Raised to be an "Aspie".

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So what were you like an an infant? That's what the psychologists and psychiatrists always asked me when coming up with a diagnosis for Asperger's.

And if it's not AS can you fix the issues you are having? Or do you choose not to?
If I didn't have AS I would probably go to great lengths to fix some issues I've been having, but like Visagrunt said when stress happens all those adapting skills you've learnt all come apart.

Although I'm wary of the power of wishful thinking, I have to admit that the null hypothesis (that it's not AS) hasn't been fully discredited by the available data. The difficulty is that the AS criteria are so subjective that I fear a definitive answer can never be achieved.

I have almost no information about my early childhood, as both my parents are dead and I've lost contact with pretty much everybody who knew me well when I was that young. I remember very little about those early years, though I do recall feeling good about practically all the kids in my class. My diagnostician barely looked at my early childhood, although my sister might have been able to provide some evidence of my personality during those early years. I probably ought to ask her myself, but not being a diagnostician, I'm not sure what questions to ask.

Before I was diagnosed, I wasn't particularly surprised by most of the unusual traits I'd discovered in myself. Social ineptitude wasn't surprising because my small family kept itself to itself and didn't appear to see any great value in my social development....the ethos seemed to be that company and popularlty wasn't important compared to the more serious business of passing exams and sorting out all the practical stuff. They failed to train me in social skills because they themselves were crap at it, and they were in denial about that, seeing their outlook as more virtuous than all those low-lifers who frittered their time away making small talk and drinking alcohol together. They shaped me in their image and I was about 16 years old by the time I had the strength to begin overturning their flawed value system, though of course my that time it was bound to be an uphill struggle. I could see that a lot of these "low-lifers" seemed rather happier than my parents, that they had a lot to teach me that my parents couldn't.

My parents (and many of my teachers) took a lot of trouble to explain things clearly and literally, so my ability to make sense of the more woolly, adult NT style of communication was unnecessary for many years. Small wonder that I found the world rather more confusing than the average Joe did.

One plausible theory is that my father was an Aspie who had rather successfully gained control over his home environment, and had unwittingly created an Aspie-friendly environment which he thought was simply the right environment for humans.....e.g. instead of saying "I need space" he'd say "a man needs space," and if he felt overloaded by international news of familes and disasters, he'd say "people aren't programmed to take on the cares of the whole damned planet." That's perfectly natural if you think you're normal, but if you keep a child in a wheelchair for long enough, that child is likely to end up with some difficulty in walking.

One of the biggest problems I had with the suggestion that I may have AS was that in my late 20s I found a lot of friends and was very happy with my social life for a couple of years. I really thought I'd proved myself to be socially adept. On reflection I noticed that those people had been unusually easy-going and forgiving (mostly hippies and anarchists), and I figured my success with them just demonstrated the often-stated adage that AS is only a disability if the other people involved are impatient, competitive and judgemental, as most people in mainstream society seem to be. But there were a few other people in that community who screwed up socially and became quite unpopular.....clearly that group were quite capable of rejecting people whose faces didn't quite fit in with their way of seeing things.

It could be asked, "if that community really worked so well for me as I like to think it did, where are they all now?" But it was I who chose to move out of the area because I wanted to live with a partner I'd acquired, and I didn't see their communal ways as being compatible with the straight family life I now wanted to pursue. I tried to keep in touch with a few of them, but visits were few and far between. My new wife didn't share the high regard I had for those people, and couldn't understand why I felt that "ordinary" local people didn't quite have what it would take to replace them. And strangely, I felt guilty at leaving "Shangri-La," and had a morbid feeling that in leaving them to start a nuclear family I'd let them down.....I'd also taken girlfriends off a couple of the guys during those two years, and felt ashamed of myself for that. And I didn't feel that it was wise to mix my new acquaintances with people of such radically different social and political outlooks.

It would be interesting to try out a few exercises, to try performing specific tasks that Aspies aren't supposed to be able to do, focussing specifically on the diagnostic criteria one by one. Could I sustainably achieve the targets without completely draining my energy? Currently I feel short of company and the warmth of human interaction - is that because of AS, or is it down to a dip in my self-confidence, or disappointment and bitterness about some of the people who have harmed me?

This is a good topic.....a lot of what I've written has been in my head for some time, but mostly just under the surface of consciousness. Probably because I don't like the uncertainty that opening up this can of worms gives to the situation. But skepticism is healthy. I still think the balance of probabilities is that I'm an Aspie, but I can't deny that there are a few question marks.

All this could explain the social deficits, but not the restricted/repetitive interests side.

