Why so many ASD and ASD like people portrait it as failure?

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So, what does the DSM 5 say is the cause of autism and other neurodivergence disorders, and what are the recommended guidelines for reducing symptoms? There are no causes laid out, nor are there any recommendations for helping reduce symptomology, because all the DSM 5 is used for is diagnostic guidelines and criteria for mental health classification. Autism cannot be detected through blood, brain scan, genetic, or and other biological type of test which means all diagnoses are done subjectively through observation, interaction, and cognitive/psychological testing.

What causes autism is a complex discussion with wide ranging theories ranging from purely genetics to strictly vaccine induced and everything in between. Modern research by open minded researchers are now slowly coming to the realization that there appear to be many factors that are involved to varying degrees and looking at autism in a whole body perspective rather than the classic 'mental disorder'. Genetics, brain and neurological structures, physiology, environmental factors, society and family factors, and development differences are just a few of the things recognized as playing a role in the development of autism. This is important as in some ways it does validate some of what you say while negating other things.

There is nothing any of us can do to 'fix' or improve our genetical material we inherited from our parents, that part of autism we are stuck with. Personally I am great with that as I love the genetic gifts, even if I didn't love the donors. We really can't change our brain structure or neural pathways into a different pattern in any positive ways to benefit mental health and autism, we can't be 'fixed'. Our individual physiology both stays the same and is changeable, depending on several variables both environmental and genetic. We cannot change our environment, not in any meaningful way at least, as most of us lack access to the resources and support needed to make any real changes.

Our environment can, and does change us in ways both known and unknown. Out of sight, out of mind mentality that allows our environment affect our whole body health in both positive and negative ways. Just because we don't see it or know it's there doesn't make it unreal or not happening, that is reality. Where we live and work, where we get our food and water, the sky above and the air we breath are all factors that affect our mental and physical health. Here we can change our circumstances and environment for the better, but only if we are able to gain access to the necessary resources and support needed and even then there is no guarantees about results.

Autism has been shown in recent meta analysis research to be a whole body issue, not merely a brain only issue believed in the past. Autistics as a whole exhibit a wide range of symptomology such as metabolic, immunological, gastrointestinal, and neurological which supports this theory completely. Some of the issues can be affected by diet and/or other measures while others can't.

The biggest thing for many of us on the autism spectrum is mental perspective and health, especially when also dealing with the stigma and attitude we and the world holds about autism and autistic people. Emotional, mental, and physical abuse are all too common factors that play a significant role in how each of us develop and grow mind, body, and soul. For most the outside world is at minimum confusing and often times terrifying and overwhelming as well. Self esteem is developed from birth and not everyone is the same because everyone's life and development is different. Having a healthy self esteem is incredibly important in life, yet this is incredibly difficult for many autistics to find without help. Without help low self esteem spirals down into despair and beyond eventually into total apathy, a dark and lonely place that many autistics sadly call home. When we get to that place, with no way obviously to verbalize our thoughts and emotions and with no known source of help, what should we do?

Modeling autism: a systems biology approach

Whole article is an amazing read but much to long to post here.

If I were to comment on anything further, it's that mindfulness is mainly useful for cognitive stuff. And yes, it can help with autism. A course I took recently for autistic people also talked about this. A lot of ASD is cognitive, and we do have high rates of anxiety and depression as secondary, gained conditions due to our inability to innately read social cues and just overall difficulties in life.

I have done a lot of mindfulness with my RSD (which is similar to C-PTSD) and have been able to reduce my overall symptoms this way.

Thing is, autism also involves, again, sensory processing disorder in many or even most diagnosed individuals. Sensory processing disorder is not cognitive. It is a brain thing where certain sensory input cannot be tuned out and so begins to cause you pain after a while-- literally, this is processed in the parts of the brain dealing with pain.

Sensory overload for me feels like intense overwhelm, nausea, and pain. Sometimes it's similar to anxiety, but when it comes in direction response to certain stimuli, it's SPD. (For me, loud noises, bright lights, and certain smells tend to trigger the overload.) Can also cause headaches from bodily strain. (The number of times in my life that I got a headache because of a lamp that wasn't bothering anyone else....)

I can be mindful of the pain and extreme discomfort all I want - that does not make it go away, nor does it make it easier to deal with.

