AS versus PTSD

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I've suspected AS for a while now, but I'm still not sure that my symptoms can't be explained by PTSD from severe abuse experienced as a child. I was badly physically, emotionally, and sexually abused.

As a child I: walked late, walked on my toes. Can't explain those away.

I also ignored other children, preferring to hide away with a book, or just play quietly by myself. I didn't know how to make conversation. I was a spacey child who was always in my own world and didn't even realize how different I was until I got older and looked back on it. I was fascinated with taking things apart. Could be AS.

But couldn't it also have resulted from the abuse? Wouldn't an abused child retreat into their own world?

I have a friend who frequently comments that I am always expressionless, that I have no facial expression. I always thought this could be caused by AS... but, my therapist is working with me on emotions. I tend not to feel emotions, which I thought could also be AS, but she says that my emotions weren't mirrored back to me as being ok to have and were never validated as a child so I probably learned to turn them off. Maybe I am not a very expressive person because my emotions are disconnected and once I do some therapy work that lets me reconnect with my emotions, I'll be more expressive?

Also, someone who was abused may have comfort stims, like rocking?

I don't avoid or ignore other people any more, in fact, I crave social contact sometimes. I feel awkward and have trouble making conversation that's not about myself or my interests, but maybe I just missed social development as a child because I was being abused? My friend says I'm not as awkward as I think I am.

I can't always make eye contact with people, it feels very uncomfortable and if I'm having a conversation I won't actually be looking at someone's eyes, more often their mouth instead because if I make eye contact I'll have trouble focusing on the conversation. But this could be an assertiveness thing from the abuse instead of an AS thing?

Sudden noises and people touching me bother me, but that could obviously be a PTSD thing. Sometimes background noise bothers me, but not always. For example, right now I can hear the fridge buzzing through the wall but I can tune it out.

I'm interested to know what others think. I relate well to people on this site, but I'm wondering if PTSD can masquerade as something similar to AS.

I have a diagnosis of both PTSD and autism. The PTSD is in remission, probably for good.

The distinction seems to be that the AS has been there from before I was born (the first traits started showing up very early on in infancy, and I was apparently a difficult baby even before birth). The PTSD was caused by a couple of jerkass stepfathers who didn't treat me very well, and those traits date back to that time. For me, that'd be hypervigilance, nightmares, being easily startled, occasional flashbacks. The AS traits--the communication, language, social interaction, special interests, stimming, etc.--were present in infancy, before the abuse ever happened, and were present after I recovered from the PTSD.

Maybe you'll figure out which is which once you have got through the PTSD and come back to equilibrium. If you work through the PTSD-related issues, what's left will probably be neurological and personality-related.

I have aspergers and PTSD, I was obviously born with some unusual tendencies....which caused me to get picked on a lot not sure if that caused any PTSD but I know I started showing obvious symptoms of it after a girl at my school ended up getting shot....I did not see it happen so I was kind of embarrassed that it effected me that much but I guess a lock down is not a pleasent experiance no matter how you look at it. But now I am thinking my childhood could have caused some PTSD symptoms to....like flashbacks of when I was back in elementary school and everyone was treating me like crap. But it is definatly possible to have PTSD and aspergers/autism I am pretty sure.

I have AS and PTSD

The following might be helpful, it is my own personal list of Defining characteristics of AS over PTSD.

Persistance

Sensory issues (even when not in overload or leading up to meltdown)

Lock on / in syndrome (obsessional interests)

Peer difficulties

Eye contact

Playing alone, with intensity of special interest

Extremity of anxiety surrounding Social events

Intensity of communication

'Little Philisopher' in expression (riddiculed for as child)

Quirkiness / Oddness (Naturally / organic)

Dress, fashion indifference

COMMUNICATION
The ability to tell but not show

Hypo-functionality / Giftedness

Not thinking in the box / extremely unusual mind (love kookie word play)

Excentric

Unusual dress

Information processing difference

Photos when young as with photos today-very withdrawn and wooden smile.

Information processing difficulties. Autism is a difference in the way a person's brain is wired, which means that people with AS take in, store, retrieve and use information in different ways than their neurotypical counterparts.

Wooden or stiff facial expressions that do not convey the inner distress or excitment of the individual.

Inflexibie re time keeping / punctuality

Cannot bare change to routine

Visual thinker, brain like a computer, the imagery takes great effort and time to process

Difficulty prioritizing.....everything comes at me at once, be iit sensory stuff or whatever.

Hope that helps.

I don't question the fact that one can have AS and PTSD at the same time, I'm just wondering if my own constellation of symptoms comes from AS and PTSD or just PTSD alone.

quaker, your list is helpful, but some of the ones you listed that apply to me could be explained by abuse, at least in my case. For example:

Sensory Issues: I'm not sure if they're true AS sensory issues or just hypervigilance from PTSD. Maybe tiny sounds bother me because I'm in a state of ultra alert and can pick up on them.

Peer Difficulties/Social Anxiety: To me, I'm not sure if the peer difficulties resulted from AS or if being abused made me separate myself from people and therefore never learn the social skills I should have. I get social anxiety, but it's mostly based on fear that they will hurt me.

Eye Contact: Problems with eye contact could come from early abuse, I explained my feelings about eye contact and wonder whether I don't make eye contact out of fear or feeling unworthy.

Wooden or Stiff Facial Expressions: I explained above that I thought maybe my facial expressions are off because I'm not in touch with any emotions - I don't feel emotion, so I don't express it.

Inflexible with time keeping and Cannot Bare Change to Routine: Could be control issues. I know I have control issues, my life was so out of my own control that now I hyper control everything.

