Question for other NTs or for Undiagnosed ppl

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Just wondering if there are any NTs (or people who think they might have AS but aren't sure) out there who have some AS traits but not enough to warrant a diagnosis?

And if you do do you think you have these traits because you're on the spectrum or because it's just your personality?

I'm curious about this because I know I have alot of Aspie traits (and a few LFA ones) but I am not on the spectrum (I know this FOR SURE). The reason I think I have many ASD traits is because I grew up around Autism and picked up alot of behaviors from being with my family and knowing my brothers and sisters friends and their families. Because of my environment I ended up with an AS like personality (yet with the ability to live outside the box, hence why I'm not on the spectrum).

So just wondering to any of those NTs or Undiagnosed aspies if you guys think that you identify with AS because of your environental factors growing up or because you fit the ASD biology? (To clarify), it doesn't mean you had to have been around Autistic people or related to them, I just mean did anything happen in your life that could have lead to Aspie traits? Example...um...maybe you were picked on in your first year of school and it made you permanently cautious and a little withdrawn, like some Aspies....(??? sorry example might be bad, but it's the best I got right now and it still works).

There clearly is a certain 'type' of human who does seem to be almost on the spectrum, but not enough to actually climb over the fence and they identify with aspies, but they aren't one. I just kind of think there might be environmental-aspies and biological-aspies. Kind of how children can be 'made' severly autistic through terrible abuse/neglect, but had they had proper care they would have been fine, but on a much less severe scale.

ALL COMPLETE SPECULATION.

Any thoughts???

Last edited by KoS on 19 Mar 2010, 12:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well, I'm diagnosed, but I'm thinking about my younger sister (not the youngest, the middle child in this case), who is probably NT with autistic traits. She's the only one in my family who I think could not be diagnosed with autism.

She left home at sixteen, graduated from college at twenty-two, and is now working at a bakery and looking for a job as a translator. She makes a small number of close friends wherever she goes.

She's an introvert. She makes friends slowly. She's shy and easily embarrassed. She went through an intense horse phase as a child. She's probably asexual, like me, though it could just be that she prefers not to get married (I haven't pried into her personal life; she's just never had a significant other, even when she met boys who obviously liked her and whom she liked--only it always seemed to be as friends). As a very young child, she had pedantic speech; but she lost that by the second grade and picked up the cadence of the people around her (complicated by the fact that she had to learn English at the age of four). She's also been diagnosed with depression, but that's no wonder considering the household we had to live in as teens, and the likely genetic vulnerability we both inherited from our mom. She also inherited the distinct talent for music and reading that our whole family has; as youngsters, she and I used to sing duets, and she picked up reading remarkably fast, though at the old (for our family) age of five.

My sister's not autistic. She was always the one embarrassed by my "weird" behavior; my mom having no clue why what I was doing was embarrassing. But she does, like I said, have some traits.

Seems reasonable to me. If it's what you mostly were influenced with, it would probably "rub off" on you. I'm certainly no psychologist or anything, I'm just going by observation and what I've heard or read about with respect to behavior overall. 'm pretty much nothing like my family, though it IS possible that I developed some traits from some events in my life that were rather large, but according to people in my family, I've always been a bit weird or different than most everyone else I was around just on my own even before the events. I also remember some faint things when I was little, generally focusing a lot on my computer at the time, and little else... other than a bit of TV I guess.

I'm not diagnosed, but I was never around autism any as a kid. However, I still managed to develop so many aspie traits I doubt it's a coincidence. Speaking with people who are diagnosed only confirms how similar I am to them.

I'm not sure what a diagnosis would really do for me. I'd rather not think of myself as disabled, and don't really want an excuse for the way I am. I haven't done too shabby trying to hold myself up to NT standards.

Not diagnosed, but I've grown up in a family where one of my parents teaches people how to communicate effectively and I still have many aspie traits. Even though my parents have tried to teach me how to socialize appropriately, it's still pretty challenging now. And everyone in my family has a pretty good social life except for me. At most part of my play was copied off my brother (playing with lego/toy cars instead of dolls), but I preferred to line the cars up according to "age" (small cars are younger, big cars are older). So there's not much influence.

The only autistic person I've been around in my life is this girl in my catechism class, and I didn't even know that she had autism until a few years ago. And I only talked to her because she always gravitated towards to me, and she still does now.

An exellent question, of course. I am undiagnosed, but about as certain as is possible to be that I belong somewhere on the spectrum, if only in the cold outer orbits with Pluto. Of course until we have a blood test or a DNA segment how can one be sure it's biology? And of course my brother is sure anything I point to is "learned behavior" thoufgh from whom or what no one can say.

