Wanting to be AS

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Neither of those are a pointer for an ASD.

@ Rocky
As told to me by a woman I know, it is very important to assign a name to our feelings and emotions so that we can deal with them effectively. Being able to identify something as possibly AS gave me a framework for dealing with my life and the way I think rather than just putting myself down for feeling, thinking, and acting "different." And when others try to put me down, I don't have to let it affect me like before I found out about WP. When I joined the Twelve Step movement, some things fell into place. But it wasn't until after I found out about AS and WP, it was like I had put the final piece of the puzzle that is me into place. This is not to say that I have AS per se, but I do recognize that I have many of the traits. I do not minimize it by saying it's a "mild form of..." as ITS impact has been fairly severe over the course of my life - whatever IT is.

@ BTDT
I feel you about the intense social situations, but I describe it as more spacing out or out of sorts - confused, if you will. I need to get away and be alone - then I get back to what is a "normal" state for me. Sometimes I need to be alone longer than other times. And even though I'm getting better in social situations, the after-effect and the need to escape is now MORE INTENSE if that makes any sense.

@ BlackWolf
After a co-worker told me that I have poor eye contact, I started trying to better with that. I do a lot better, but it is still more natural for me NOT to make eye contact.

I don´t think it´s fair to say that you don´t have AS just because you make good eye contact. This is why, in the diagnostic criteria, it is written "two or more of the following"- (or whatever the number is, I can´t remember). Not all Aspies have ALL of the traits all of the time. (In my case, I did not make good eye contact for much of my life, but I´ve learned how to do it; so, of course, if I went to get diagnosed, the person would only see me how I am NOW). Unfortunately, many of the so-called "experts" out there don´t know much about what they´re talking about! In addition, it sounds to me like AS diagnoses are relatively subjective anyway. Maybe the reason you "want to have AS" is because, intuitively, you feel that that´s what you really have?

Also, girls and women are under diagnosed. I have read that the doctors aren´t really sure what it is they´re looking for in females. Remember, AS is still relatively new, and they´re still learning.

Its wierd how AS is new. Most here at WP seem to know more about it than all the rest of the people in the world.

"To those that know, no explanation is necessary, to those that don't, none is possible"

Exactly right. People have a tendency to forget the diagnostic criteria often says or and not always and.

That's just like me. I have ADHD too (diagnosed, and definitely meet the criteria), don't feel any more 'at home' with the majority of other ADHD people (with one very notable exception, and she could just have stronger than average traits of it rather than a diagnosable case), have obsessive interests, stim in ways I've only ever seen autistic people stim, yet I can instinctively read body language even BETTER than most people, at least in some situations like formal, static face-reading tests. I've wondered if NVLD would be a better fit for me. The ASD charity worker I've met with dismissed that possibility though, he said he did notice traits of ASD when talking to me, and I know I make a lot of eye contact in meetings like that one.

I've noticed that I mainly look away from people when I see their expression changing. I think the problem is that I don't trust my face to respond the right way. I can often imagine exactly the body language, tone of voice, and expression that's appropriate for a response or a joke, but I know I won't be able to make that expression easily. So when somebody's facial expression changes, I out of habit look away so that they won't notice that my face doesn't respond very much, or properly, to their face. Prioperception is weaker in many people with an ASD and it is for me, so perhaps that's related to why I don't trust my face. Maybe the autistic people who report that they can't communicate by speaking because their mouths won't move properly have an extreme form of poor facial prioperception and coordination that some verbal people on the spectrum also experience?

This is important and I agree, you can meet the DSM-IV criteria for AS, and easily for PDD-NOS, without having any trouble reading body language. Speaking for myself, possibly Angnix would agree, I think the problem is that I really don't feel I have any trouble reading body language at all, I mean I'm not even of low-average ability there. I have problems understanding what's really going on in some social situations, working out what people really mean or want by what they say, why certain situations are supposed to evoke particular emotional reactions, realising when I'm being lied to or should suspect I'm being lied to etc., but that's DESPITE my body language-reading abilities, which are good, not because of them. It just doesn't seem right that anyone could not only not have a symptom, but have the opposite presentation to it. Whereas with the need for non-functional routines, while I probably wouldn't be judged to have that one by a clinician, at least I can see that I come closer to it than the average person.

I'm the same way. I see it and I know what it means, it's just that I don't know why whatever it was I said or did elicited that response.

