Overlap in autism and giftedness (diagnosis often confusing)

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I am not sure how it works in other country's but in the Netherlands you will not likely get a HFA or Asperger's diagnosis unless you have at least an average or above average intelligence so it is likely that you will notice some traits that are also common in people who are gifted.

What I feel in my personal experience is that I am not quite able to pinpoint which is the most dominant under ideal circumstances, sometimes it is as if I have a 70/30 gifted/autism ratio in a safe-zone and a 20/80 ratio in a zone that I consider unsafe.

My ability to think on a above average level, allows me to influence my behavior and mask certain "flaws" ,causing no one outside of my family to notice that I have autism, however the sensitivity to my senses combined with the constant masking of my autism, causes me to occupy my mind with dealing with social interactions instead, ultimately sabotaging my ability to effectively advance in other area's.

I'm not saying that I see my autism as something evil as I think plenty of positive parts of my personality are due to having it but I do sometimes try to find out how workspaces or classroom situations could be manipulated to fully use the mind of a person with Asperger's or HFA.

I am sorry to hear that because that must be difficult to deal with.

I've brainstormed a bit about this and I think it could be that amount of social interactions you have to deal with has increased over time, and is more than you can handle if you also want other area's to remain active at the same time.

Look at it as a 2 holes in a filter going into 2 different tubes, one being for social information processing and one for general information processing, both being of a different size but the general one smaller, now see social processing events and innovative ideas as 2 different size balls with a variety of sizes within that range but the social never being small enough to enter the general information realm, now at 17 this filter may have been functioning at the ideal capacity and the smaller balls could enter the realm social thinking but the larger could not enter and influence innovative thinking, by the age of 37 the hole that leads to innovative thinking may have become gradually larger causing it to allow social events to gradually influence it.

I forgot to add that you need to imagine that the amount of ideas was greater at 17 and at 37 the amount of social events.

-edit- changed the terminology a bit to make it slightly clearer but its a simplified example, and in reality you would have to take a lot more things into account and we would talk about dozens of tubes.

at a younger age you do not have much to worry about, allowing you to use almost all your thinking power on innovative ideas and are able to add to your knowledge a lot, but once you get into a job with a specific description you use most of that power on the subject that fits that description, added to that the amount of effort a family life takes in terms of thinking power (as simple as jimmy's swimming lessons), the amount of time you have left to think of new ideas is therefore already limited.

There are more factors that influence how we score on certain tests, for instance if I have to go to a test using the bus I will already be on edge before I even start the test, not to mention the things that may distract me in the room that I fill out the forms in.

This is just a theory that I came up with, but when I look at my own life I see that the less social events I have to deal with, the more freedom my mind gets to develop room for idea's that are not related to social events.

Bottom line is that it is quite possible that the reduction of social events ( if possible) in your life, could give your mind more freedom, I plan to do more research into that, so see it as a idea rather than a truth, because I am not an professional expert on these things.

The funny thing about the social interactions is that their quality does not improve as the quantity increases. I'm now better at dealing with social situations than when I was as a child but seems like I've reached certain level I can't exceed, with this my off-standard brain and/or personality. Moreover, if the amount of social life keeps increasing, the quality of social thinking drops dramatically because of the overload. You're right, looks like I'm over the limit where I could handle it properly.

Unlike this, intellectual abilities increase proportionately to the time and effort you invest in them.

I've edited my example a little bit because I felt it was a bit chaotic ( my idea was mostly created in my mind by using my own language so I had to find the right descriptions in English as well) but the general idea remains the same.

I can btw relate to the quality of social interactions and for me it functions mostly in a survival mode when I get overflow of such data.

As the amount of time left to invest in intellectual abilities gets reduced by the overflow of social interactions, its not unlikely that innovative thinking to create ways to improve socials skills gets reduced in the process as well.

In a way it is like the difference between a fast food restaurant and a conventional restaurant, because the amount of orders demands you to take limited time to perfect the product you will resort model that is simplified, whereas by limiting the amount of orders you allow yourself time to deliver quality products.

I am glad I could help you out a bit by brainstorming with you, I hope you find a way if possible to balance both area's.