But I have quite a few traits present making life in 21st centure North America hard though not crippling; I definitely have some Sensory Processiing issues [a lot of tactile and vestibular]; and though my family is pretty strange and hard almost nonde of my traits can be duplicated until you get to my great aunt M [who if she was not Aspie I will eat a plate of liver].

The traits show up so early, and with no visible causation, that I do not doubt there is a hard wired element.

That said, I did just read the claim that young orangutans maltreated in certain ways develop Apie like traits.

Once again, etiology and phenotype do not simply match up.

This question might apply to me, because I am an NT, but I have had and still do have some AS or autistic traits. (My current aspie quiz score is 44/200 aspie, 162/200 NT.) I suspect I was autistic as a child, and had my parents taken me to a doctor, I most likely would have been diagnosed with AS or autism. However, all but one of those traits has disappeared, and I'm working on getting rid of the last one.

Here's why I suspect I was autistic or AS as a child. I learned to talk late, and I couldn't tie my shoes until I was eight years old. However, I scored far above my grade level on standardized tests, and in some subjects, my test scores were on the college level when I was in elementary school. I hardly ever had friends in school, because I preferred walking around in circles on the rocks by the flagpole as opposed to playing with the other kids. I was a target of bullies from the start of school until 10th grade. In 11th grade, the bullying stopped because I transferred out of parochial schools into public schools. In conversation, I always said things that didn't fit. I never cared about the things that everyone else was interested in, and I was interested in things nobody else in the world cares about. I was shy. I didn't even start going on dates until last year. (I'm 33 now.) Before then, I had very few girlfriends. I can count the amount of girlfriends I had on one hand, and still have fingers left over. I didn't get over things. It took me until last year to get over the bullying and desire for revenge on all of them.

I also used to stim a lot. I started when I was 5, and I quit when I was 22, and I stimmed every chance I got.

The last characteristic of autism or AS that I'm trying to get rid of is the aspie monotone voice. I also don't have the appropriate accent for where I live or for where I grew up. This is as annoying as hell, when I get "Where you from?" Then it's "No, where are you originally from?" I usually tell those people what I think they'll believe just to shut them up. I grew up in Colorado, but my parents were from Wisconsin. Mom has a neutral American accent, dad has a Wisconsin accent. So, I should either have a Wisconsin accent, a Colorado accent, or a neutral American accent, but I don't have any of those. I can't even imitate them! Instead, people either think I'm from Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Massachusetts. I have no idea how I got a northern US / western New England accent. Yesterday someone at work asked me if I was from Massachusetts. I really wanted to strangle him, but that would be illegal.

I just signed up for voice lessons and regional accent reduction therapy, so hopefully I won't ever get asked where I'm from again.

There are also some things I'm not interested in changing. I was never "cool". I know "cool" is difficult to define, but I would define it as trying to figure out how the majority of the people act and adopting the tastes and styles of the majority as my own. I'm simply not interested in that. As far as what you call "special interests" go, hold on to them. It's knowledge about a subject matter most people don't have.

In my case I don't believe it was environmental, nor do I believe it's biological. I think it was something else.

That description sounds like a lot more "than some traits" That sounded just like all the classic hallmarks of autism to me. She should probably talk to a doctor about this.

I have a little. My husband has a little. Various family members of his and mine have a little. This is part of what convinced me it's genetic.

I like the furniture in the house to remain more or less where it is. I don't like constant redecoration. That could be from the DSM as "dislikes change". So why no diagnosis? Because it's mild. I won't come apart if the furniture has to be moved. I can handle change in my life. My daughter actually does come apart, although that may be one of those things that can lessen with age (hoping!).

My Mom stims. It's a little stim so a lot of people don't even notice it. At this age in her life people might think it's an age-related tremor. She can do other stuff while stimming, too. My daughter stims but the difference is she can't do anything else while stimming and it lasts much longer.

It seems as though there are these little things that got turned way up in her. When the trait gets pronounced enough that it gets in the way of a person's life (like being unable to enter a room with moved furniture and screaming)- that's when the diagnosis happens, it seems.

I think it is genetic,hardwired, not learned from watching others. I can see myself and my family and my husband and his family in our daughter. It's just that in her things got so pronounced that it makes her life much harder and has required school accomodations which requires getting an evaluation which led to the diagnosis.

This happens to me alot. I really liked this guy and I met his parents the day I was moving house. They are broad Scottish and I have strange sort of posh accent which is neither English or Scottish, so no one can tell where I am from. His Mum said to me, so where are you from. I replied oh I'm just moving from one place in Dunfermline to another. Ah, she said, that's not a Dunfermline accent and I realised she wasn't asking me where I was moving from she wanted to know why her son had brought this posh lassie home. It was really embarassing. I think I picked it up from watching TV as most television programmes are made in England and practically everyone on TV has an English accent. Plus my parents are English, but my sister has picked up a Scottish accent. Weird. I also don't know how to answer the where are you from question. I'm not really from anywhere. I've moved around alot throughout my life, but mostly in Scotland so I would say that I'm Scottish.

