Sounds like it could be AS, or mild brain damage, depending on if your condition is a product of the accident or not. A lot of the things you have mentioned I have, although I feel guilt all the time. Many aspies don't though.
Sophist on this site wrote this, how strongly do you identify with it?
Quote:
LIST OF COMMON SYMPTOMOLOGY FOR AUTISTIC SPECTRUM DISORDERS:
This is not an exhaustive list of characteristics of the Autistic Spectrum nor are all these characteristics particular to autism alone. It includes a listing of symptoms one may see in ASDs. But please note that not every autistic person is going to display every point on this list nor to a similar degree as the next. This is just a general guideline to some of the underlying issues seen in ASDs.
Anxiety/GABA-related Issues:
OCD-like Tendencies These symptoms are on a spectrum of their own within Autistic Spectrum Disorders. They can include full-blown OCD or milder, undiagnosable symptoms such as a preference for routine, difficulty with change, repetitive thought processes, and compulsions which may fall short of the full OCD criteria.
Anxiety Issues The anxiety can vary wildly from sudden panic attacks to more specific phobias. Social Phobia is a common comorbid. If not diagnosable with Social Phobia, many autistics may have a general social uneasiness. Anxiety can also often focus around the OCD-like issues and involve compulsions and/or obsessive and repetitive thoughts.
Obsessions Despite that the DSM and many books imply an autistic person is usually only obsessed with one thing at a given time, the focus should be on the level of the obsession and/or whether it us an unusual interest; not the number of obsessions. The duration can be longstanding (years) or even as brief as a single afternoon. Instead the focus should be on the intensity and/or the abnormality of the obsession, itself, and not the number or duration. Some ADHD symptoms can often make obsessional interests last shorter than “stereotypical”.
Self-stimulatory Behaviors In some autistic individuals, this symptom is very extreme; in others, it may be subtle or solely done in private. Stimulatory behaviors are common to all humans; however, autistics tend to stim more frequently and perhaps may or may not inhibit their stimulatory behavior simply due to social convention. Stimulatory behaviors (or rather an increase in these behaviors) is often triggered by a non-homeostatic emotional state (e.g., anxiety or excitement). However, stimming can also be a sensory-exploration and not simply a method of anxious calming. Examples of stimming behavior can include (but are not limited to): hand flapping, rocking, pacing, other hand movements, etc.
Hyper- and Hypo-sensory Issues These can involve any of the senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, vestibular system (balance), proprioception (joint awareness; limb awareness), exteroception (skin awareness), and interoception (awareness of the inner body: organs such as stomach, bladder, bowel movements, etc.). Vestibular abnormalities, proprioception, exteroception, and interoception all seems to be fairly constant in abnormal functioning; however, the level of sensitivity of the five main senses can many times be contingent upon anxiety levels. Many autistics experience a consistent abnormality in several of these senses, but level of severity (e.g., an increase in discomfort) can be affected by anxiety levels.
Body Issues:
Coordination, Balance, and Body Awareness Each of these areas can be affected. As stated above, issues in these areas are usually constant in nature and not quite as vulnerable to shifts in anxiety. However, these functions can decline during a task which requires divided attention.
Cognitive Functioning:
Executive Dysfunction Autistics can have varying levels and combinations of EDF. Most have issues with multitasking, some even to the point that looking and listening can be a difficult task. Social multitasking can be an issue. Common ADHD symptoms are most often noted, if not full-blown ADHD. With this, attentional problems, organization, multitasking, and goal-oriented planning and carrying out of these plans can all be affected. Although each autistic will show varying levels of severity.
Language Expression For some autistics, language can be impaired as severely as a complete inability to communicate verbally (either due to a larger language disability or just verbal motor apraxia). For others, language can be less noticeably affected. Some autistics may exhibit poor prosodic control such as monotonic speech, some may have poor volume control, others may prefer to do voices, others still may have an unusual way with words. But this does not discount autistics who, through years of learning, have also come to blend fairly well, language-wise, into the world.
