Cassandra Affective Disorder

Post Reply New Topic

Anybody studying this?

what is it

you don't want to know.... the fact that NTs would make up such a disorder is appauling

How would this be dissimilar from me saying I have a disease of being close to a person who has a disease..my disease is being near them?

seems like a joke. Is this what people who have it look like?



If so, the cure may be plastic surgery.

You have got to be kidding me! Ok, you know, Im pretty sure a bunch of NTs have said the same thing about asperger's syndrome, but this is rediculous. You dont GET a disorder because you married or live with an autisic/aspergian. If you do, you are a weak person. I mean, there are causes for schizophrenia, there are causes for PTSD, and while we dont know it yet, there is a cause for autism(no, I dont have a guess).

But its like, come on. You chose the person you married. If you didnt love them for who they were, WETHER you knew they were autistic or not, doesnt give you a mental disorder. Its your fault, much like(and I know Im gonna catch hell for this) being a battered woman. I know, I know, they didnt know the guy was gonna be abusive. But the moment they became abusive you should have left thier a$$. Thier is no love in hitting a person(not even in "discipline").

But Ive digressed. I cant believe people would create something that blames thier problems on loving us. That

what in the world is a cassandra affective dissorder???

It's a disorder made up by some psychologist called Maxine Aston.

Here's a quote from her website on Cassandra Affective Disorder:

My research strongly indicates that people with Asperger syndrome emotionally deprive (usually unintentionally) their partners and this, in turn, will have an effect on the mental and physical health of that deprived partner in the relationship. It is especially extreme if the couple are unaware of the cause (AS) of the relationship problems.

Her website is http://www.maxineaston.co.uk/

Oh it's quite real. You can ask my Missus, I drove her to drink ! ! Not to mention how I inflict this lovely website with my fractured logic ! ! Why, Alex was a nice young man when I first signed on, and now look at him, a wreck ! ! Poor lad ! !! {sarcasm}

Ok, so we can have alanon, alzhiemer's support groups but no support for the spouse of an aspie??? Come on have a little sympathy. And yes we do support the aspie through all the self medication, years of therapy including anger management from professionals that don't know what is wrong. Point is.. I am doing all that I can to educate people about autism and this is just one avenue for help with this very misunderstood disability.

Cassandra Affective Syndrome isn't recognized by the medical community. Alcoholism and alzhiemers are all personal problems.

It seems the cure for CAS would be to get a divorce and marry someone else. Some people with Asperger's are incredibly emotional and empathetic but pathetic with social situations. It's insulting for someone to create a disorder that implies everyone with Asperger's is emotionally draining.

If your spouse has Asperger's and you can't deal with it, don't assume he's exactly like everyone else with asperger's. At the same time I can understand the idea of a support group for aspies and their spouses altogether.

Maybe it should be...

Well it hurts my feelings. I'm very caring and conscious of other peoples feelings. I'm just awkward in social situations and have some interests in my career.

I agree with Alex on a number of points. First of all, I think that you are over generalizing when you say that everyone who is married to an aspie has to deal with years of self-medication, therapy, and anger management. We're not all cut from the same mold. I, for one, don't self medicate and I don't have an anger management problem (I do have meltdowns occasionally, but when that happens I get emotional and want to be alone - I am not violent towards my husband). We are currently going to therapy, but mainly because my husband got caught up in an irrational religious sect. Does this mean that I should start a support group for people with Jani Syndrome - autistics who are emotionally deprived due to their spouse's NT tendancies to join fundamentalist sects?

I don't think that support groups for people married to autistics is necessarily a bad idea, but it's a little presumptuous name a syndrome after it. As far as I can tell, CAS is based on the assumption that all people in relationships with autistics will have identical problems because all autistics will behave identically in a relationship. I can't even begin to say what a problematic assumption that is based on....

Also, I consider myself caring when it comes to other people and how they feel. I'm also awkward in social situations. AND at the moment, I am very preoccupied with getting a PhD. I just don't see myself (or many other autistics) as fitting the "profile" of the autistic person in the CAS relationship. It's absurd.

There is NO WAY you can call it a syndrome when you make a choice to do it. So you as an NT have no ownership in marrying an emotionally unavailable person who happens to have asperger syndrome?

If I married a man who had no legs and I started a SYNDROME support group for people sick of fetching things for their amputee spouses that would seem pretty shallow wouldn't it?

Or.." I need my own syndrome because my spouse is trapped in his own thoughts and mind and feels like he is somehow disconnected with the *real world* " Again, sounds pretty shallow.

Can I see a support network, hell yeah, because trying to understand my son is one of the greatest goals in my parenting life, to help him cope and develop in the world of NT reasoning. To say I develop a syndrome from this is insulting to HIS "condition", "disability", "internal angst" etc. If you think YOU have a syndrome from caring and loving for an Aspie, take a step back and imagine life in their shoes!

I am not trying to sound aggressive (my son said this sounds fine) in this post but to actually claim you have a syndrome because someone you love and care for has a syndrome is what...syndrome by proxy?

And one other thing...

As much as the CAS doesn't make sense, if one were to start a support group for spouses of autistics, I would envision it running the same way as a cancer support group that my husband's aunt and late uncle attended (actually the aunt still goes). DH's uncle had a fairly rare and virulent form of bone marrow cancer and he had a bad prognosis. He attended the group, and there were some people there whose futures were equally bleak, and some people who had some milder types of breast cancer and a fairly good prognosis. So there was no comparison between the members of the group in terms of prognosis, type of cancer, treatments received, etc. So you couldn't label all of the spouses in that group as having "Cancer Spouse Syndrome" because their situations and lives were all so different.

Now, comparing cancer and ASD is not an apples to apples comparison since they are quite different. But the point is that you couldn't possibly take my relatives' situation and superimpose it on ever single couple in that group and name a syndrome after it. It would be utterly ridiculous!