria, still he thinks like an aspie and acts like one. I heard some referring to this as a shadow syndrome.

I'd be careful of terms that imply too permanent a recovery. It might mean the person is coping by working at 90% (or 110%) capacity all the time. So when some extra problems, requiring another 40% come along (that any normal person would handle fine), they break down (requiring even more energy to handle the fallout...). So maybe they managed ok from age 20 to age 35, but at 36 they're in deep crap again.

There's getting older, getting sick, getting other disabilities, getting poor/poorer, and on and on. Hiding a problem isn't the same as being cured of it, despite what the behaviorists think.

It mean either you were misdiagnosed or you're not being honest with yourself. Most likely the latter. Your brain didn't magically heal itself. You may develop coping mechanisms, but your processing impairments and weak Executive abilities don't just disappear no matter how much one might like to believe that they have. If your confidence level is up and you're functioning better socially than you did a few years ago, that doesn't mean you're cured, nor that you won't have those problems recur during periods when you aren't as psychically well-adjusted.


@n4mwd: Yes, some social things we pick up slowly, but we do pick them up given time and exposure to social situations. However, AS is not exclusively a social disorder - there are many other aspects that do not get better with time, like impaired processing, Executive Function and Hypersensitivity to Sensory Stimuli. The disparities we experience are primarily neurophysical, not mental - the mental and social issues are symptoms of the disability, not the disability itself.

Prognosis.

The problem with Autism is that because of the way that it impairs you, you experience difficulty developing the same way an NT would. So because Autism is so misunderstood, many people with it have missed or are actually incapable of certain developmental millstones. Therefor the severity of some symptoms may actually be caused by environmental developmental factors in some cases of spectrum disorders. When people are given the help they need, or find a way to get over those developmental millstones some of their symptoms will become greatly reduced. It's not being cured you still have the condition but the severity of certain impairments can be greatly reduced..

Science can't really measure how your brain behaves - thus it's not part of the diagnosis. Scientists use behavioral observation to determine criteria for the diagnosis. That's part of the question. If someone diagnosed develops a "filter" between their brain behavior and observable behavior so that the observed behavior does not fit the criteria - what are they?




As far as the definition of AS per the DSM:
- Hypersensitivity is not part of the DSM as far as I can tell.
- Impaired processing is not a mandatory part of the DSM.
- Impaired executive function is not mentioned in the DSM but if inferred, I don't believe it would be mandatory either.

This question is really hard to answer because you'll have to draw a long scale showing how you were like as a child compared to how you are now like as an adult. You can develop coping strategies for various issues that an ASD can cause, but the general issue will still remain. Such as, you might be able to develop coping strategies that would alleviate issues with interpersonal contact [i.e. worked out ways of working around issues with eye contact, having some sort of script to know what to say and when] but it's all learned - it's not something that comes out of you naturally.

The other options are that you either have sub-clinical aspects of ASD or you misdiagnosed yourself.

My father has dyslexia and struggled with it mightily growing up but he was able to overcome his disability and is able to read about as well as any normal person now. A dyslexic person doesn't stop being dyslexic, they just learn how adapt to it.That's kinda how I see AS.

I have Dyslexia too I still have trouble reading and spelling but in high school I had the highest marks in my class for creative writing when I was able to involve my special interests

Legally, I don't know.

I still call it Asperger's. I usually get by just fine in everyday life, but I still have Asperger's. A person can learn to live with it, but there's no getting around it entirely.