"You're too functional."

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Get this all the time. Its often used as justification for bullying. - the assumption being that if there were really a problem, an NT person would assert themselves and fight back. Since I don't say anything, or punch someone in the nose, it's okay to walk all over me.

What I hate most is being told how much worse every other person with a disability (including other Aspies) has it because I'm so high-functioning. "Oh, that person's autism is so bad, they can't even answer the phone."

Mmm-hmm. And you've only had to leave a message on my machine and wait for a callback for how many years?

Like you, I have a highly functional public persona based on observation and mimicry. No one who has only seen this persona would diagnose me as AS. I can even take tests in persona and out of it. The results are very different. Quite frankly, if there's no need for someone to know about my condition, they will never find out. Most people don't need to know and I don't tell them. By the time they know me well enough to tell them, they'll have figured it out. They may not know it's AS, but they know that underneath I'm strange.

First of all congratulations on your coping skills.

I went to my first 'post AS discovery' party at the weekend, full of self awareness, confidence and..........knowledge!!

It wasn't a disaster but it was still quite awkward (and that is without any alcohol)


One of my good friends had the same disbelieving response when I told him about my AS recently and so I know that was said as a compliment.


When most people look at those who are successful (AS or NT), they generally only see the glory, the money, the car, etc; they rarely see the sleepless nights, the agonising hours of work and perhaps in some cases the despair.

When people see you they won't necessarily assume you have AS (if they have even heard of it) provided you are coping reasonably well.

Throw in the word Autistic and they might quite understandably be quite confused.

They probably don't have the slightest idea of what you have had to struggle through.

But when they respond in disbelief, they may just be volunteering that you don't appear disabled, (as they understand the word disabled), in any way.


I did get some empathy from the friend that I mentioned at the start of this message.

After I explained AS to him and how it demonstrates in me he acknowledged that I 'probably had a lot of hard work ahead of me'.

Within my immediate circle, I am the only one with a Dx (although a couple of others display AS traits, and one has a social anxiety, and a brother with an AS Dx).

At the same time, I am perceived to be the second most 'outgoing' of our group. (Not least of all because I am an active performing artist). At root, it comes down to how good your coping skills and filters are. The better your skills, the more you can "pass." When those skills come tumbling down (as mine have done in the last month), the reality underneath is more apparent.

It has been commented that I am "highly functional"....but not "too functional"
The comment was made by a rare-odd acquaintance who happens to be one of a small number of people I don't mind talking to, and who doesn't know much about the autistic spectrum...

Suspect I'd get that if I told more people. They probably would not realise they were not using the most objective of samples, for if I am speaking to them then I'm functioning at that moment.

Last edited by oppositedirection on 03 Nov 2009, 6:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Some people, when they want to pay me a compliment, apparently think it makes sense to praise me as "well, yes, you're autistic, but you're high-functioning." Because, obviously, I must hate being associated with disability and want no greater compliment than having it implied that I'm not like those other low-functioning people over there. Must feel kinda that way when a black guy gets told, "Well, yeah, you're black, but you don't act too black."

I think I just defined "backhanded compliment"...

My psychiatrist:

"I think you do have these problems, but that you're coping well enough with them that they aren't a real issue."

Yes, I was coping so well that as a result of these non-issues, I'd been referred to him because my GP was afraid I'd kill myself, and because I was failing a semester at university, and what I was studying was what I'm best at. If that's "coping well", I'd hate to see "not coping".

I have gotten "You seem normal to me." I take it as a compliment. I grew up with kids knowing I was different and I was made fun of bullied and called ret*d and told I was stupid, I was also labeled weird. So it's great to be seen as normal finally and not have someone think you're weird and stuff or ret*d.

Its sort of like telling a dyslexic that since they have learned to read they no longer have the condition...

High-functioning is too subjective. I am functional in that I was able to graduate school (scraped by in many classes in college) and able to hold down a job and not completely alienate everyone around me.

On the flip side, I am severely socially stunted in that I have never had a deep relationship with anyone (no friends by my definition and never even close to a boyfriend), I suppress most of my true feelings in almost every interaction, and I am in a general state of apathy (I have times of happiness and times of sadness but 95% of the time I am apathetic toward everything in my life).

Yeah... I HATE when people say that! The whole "low functioning/high functioning" label is such a value judgement! Those dunderheads have NO idea what its like to live in our head....they think we get a rest like they do! They dont have the high standards for themselves as alot of us do. I used to cry when I got 97% on an exam. Nobody understood my grief.....they thought I was "doing it for attention". ANOTHER phrase i despise.....dont get me started
"You havent got Aspergers", i have been told by a few so called trained professionals. The motivation? I dont know. To make me feel like a freak again? Like Im useless and a bad human? To say "You do not know yourself as well as a stranger can in 2 minutes".
I just reply...."well Im pretty sure you dont have a PhD on the subject (not that that matters) but someone who HAS got a PhD said Im a classic Aspychick! You see, many uneducated have a very boring narrow view of Autism. But there are ignorant people everywhere."

This hit home for me!
I've been told countless times that I can't possibly have Asperger's because:

-I have a sense of humor (seriously, a psychologist told me this)

-I can do small talk (never mind the fact that I write scripts in my head for five minutes before entering any store ever)

-I don't "seem" autistic (siiiigh)

I have distant family members who still deny my diagnosis and say that I'm just shy. It drives me crazy. I think it's because I mask well and break down only in my comfort zone. Regardless, my diagnosis was like a breath of fresh air when I realized I wasn't just crazy/abnormal/whatever and when people tell me I can't have Asperger's it feels like they're trying to strip that relief away from me.

You are not alone at all!

I'm kind of lucky not to be shy; it makes my weirdness that much more obvious, and made diagnosis easier. Of course, it did take until I was twenty, but that was only because my mom was doing her level best to keep me from getting diagnosed at all. Silly Mom didn't realize that things are actually still there even if you close your eyes and refuse to look at them.

Yeah, I run my social-interaction subroutine pretty much all the time, especially when I'm out of the house - but this past week, I'd been cleaning out our old apartment by myself (we just moved to a new house, wife down with H1N1 and a sprained wrist, cohusband deployed to Iraq, no family members available to help), and can verify that when I'm exhausted, all that careful work on "fitting in" goes right down the metaphorical toilet. I lose the ability to infer things in discussions, I can't tell when what I'm about to say might offend someone (nor do I really care that much - as I put it after offending one niece, "I'm sorry, but I'm tired and grumpy and accidentally said what I meant"), and I become easily overwhelmed by interactions with strangers, which doesn't really go well with getting appliances installed and services turned on...

I wish people would stop trying to judge our insides by looking at our outsides. I learned to act normal aged 10 and I'm bloody good at it. I also tend to hide away when I am feeling tired or anxious, so most people only ever see the confident me. I have even learned to have a panic attack in front of people and they would never guess I was feeling stressed.

I explain that it is like being a swan on a lake. You look serene and calm on the surface, but you are paddling like mad underneath in case you sink.