Hello, glad to be here.

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Hey people, I'm new.

I've only known I was autistic since 2018. I am one of the only people in the world who has beaten Borderline Personality Disorder. For a few years, I helped out on the reddit and psychologyonline forums for other people suffering. I found a post that year regarding how the UK had a string of misdiagnoses for BPD of people with autism. So, I found this site and took a few of the available tests to see if I scored within range. I found that some of my behaviors still occurred even though I didn't have the emotional or identity instability associated with BPD any longer.

Well, sure enough, I did score high. I'm just below the line for disabled. The funny thing is that I grew up in a staunchly conservative christian household where my parents basically beat or mentally manipulated any of my autistic tendencies away. I mask exceptionally well. I even used my masking to become an exceptionally good B2B/B2C salesman. My life has been anything but normal, and I've enjoyed quite a great number of adventures. While I am saddened and angry about my situation regarding my family, I am eager to learn more about the aspie/autism community.

I have a ginormous collection of Transformers and host a new channel on YouTube doing reviews. Since I was young, I have used toys to stim. And as an adult now I find myself less ashamed of my time playing with them. I'm glad to see similar nd "eccentricities" in everyone's responses and find myself having many of the questions about the psychology of neurodiversity answered. I am still curious about one topic.

I joined Mensa about 15 years ago and didn't get my test scores until last year, due to the hubris many intelligent people accumulate after they learn their IQs. I scored two standard deviations above the entrance requirement for the social organization. And, it tracked with my experience in the San Francisco Bay Area I spent the last 8 years living in, and some of which I spent active in the org. So, my curiosity is this - are all neurodiverse geniuses? Is there a link between the two that anyone has put to scientific research? I'm interested in seeing any forum topics here about philosophy, high level theoretical math (I solved the twin prime theorem and Goldbach conjecture last year in my spare time), and anything related to the pedagogy of autism.

If anyone is interested in my channel, I'll post the link here once I get some street cred (played with toys transformers reviews on YouTube). I'm looking forward to getting to know the community.

No. Nerodiverse people come in a whole range of different IQ levels just like nerotypical people do.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

But what you will find with nerodiverse people is that when the brain is developing, because there are missing brain connections (Which causes them to be neurodiverse), the brain then compensates for this by overdeveloping another area or areas of the brain instead, which results in people in certain narrow fields having genius levels of intelligence, and in other areas they are lacking where NT's will be puzzled why they are lacking (As to an NT, their personal experience is that one is either intelligent or not, so they can be confused with this mix and assume one is not trying if they see one as highly intelligent in other areas).
Another outcome of the overdeveloped brain areas are where it comes to sensory issues where sensitivity to light, touch, smell etc can be heightened to even "Superhuman" levels.

Something many autistic people can do which allistic people can't is that it is found out that they have what is known as a "Fluid brain" where they can divert attention from one brain area to another. (I am going by memory here on what I read and I know I have done this in the past). For example, if one has pain like toothache, one can divert the overwealmed area of the brain dealing with the pain to another area so one does not feel the pain. I believe those studying autistic brains found that the brain connections can connect elsewhere when this happens? This does not happen with NT's. (Maybe someone who has read the same studies that I read can clarify as I have read so much information in such a short time I do not know where I saw it. It may even have been a Youtube Ted talk. (I have been on a mad study of everything I could find out about autism when I joined this site as I had just been put on a waiting list to be assessed. I am still here and I am still on the list. I only initially joined to ask a single question! Haha! This site is good!)

Autistic people usually have what we call a uneven (spikey) cognitive profile. There are many extreme examples of this: the autistic savant, Einstein - a "genius" who had trouble tying his shoelaces, etc. When people throw around IQ numbers related to autism, they usual just create confusion over the complex reality of the abilities of ASD people. I just checked the Autism Speaks website, since earlier I saw them presenting grossly pessimistic and misleading IQ numbers. They now say:

31% of children with ASD have an intellectual disability (intelligence quotient [IQ] <70), 25% are in the borderline range (IQ 71–85), and 44% have IQ scores in the average to above average range (i.e., IQ >85).

This still is probably pessimistic. If you dig deep enough into their website you can find that this is CDC data from "The Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network". I suspect these numbers are missing a lot of aspies who get diagnosed after age 8, if at all.

You have just hit on a reason why one can take these statistics as reality. Because only the more obvious cases of autism will have been picked up on (Example, those who from an early age did not learn to mask) one only has a small percentage of examples who are ALREADY in the realm of a certain area to go by... So one is not getting a full picture.

To get a full picture, one has to take whole classes of school children, assess them to see who is or who is not classed as being on the spectrum, and then take the ones who are on the spectrum to the side to work out the statistics to get a clear result.
Their results EXCLUDE all the intelligent ones who have cleverly masked their symptoms, so they will by nature only have the ones with the lesser IQ levels to begin with.

I remember watching a Ted talk by one of the worlds leading experts of autism who was a professor in the subject. He did his own studies and went right around the world doing this. He found that if he selected people at random from each country and people group where he did not know if the people were on the spectrum or not, and assessed them to see who was or wasn't on the spectrum, he found that the figures were a constant 6% from every people group around the world that he assessed that were on the spectrum. He said that there were minor fluctuations like 5.8% or 6.2% but it always gave him a 6% figure.
He then questioned the official autism statistics foe each country as he said in 3rd world countries their figures were less then 1%, and he said in the countries with the best healthcare, it was up to 2 and a half %. He said that this has nothing to do with how many are really on the spectrum, but has everything to do with how many people are assessed. (I know that for most western countries like the UK where I live, one is only put forward to be assessed if one has a logical reason to need to be assessed so many like me have already slipped through the net and not known that their struggles are related to having autism traits).

Welcome to WP!

You may have heard that "If you've met one person with Autism, you've met one person with Autism." Well, I'd say the same things about Mensans. I joined WP in 2020, after being diagnosed in 2019, and I've been in Mensa since 1981. And I'd say both communities contain an interesting mix of folk with a lot of friendly people. I like both.

I'll admit I'm surprised that if you took the Mensa admission test that they later gave you detailed results. I thought it was Pass/Fail.

Welcome to Wrong Planet.

I suspect many of the individuals in Mensa are Aspies. I do not think all Aspies are geniuses but some are. I am a pattern thinker (I recognize patterns that may be missed by others). I noticed this trait is strong in both my children and grandchildren.

I do believe that if an Aspie develops properly they may become a NONCONFORMIST.

These are some quotes about nonconformists:

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. – Rob Siltanen: Apple, "Think Different" campaign

It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed. - Albert Einstein

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road. - Voltaire

Not all those who wander are lost. - J.R.R. Tolkien

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. - Winston Churchill

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

A "normal" person is the sort of person that might be designed by a committee. You know, "Each person puts in a pretty color and it comes out gray." - Alan Sherman

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche

The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain. - Colin Wilson

Freedom began on the day the first sheep wandered away from the herd. ― Marty Rubin

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

welcome, enjoy looking around and learning more about autism. Ask questions if you've got them, loads of experience and insights in this group, combined wisdom all in one website can't be beat anywhere but other similar one topic (autism related) forums. Glad you are with us.

Welcome to WP!