I feel the same way. Therefore, I usually just keep in my own head to make me happy.

Any adult who walks into a psychiatrist's office is going to get pegged with depression and any kid is going to get pegged with ADHD...whether they actually have it or not.

I had a friend who had ADHD, and trust me, he actually HAD ADHD. Most of the time though, I find kids who were diagnosed as having ADHD just have impatient or undisciplined parents who took them to a like minded psychiatrist.

Anyway I fail to believe that ADHD can exist alongside OCD. Ask yourself. Do people with OCD have trouble concentrating on their obsessions and compulsions? No. Of course not. They frequently take medication to try to stop concentrating on them.

Are the things you have trouble focusing on boring by any chance? Probably! But that just means you think it's boring. Not that you have ADHD.

People with true ADHD act in a manner similar to those with bi-polar disorder. They have very poor impulse control and the impulse to do one thing or another changes within a matter of seconds or minutes and can appear manic because of it, and then they get depressed because they become frustrated with themselves for their poor impulse control.

I believe the thinking now about adhd is it means trouble with maintaining or shifting attention. That accounts for the

adh-er having trouble with transitioning.

The part of the brain that allows you to concentrate when interested in something is not affected in AD/HD, therefore most people with AD/HD can concentrate when interested. The part of the brain that is smaller in AD/HD is the part of the brain that allows you to concentrate when NOT inherently interested in the task, when working towards a worthwhile long-term goal instead. People without AD/HD are much more able to focus on something boring when they have to. They always think they aren't, which is amusing, but if you ask them about what they learned in a lesson they've just had, they can tell you a hell of a lot more than I ever could. Forgetting the finer details or having tuned out for a few minutes at one point in an hour long lecture isn't what I'm talking about, it's much more severe than that. It can mean being able to report only one or two simple facts or statements that you caught and were able to make any sense of due to a lack of context with which you could understand any sentence when you'd not processed any of the relevant preceding sentences. Every. Single. Lecture.

However, you will find that even though we appear to be able to focus on our interests, there are still tell-tale signs of AD/HD in the form of cognitive deficits. The poor working memory doesn't go away just because you're interested, so someone with AD/HD will for example be able to continue trying to write on a forum without getting distracted very much if they're interested, however despite not getting distracted they will still take longer to finish writing it than someone without AD/HD would, because of the poor working memory, organisation and planning skills. So the fact that someone LOOKS like they're doing a task normally at the time doesn't mean that the underlying cognitive deficits, which are much more complex than simply paying attention vs. not paying attention, are not affecting their overall performance on that task. A child with AD/HD might be able to play computer games for hours, but they won't be any good at strategy games, which require working memory and organised thought, or if they are, they have to fidget a lot while playing it in order to stimulate their brain enough to manage the task.

OCD is actually slightly more common among people with AD/HD, the related bulimia nervosa even more so, I think because AD/HD causes you to feel that you have no control over things you want to control. I've had numerous obsessions and yet I definitely meet the criteria for AD/HD-PI, definitely including the 'significantly impaired' criterion. I can't control things like getting to bed on time without taking melatonin to make me feel sleepy, however much I want to before it comes down to it, I never seem able to. Prior to medication I couldn't control whether or not I processed the information I was given in school, or whether or not I got my homework done by the time I desperately wanted to. I could, however, control how clean my teeth were, so I brushed them so much that my gums receded. I could control how much UV exposure my skin got, so when younger I went to great and humiliating lengths to stand in shade or cover my body up. I've had numerous obsessions that have not been precluded by my inattentiveness at all.

Basically what my old therapist said was I picked up on lots of social cues, but I do not react properly. Also what's deceptive about me is that I'm fine with one on one conversations, but get another person in there and I keep getting the timing wrong so that I'm always interrupting. There was a time when I was bad at one on one conversations also, as late as college I had people help me with them.

But yea, basically what the lady I just talk to said I was very animated with my facial expression and body language and had good eye contact. But later on after talking to me about birds, she mentioned something about it was a true obsession.

That's much like me too. I still get one-on-one situations wrong sometimes but it depends on the person and situation. I find it very hard to talk about one of my interests without dominating the conversation too much (my friends are people who don't seem to mind this and are interested in what I have to say), I'm not good with banter, avoid giving advice to my friends when they confide in me because I have no idea how much is too much or how much they want, and then when they confide in others and get lots of advice I realise I could/should have done too.