I also read alot of classic literature growing up and that's how I learned my vocabulary. But I didn't realise that this is not how my peers were learning their vocabulary, so I spoke different and no one understood why. Even last week my friend said something to me and I replied, "oh gosh," my sister rolled her eyes and said, "why can't you talk like a normal person?" I asked her what would have been better to say instead. She told me I should have replied, "oh really?" I just don't act like other people naturally, I'm just uniquely me, so I've never really fit in.

In a social setting I panic. I just don't know what to say to people. My sister doesn't understand this. She finds people easy to talk to and just thinks that I am not trying hard enough, but unless I am presented with a topic to talk about I have nothing to say. I just can't generate small talk and I feel stupid when I try.

My Mum saw a tv programme about Autism in the late 90s and she told me that she thought my Dad and I were both Autistic. We don't respond to situations the way an NT would, although I seem to have a better understanding of how to react than he does. I was having a conversation with a friend the other day, I can't remember what about, but I was aware that I wasn't saying much back to her. I knew that my face probably looked blank, my sister will often look blankly at me when I talk to her, especially about something emotional.

My parents are not social. So I don't understand social things. I had no one to learn from, so it could be either genetic or a case of environment. They don't have friends that drop in. Mind you, they have moved into a house in the middle of nowhere and I think that is an unseen barrier saying that they don't really want anyone to drop in anyway. So I find socialising hard. I don't know whether people expect me to drop in on them as a friend or not.

I'm NT and have some Aspie traits however for the most part, I just think my personality is compatible. Also I generally always steered towards the "weird" people since I was strange myself.

This is a very interesting question to me. Before my son was born, I thought all the stuff about me that was "weird" was because of a pretty bad childhood. My older sister is a far more "normal" type of person than I am, but my mother always attributed that to her having a much more regular childhood than I did for the first years of life.

Then my son was born. I knew almost instantly there was something different about him and I finally listened to my gut and had him evaluated when he was about 2 1/2. He was diagnosed with autism.

My son has everything I didn't have growing up. Stability, security, two loving parents, safe environment, the classic middle-class picket fence childhood. And he is mini-childhood-me.

I am virtually certain that I'm on the spectrum. There are many, many things that make me think so, but the primary one was the realization that I didn't start to understand that other people have different points of view until I was in my 20s. It was never that I didn't *care* about other people's feelings, just that my own were so strong I couldn't see beyond them. I see this in my son now.

Things I remember from my childhood: physically behind the other kids. (I still tie my shoes in an odd way that someone taught me as a child because I just couldn't do it the regular way.) Slow to start talking. Massive chewing needs -- I chewed my hair and all the hands and feet off my dolls. (So happy there are better ways to deal with now! My son had chewy tools and now uses gum.) No social skills, always the odd kid out. Easily overstimulated or overwhelmed. Very anxious. Very bad sleeper. Loved to spin -- what I now know is a "sensory seeker"," as my son is too. Stimming.

I think I mostly "pass," but I still have problems with small talk and with eye contact; I never know how long I'm supposed to do it for. And I stim whenever possible by playing with small toys -- having a kid is great for that. I hate having my routines disrupted. Can't take too much noise or crowds.

I'm so glad you asked this question! I don't have AS, but I've been diagnosed with nonverbal learning disability and mild ADD as well as giftedness, all of which I think overlap a lot. I went through a long limbo period where I knew I was not NT, as I had been raised, but none of the labels out there really seemed to fit.

I have a lot of the sensory processing symptoms. I get visual overload all the time just by walking down the street, checking my email, or being in my messy dorm room. I am bothered by noises that don't seem to bother other people, and have to cover my ears and wince while those around me make no gesture at all. As for balance...what balance? If I spin in circles as few as 8 times I feel nauseous and have to stop. I could go on forever; there is something weird about every sense. I also have only the sketchiest mental map of an area I've lived in for years, no sense of time, and I'm constantly either bumping into things or hastily trying to get out of other peoples' way.

I have gone through periods of intense "special interests" in a particular topic. As a child, these included fairies, the planets, dinosaurs, ants, prehistoric people, Magic: the Gathering, and manga. I knew a lot of facts about all these topics and read a lot about them, although I was always more interested in the larger concepts. Now my interests in brain development are more stable (I plan to make a career out of them), but they are equally intense. I still like nothing better than to talk about my interests; it is energizing and it is in a way social, a way of sharing what I care about most, a huge part of myself, with other people.