I'll make some example if needed but when cames to genetic vs. environment vs. education is really difficult to divide things. How you react to situation is a matter of genetic + past expirience. I've seen very extroverted children grow up under pressuring and isolated families and the other way around. It's hard to divide between genetic and ambient but, as someone said: how do you behave at 2-3 years old? Do you remember that? How do you think? Removing social problem do you have other things related to Asperger? A quick way to see it is doing the Aspie-quiz for istance, as I said to many people also on other forums, you can say that I had some trauma so I'm introverted but how can environment make you walk on your toes? How can environment change the way you percive particulars? How can environment give you hyperfocus abilities? There are things purerly genetic, focus on them.

Strangely enough I've always been suspicious of the "special interests" part of my DX. I'm supposed to be obsessional about performing and recording music, but I've done almost nothing in that vein for the past month, and haven't found that abstinence difficult or upsetting. It's been getting rather boring, and one of the main reasons why it's getting boring is that I can't see any feasible way of making my next performance/recording any better than those I've done before - i.e. my special interest isn't changing and developing so there's no excitement in it for me. Which makes me wonder if all the repetitive qualities of my musical activities are the attraction (as they would be for an Aspie) or just part of the price of trying to become a good musician. I expect I'll carry on with music after a rest, but for now the only music I'm doing is to keep up with commitments I made to other people a while back.

I suppose my interests over the years could be described as being restricted, but nobody's ever really tried to quantify the degree of restriction or compare it to that of the general population. It's doesn't seem unlikely that there are NTs out there whose interests are more restricted than mine.

Well, I'm not going to define what is and isn't Asperger's.

I read somewhere that feral children have the same traits as austistics. And it doesn't come from a neurological difference. (That's why psychiatrists once thought -- wrongly -- that autism was caused by neglect.)

So, yeah, seems to be it could be possible for what looks like Asperger's to not come from neurological difference.

I also think, though, that some autistic/aspie traits do not come directly from the neurological makeup. They come from, well, from being different and not having good roll models of people like you. Psychological stuff, not neurological differences. And that some of us can learn and change and grow enough to not have a autistic spectrum disorder, but, still, we do have neurological differences.

TD, thank you for sharing your insights and a bit of your history. Your life seems to match mine in a number of ways that speak to the nature of this topic.

I have a similar absence of information on those years. My memory of those times is very poor, my mom has been dead for 12 years, and my father (while quite alive), is the most aloof and distant person I know. I can't seem to get any relevant information out of the guy. He remembers my childhood in terms of events, places and dates. No human emotional content whatsoever.

So very true! This was my childhood. My parents looked down on the rest of the world, and downplayed social interaction to the point where it almost seemed offensive.

Yes! As I said, my father definitely has communication/emotional issues, and he seems like more of an Aspie than I do. He created a fortress of solitude for our family, all the time convinced that he was doing the best thing for us. We had a comfortable suburban home that was utterly dead inside, and it caused problems, much like your excellent analogy of the child in a wheelchair.

This was me in my early 20's. Hanging around all kinds of drop-out-alternative-type people, who didn't really care about my level of complicated social engagement. We were very laid back, and I actually considered a few of them to be friends. In those days, I was far more outgoing and spontaneous. I took risks, initiated social events, and revealed more of myself to the world than I ever have since.

I've thought this too, in that I definitely have some narrow interests that might even be considered unconventional, but they aren't severe enough that I get really upset if I can't spend time doing them. As you can tell from my signiature, I am really into botanical taxonomy, and all things plants. I used to think that was a sure sign of AS. But I haven't been out in my garden in upwards of a week and I'm not freaking out. Sure I'd like to go out and work in the garden and think about plants, but hell... I'd also really like to make a cup of tea and take a good long nap. I feel motivations to follow interests, but not to the point that they have debilitated me, or cut me off from the outside world.

I also don't "hyperfocus", the way that some Aspies are said to be able to. If anything, my focus is often scattered and erratic, even when I'm thinking about my "special interests". I've known enough NT people who seemed a much more focused and keen on their interests than I am.

I'm glad that you were able to express these words here. You've written a lot of very poignant stuff. Skepticism is a good thing in my case, because a few months ago, I was resigned that I was an Aspie, and that certain negative things about me were unchangeable... that I was doomed to social failure, and sensory torment, amongst other things. Seeing these traits as the product of an unbelieveable coincidence of environmental factors, means that these things are not permanent. I am not my shortcomings. I can change.

I can't exactly diagnose you, but I'd say from the problems you describe on here that you do have it. You've described having sensory overloads before, I think. You can't get that from your upbringing.

It's not the first time I see this kind of thinking in this forum, but I don't get it. When I learned about Asperger I was happy because finally I known that I'm not "stupid" but simply "different" and knowing the origin of the problem improve my coping ability.

I think the behavior of person can be altered by the environment.
So it is likely you can be raised to have these action like AS.
In the biology view, there are some traits that are influenced by outer stimuli which can change the host behavior for the whole life. And these traits can even be inherited by there offspring.