Things like that, nothing major really, I very rarely offend people these days (I'm 22) because I'm hyper-cautious about it and avoid teasing, asking personal questions if I haven't been asked first, giving advice etc. as I said. In groups, it's not bad enough that colleagues or most other people ever mention it to me, but my sister tells me I interrupt far too much sometimes, and she even says she feels sorry for the people I'm speaking to! (Most of my specifically laid out negative feedback as an adult comes just from my sister and to some extent my mum unfortunately, which contributes to my doubts and confusion, but it's inevitable because most people won't tell you bluntly the kind of things your siblings will, lol.) I'm not even aware I've been interrupting. But people don't show anger towards me over it, so at least they don't take it badly, probably just think I'm strange but it could still reduce their enjoyment of my company. A few times I've thought I've gotten on well with someone but they haven't contacted me again even when I've contacted them. I think I can be 'too much' when I take to someone.

Well, PDD or not, you're not the only person with your pattern of abillities and disabilities, if that makes you feel better. It's made me feel better, so thanks for sharing.

What a convenient definition for the drug companies. They have made not being able to pay attention to something borning a disorder and have been telling you it is abnormal. Just like they like to tell people being depressed is always abnormal. Again I'm not saying there is no such thing as ADHD, I'm not saying you don't have it, and I'm not saying medication isn't warranted sometimes, but generally speaking this whole thing is just a case of the drug companies trying to convince people they need to buy their drugs.

Any part of the brain a person does not use as much as the general population will be smaller when compared to that part of the brain in the general population. But ANYTHING that could prompt a person not to use it will do this, included particular disdain for a subject, or poor discipline skills. I see this with my brother. My mother was a very poor disciplinarian. The dog wouldn't even mind her because she couldn't be strict and consistent with her. She could never make my brother do his homework and when anyone else tried to step in and make him, she took his side! She was actually like this with all of us when it came to homework.

When I got to college I realized, I didn't know how to study like one needs to study for college. I had to teach myself.

My brother had the same problem and is having considerably more trouble with it, because I had a long term goal in mind and he doesn't.

So the doctor gave him some ritalin type stuff. In fact my dad is also on some ritalin type stuff and I can tell you he didn't need it. He's only on it because his wife is a perfectionist and he wasn't perfect enough for her.




Or maybe the instructor was just talking about a subject which is difficult for you. It's normal for some subjects to be difficult for people, and when people don't understand something, or like it, they tune out.

Maybe they also have difficulty with a subject, aren't interested in it, and have a central auditory processing problem. Central auditory processing problems are very common for people on the spectrum. A lot of us take the information in as jumbled and then have to sort through it and organize it later because the right brain isn't doing the initial pre-processing it's supposed to. It's very easy to tune out what your brain interprets as junk.



Maybe you have "delayed sleep phase syndrome". I do. It's very common with people on the spectrum. My natural sleep cycle is shifted so that my natural hours for sleep are from 4am to 12pm and no amount of anything will change this.

It's not really a syndrome. It's just called that because it doesn't affect a large percentage of the population and it makes it difficult to hold a 9-5 job because we'd constantly be sleep deprived.

But in the context of pre-historic society, having someone such as myself in your group was an advantage because someone had to stay up and watch camp. If all humans slept all night, humanity would have been eaten to extinction long ago.



If it helps you fine. As I said, I'm not claiming you don't have ADHD. How much of that information do you retain in the long term though?

Just wanted to point out that I´ve read that many women get a diagnosis of ADHD, when they should really be diagnosed with AS. It seems to happen quite often, then, that a girl or woman will be initially diagnosed with ADHD, only to have it amended later as an AS diagnosis. That´s not to say that some of you here aren´t really ADHD, I don´t know that....I´m only sayin´....

I also tune out when something is boring, go into my own little world, and couldn´t tell you what was being said; however, I don´t seem to have other symptoms of ADHD.

I do interrupt people constantly, too- (or just cut them off). For years, I had no idea I was doing this. Now I´m aware of it, but can´t seem to help it much of the time; I only realize what I´ve done when it´s already too late. But I thought this was a trait of AS? I think I read that Liane Holliday Willey has this problem too.

Wow, "delayed sleep phase syndrome"! I most definitely have this! Perfect, for me, would be 3:00 am to 10 or 11 am. I definitely have trouble with regular jobs, or school- society in general- because of this. I´m constantly overtired!