This was half of my problems at my job-- working at a grocery store is noisy and chaotic. I'd literally react to the grocery carts like a gunshot had gone off. Flinching, recoiling in pain, etc.

I also get sensory overload in my own home sometimes.

There are things that can help, sometimes. But this does severely limit the sorts of jobs I can work.

Somehow true in my case.

Kinda why I'm pursuing health related solutions.
I'm mostly done with what's virtually free.

And my primary sensory intensity is around interoception. It's not often talked about because most of the discussions are focus around external.

To a point that any external accomodations are pointless.
But not in a way that autism should be cured, either. Because autism isn't the root cause for me, but autism makes me afford less in carrying around whatever untreated crap that people dismissively never had to take seriously all because "everyone is struggling".

The best way for the world to ever accomodate my case is simply prevention of any further secondary crap that could've been prevented in the first place.

Left unresolved, it'll become a mental illness on top of whatever affliction.
Or a source of it anyways. And when I don't experience it's symptoms, there's nothing I need to fight. Nothing to fight, nothing to accomodate.

I don't know, but I just know whatever untreated physical illness this was, it's using my own neurodivergence against me and it's fueling the dysfunctional mental related stuff I have to fight on a daily basis.

And people misattributing these issues with autism instead of thinking that there's a reason why I just do certain things, or worse, ill the whole time.


Really.
I can ignore the world. Pierce through the patterns of thought and emotions and other concepts of 'what makes a human person'.
But not my damnable physical vessel. And the only person I can trust to accomodate it is myself.

What triggers me more is not the noise of the outside world and the situations around it, but the noise my own body makes that had been an enabler to unwanted thoughts, unwanted cognitive effects by being a processing space thief, unwanted behaviors all because I spent too much time fighting it...

I cannot afford getting real mental illness. Hell, I cannot afford particular mindsets even.

If I'm down, I'm down.
I cannot mask my inner states, which is very different from the common topics around just regulating emotions, thoughts born from beliefs, sentiments and towards socializing.

And I don't have anyone else to talk about it.
Not even other autistics. More than not, cases of autism have issues with interception and expressing things related to it.

Thus I'm on my own, disability or not.
I got no one to trust, no one to rely on over it except that the world should let me be.

Some of us are really good at making stuff. Or figuring out how stuff works.

It may help to seek out opportunities to use our talents.

Maybe you are good at putting together bicycles.
There may be a brick and mortar store who could use someone like that.

Well, I suppose there should be a DSM 5 by now, but I doubt I'll get around to studying it. After much such of the DSM 4, I was forced to conclude that their methodology amounts mostly to: we don't know how to categorise this, so lets dump it with all the other unconected issues in the autism "spectrum"!

The label "Autistic" when Leo Kanner borrowed from it, was quite straightforward, based on the historical meaning, which was in common use around the end of the 19th century. Since the 60s, though, this "autism research" industry (sic: thier main concern is prolonging their careers, by keeping things confused) has turned it into an incomprehensible plum pudding (or should that be vegetable soup?)! To label someone as autistic, with no reference to the aspect of personality that label properly describes, is pure nonsense!

Speaking of Leo Kanner, does googling him still diplay his preeminent status as the author of the word "autism", or has his biography now been watered down to irrelevance? This process has been going on for the last 20 years or so, and at one time I attempted to make corrections, but it became pointless, as, within days, the lies were back again.

It seems a long time since people believed the web was a haven for truth, but those who've thought about it, should have realised by now that,in fact, it's just another tool for propoganda, under the control of the establishment.

The problem is: not only ASD got problems.
Nobody will tell you your life will be like there isn't... mindfulness is amazing.
Teachs you HOW TO DEAL.. the propblem is the mentality behind.
Here in Italia in Milano exists a restaurant made by down people... it works.

I follow thousand off stuffs, I even started to veil doing my mindfulness.
Mindfulness is the only thing everybody can do, it cannot be ableism... potrait life as failure is mindset, asking yourself or other people what they cannot reach is ableism.

Mindfulness can be by everybody. Is free and useful.
I mean is like brush teeth, brush hair, wash yourself... clean house, your mind and yourself will be ALWAYS the first thing to do.
Everybody is able to do it. You won't ask impossible stuffs but the minimum yes.

