Am I Aspergers or am I like this because my mother is?

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inmydreams
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23 Dec 2015, 11:54 am

My mother is undiagnosed but I am very confident that she is Aspergers. I also have many of the attributes but can't tell whether my social confusion and other aspects have come as a result of her difficulties in this area or that they are inherent. Is there anyone else out there who is struggling with understanding the difference?



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23 Dec 2015, 12:22 pm

(Moved from wrongplanet.net discussion to General Autism discussion)


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23 Dec 2015, 12:40 pm

That is a very good question and a very difficult one to answer on a forum. I think you would need a professional to assess you to see if you are truly Apsergian of if your behaviors and responses are learned. Do you have any sensory sensitives? I don't think those can be learned.


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23 Dec 2015, 3:45 pm

Since autism seems to run in families, it might be a bit of both. Even if your traits are simply a result of nurture, you can still benefit from the advice aimed at autistics about the important of eye contact, conversational reciprocity, etc. that your mother didn't teach you. WrongPlanet is a good place for people with the broad autistm phenotype.



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23 Dec 2015, 4:06 pm

It´s complex. You have been influenceed by your mother - then there is your gender, your temperament and-and-and. There is nothing clear cut here.


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24 Dec 2015, 9:18 am

Well, siblings of kids with single-gene forms of autism don't have higher autistic traits than average, according to this study. These kids have no increased genetic predisposition to autism (unlike siblings of kids with polygenetic autism), but they have regular daily contact with an autistic person.

I don't know of any research on people with autistic parents, but my impression is that autistic traits are probably not something that can be learned, except in the most superficial way. Also, NT kids are social sponges and readily imitate non-family members as well as family members - that's why most second-generation immigrants have no noticeable accent. So even if an NT kid was mimicking an autistic family member's behaviour, they'd start acting more NT as soon as they entered school.



inmydreams
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02 Feb 2016, 12:16 pm

Thank you for your responses and sorry for my delay in replying, I've been moving house.

I am trying to see a consultant to be tested at the moment but it is quite demanding. They would like to see someone in my family but they find me so annoying and bring their own agendas to everything (my sister thinks I should take Citalopram because it works for her, and my mother - who I strongly believe is Asperger's - doesn't want to be and therefore won't want to think I am...) that it makes me feel really anxious about going with any of them.

In fact I feel really exposed/vulnerable at the thought of doing that but I can see that having information about how I was in my early years is really important. I rememeber so much of my childhood myself but I guess it makes sense not listen to just what we (the people being tested) say and to get another perspective...

Does anyone have experience of feeling uncomfortable at the thought of bringing a family member to their assessment?

Thank you.



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02 Feb 2016, 3:31 pm

Are you thinking about your mother? I´d surely have liked to bring mine - and she would have been interested too - as she had a lot of questions herself.


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inmydreams
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02 Feb 2016, 4:19 pm

Hello, are you asking me if I am considering her feelings? If you do mean that, I think I am. I asked her if she thought she might be Asperger's and she said she was very offended so I take that further to mean that she might be uncomfortable going to see if I am. Also, whenever I was ill my mother denied it unless I had a temperature or blood tests could prove domething. If there were clear genetic tests it might be ok... Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions but she is very guarded when I ask her about my infancy too, so for my own sake I thought it might be safer to find someone else perhaps...



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02 Feb 2016, 5:18 pm

If you have any NT siblings, they would be just like you if it was all learned behavior. That is what i think of myself about my brothers, if my social skills were from my father and learned from him, my brothers would be just like him too but they aren't. Kids have other role models so they grow up not ending up like their aspie parent. They might mimic some of it but then they stop doing it.


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02 Feb 2016, 5:54 pm

inmydreams. It seems, that your mother is somewhat afraid of anything being wrong. Perhaps she had her quiet struggle and finally found a way to be "like anyone else". If you had a test yourself and it turned out, that you´re an aspie, she might perhaps be less afraid and look into it - but if people don´t want to know, they shouldn´t be forced to.


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03 Feb 2016, 3:07 am

inmydreams wrote:
Does anyone have experience of feeling uncomfortable at the thought of bringing a family member to their assessment?

Thank you.


I was really nervous about my family being involved in the diagnostic procedure because whenever I had brought it up in passing to test the water they had been very dismissive - don't be so silly, lots of people have traits but it doesn't mean they're autistic, etc etc. We were always quite a 'man up and get on with it' kind of family when we were I'll or anything.

I went to my GP secretly and when I'd got the assessment date through the paperwork included questionnaires for family members. I braved it and asked my Mum and one of my sister's to do one. My mum thought I was taking it a bit far but when she realised it was that important to me she went with it. Her questionnaire didn't have so much on it as my sister's, who had noticed a lot of things since us two living together as adults.

Nobody came with me to the assessment but they did use the questionnaire info.

Hope that helps!



inmydreams
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03 Feb 2016, 5:28 am

Thank you YorkieDuck, it does help. It would be much easier to ask my sister or either of my parents to fill out a questionnaire than have them be there. Dismissive is the word! I appreciate the suggestion.