Is WP attracting too many of the wrong people

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its in my nature to believe and trust everyone until they are proven to be liars. I can relate to the self-diagnosed because it is so hard to diagnose AS in a female, but they managed to find it in me. They may just be NT emos, but they are looking for friends just like any aspie does.

Yes, and it is evident that everyone is welcome, when one signs up and sees all those categories to put oneself under.

It's not unusual to go through much of life and have no one really understand what you are going through as an individual, when there are not many whom share those differences.

I had tactile sensitivity and could not stand to even touch the cloth of the denim on my jeans. I thought I was the only person in the world like this until at age 44 one of my employees mentioned that they couldn't stand to touch towels after they came out of the dryer.

It was like there was another person on the planet that shared that quality. It was an amazing feeling. It led me to understand that I was born with Autism and that was the underlying cause of many issues I had that I didn't even understand were issues.

That is what can be found on this website, easily. It's much better for an undiagnosed person to come here and find out that there are others that share these kind of traits, rather than waiting for 44 years like I did.

Yep. And if someone happens to be NT, then they can help out with sharing the NT perspective and help aspies understand them better or to better understand the NT world around them. So, (almost) everyone has the potential to positively contribute to the community, regardless of their diagnostic status.

Aspergers or by the DSM IVtr PDDnos (pervasive developmental disability , not otherwise specified) has been used as a dumping ground for the field of psychology for a while now.
I have spent the last 7 years working with a man who has that DX on his chart.
He is nonverbal, and had blinded himself in one eye through his efforts to communicate to his caregivers. (that was before i got to him, 30x a day to 0x in a year, the treatment, PECS)
So though I have known as long as I can remember that I just didn't fit with the rest of the people out there or their world, I told myself that Autism couldn't possibly be the answer.
I fell for the same BS as many others for most of my life, I had ADD (we were working out of dsm3 back then, so no H) that was supposed to explain it all, of course I score sub clinical on all of the adult adhd scales I have taken. I finally was shaken out of my confusion by a posting on the forum entitled "dude I'm an Aspie" oddly enough written by someone who is "self diagnosed"
I found myself in a state of awe that someone who I had never met, had written this thing about me.
I then started putting the pieces together, why I score 47/50 on the AQ, why I have slept with more than 2 dozen women but have never really felt intimacy with anyone (you can be entirely alone while making love, I've done it many times). I finally began to understand myself. People tell me I have good social skills, come across as very personable, however I have no close relationships (this includes the woman I am sleeping with, my family, the 2-3 people I consider friends).
Finally I took the plunge and went to a new shrink and threw it out there. he seemed surprised that this was news, kinda like yeah it is plain as f-ing day (mind you this is someone who is actually up on the research, and has 4 separate phds)

So I will have to say I resent the notion that self diagnosed people have no business here.
Autism is a spectrum not everyone is at the same place on it, however as an adult I wish I had the benefit of knowing why I wasn't like everyone else as I went through my teens and twenties, perhaps then I would not be a man who has scars from lacerations across most of the arteries in his left arm, perhaps I might have been able to keep from loosing the one woman I ever felt close to.
There is nothing cool about having autism, but it is damn cool to have an answer as to why you have felt the things that you have.

What's with all the elitism bashing? Elitism increases self-esteem.

Not only that, but the best way of creating an aspie community IRL would be to breed elitism.

You all seem to be indoctrinated with the belief that diversity is a great thing.

Flame away.

Seems like the OP took their ball and went home.

Sad. I would have liked to have heard the reasoning. Again. I suppose if we of the self dx variety want to play, we need to officially join the team. Because it is trendy and desirable to be autistic. It has great benefits and, if you just suck at being an NT, it's the perfect excuse...

I honestly could care less if you believe my self dx or not. Even if I am a deluded NT, I've understood more and have felt more understood here than I ever have anywhere else. Call me selfish but I'm staying.

Your TOM capabilities as demonstrated by the first sentence suggests you're simply a deluded NT. Unless you're female, then it's alright, because female aspies are expected to have a sophisticated theory of mind.

I have no problem with the self diagnosed. I also have no problem with members who are higher or lower functioning than myself. I have no problem with the members who score below 86 in intelligence. I have no problem with the members who are ADD/ADHD and I have no problems with the members who are NT.

Your un-diagnosing people is misplaced and borders on the offensive.

Remember that autistic people come in many varieties. It's a spectrum.

ToM can be developed, and I find that aspies over thirty tend to have much improved ToM

Sadly, I think you are deliberately setting out to cause aggro here.

Until you grow up a bit and realise how much of a prick you're being, after which it rapidly loses its virtue. As I know very well. Though I still have a fanatical and combative nature to fall back on.

Thanks for having my back, Moog!

But, it's ok. Not only am I woman I am also 42 years old. I've learned alot of things the hard way.

Yes, I do know what they mean when they say 'Don't cry over split milk.' I've had 40 years to learn. And I'm having alot of fun teaching these things to my daughter who is exactly like me when I was a kid - only I KNOW how to help her because I've already been there. She won't have to do it the hard way like I did.

Yes. Elitism increases self-esteem at the expense of others. Self-esteem has no reason to be a zero-sum game.

I know, right? I'm 41 and I've changed so much in how I relate to people (and still have problems) that I have had people tell me that I am not autistic because I do things they have not seen autistic people do...and these are things that if they knew me 20 years ago, I didn't do either.

It's great that you can help your daughter like that.

Thank you for your wisdom. There is much hope yet for my relatively young ToM-impoverished grasshopper-esque mind.

Last edited by swbluto on 04 May 2011, 7:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was also wondering why the OP hasn't come back and defended his/her viewpoint. What I likened it to was a hit-and-run driver. Cause wreckage, and flee the scene.

I'm a 46-year-old woman, and I don't even know what ToM is.

And TOM is precisely, completely, and most fundamentally what autism is because... some academics theorize it to be so, and it's really hard to prove something like that wrong, especially when no one really knows what autism actually is (let alone on a neurological level). And also, because of an impression that autistic people tend to give off to non-autistic people, and the autistic people were never asked about how they felt internally.

Just because it's written in a book, doesn't mean it's the absolute, complete truth. IMO there is something to the "lack of ToM" theory, but it isn't as simple as it is presented to be. (And IMO it's probably a secondard effect of something else.) I.e. autistics are supposed to be unable to detect non-verbal signals, yet autistic kids can be very sensitive to an angry or tense 'atmosphere' in a home. Obviously, the story is more complicated than just "can't read any non-verbal signals." There is also the "intense world theory," which is nearly the opposite of the "standard model," but is nonetheless receiving some serious consideration. The truth is "out there," because we obviously we haven't gotten to it yet.

I've heard that in the past, autistic people were characterized as being very good with analogies. Nowadays, the characterization is the opposite. In a couple of threads here it was noted that people seemed to be good at making up their own analogies, but bad at understanding "pre-built" analogies (the kind "that everyone knows"). So, maybe the old & new theories are both half-right and half-wrong.

The reality of things is not that well understood at this point.

So, going around saying, "oh look, you showed a sign of a theory of mind! -- NT!" is not just annoying, and destructive to a community, but also... facile/shallow/thoughtless/not interesting?

It reminds me of the "birthers," who are/were all wrapped up in the minutea of "long form birth certificates," when those details were not at all what they really cared about. They just didn't like the president, that's all.

(Honestly, the more of your posts I read the more I see you trapped in some kind of hell (and very stressed out). I think you do think that you think you're on the spectrum, but are scared sh*tless by the "diagnosis police," yourself. Good luck, though.)