Do it is already the first move... when you start you are already at the half of your path.
But is important start, important believe you can solve it.

The only one can do it is yourself.

---

I went throught depression, I never gave up.

Mindfulness/meditation isn't for everyone, as there are potential adverse effects such as anxiety, depression, psychosis etc.

https://www.sciencealert.com/meditation ... talk-about

https://miguelfarias.co.uk/wp-content/u ... tation.pdf

But the mindfulness industry is too big to mention such risks. In the US alone it's about US$2.2 billion (£1.7 billion).

Virgil wrote: "Happy is he who can determine the causes of things", and Autistics, by the classic definition, are a good fit. I happen to be one of those "Felix" types, and don't expect me to apologise for it!

There is such thing as a single condition called autism.

It’s a 1940’s word that used to dump and label neurological conditions science doesn’t understand.

Only 25% of autism has a genetic explanation the other 75% is unknown.

So when you see a cool guy on Tv who says he has autism and it’s all ok you can run a tech company too.

It doesn’t mean the autistic person who has 50 seizures a day is intellectually disabled needing 24hour care is the in the same situation.

So people need to get away from the idea that all autism is the same.

It’s a spectrum of disability not a spectrum of the same condition.

When Kanner coined the term in the early 40s, it was of certain disorders he'd discovered in kids who happend to be strongly autisitic, by it's then, widely understood, historical sense.

The "dumping" didn't start till the sixties, to conciderable protest at the time (by people who subsequently found they could no longer get their papers published) turning it into a vegetable soup of unrelated disorders. To call it "autism" is to support this wrongdoing, as is the ludicrous use of the word "spectrum", which it doesn't begin to resemble!

It has now been turned into what taxonomists label a "waste basket" category, and will remain so until this monstrous "research" industry gets back to basics, and applies the autism label only to those who are demonstrably strong in this aspect of the psyche, to which the label "autistic" properly refers. Anything else is just a job creation/protection on a massive scale.

As I've come to understand it, autism is associated with difficulty processing sensory input in real time. This can mean auditory, visual, tactile etc. including verbal information.

But apart from that, what really matters are the symptoms, and they can differ greatly in nature and intensity between individuals who are ostensibly autistic. What really matters to each individual is their symptoms and how those symptoms impact the person's life. Diagnosis only really matters if the person needs support, especially if they need disability benefits from the government, because the symptoms prevent the person from seeking gainful employment or living independently. So if the only accepted diagnosis is "autism" then you have a mess on your hands, including situations in which a person can claim to be autistic or even have diagnostic evident to support that, but others doubt the validity of that person's claim.

Wow! A technical term that makes sense, is easy to understand, and is very descriptive.

I am not being sarcastic. I genuinely like the term...and its use in this case.

Not only that I've come to the conclusion that scientists just don't have a clue about autism, its largely made up to cover the holes in knowledge about the brain:

Here`s a science article showing the link between gestational diabetes in mother and autism in child

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ne ... 38115/full

Here`s a science article showing mothers health condition in pregnancy has no effect on autism in child

https://knowridge.com/2025/02/no-strong ... se-autism/

The multiple science reports about genes causing autism, the latest news is whooping cough can cause autism. Maybe they`ll replace CRISPR with whooping cough since you can now do genetic engineering with whooping cough

https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2025/ ... rch-finds/

Perhaps recycling bin would be better. It all gets sorted but ends up in the same place despite the effort.

Did you ever studied how works mental health or you are speaking about preconcepts?
A) get a diagnosis; B) work on this; C) manage it; D) you could not erased this but you can manage it.

Sorry but I cannot stand ignorance... since I guess a person with a degree doesn't study for nothing.
At this point we don't get to hospital, we will live without electricity... in the end why and what is the sense of evolve?
I mean get to delete whole the evolution we got in our society.
I mean go with Scientology and erase psychiatry... "ASD isn't like cancer", no but you can erase most of issues since stand alone ASD is neutral.

But ok, psychiatry is useless and DSM V is useless.
University are useless and psychiatric are just loosers.

Ok. You are right.
But if I'm sick I will go to my doctor.
If I take a medicine I will check and ask my doctor.

But keep going on with refuse it... are choice.

If I'm in a bad period I would say is better asking help... but are choice. People got a degree but you are right degrees are useless.