Is it better to have severe or mild aspergers?

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It's possible to have "severe" Asperger's, and there are at least a few posters here who qualify.

Ah finally to see severe in quotes than mild.

I wish I could remember why I put the quotes there. It was certainly not to question the validity of such a thing.

At least I managed to do something new in the process.

Thank you for sharing again your condition. It was inspiring for me as I didn't have idea of what sensory preocessing is. It helped me understanding my son and I now try to adjust therapy tecniques on his needs. It was difficult to explain to his ABA therapists but I hope I will succeed. He was avoiding to listen to verbal requests because he can't give attention for more of 30 seconds. He was likely experiencing a shutdown everytime he was requested to function at higher level. I tried to demand less and for less time and he began to answer. I can feel your pain and his pain now and I feel so guilty. I'm still so far from understand him, I only can work on hypothesis, so I try to help him but It can occur that I get wrong. I should know his needs but I don't.

Rubbish. Severe aspergers does not guarantee super abilities or any of those other things you've listed. The severe aspies I know are nothing like that and to be honest have quite a s**t time.

Sheldon from the TV show Big Bang Theory a professor and a cold calculating genius is the pin up Uber Nerd/Geek with Severe Aspergers with super human abilities.

I find this really difficult to work out. I consider myself to have AS (this is all quite new to me and I haven't sought a diagnosis yet, but it may come about as my daughter goes throught the assessment process). My husband considers himself NT, but I have my doubts. I think he's blisfully unaware of his traits. In my case, the sensory issues are the biggest problem. I can't ignore them and they are probably what causes most of the outward symptoms.

I'm very aware of everything, including people's reactions to me. My husband, on the other hand, does tend to monologue and can bore/irritate people very easily and he's not even aware of it. I just tell him to be Shhhhsh, he smiles and calms down. He's very moralistic (as am I) and makes his voice heard about all the wrong things in the world. His best friend thinks it's funny and points it out to his other friends when the monologuing starts. I monologue too, but I'm very aware of it happening.

I know he has mild face blindness and I'm quite shocked when he doesn't recognise a familiar face. For example, he never knew who Terry Hatcher was in a film, even though we had been watching the Superman series at the time. I know this isn't a prerequisite for AS and I don't have it, but it's often associated with AS.

As for coping, I think he does well, but he doesn't care what people think of him at all. I care enough to not want to lose good friends, but won't bow to peer pressure. He has a reasonable job (won't go any higher up because he's rocked too many boats and is perceived as not having the social skills for management). I think most people would see him as the Aspie and not me. If we both have AS, or at least significant traits, who is worse - me because of how it makes me feel, or him because of how he's perceived?

I would have to say my level of Asperger's syndrome is not mild. My social anxiety is so bad I become dizzy and sweaty due to spikes in my blood pressure when I go to the store or have to wait in a doctor's waiting room. These spikes have effected my already high blood pressure causing me to have an enlarged heart and kidneys with only 80% function. It has also lead to me having congestive heart failure in 2005.



I consider myself as having near severe Aspergers its anything but cool. I have no friends, no girlfriend, I depend on others way too much, people hate me or find me too weird for no reason, every job I have ever worked I was the pariah. My memory is poor and I have average intelligence with a high verbal IQ my life is miserable and not anything spectacular. I don't know why but your post Dark_Lord_2008 has pissed me off.



Are you taking the piss? He is a fictional sitcom character and not a real person. He is a character designed to make people laugh at his situation at life. I so want to call you an as*hole but I wont because that would be against the forum rules.

Last edited by Todesking on 19 May 2011, 12:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Isn't part of the differential diagnoses between AS ad high-functioning autism whether one wants to socialize, but has poor social skills?

That's one thing I see, but it's better to just remember that HFA and AS differences are totally arbitrary and pointless, either way if that's true then theres been a ton of misdiagnoses.

Yeah. I'm not even sure what "wants to socialize" means? Does it mean "wants to talk to people?" Does it mean "wants to be able to have reciprocal social interactions?" I don't get it.

I like to socialize as minimally as possible, and I easily slip into non-reciprocal monologues if I'm not careful. Does this mean I'm AS or HFA?

lol. It would be nice if "feeling alienated" was my biggest issue. It doesn't even make it onto the list of things that I worry about.

Also, being female, I can say that the combination of having severely impaired social skills and being expected to be better socially because of being female does not make things any easier.

