beginning to have doubts that I am an Aspie

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poopylungstuffing
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16 Apr 2007, 9:50 pm

I watched Mozart and the Whale last night with my boyfriend, and it made me have doubts that I am an Aspie..I sorta identified with some of the stuff...like when she cleaned his house and he freaked out....but unless there are facets of Aspieness that the movie did not cover...then I guess I am not one...I have no savant skills that I can think of..i doubt that whooping ass in dominos and finding things count..and I doubt that singing counts...
I educated myself through rote memorization when I was younger because I could not concentrate in school...but I don't really do that anymore...I am not a walking encyclopedia, I am of average intelligence....I do have meltdowns (panic attacks)...difficulty bonding with people...mild face blindness..very bad eye contact...social paralysis outside my "safety zone"(i am the only person I know who can have a meltdown during a peaceful camping trip)....um....the toe walking...multiple stims and a few other symptoms...I even have family members who exhibited strong symptoms of what might have been a form of autism...

but I am beginning to think that that is not enough..I will never really know for sure until I get a diagnosis, but I have no idea when i would ever have enough money or find a decent sliding scale doctor who would be willing not to give me the runaround...
Whatever it is that I have has caused me alot of suffering...(ADHD combined with other things..)..but it has also pushed my life in interesting and unconventional directions..and I would like to figure out exactly what it is someday...but I have a hunch that it is probably not Aspergers.



KBABZ
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16 Apr 2007, 9:57 pm

If it is any consolation, I have don't have many of the things that you have: I'm not an encyclopedia either, but I also don't have meltdown very often, I can bond easily given time, I can pick out expressions, I make eye contact quite easily, I'm quite social (and good at it too), I don't toe walk and I stim. And guess what? I've been DX'ed with AS.

Even if you don't find what you're looking for, WP is still there and you can still come here when you need to or when you feel like it.


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maldoror
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16 Apr 2007, 9:59 pm

Lord curse that stupid movie.



nutbag
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16 Apr 2007, 10:14 pm

Yeah, dx by movie is questionnable. And WP is always here.

AS is so big, and so new that to actually get it is akin to nailing jello to a tree. I wish you luck in your self quest.


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poopylungstuffing
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16 Apr 2007, 10:14 pm

ya think??

I had some problems with it (aside from the mix of both annoying and good music)

....like I thought the two main characters make a horrible couple....I feel sorry for the guy....he seems like he would be better off with someone who was not so exhausting.



KimJ
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16 Apr 2007, 10:14 pm

Savant skills are rare, not the norm. My husband has near photographic memory but that alone is not a savant skill.
I just saw the movie too and the movie showed a wide array of autistic people. "Isabelle" also had PTSD which presented different problems with how she related to men. I would not use a dramatization to self-diagnose or to undiagnose.



maldoror
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16 Apr 2007, 10:21 pm

Yeah, I think so. Josh Hartnett was playing the part of a moron with ADD that pulled numbers out of his ass, and the chick might have almost seemed aspie if the idea was to portray an aspie on coke.

I wouldn't care; bad movie is as bad movie does, except that, since the two leads had no chemistry to speak of, it's almost as if insinuating that aspies would be lucky to be able to "settle." That and every once in a while someone posts on here that they're questioning whether they have AS based on what they saw in that movie.



poopylungstuffing
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16 Apr 2007, 10:25 pm

really? I'm not the only one?? :)

I have known plenty NTs with photographic memories

um...yeah..I know it is unadvisable to self-diagnose or undiagnose via watching a dramatization...but I sorta couldn't help it.

I was skeptical as to how good a dramatization of it that it was...but if it was accurately representational, then um...I guess I could not visualise myself in the the room with those people...

my boyfriend and I did joke about certain parallels...like super happy fun land is sorta like our support group for people who would otherwise not have any friends...(he related to the "godlike among his peers" comment..as he always has a possee of folks who are socially dysfunctional)...except we have bands playing here constantly..and I guess a much more ADHD vibe...and Flakey and I have our various and assorted dysfunctions and they have caused us to break up a couple of times...but we are much more similar to each other..we have genuine chemstry otherwise it would have been pointless for us to continue..
but...
um...
there was another poit I was gonna make but I guess I will try to articulate it later.



Last edited by poopylungstuffing on 16 Apr 2007, 10:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Lightning88
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16 Apr 2007, 10:27 pm

Oh God, that movie is awful! They seemed much more like full blown autism than AS to me! I actually seriously had a nightmare from that movie once! 8O



Cadzie
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16 Apr 2007, 10:32 pm

I suck at numbers, music, but history and silly facts I clean house, all aspies are different but the same, like I love details, but another guy who claims to have it, doesn't and he's like lazy and a moocher, plus, read the book, Hollywood and tv, who have us as monsters or Rapists.



KimJ
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16 Apr 2007, 10:38 pm

MAldoror, since that movie is based on real people, I find your comments very insulting and slanderous. Who are you to call "Donald" a moron "that pulled numbers out of his ass"?!

I think the support group itself was autistics and Donald and Isabelle are Aspies. Greg was probably an Aspie, he wasn't diagnosed, which makes sense as the movie takes place in the mid 90's.

I find it hurtful to read people's comments that seek to exalt themselves by putting down others they consider "lower functioning". There's some guy on Youtube actually protesting the movie because it isn't about him, godforbid. He should write a movie and have Antonio Banderas portray him and show the world how great he is.
I didn't find the movie poor, I identified with a lot of main characters and their problems. We should probably look forward to the next movie that might give even more and better examples of the autistic community.



poopylungstuffing
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16 Apr 2007, 10:41 pm

yeah..I wanna read the book. I tried to explain to Flakey that the movie was not neccesarilly a good representation..but I was having doubts...what it it WAS..?


There are certainly better cinematic representations of people with Aspergers out there...but they genrally don't go around tossing the A word left and right...so much of the script seemed to come straight from the wikipedia entry on Aspergers...it seemed quite heavy handed.



maldoror
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16 Apr 2007, 10:48 pm

Well, I'm sorry you feel that way, but I feel insulted when I think that there might be people out there who picture someone with Aspergers as apt to stroll away from a cab they'd just crashed. That's my interpretation of a moron, but hey, to each his own.



KimJ
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16 Apr 2007, 10:51 pm

That part is true, Poopy, I felt the first half and the second half didn't go together because of the throwing around definitions and the flashbacks. That didn't mesh with the immediate narrative and conflict.
Apparently, there was a change of directors (I think during post production) and the lead actor, Josh Hartnett refused to promote the movie because of it. He claimed that the finished product was different that originally intended, I think. So, I'm not sure what the actual concept was, if it was that different.



Cadzie
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16 Apr 2007, 10:55 pm

KimJ wrote:
That part is true, Poopy, I felt the first half and the second half didn't go together because of the throwing around definitions and the flashbacks. That didn't mesh with the immediate narrative and conflict.

Well kim, as a person with Aspies, I have flash backs all the time, when thinking of my problems all the times, I could live in my past if I wanted too, and I sometimes lose my point in thinking of details like the characters did



KimJ
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16 Apr 2007, 11:02 pm

I'm referring more to the quality of the production and story-telling. A movie with flashbacks spreads them throughout, not just at one binge. For instance, when Isabelle gets so engraged and vindictive when he brings the boss home, a flashback could have worked to explain her rage and confusion. Having Donald share his story was redundant because the group would already know him well and his number obsession is shown throughout the movie. To smooth out the definitions, as Poopy and I referred to (sounding like wikipedia), they could have changed that to more interactions showing those traits.