Cognitive Distortions, mental illness, Asperger's Syndrome

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Hello, and thank you in advance, for taking the time to read and respond!
The topic, as shown above, is about Cognitive Distortions in relation to mental illness (Predominantly curious if this has anything, or a lot to do with Asperger's Syndrome.) For those of you reading this, and have never heard the phrase "Cognitive Distortion" here is directions to an insightful, credible, and informational link to describe what this means, exactly:PLEASE type this in under google search; this will take you to the link: *15 common cognitive distortions--psychcentral*)

If you did happen to have a few extra minutes, and were able to read through the psychcentral link (directions provided above), then you may have refreshed what you already knew prior to reading this post, or perhaps you've just learned something new, and interesting that may or may not (for you personally) highlight, explain, or describe a lot of what you've experienced as an individual living with a mental illness throughout life, or not living with a mental illness at all. Now, the reason why I don't injudiciously make this post ENTIRELY (it's still about this Syndrome, just not completely) about Asperger's Syndrome...and why I have chosen to attempt to make it about mental illness as a whole (yes, a very broad-based subject, sorry!)...is because I get a strong set of thoughts that this topic is massively intertwined, and apart of a plethora of different, complex mental disorders (which can make things rather confusing for people, and professionals trying to figure out if this has something to do with Asperger's Syndrome)...and wouldn't want to get confused or tied up thinking it has something to do with Asperger's, but it may not have anything to do with it at all. So, my question is, is this topic something that is strongly, and generally related to AS? Is this related to too many things to correctly zero in on? Does it really just depend on the individual? Or, in fact, could it be something else that is similar to AS? I promise you, I tried my best to not write this post so confusingly...but inevitably i'm sure it turned out that way.

P.S (this might help)- Something a close cousin of mine does (diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome) quite often, is...whenever he watches a movie, reads something online, sees something in other people, etc...he converts those happenings, compares, and personalizes them to his life obsessively...thinking that the circumstances found in the movie, the online research paper, or anything really...are completely true for him as well, when in fact he's usually being very irrational...but for him it's very real. For example, he was watching that new movie "Concussion" about the sport of american football and how repetitive blows to the head causes serious brain damage, and can have terrible side effects later in life. My friend started to think that this was inevitably going to happen to him later in life..because he played football has a young child, and in high school, and said that he hit his head a lot while he played. He got a lot of anxiety from these thoughts, which then turned into a depressive mood. He started thinking life was pointless to keep trying to live seeing that he had this permanent brain damage from playing football for a few years as a teenager, just like the character in the movie "Concussion" who passes away in the movie. From this he started to obsessively research concussions in younger people, and how it effects the brain. This is all happening in the course of literally 30 minutes. Eventually, after thinking there was no hope, that he was doomed, and that this was why he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome to begin with..he calmed down and also apologized for lashing out at those around him trying to reassure him. Have any of you experienced something similar to this? It was like he became overwhelmed, enraged, and had a mini meltdown for a little while.

I do not know where you want to come but I can recall taking cognitive tests at my psychiatrist. I did fairly well on some of them and real poor on a few.

States of abnormal thought patterns, abnormal feelings and an abnormal way on how you perceive the world is the definition of a mental illness. Your whole mental state is affected. Often people with mental illness have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. They might also be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder due to their abnormal behavior.

But Asperger's syndrome is not a mental illness in that way.

to the OP: your cousin's behavior reminds me of my own at his age. I hope his frontal lobes come on line soon enough and he can chill. I don't know how common that particular kind of cognitive distortion is with us denizens of the spectrum, it would be interesting to hear somebody knowledgeable about it hold forth here.

Wait, your cousin was diagnosed with AS because he was worried about having a brain concussion because he played football? That sounds a lot like OCD and he got diagnosed with AS instead of OCD. If that is all he had, that makes no sense why he would be diagnosed with it.


This reminds me when I was in my teens, I was always worried about having schizophrenia. When I was 14 I was worried I was ret*d, then I was worried about being a schizophrenic so whenever people remembered things differently, didn't hear the same sounds as I did, couldn't remember the same things I remembered, and also misunderstanding what I heard, I would always freak out thinking I was going crazy because those were all symptoms of schizophrenia. They hallucinate so I thought I was having delusions and hallucinations. Watching A Beautiful Mind made me realize I wasn't even close to having it. Even my therapist I was seeing went through a verbal schizophrenia assessment with me asking me all these questions and I answered no to every one of them. I think he did it to reassure me I didn't have it. But I wasn't convinced because something else would happen and bam my thoughts about me being a schizophrenic would be back. I have an aunt with it so I know it can be genetic and my aunt was an adolescent when she started having problems, junior high it was. So I was frightened about having it and getting it so I decided if I do start to see things that are not there or start hearing voices when no one is in the room nor at home, I will go to the hospital to get treatment.

My husband would be inclined to tell you that AS and cognitive distortion are heavily intertwined.

After seventeen years of dealing with me, he oughta know.

I can tell you that it is very difficult (possibly impossible) for me to sort out distortions based on irrationality from distortions based on things that were true when I was a young Aspie that might not be true any more from things that WOULD BE distortions for a non-autistic but are facts of life for me because of the way my wiring interfaces (or fails to) with the non-autistic world and its inherent quirks.