I suppose I could ask my therapist what she thinks, but she's on vacation for two months and doesn't know Asperger's so it's likely she'd conclude it's just PTSD.

There's been studies on orphans experiencing severe neglect in orphanages and what they found is children from understaffed and underfunded orphanages are developmentally delayed but once they are put in foster homes, they catch up rather quickly. They learn to walk and talk and catch up with other kids.
They may experience attachment disorders. I haven't heard them being called autistic, though.

Hi Dots

I spent 20 years in psychotherapy and self-help groups beleiving that all my difficulties were the result of severe abuse and childhood neglect. This was only half the picture.

My whole personality was so 'other-focused' because I ached to be accepted, and feared abandenment......abandenment ment death..... concequently I disacociated myself from my autistic self. I split-off.

I spent 20 years coming to terms with my inner-child, and yet the more i cried, screamed and got in touch with my pain, I still felt so different from other survivors. Many of them would become work-a-holics or sex addicts or just driven to take on the world that screwd them.

I have never been able to work the world like this.

I should say I was adopted and when i traced my natural father he was classicly AS, this was a useful guide.

Many many people with AS have been abused because they are different and develop PTSD.

If i had to pick one from my list above it would be oddness and unusual / intensity of mannerisms.

If u hang around with aspies u soon start to get the feel of all this stuff, you get to know you kind.

Go well my friend.......be gentle on your journey to truth.....it might take some time, but dont give up.

Thank you, quaker. I'm still not sure what's up with me, but the PTSD is worse than the AS right now so that's what I'm going to focus on in therapy. Once I've dealt with that, I'll look at what aspects still remain.

I was systematically abused as a child. After years of working on abuse issues as an adult I found that it PTSD and such things just didn't really get to the core of whatever was 'wrong'. It was important, but it never bridged the gap between my internal states and external interactions. Autism bridges that gap with startling consistency across all periods of my life.

My mother has always been emotionally and psychologically abusive. She has a very unstable personality. Her temporary acts of love trained me to think this is normal. But now I know her behavior is not normal. When my mother acts kind, it is like giving me a local anesthetic. Underneath her kindness is ulterior motives. After the initial kindness she sticks a knife into me, and I am not aware that I am being shafted.

My resulting low self esteem causes me to continue to be bullied by people. I get stalked by the police. There is one town that has been really bad to me. A cop told me to keep pedaling my bicycle and get out of town, or I would be down on the ground. After years of abuse from them, that was the last straw. That is when I complained to the disctict attorney. Because of the history of how the police have treated me, I now call 911 to complain about the police if they get within 100 feet of me, and stick around, and don't keep on going in a direction away from me.

I have a better idea now of the source of whatever psychological problems I had. I know now that my mother has a severe mental illness, and I have the effects of PTSD from her abuse.

I think that's a good idea. I didn't end up with PTSD until I was an adult, so for the most part I know what aspects are ASD and what are PTSD - but it's still hard to figure out sometimes. For instance, two years ago I started having meltdowns, which I hadn't had before, so I assumed they were a PTSD thing (since I hadn't had them before, I hadn't been educated about them). I couldn't find anything that looked like what I was experiencing because I was looking at PTSD information sources and I honestly thought I was losing my mind for good. Once I figured out my "episodes" were meltdowns, I could deal with them and I haven't had one since - but still, my PTSD symptoms complicate and magnify the meltdown issues.
But like you said, you need to deal with the most pressing issues now. When I was being treated for PTSD, I did not tell the therapist that I was on the spectrum (though she guessed) because I was afraid my immediate needs would be ignored or discounted. Now I think therapy would have been more effective if I had been treated with my ASD symptoms in mind - for instance, I think I would have made a lot more progress if I had been given the option for non-verbal communication. But good luck to you! Therapy is hard work.

I reckon my mum and her 3 siblings have PTSD. They did have a terrible upbringing from their dad, and now they've grown-up to be prone to depression, anxiety, poor self-esteem, and intense shyness and/or social phobia. I always wondered if my auntie has AS, but I reckon it's just due to their upbringing, and it may have just affected her bad.

I can't really say I have PTSD, because I never had a terrible upbringing, and I can't go around making PTSD a made-up excuse for my odd behaviour because I would feel so guilty for my parents, because they are lovely parents who gave me a really happy childhood. It'd just be mean of me to turn all my friends and partner against them just because I want to cover up my AS.

You could have both....but I cannot say for sure, some AS symptoms do seem kinda simular to PTSD....I have both. I mean I could try to attribute it all to my environment but there was something wrong with me in the first place that caused a lot of the negative social interactions. I mean I was quite different so I guess it freaked people out and so they either ignored me or picked on me. The PTSD started with something that happened in highschool but since I aqquired it and its progressively gotten worse it also seems to trigger memories further back that are quite unpleasent.

But yeah if what you experianced as a child is the cause of it all it is possible it was mistaken for AS and you just have PTSD but continue talking about it with your therapist It is possible to have both though.

Neglected children do develop autistic symptoms. Maybe the same can be said for abused children. It's known as environmental autism. You don't always have to be born with autism. People can acquire ADHD through brain damage, so why can't autism be triggered in other ways?

I agree with the previous post. Child abuse can alter the childhood development of the brain in such a way as to closely parallel the effects of Autism and Asperger's Syndrome.

Still if the argument must be that one has to be born with Autism, then being in the womb of a psychotic narcissistic sociopath woman for nine months can so alter the prenatal development of a child to be born Autistic.

brain damage can often mimic autism as well....didn't know adhd could be aquired from brain damage