"Little professor?" Check. I was homeschooled by well-educated parents, one of whom was an academic, from K-5, so I entered middle school sounding like I swallowed the dictionary. I systematically taught myself how to talk like a normal person, along with an entirely new set of social skills, since I was amazed to discover that a, most people did not think like me, talk like me, or share my sense of humor and b, the sort of precocious child behavior adults thought was cute & encouraged me to be was not the sort of behavior that middle schoolers liked.

However, there are a lot of symptoms, mostly social, that I don't have. (Although I realize that not everyone with AS necessarily has them either).
*I can pass the theory of mind test.
*Although college and job interviews make me anxious, I make a good enough impression that I am often given extra time.
*I have a large emotional vocabulary and talk easily about emotions with friends, family, & significant others.
*I dislike small talk not because I don't want to interact but because I want to interact more deeply.
*I can observe other people's behavior and tell you exactly what is socially appropriate or inappropriate about it. I am very sensitive to awkward behavior in myself and others.
*I have strong, close friendships with a few people and have maintained them for years
*My best friend and I were the "social glue" of our group of friends in middle school and high school, arranging most of the get-togethers and knowing more of the gossip than anyone else in the group.
*My facial expressions and voice are very expressive, & not monotone. I am also maybe a little too sensitive to tone of voice in others, detecting even the tiniest hint of a raised voice before the person even realizes they're doing it.
*I can tell when I'm annoying, boring, or otherwise bothering other people, & try to adjust my behavior accordingly.
*I understood metaphor and figurative language from an early age. My problem is probably that I don't take language literally enough. I could also understand irony and use it myself by about 6 or 7.
*I can often tell when people are trying to take advantage of me, although I don't always know what to do about it.
*Far from having a problem with abstract thinking (you won't believe the number of checklists that say this is a trait of AS), the only things I do well are highly abstract with no real-world information getting in the way.
*I don't shy away from touch. If anything, I probably seek it out.
*Although I need a very strict routine in order to be organized, I dislike routines and have trouble sticking to them.
*As far as I know, I don't show repetitive, stereotypical gestures or body movements. (I used to suck on my clothes and my hair as a kid when I was stressed, though, which I guess is the same thing as stimming).

There's probably some genetic basis (both parents have AS-like traits and my brother has actually been diagnosed with Aspergers). Being homeschooled by a family where one parent was an academic and there were books everywhere probably helped. My parents encouraged my strengths (in academics) and ignored my weaknesses (in anything involving visual-spatial or movement ability) because of their beliefs about what was important, which probably helped my self-esteem but prevented me from working on my weaknesses until I was almost an adult. I think my personality actually works in the opposite direction because on MBTI I score as FP, while I tend to associate AS traits more with TJ (although, YMMV). I was very aware in middle school & 9th grade that most people didn't like me, and developed intense social anxiety, so that probably didn't help either. So...maybe a little of both?

I agree that there are people who are almost on the spectrum but not quite...I'm pretty sure I am one. I'd love to know what causes it, and I've been speculating about it for a long time.

Excuse the length of the post, and also any misrepresentations I might have accidentally made about characteristics of AS. Cheers!

I am not diagnosed, but I am 100% confident I have it.

Like I said in my introduction, I have always been the odd one out. Always the weird problem child of the family. The one who threw tantrums in the store if I didn't get to touch something. The one who has so seemingly been unable to understand a lot of human interaction. And then my physical health: How horrible it is, how much I know for a fact something is seriously wrong.

I genuinely struggled throughout my life with this though. It didn't help that my family was treating the wrong problem or they didn't want to at all! I have to take a foot forward and show them how it's done now.

Actually it seems like more of a classic trauma response (especially when you factor in the depression), and with the comment about the hard teen years, woudn't be surprising if there was some sort of trauma in there. And never forget, a traumatised person (especially children) and an Autistic person look pretty much the same (symptomatically I mean) - hence why so many Aspies/Trauma victims are misdiagnosed with the alternate condition.

ASDs are developmental conditions that entail symptoms developing in early childhood whether or not they are mistreated. A caged animal engages in stereotyped non-functional behavior, but we can be confident that most Autistic people were not raised in a cage.

Nothing that occurs in Autism cannot occur outside of Autism. If you consider what is occuring physically, either there is an excessive presence or absence of any particular possible neuro function/process. There is no reason why such anomalies cannot have some non-PDD cause. It is in fact unlikely that all instances of Autisms are all outcomes of a single sufficient cause. I expect there are a number of sufficient causes of Autisms, and I know that there are other causes than Autism/PDD of a diagnosible cluster of Autistic symptoms.