I think that you are a genius. I actually drew out a graph desccribing what you said, and the curve just so happened to be an upside down parabola. Those with mild aspergers had the most social anxiety, while the NT's and those with severe aspergers had little to none at all. It probably doesn't really work that way in the real world, but I think this is interesting nonetheless.

There will always be outliers, I suppose. Moderately autistic here, give or take, and have underlying, pervasive anxiety, and they tell me it's severe.

There are worse things than having anxiety. Being dependent on people and being frustrated when you fail to do the simplest of things comes to mind.

I don't have much social anxiety because I just ignore people and I have extreme sensory issues, which sort of takes away any chance to know if I have social anxiety or not.

That said I have a severe dislike of change, so much people have had to stop doing what they're doing and adjust to my routine. I feel awful for it and want to try and not get so upset when something unplanned happens.

I have hormonal issues where I experience severe pains and anger/depression, not to mention the crazy mood swings that happen before all that. I become hyperactive, completely open minded before the exact opposite happens. Then the seizures start up, the migraines, the mental and physical tiredness. Then I become the opposite of hyperactive.

Add to this the fact that I must be medicated to sit still and focus or keep my head up (when I fall asleep for lack of dopamine). And to possibly control emotions like anger and depression. And ease my sensory issues. And to plan and organise. Most importantly to write and to do in depth research for said writing.

I think both end of the spectrum have their own struggles especially those with co-morbids. I've been through the whole social anxiety thing, now I get these weird symptoms of agoraphobia and discomfort around people. Not nervous around them but angry. I want them gone. The only reason being that they're there. I feel bad that I don't want them around when they mistake my attitude for something else, especially when I'm medicated and will be able to talk to them. It must be confusing for people who have no idea what's going on in my head and don't know just how planned out my day is, including the scheduling of medication.

I view mild as people able to work, have passable social skills but still some issues there, have had relationships, may dislike change but won't explode about it every time, and possibly are able to do things without being shown how 30 times. And as sensory issues are so common many doctors think they are a part of the ASD then mild to moderate sensory issues, where irritation does occur but it doesn't affect their life too much.
That's not to say that mild people don't struggle. We just have different struggles. They have more responsibilities so probably have more stress because they can't be free to have three or four breaks a day.

My stress just explodes at once because I don't always have to be around people or pay bills or go shopping, so when I venture out of my safe zone it's like a sudden rush of every sense at once and I have to remember that people outside of my family expect me to talk to them in the usual way.

In closing, I don't think a character like Sheldon would have severe Asperger's. He may take things literally and I think in one episode he had a shutdown. But he has a good job and at least talks to people with little anxiety. And he lives in a share house. He is mild. Those labels should be about functionality, rather than just how severe a symptoms is.
I've seen the severe AS label applied to those who have writing issues which somehow makes me mild because in the last three years I developed better punctuation skills through involuntary mimicry by reading forum posts on WP, and through the same mimicry but by picking it up from authors like Philip Pullman, J.K Rowling, Isaac Asimov and Neil Gaiman.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to have a meltdown over making dinner and blame it on my mum....because I'm so mild and all. :p

That I actually disagree with. I think we should explicitly both discuss severity - how severe traits are, and the functioning level of the person, but these can be incredibly complicated rather than so closely tied as people seem to view them as. Having words that take both into account might also be useful, but assumptions that higher functioning means less severe can get really problematic.

It might be rare, but its possible to be higher functioning than those who have more mild symptoms - and when you take co-morbids into account this can turn into a big tangled mess.

Personally, I got through college and living with a boyfriend before being diagnosed, yet I'm not a mild case (in either definition when you take into my inability to get a job). Just looking at where I am in life at 22 compared to an average 22 year old, I look like I'm a mild case, because I've been high functioning enough to have this not matter.

Yet I still have multiple meltdowns a week, am in a near-constant fight with sensory overload, am completely unable to work in most environments (I'm trying to get a telecommute job and trying to get SSI), am unable to drive and expect to never be able to drive, have major issues cooking, can't clean parts of my apartment, and have an emotional intelligence likely two standard deviations below average. I have severe sensory issues, alexithymia, and rarely leave my apartment if I don't have a specific planned reason to.

Yet because I've managed to work around these to a high enough degree, have managed a multi-year relationship, have managed living away from my parents and sharing an apartment in close contact with someone else, and have graduated from college, I present as high functioning enough that people try to convince me that I'm not autistic and just have minor social problems.

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As for answering the question - what matters is being happy and being yourself. It's not "better" to be severe or mild. There are advantages and disadvantages of each. Thinking that others have it better than you and just wishing to be them instead of being happy as yourself is where the problems come up.