TYPES of ASD individuals from a professional source

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In reading many of your posts I think a few things jump out, in regards to your success. And there is no doubt, you are successful...

You had a supportive childhood. Your differences were just accepted as who you are. You are also in a very openminded accepting area of the country. The Pacific northwest is one of the last great bastions of liberal thought (and not in the political sense.) I think people are more readily accepted for who they are than in other places around the world. You have also found a career that is virtually comprised of Aspies - or you'd think so based on the media. Computer technology firms seem more willing to accept eccentricities in individuals, having ackonwledged long ago that great genius comes with that touch of madness.

I think many of us would kill for any one of those three conditions.

I'm not sure if anyone has make this connection but many of those here that are having the most difficulty also had rough childhoods - excessive teasing, outright bullying, intolerant family, substance abuse in their childhood home. Now, toss a social functioning disorder into that mix and shake vigorously. Self esteem issues are rampant and they have compounding causes.

You have some rock solid self esteem, k. It is a thing of beauty, beautiful to behold. Many are still struggling with it though. Therein lies, what I beleive, to be the crucial differences. Someone else may be a very 'high functioning' but will never accomplish half of what you have because of a wide variety of factors. Dx alone cannot determine someones potential for success. There are lots of ways to be 'broken'.

Not taking away from what you said in the least but do want to clarify for you.

1. I was raised in a blue collar/manufacturing small town in conservative PA to parents who were extremely NOT equipped to support me. My folks were fundamental born-again Christians. As such, I was beat/hit more times than I can count. I simply do not dwell on this anymore or think about it. I believe people are well intentioned even though clueless. I knew at a very young age that I needed to leave that environment in order to survive and sought ways to do that. I managed to fund my High School education in Europe as one way of "escape" and used the military beyond that. I left that place when I was 15 and have never returned save for a brief visit now and then.
2. I am in the PNW ONLY because I tried and FAILED to be okay or "fit in" in so many other places. Let's see... I have lived in, Texas, N.C., MD, PA, TN, CA, Europe, and several different cities within these places in some cases. So I have "tried" out many different places and nothing felt like "home" until I moved here and bought property to assure my "alone" time.
3. Again with the job thing. I have tried and FAILED many different jobs before I discovered and found "home" in high-tech.

My journey includes many extreme hardships including, drug use starting at 12, gang involvement, child molestation, teen pregnancy, single parenting, forclosure, divorce, abuse (both as a child and as an adult in relationships), war, dropping out of college, eating disorders, addictions, etc.... Like I said, I do not dwell on these things as I prefer to focus on what is possible not what happened. In fact, I know of no succesful person who hasn't FAILED more times than succeeded. I just always think of myself as more stubborn than this life is hard. One of my peers often says, "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

Like I said, not dismissing the premise that there is a lot more to success than a DX and even agree witih it. BUT, my success is not attributed to the 3 things you point out so much as are a result of the work I have done to put myself in this "good" place.

Last edited by kfisherx on 25 Mar 2011, 12:41 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Exactly this. The very concept of networking and socially centric interaction is completely foreign to me. I just can't see it - as in utterly blind to a part of being human that is apparently REALLY freaking important.



The group I've gone to a few times is the same, or at least that's what I think is happening. Too much group and not enough support.

My first shrink kept trying to convince me how important this stuff was to survival in this world. I think I am sort of understanding that other people need it but still haven't bought into it for me yet.



I was never "accepted" as part of the NT world. I was always called a martain even by my own Mother (still does call me that) and other names by various people. Perhaps I was more "bullied" by kids and I did not realize it? I laughed with the kids who laughed at me then and still do it. I am still singled out as being weird. I honestly do not care and never have that I can remember. THIS is the thing that has also saved me IMHO. I am so socially aloof that all this "picking" and pointing out of my differences was something I found more humorous than horrible. I told my shrink that my friends use my name as a "adjective" or "adverb" to discribe alll my "isms". I laugh with them and at me. I have always been able to laugh at me and I attribute that now to my complete lack of social awareness. I am just fine with this btw. It is a MUCH better alternative than to have all these emotions that so many of you have... (shudder) I never feel "left out" or any of those things. I just feel "me" and that is much simpler. LOL!

