What kind of Autism/Asperger's do you have?

Post Reply New Topic

Yet another poll! I'm doing a whole lot lately.

It seems like there's a great deal of diversity. So what's your style of autism?

They'd make really long poll options, so I'm listing them here with numbers. Pick the number that corresponds to the way you think.

1. Intelligent and intellectual. You enjoy working with theories and ideas. You're anything but unemotional, though, and probably have strong values and feelings. Your executive function could charitably be called awful. You may be asocial. I fit this category. I'm pretty sure Callista (chaoticidealism.livejournal.com) fits, too, though of course I should be careful saying something about someone else.

2. "Robotic" and not particularly interested in people or relationships. Not social, not socially skilled with anyone, autistic or not. Very logical. You aren't necessarily devoid of emotions, but if I had to pick someone to impersonate a Vulcan, it would be you. I can't think of anyone that I know is like this on WP.

3. You dislike anything as abstract as my post. You don't really "get" language, but may use it better than you understand it. You don't particularly like other symbols, either. You don't do very well at starting things off on your own, at least not compared to how well you do them in response to an external stimulus (triggered). anbuend (standard disclaimer about saying stuff about other people) fits this category. Her blog is at ballastexistenz.autistics.org and has more in-depth explanations of what I'm getting at.

Anyway, I'm SURE I've left some people out. Please speak up if I have! I want to hear from you. Please tell me if you dislike these categories for any reason. Also, please tell me if you have more information relating to these categories.

Some of 1, a bit of 3. I picked 1.

I have trouble initiating things without something to prompt/trigger me. Once I have that I can go on all day, but otherwise I find it difficult to say nearly as much as I would like, or assemble it into a coherent whole. I actually wrote a long post about this. I am also not excellent at more abstract things, although I often end up pouring a lot of energy into them because they seem important or interesting, but every time I want to deal with them I have to do it all over again. My preference is to not spend time on constructs I can only make sense of for short periods of time. This isn't 100% the case - I think some abstract things come more easily and are more "durable" than others, and some things I like the ideas enough that I keep going back to them.

I'm not sure how related the needing-of-trigger thing is to the abstraction thing. (I think the needing-of-trigger thing is fairly common in lots of types really.) I really don't even know how many of my traits go together because they naturally go together that way really often, or just because I happened to get that combination of unrelated traits. Obviously I still voted #3, it's hard not to vote yourself as part of a category someone has based on you.

I really wish there was an option for polls where you could vote on multiple answers. Then, you could just list a bunch of single traits, and everyone could check off the ones that applied to them, and that would be really cool. I'd be interested in all kinds of things, like having rigid levels of skills versus fluid/fluctuating levels of skills, the inertia thing, lots of other things too. I often get frustrated with the limitations of the polls here. I keep ending up writing polls where I have to say "Which one of those are you most like?" even when a person could be equally three of them, and it goes against the grain. And I don't care enough to try to find a site where I could actually make a decent survey, if such sites exist.

I'm definitely a Type 1. I'm intelligent (or so I'm told by other people), but I can also become very emotional. I also have strong core values which I won't compromise. And yes, my executive dysfunction is terrible, to say the least.

I guess I'm more intellectual but not robotic. While I do have a kind of monotonous voice, I do enjoy socializing on occasion. I'm definitely not anti-social.

I wonder if surveymonkey.com or quizilla.teennick.com would work for that sort of thing.

I voted 2. I play off the robot thing a lot, probably more than is healthy for my growth/development as a member of some kind of society.. but hey, learning curve.

I am intelligent and thinking but rely on stimulus to keep my thinking on the level that I'd like to be on. I can make bold statements that are not followed up by any sort of speculation, and I could call these 'conversation starters' except that the conversation starts there and ends with a weird, anticipating look from the other party.

I am mostly number 1 with a trace of number 3. At one time my goal in life was to be like number 2, but I never managed to do it very well. I think that someplace inside me, I am very social, but I have so much difficulty in socializing because of my poor social skills and because of my tendency to obsess about things.

Actually, my goal was to be Data rather than a Vulcan. I found the behavior of those normal humans to be an interesting study, and their illogical habits were the most interesting of all. I wanted to be like them, but at the same time I found them to be completely incomprehensible.

I do know one person who is a perfect number 2. He makes me a bit uncomfortable. He tries too hard to be logical, and he is so pedantic that he gets into arguments with people over trivial matters. I don't think that he is an Aspie, but I would not swear that he wasn't.

Yeah, I fit #1 better than the other two, so it's not a bad guess.

There's also a big, big focus on details for me. Not really "intellectual" so much as just... lots of data. I like collecting and organizing facts. I see and think in details and lots of little ideas all together. I put all those ideas into patterns... in fact, I pattern everything I encounter. And I'm utterly consumed by special interests.

Somewhere between intellectual and robotic. Most days I feel more robotic because I'm quite logical and I very rarely get lonely, but I know I'm not unemotional. Thinking about ideas and theories stresses me out, but I still love it (for as long as I can handle it).

Interesting.

I *am* number one, but I didn't really think that was the way most people thought of Asperger's. I've known a lot of people like this.

We were just thought of as the "weird" kids, lol. I am asocial...not antisocial. I enjoy it sometimes, but never require it.

I might be a bit more like number 2 as far as logic goes. I have strong ideas and values but logic easily overpowers them. I'm not a TOTAL space case, as far as executive function goes but am defnitely not robotic. Have always been called animated.

I voted 2. though really I'm more of a 1.75... I was probably more of a 1 at some point, but years of being made fun of and being called a freak and being stabbed in the back by "friends" has made me more or less stop caring about having real relationships... I pretty much keep to myself these days, it gets lonely sometimes, but for the most part I'm okay with being alone.

I voted three. Abstractions don't often help very much when it comes to understanding. They have their uses when it comes to enrolling new enthusiasts, or have to draw curtains across difficult conceptual territory. But...

I mean, it's all very well to describe me as high functioning autistic, but the reality is that I've wasted a lifetime in pursuit of various chimerae, have no property, networks, friends, ... Yes, I'm just high functioning enough to ignore the possibilities for help and continue in the fruitless chase after normality.