I think it's normal for people to feel daunted if they find strong evidence that they're just not cut out to do the thing they were fondly hoping to do. Hypothetically, if I were diagnosed with a mental disorder characterised by a limited capacity for artistic expression, it would probably affect my confidence in the music I try to create.....I've often noticed that I tend to get sidetracked into techniques rather than the direct expression of the art form, and with such a DX, I might well begin to feel that the results were never going to be worth the effort.

But I agree it depends on the attitude of the individual. When I was in my 20s, I did a couple of personality tests which labelled me as an introvert. The book warned that it was pretty futile to try to change one's basic personality, and that my best hope was to remember that it takes all sorts to make a world (thanks a bunch, Mr. Eysenck ). But I was more hopeful and headstrong in those days, and I just thought "I'm not having that!" and redoubled my efforts to prove the "diagnosis" wrong, with amazing success, albeit unsustainable in the long run.

I'd probably find it easier to have the same attitude towards my AS diagnosis now, but over the years I've "matured" so that I don't so readily dismiss hard evidence any more, I now understand that pride isn't power, and I'm more sensitive to indications that I may be wasting my time. You'd think it would be healthy for a person to start listening more to what the outside world has to say, to give it more credence, instead of childishly clinging to the notion that everybody but myself is talking rubbish. But such "maturity" has its downside. It will protect me from throwing my life away on some pie-in-the-sky endeavour, but it may also daunt me trying to do things that are perfectly attainable. Unfortunately that understanding alone gives me no clue as to exactly which aspects of external advice I should heed, and which I should ignore. My only guide is the old adage to take reasonable risks.....weigh the investment against the likely benefits, and make the decision on that basis. But that's a logical method. Emotionally, since my DX I have this extra weight to drag along with me through my life, a weight that keeps telling me that I'm "only an Aspie" and will never rise very far above that neurological heritage.

I think part of the problem is that although I know AS is a spectrum disorder, in spite of myself I still tend to see it as a black-or-white thing....I've got it, so I can't do anything on the list of AS impairments. In reality, it's quite possible that I don't have a particularly big slice of some of those impairments (I seem to be very resistant to having meltdowns, for example), and it gives me hope when I think about how I might be able to test my abilities out one by one, and find out for myself what I can and can't do. It doesn't matter whether the reason for any success is a bit of NT brain wiring or just clever coping strategies, as long as I can do it without getting horribly fatigued or dangerously stressed out.

I don't mean to say that the DX is completely negative. A lot of things became clearer when I first noticed the possibility that I might have AS, and I don't know where I'd be with my job - it was a pretty scary existence until I had documentary evidence to show the management that they had been expecting too much of me in some important respects.

I think you are all thinking kind of in a wrong direction. AS is a syndrome, i.e. a group of symptoms and clinical signs, occuring together or in some combinations that suggest existence of some common cause: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndrome

As such, AS does not imply any one particular genesis. I can totally imagine that people become aspies for a variety of different reasons, including, possibly, genetic inheritance, some congenital factors, early childhood traumas or - why not? - even some more late-in-life injuries, stresses and influences. I don't think there should be difference between "psychological" and "neurological", because those things tend to grow into each other - if you've been in something for long enough, it already became "hard-wired" anyway.

Formally you have reason, pratically not. Real autism is different from "induced" autism and can't be treated in the same way.
P.S.
I hate behavioralism

^^
Maybe, but the last time I looked, the received wisdom was that AS is a lifelong condition that's present from birth. I don't entirely believe it, but that's the currently accepted idea, as far as I know. It's quite interesting because my known life history isn't inconsitent with a neurotypical beginning that became AS later on. And it's possible that the "lifelong brain-wiring" model was constructed for political motives, such as protecting parents from blame......seems to me that in our world the Big People will stop at nothing to ensure their image of always being right isn't damaged.

By my thread title, I was not referring to the legitimate acquisition of Asperger's Syndrome through behavioral and environmental sources. I believe that the core of AS is an unchangeable neurological dysfunction... This thread is about being raised in such a way that causes a person to mirror a number of the symptoms so as to appear to be an Aspie, when they actually aren't.

Last edited by Acacia on 03 Dec 2009, 9:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

More related to the first page than the second, but I can vouch for NT siblings "acting" aspie. My own younger brother, who seems to idolize me (I don't know why, I can only assume it's because my intelligence level was so bandied about by teachers/parents and he struggled so hard with school academically) and tried to be similar to me. Even though his interests were/are football, booze, cars and parties/people, he still copied alot of the aspie traits I have and either developed them, or mimiced them, I'm not sure which.

So it wouldn't surprise me at all if you misdiagnosed yourself from having developed some of the traits instead of inheriting them. But at the same time, ASD, though it's genetic is still also part nurture.