I wonder about this, too. Certainly there was name calling and ostracizing, but when you don't really care whether you're ostracized, that's not exactly punishment.

I don't consider myself to have been bullied (well, very much at least), but I once told a friend about one of the times I was physically hurt from a bully, she seemed to think it was rather extreme. Most of the psychological stuff went completely over my head, so maybe that's why? Whatever the reasons, I never internalized bullying as anything wrong with me; I always believed it was something wrong with the bully.


I seem to have escaped the "weird" label and trend towards "charmingly naive," at least as an adult.


Wow, I couldn't agree more. But I don't consider myself to be socially aloof in the same way. Or maybe we're using the term differently? To me, if you have friends, you can't be that socially aloof.

See another one of the ESC people. My shrink says I am "whimsical" and my friends also use "charmingly naive". Most of the time though, they just laugh at me and say, "There goes the BIG BRAIN again..." Becasue they all think I am exceedingly smart in many subjects. Just not "life" ones. LOL!

I was once hit by a bully on top of the head with a book that left a welt so large it stayed for a long time and actually hurt. I too, always thought the bullies had "issues" more than me. I also am a fighter and learned to be "present" in bad situations early on. As I grew older people respected my abilites to fight more than they wanted to pick on me so I was fine.

See, those are good ways of looking at the world IMHO. Save me from all the "drama" I see in so many other threads. I once ventured in the Haven! Those threads were sooooo beyond me!!

Thank you for sharing your story! If I catch myself feeling sorry for myself, I will remember what you've been through and how you talk to yourself about it like a talisman to keep my eye on what's possible rather than on what has been.

While we're on the subject of bully stories (sorry) I had my head throw into a locker and it bled all over the place. Heads do that, though, when cut. It was more shocking than anything else, but apparently most people would consider this to be severe bullying. I have other incidents (like having food thrown on me) that made more of an impression than simply the physical bullying.

I agree with you that being successful is not as much about a supportive upbringing as it is about a healthy outlook on life. I can't explain why I'm such a sickeningly optimistic person. Was I born with the ability to produce the "optimism" chemicals more effectively? Honestly I have no idea. However, I consider myself successful not because I have the "typical measures" of success but because I genuinely enjoy what I do (for work and for free time), who I have chosen to spend time with, and the environment I find myself in.

I feel the same way about the Haven... though I'm glad that there is a forum for those who need that support. (Who knows? I may need it at some point.)

Choked with a shoe lace until I passed out. Strangely, I wasn't bullied by that guy after that. I suspect it was because when he came up behind me and wrapped the shoe lace around my neck I went into my immediate ultra passive mode (I recognize that now as maybe a shut down). It wasn't any fun for him because it didn't struggle or gasp are yell or anything. I just sat still, silent and completely motionless until I blacked out. I was seen as too weird even for bullying after that.

I'd say similar, except with one caveat: Anti-cure arguments from people who consider themselves at the "highest functioning" end of the spectrum are actually the least convincing to me, and the most shallow. Many of them just take the ableism that exists in the world, move it around a little bit so that they're the ones on top, and then don't bother to actually get rid of the ableism.

Additionally, I don't agree with anti-cure arguments that make autism a special case. In the disability community in general, it's common for many (of course not all) people to not want to be cured, and just as in the autism community, they are not the "most mildly impaired" of the lot generally. (In fact, many are quite severely impaired by any definition.)

Like AIME said, the idea that this is a thing for only "mildly disabled" people is a common idea, but it's basically a misconception if you look at the actual people and how they feel about these things.

This (looking at the actual people with these opinions) includes looking beyond message boards that tend to attract people who are or consider themselves the most mildly impaired. The reason WP tends to attract more of these types isn't simply because other people aren't capable of posting here (although there's always some of that), it's also because there's a common mentality here that sees people considered mid to low functioning (or, really, whatever division people are making, they don't always call it that) as inferior, and otherwise (in so many ways) makes it an unwelcome place for anyone who is regularly put into that category (whether by others or by ourselves). I've seen many people eventually leave here over it. I periodically duck out of here because I can't take some of the attitudes, I have to take breaks to be able to stand it sometimes.



