Why would someone pretend to have aspergers?

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I don't think people pretend to have Asperger's, as such (apart from a handful of Munchausen cases). It's more likely that people genuinely think they have it, read up about it, and subconciously take up and exaggerate autistic behaviours without even realising.

This is actually what genuinely autistic people tend to do upon diagnosis. Not always, but sometimes.

Or maybe to try and figure out why they behave weirdly and have no friends, I really doubt most people here are claiming AS to excuse anything. So many jerks on this site...

I do agree that it's trendy (winding down a little now, but has been trendy since around 2010)., but I don't agree that it's social laziness.

There are some people who are just jerks and think that's what AS is about. They are wired normally and have no fiends because they have a superiority complex, in most cases, but they either genuinely think AS may explain it or just claim to have it as an excuse.

I've attracted these types. They have said in plain English to me that they "enjoy being smarter than everyone else" and they come to me like we're supposed to be friends. So that makes me think that I must be more annoying or more of an ahole than I realize sometimes, but regardless this is one popular "portrait" of Asperger's that circulates. I don't relate to they types that enjoy being aholes for the sake of it and truly believe that they are better and smarter than everyone else, I brush them off immediately.

Actually I have actually seen that as*holes are able to have friends and I wasn't. I notice kids who didn't like me and picked on me had lot of friends themselves. What always baffled me was how they were able to have friends despite not being very nice kids but yet there was me who was nicer than them but yet I was the one who was labeled mean or rude and lot of kids didn't like me. How on earth are jerks able to make more friends than me and still be likable?

Sometimes, people think that they have asperger even if they haven't

Except Hypochondriacs tend to believe they have physical ailments, usually something dire, not things that COULD BE seen to be Mental Illness.
Maybe there are a few here. But I doubt its a huge number.
And even fewer MbP types. That one is EXCEEDINGLY rare.
Its more likely there are people here who exhibit some signs & jump to concluding they have the WHOLE thing. Remember, its a spectrum!

Matt

Well either you have autism or you don't.....there is no such thing as part autistic and mostly neurotypical....the only thing it being a spectrum really indicates is not everyone reacts to their autism the same way or has the same impairments. Not that partially autistic people are jumping to conclusion....also I have doubts most people here just randomly jumped to the conclusion they have AS based on little or no info but maybe I think better of people than I should.

And Hyprochondriacs are mentally ill, it's a mental illness that causes them to experience physical symptoms, not better explained by another medical condition.

I don't mean the people who "fake it" or think they have AS are hypos.

I'm saying if that if this logic is applied, both things are true.

And they aren't.

But someone with social anxiety will often exhibit some autistic traits. If someone with social anxiety latches onto it it doesn't mean they're autistic, it would however exhibit signs and jump to that conclusion and latch onto it.

To the selfDx'ed person, or pre-diagnosed, (the ones who are very likely on the spectrum), finding out this possibility was like, suddenly so much makes sense - and even if you completely exclude the lack of friends and social interaction.


You may or may not realize that for some of us who are finding out later in life - this may be what has eluded us all of our lives. I never knew anything about any type of high functioning Autism, although now I'm pretty sure my first cousin is a high functioning Autistic - he might even be a savant because he's a computer genius. I don't know if he's been formally diagnosed because my family doesn't speak to those relatives. I asked my parents to just take the Aspie test recently and it confirmed by suspicions that my father has some traits - he came up borderline.


While I still can't say if I have it for sure (although I would bet on it), I've been doing a life review and making some incredible connections to my behavior....for example, my mom told me I never cried as a baby....in fact, this was so odd that she told my pediatrician and he got mad at her and told her to let me cry (as if she was preventing a baby from crying).



I took online tests and came up positive before I read up on the typical traits. The only trait I connected with when I first heard about AS was the intensity of focus. It was 6 months ago on TV, Michael Burry was talking about his intensity of focus and working on his computer for ridiculous number of hours at a time - that sounded so familiar to me. I didn't know AS encompassed a lack of social skills, although that's very true for me....and when I read Liane Holliday Willey's description for female traits I almost fell off of my chair! No personality test I've ever taken explained my preference for men's clothing, the need for pockets, and why I didn't identify with being a "woman" even though I am totally heterosexual.



Are there people who like the Asperger's label because it seems "cool"? Sure there are, but I wouldn't deny someone who connects with it because it seems like the answer to their life questions.


Anyway, that's how I feel.
Working towards a professional Dx soon.

Yes some psychological conditions have overlapping symptoms, however those traits in someone with social anxiety would have to do with the social anxiety. So though on the outside it can be pretty similar its not the same process. Someone could probably have social anxiety and autism as well....... after a while of being re-jected or treated not so well its probably normal to develop some social anxiety.

So social anxiety does not rule out autism anyways....also what makes you think most people here are jumping to conclusions about having autism that seems like quite the assumption there but as I said I could certainly be wrong its just not the impression I've gotten from most self diagnosed people who have posted.

There is an episode of _Glee_ where a girl pretends to have Asperger's because she wants to insult people and then say, "Sorry, I have Asperger's, I can't help saying what's on my mind." Then when she gets really mad, though, and wants the coach to understand just how furious she actually is, she insults him and says she was just *pretending* to have Asperger's.

I was talking about psychiatrists, not psychologists. The two professions are quite similar here in Germany: A psychiatrist is a doctor of medicine and can write prescriptions, whereas a psychologist is basically a person who gets paid to chat with people (I like the term "mystic" btw).

But even though psychiatrists have a medical degree, I don't view psychiatry as a proper medical discipline. It is getting there, but it also started out as a form of mysticism and has a long history of patient abuse. Psychiatric diagnoses are, for the most part, pure guesswork based on the psychiatrist's subjective impression of the patient. There are no proper medical tests involved as of yet, such as DNA analyses or brain CT scans. There are psychiatric treatments (such as ECT) that have no scientific basis whatsoever, and there is still a whole lot of patient abuse going on in psychiatric hospitals.

Perhaps at some point in the future, there will be a cross discipline between psychiatry, neurology, genetics and endocrinology that meets the standards of modern medical science. One can but hope.

Many autistic people suffer from comorbid disorders, and social anxiety is one of the most common. Other common comorbid conditions are depression, OCD, and ADHD.

So there is absolutely no reason to assume that someone with social anxiety / phobia doesn't have an autism spectrum disorder. On the contrary: if a person has both aspie traits and social anxiety, it makes AS all the more likely.

Quoted for truth.

I have to say, I'm a bit appalled by the opinions here that many or most of the self-diagnosed autists / aspies on this board just want a trendy label or delude themselves into thinking they have AS. We self-DXed people have been struggling and suffering our entire lives without knowing why. Many of us have been wrongly diagnosed back when AS wasn't recognized by psychiatrists and have taken all kinds of meds that made us feel worse instead of better. Some of us have eventually given up and turned into social recluses.

Now that we have finally realized what was "wrong" with us all this time, and our entire life experience finally makes sense, we are looking for a community of people who are in a similar situation and struggle with the same problems. It would be great if this community gave self-DXed people the benefit of the doubt instead of questioning the authenticity of our condition, because many people have no one else to turn to and no other social outlet. The last thing we need is feeling rejected by the only people who can relate to us.


Edited to add: In the end, a professional diagnosis means as much or as little as a self-DX. Psychiatrists are only human and occasionally make errors, and they base their DX on the same criteria that are used in online aspie tests. So when we start questioning the validity of people's autism, we have to question everybody. Why not just accept people instead?