Is Aspergers trendy?

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It doesn't say "severe", it says "significant":

I thought this was an interesting section as well:

Last edited by Shadi2 on 26 May 2014, 9:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

alright so the official definitions require significant impairment

Def: significant sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention; noteworthy.

Def: imapired being in a less than perfect or whole condition: as
a : disabled or functionally defective ?often used in combination <hearing-impaired>

From: link

still points to disability, not just difference.

I realize that you didn't directly say writing in regards to employment, but what I was trying to suggest is that maybe it just seems like people are less impaired on WP due to the fact that they are better able to articulate themselves. I don't know. I haven't been on the forum for enough time to really form an opinion.

I do get what you're saying though about people saying that they don't have a lot of difficulties with the condition. In my own experience, I think it causes considerable difficulties in my everyday life. Yeah, I'm married, but my marriage always feels like an uphill battle. My wife is beginning to accept my Asperger's, but she uses it against me quite a bit, especially when I need my solitude to recharge from a particularly difficult day. I don't have any friends; the ones I've had in my life have moved away, and I made them because they reached out to me and brought me into their circle. I don't know how to do it on my own, as it's difficult to relate to people and bring up conversations (because I have zero idea what they are thinking the majority of time) when my own interests are very limited and I don't wish to discuss trivial matters. Also, I do work and my job isn't difficult at all (for a NT), but for me it causes considerable stress and anxiety, and I have to take medication so I don't have panic attacks due to the fact that I have to interact with people on a one-to-one basis. At the end of each shift it takes me a couple hours of decompression to get myself grounded again.

So, I guess if one chose to, they could argue that I've had some success because I am married (though it is my first significant relationship, and it didn't start until my early 30's), I work, I have a kid, and I've had friends, but in reality, all of that is just a smoke screen of sorts because the actual machinations of existence make my life profoundly difficult.

I don't know if this is making any sense.

I meant the understanding of what ASD means seems to have changed. The way it is applied and the written definitions.

I don't understand what you and others are saying here. I get that you feel your aunt is mislabeling herself. And I am very frustrated when people don't make sense. Despite that they keep not making sense to me over and over. But this seems like something else?

Some people feel, I think, that there is personal harm being done to them if people with anxiety label themselves as having ASD when they do not?

I think we might have a misunderstanding, possibly because I'm not explaining myself correctly, I will try again.

I completely agree that some traits are disabling, and yes certainly, to get diagnosed with Autism you must have significant impairments. What I don't agree with is that Autism is a disability as a whole, nor that all traits typical of Autism are disabling. There is a lot more to Autism than the traits (or impairments) that you get diagnosed for (again I don't know if I am explaining correctly).

In addition to the disabling traits, the ones that will get you a diagnosis, there is other traits that are also due to (or typical of) Autism, that are either not disabling (or not the same way, or not as much), and some that can even be considered as talents and "gifts". There is also the traits that eventho they would be considered impairment if you wanted to do some things or in certain situations, can become a strength if you focus on other things where your traits or talents can be very useful. That's one of the reasons why, apart from people who are high functioning (for whom it might be easier to find and keep a job in general), some people are lucky enough to find the right job and the right boss (who can understand the impairments and work with/around them), and do really well despite serious disabilities. Like my loved one who was also diagnosed with Aspergers, he couldn't be, for example, a football player because, among other things, he can't run normally, but he sure as heck can focus for hours and be a good computer programmer. Like Temple Grandin, the way she thinks in images, it is considered an impairment, because to begin with it was difficult for her to communicate with others, but ultimately it has become a strength, because it allowed her to see and understand things that a neurotypical person can't.

Last edited by Shadi2 on 26 May 2014, 10:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

^^^
What I think is that :

1)Conditions become trendy and then people think differently about those conditions by associating them with milder everyday personality traits similar to the condition but the condition itself isn't different and professionals don't necessarily think differently about it. ASD has changed in the way professionals see it but the requirement of impairment in daily functioning hasn't changed.