I am quite sure that none of them truly fits me. CSC fits me on many ideas, but if you were to go to what they think of CSC, and then make assumptions about me on that basis, those assumptions would be pretty wrong. I also have quite a strong streak of SCSC in various areas (especially in the departments of sensory issues, stimming (minus my movement disorder's impact on such), self-care (to be mistaken for a CSC in that department would be fatal), and in how I'm perceived socially). And then ESC in others, WISC in a small few, and "isn't adequately covered in any of these categories" for still more. I guess if I had to choose one place I'd pick somewhere on the CSC/SCSC borderline with acknowledgement of a small number of skills way "higher up" than that.

As far as putting a person into these categories socially, I think that how you're perceived socially means a lot more than what your actual level of social understanding is. I know many, many people who would normally be considered an SCSC, who are far more perceptive socially than most people who'd be considered a WISC. (In fact, if I were making the categories, I would actually put extreme social perceptiveness as more likely in the CSC and SCSC categories than in the ESC and WISC ones. Because most of the very socially perceptive autistic people I've known are people who would've fallen into those categories.) This scale makes a whole lot of unwarranted assumptions about what it means to have different social appearances. For instance, a person who appears socially aloof can be very much desiring social contact. Desiring social contact does not make a person less autistic nor "higher functioning". It's just that autistic people have always given the appearance of social aloofness (well, some of us anyway), and therefore many professionals have not looked past that appearance or wondered about what was really going on beneath the surface. Often the more socially aloof a person appears (as in, when getting into the range of SCSC where a person may appear as if they don't notice people at all), once the person gains a means of communicating they will often beg for social contact, as they have often had a lifetime of being perceived as not wanting social contact and people often assume they just enjoy being "in their own world" and don't try to help them make friends or anything. So after years, or decades, of that experience, many are starved for socialization, and yet unless they have a good way to communicate in words people will assume the exact opposite.

I've found that when I'm at my most perceptive socially is usually the time when people perceive me as just perfectly in line with the SCSC descriptions. When I'm more capable of communication in ordinary terms, I become less perceptive because I have to think too much about communication. This is one way in which the assumptions about who understands the most social stuff can sometimes be exactly backwards from how most people (including the authors of this instrument) perceive it.

But of course real life is more complicated than just being one way or the exact opposite of that one way. There's other times when I'm perceived in line with SCSC socially, where I am... I guess the best idea of it would be, aware and unaware at the same time. This is when I'm in my most natural state, which I've described many times elsewhere, where I understand the world perceptually rather than conceptually. At that point, I'd be pure SCSC in just about all respects, I think, although there are still areas that would surprise people, because reality is different from models of reality. The trouble comes when you try to teach a person who is purely in the sensory realm, regardless of how "basic" you make the concepts. Basic concepts are still concepts, and a person may be incredibly intelligent but would not necessarily be able to show it when you are using a teaching method so thoroughly out of line with how they deal with the world.

If they'd made a category that did deal honestly and thoughtfully with people who live in sensory mode I'd have welcomed the category and climbed inside it gladly. But really the way this system handles thinking, is that all thinking is conceptual but it's just a matter of how simple or complex the concepts the person can understand. Which is not going to work whatsoever (nor are teaching methods based on conceptual thinking) for a person whose natural mode of thinking is not conceptual, regardless of where that person lies on this categorization system. Also, people whose thinking is more sensory, are going to have a totally different way of perceiving social things than conceptual thinkers. As Donna Williams points out, we're more likely to have trouble with the concept of simultaneous self and other. And yet we're often able to perceive simply from a single footfall, all kinds of information about the person that is going to be lost on an autistic person who is using conceptual thought. We are more likely to be able to 'sense' things about people that are quite accurate, and yet our way of relating to that information (and to the people, if we relate to them at all), is going to be quite different than a conceptual thinker relates to things like that. Worse, almost all ways of testing autistic people on our perception of other people, are based in linguistic (therefore conceptual) thought, so a more 'sensing' person is either going to fail the test completely, or pull themselves into conceptual thought only to lose their perceptiveness about other people in the process (or be unable to describe it even if they remember, and therefore are assumed to simply not be perceptive).