Social Issues This is the symptom which is often most obvious to onlookers or during interaction and the reason Autistic Spectrum Disorders have mistakenly been called “social disorders”. Issues in this area can range from very severe to very mild. Most autistics have difficulty in this broad area, although, as just stated, these difficulties can be very subtle in some and difficulty in this area is not a condemnation to lifelong solitude (many autistic people are married and have children, friends, etc). As a generalization, males tend to be more seriously affected in this area, especially those with Aspergers or High-Functioning Autism-- although that is not a steadfast rule to diagnose by. Some of the common symptoms which add to social difficulty can include: nonverbal reading issues, social multitasking, social phobia and other anxiety issues, and theory of mind problems. Some autistics may also have less of a desire to interact socially, although this is certainly not the case for all.
Nonverbal Language Issues Many autistic people have difficulty in recognizing, reading, and interpreting nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication includes gestures, facial movements, body positioning and other sorts of communication which do not deal with verbal language or prosody. However, within the autistic spectrum, disability in this area can range from only very mildly affected where the person may miss things but overall keeps up with a majority of social cues to someone more seriously affected and who cannot recognize, read, and interpret the majority of nonverbal language.
Prosodic Interpretation Some autistic people can have difficulty in reading the portion of verbal language which includes voice tone and range. There is more meaning in language than simply words, and prosodic language can be integral to correctly interpreting communication. Some autistics may only listen to the actual words and completely ignore intonation, while others may only miss subtler tonal cues.
Emotional Dysregulation Many autistic people have difficulty with the regulation of their emotions. This can include a wide variety of emotions and can range from under-responsiveness to over-responsiveness; this dysregulation can also range from causing a severe disability to something which is only mildly problematic. The autistic person may have the utmost patience for a normally-frustrating project while on the other hand, they may erupt over something seemingly trivial. Not every autistic person has difficulties with emotional regulation and for those who do, the level of dysregulation can often be traced back to stress levels. If the person is going through a more stressful period in life, their ability to control their emotional behavior may lessen.
Local Processing Bias Autistics often have a Weak Central Coherence for information. If one thinks of nonautistic people as being the “generalizers” of the world-- those who are constantly making associations during their intake and analysis of information-- autistics could be called the “specializers”, where information is coded more piecemeal or non-associatively. This is the main reason many autistics have issues with literal interpretation of language and/or concepts, because it takes a great deal of neural cooperation to tie concepts together. For an autistic, this can be both an advantage and disadvantage in that it is more difficult to build conceptual gestalts but it is easier to see and analyze the parts of these gestalts. However, as a caution, as with all the symptoms associated with the autistic spectrum, this local processing bias varies by degree from autistic to autistic and can cause varying levels of ability and disability.
Sleep Disturbances Many autistics have issues with sleep. Often it is a difficulty with sleep (e.g.., getting to sleep) or staying asleep. Sometimes it can be an OCD-like issue regarding repetitive thoughts and the inability to “wind down”.
Talent Areas Many autistics seem to have splinter skills, talents, or even prodigious talent areas. The areas most noted are: music, art, mathematics, language acquisition, memory, visuo-spatial skills, writing, and analysis of information. Though this list is by no means exhaustive.
Medical Issues:
Autoimmune Dysfunction More recent research supports the notion that a portion of ASDs may involve an autoimmune component. These immune components can include IgA Deficiency, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Hypothyroidism, gastrointestinal issues such as Celiac Disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, nondescript gluten allergies, casein allergy, lactose allergy, other sinus-related allergies, and asthma. As further research is performed, other related issues may continue to arise.
Common Comorbids:
Common Comorbid Conditions: ADHD/ADD, OCD, Depression, Central Auditory Processing Disorder, Learning Disabilities including Nonverbal Learning Disorder, Dyslexia and other disorders of written or verbal expression, Tourette's and other Tic Disorders, Bipolar Disorder, Psychosis (most often noted in the teenage or early adult years), Schizophrenia, Epilepsies, various apraxias, Prosopagnosia and other perceptual disorders (e.g., depth perception), various synaesthesias, and a host of others. For some, addictions can also be an issue.
Family Genetics:
Family Genetics In most Autistic Spectrum Disorders, it seems many genes are involved; therefore, it is likely these characteristics did not arise out of the blue. Like any other phenotypic expression, most often if a child exhibits some characteristic, members within his or her family will express similar characteristics. A “Broader Autistic Phenotype” can often be seen within these families (i.e., Shadow Syndromes) if not autism itself. Although in females these expressions may be subtler due to a possible genetic suppression that female-sex-specific genetics may wield, so in looking back on the family the possibility of this sex-specific suppression needs to be kept in mind.
26 Apr 2007, 12:47 pm