2) There are people on this site who are self diagnosed and have described their lives and said that they're very successful and they think ASD is a gift, a positive thing, just a difference and not a disability ect. I went to an ASD social group once, I only went to one meeting and never went again. One person there was self diagnosed and actually said when I said I hate the "ASD people are superior" attitude in response to something else that he think's "we are superior" and that "we're like X-men". My point is that these people say they have a condition that is defined by impairment then say they are not impaired and that the condition does not involve impairment. That doesn't make sense and is specious reasoning, that's all I'm saying. I certainly wasn't accusing you or any particular person here of this faulty logic but from what I've seen and heard there some people do think this way. This could be the new way of seeing ASD for some people.

@anyone with whom I'm debating- Okay, I seem to be arguing a lot with everyone in this thread tonight and I'm exhausted so sorry if I'm inarticulate or not explaining myself well.


@Shadi2- Sure there are talents that can come along with the disorder, like better attention to detail and better rote memory , for example. That doesn't make it any less a disability or a disorder though. Many disorders and disabilities have compensatory benefits, so to speak. Bipolar Disorder was shown in at-least one study to be linked to increased creativity, blindness is associated with higher verbal IQ, deafness with increased spatial visual skills. This was from lecture by Dr Weizmann in an Atypical Development course at York University two years ago. link

Yes I understand what you mean. I think you will find this feeling of superiority more with people who are either high functioning or are very gifted (like very high IQ, etc), despite their disabilities. Myself I sure don't feel superior lol if anything I have low-self esteem, but I still wouldn't want to be anyone else, I finally learned to like myself, ... a little bit at least

I agree with that entirely.I think that even if one has a diagnosis on the absolute most mild pole of the spectrum they will have still had to experience the requisite "significant" impairment in their daily lives. X-Men? Seriously? If I'm going to play that game I guess my special mutant power are excellent visual and rote memory skills. Bring it on baddies!!

Speaking of which, my brother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I wanted to add, about the people you mentioned in your other post, there is also different personalities, it is possible that these people would feel superior no matter what, with or without autism. There is some NTs like that as well, I have an ex sister-in-law who was like that, her self-esteem was way high lol, and she was very NT.

Interestingly arrogance is supposedly a prevalent coping mechanism for Aspies, though the "I'm superior to NT's" line is going a bit overboard. I have an IQ in the gifted range--some things come incredibly easy to me--but I'd never once consider myself to be superior to anyone because I'm lucky to remember to zip up my fly or button my shirt correctly. Also, I doubt there are many superior individuals that can't wear white, due to the fact that their garments would be covered with what they ate that particular day for breakfast and lunch.

^
Yeah, definitely, there are just narcissists out there but some of these people seem to like the idea of having one of these trendy conditions that they think makes them smarter or more creative or more interesting. ASD isn't the only one, ADHD was very trendy for awhile but I think it isn't as much anymore and people also associated it with creativity. I'm not sure if there was any truth to the creativity in ADHD idea, any empirical evidence to support it or not but I've seen online that people think it.

This is unrelated to the topic, but I just discovered that I blink ultra-fast.
Almost all of my blinks are less than 100 ms in duration.
The median of my blink duration is 52 ms.
This is my mutant special power, I think.

Same here. I am always surprised when I meet people who think they are superior to everyone else, but like I said there is people like that who are very NT, maybe it has something to do with the way they were raised, I don't know. I think some people with feel superior no matter what, for whatever reasons that I don't understand. One of my uncles is like that, but he is narcississtic, so that doesn't help either.

Last edited by Shadi2 on 26 May 2014, 10:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Awesome! Do you find the extra speed of your blinking gives you the extra propulsion necessary to get off the ground for flight ?

So far, I have not put my mutant blinking to good use, but I will try to combine it with my abnormally oblique saccade angles to achieve heretofore unimagined feats of mutant freakazoidism.