A person who is purely 'sensing' is more likely to be put into the category of SCSC, or possibly CSC, and yet there are 'sensing' people who will be perceived as ESC or WISC depending on their ability to camouflage themselves. And yet people whose native way of dealing with the world is 'sensing', are more likely to have things in common with each other, including the way they learn best, with other 'sensing' people regardless of whether they're put into SCSC/CSC/ESC/WISC. And the way we learn best is simply not represented in this category system to begin with, so whichever category we are put into, we are going to be put in with learners who do not share our learning style at all, and likely to be taught in ways that does not match our learning style whatsoever. If I were to design this system, I would put in a new category. And it would be off to the side, much like RSC, because it can occur within the apparent 'presentation' of any of the other main categories. It would be something like SSC (if going by the system where everything ends in "SC" regardless), and would deal with all the things I've just described.

I should note that sometimes it does talk about the "inability to think conceptually", but where it deals with that, its definition of "conceptual" is different from mine, and it only deals with difficulty with conceptual thinking at the "lower" end of the spectrum, when in fact people on all of the traditional parts of the spectrum can both have really good conceptual thinking, or do their best thinking outside of conceptualization. (And of course some people have both conceptual and sensory thinking running at once, something I hadn't really thought about until I talked to wavefreak.) The thing about autism is that even in the supposedly simplified areas that this is meant to address, it's still not that simple, not even for deciding what kind of teaching methods are appropriate. A conceptual thinker, whether simple or complex, is going to still have a totally different learning style than a sensory thinker, regardless of whether their appearances suggest they go on the same "level" or not.

Wow, I didn't mean this to turn so long, nor did I realize I had it in me to write something this long feeling the way I feel right now.

Very insightful, anbuend. Thank you for that!

Some aspies are social. There can be many factors that lead to this- aspie could have extroverted parent and aspie parent so end up as extroverted aspie.

However being an extroverted aspie is a pretty alienating thing- imagine moving to a new country where you barely speak the language and cant understand the customs.

You want to get a house, a job, meet people, but nobody is making any sense, like living in Upside-Down World. Now, to an aloof aspie that person may look high functioning, but to the person living it it is very hard to function.

Also, there are disorders such as ADHD, dyspraxia, hyperacusis, and OCD that can effect people at the top end of the spectrum and undo any benefits they might otherwise enjoy from being technically mild aspergers. For example my social skills are a lot better now. But I cannot go to the cinema. I have hyperacusis, and I cant handle the noises coming from those huge speakers.

I don't remember ever being bullied. My mom says that i probably just didn't notice it though, so i'm not sure. There were usually a small number of people that i would talk to, but for the most part i was socially "aloof" at school. If anyone ever did do or say anything mean to me i probably wouldn't have registered it as malicious unless it was something very obvious. I don't imagine that many people would have fun bullying a kid who is as socially detached from them as i was, though(not reacting to most of the stuff they do and all). I did have a great deal of anxiety around people in middle school, though. I don't know if it would really be classified as normal "social anxiety" now that i think about it, because the therapists always called it "generalized anxiety disorder" and it was more because i didn't know what i was supposed to do around people in the first place(it was confusing and i didn't know what to do so it made really nervous, and being nervous about it just made me more withdrawn) than because i thought i'd be ostracized or something. I went on paxil when i was in 8th grade, for depression and anxiety, and that helped a lot. I was still detached from most of the social stuff going on and had no idea what to do around people, but i had less anxiety around people and was a little less withdrawn(so i started trying to talk a little more and stuff). For the most part, since then i'm still completely confused by people, which causes a little anxiety, but i talk more and am a lot more likely to say what's on my mind(sometimes i probably talk too much).. So i've gotten much more comfortable around people and less withdrawn, but not really that much better at socializing.

I was socially passive. That means that I was unable to either accept or reject social approaches deliberately, I generally (except when appearing aloof, which also happened) accepted all approaches and could not reject them, and then if I wanted to approach someone I couldn't. We're apparently the rarest social grouping in the whole spectrum. And I have to say that none of this reflected my actual social attitudes, it simply reflected how my body worked.

This sounds a lot like me in high school. I would not initiate things and if someone else did I let it happen. This was always the case with people I did not know. With people in the small circle that I interacted with, I would rarely initiate conversation. People were actually quite surprised when I said something more than "what's up?".