Who here has "high functioning autism?"

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Actually, I can relate. Everyone I knew in High School has disappeared on me. When it comes to choosing a career, I have no idea what to do, but nobody is rushing me. I'm willing to be married, but I don't want to have children. This is one of the drawbacks of being a HFA. Nevertheless, I wouldn't trade it for ANYTHING.

Lets put it this way, both are diagnostic criteria that are still little understood. Part of the reason to moving to broader criteria is the fact that while there may be differences between HFA, AS, PDD-NOS, and NVLD there is often diagnostic hair-splitting when applied. I have heard of HFA parents mention their child got moved down to AS, and likewise parents with PDD-NOS children complain their child got moved down to a NVLD diagnosis. This is the fact that while from an observational standpoint we are developmentally different from NT, on an individual diagnostic level it gets tricky, and it is not uncommon for diagnosticians to change the diagnosis. It gets down to the "you met one person with autism, you met one person with autism criteria". We are hard to pin down as a group in general, and often diagnosis is based on early developmental cycles which often do not really determine our later ones, because we do develop differently.

This gets even trickier with adults.

I have Asperger's Syndrom, but I am now well adapted to the NT world. I am in my mid seventies and I have had several decade to learn how to navigate in the NT world purely by empirical means. My underlying intuition is still AS and I still am literal minded. I have to repress showing my literal mindedness in order to get along with NT folk which are most of the people with whom I associated.

At my age I have learned to pass for human pretty well.

ruveyn

My diagnosis says I have high-functioning autism solely because HFA and Asperger's aren't classified as sepparate conditions here. I asked. However, I had no speech delay as a child so I choose Asperger's in the selection bar in my profile.

i dont know about autisim but i have highfunctioning aspergers

Too many variables to list, but I'll use fictional examples and say I'm closer to Rain Man/Simon [from Mercury Rising] than I am to Adam/Mr Bean/Sherlock Holmes. Though I have bits of all of them, hence the overlap in the disorders.

Diagnosed with Autistic Disorder without an Axis-II diagnosis of mental retardation (that would be HFA).

I was diagnosed in my childhood of this. My physical features were uniform and the condition was based around mental thinking.

Whenever I think of "high functioning autism", it seems like there is this natural "high" which is causing me to function in an autistic way. I've always felt responsive to certain sensory events, colours and sounds. Like they had a major importance in life. I don't know when this eternal "trip" is going to end, but I've learned to enjoy it as long as it lasts.

HFA has speech delay, AS don't.

NVLD's not on the spectrum.

The differences between NVLD & AS are that in NVLD there's poor visual memory, poor navigation skills, and difficulcies understanding any non-verbal given subject (THAT includes communication). In AS there are obsessions, extra-sensitive senses, and more "autistic" differences.
(God damnit, I oficially have no idea which one is MINE.)

I thought I would give you a little update, I finally found a career I am going to pursuit, Gerontology.
After a wonderful appointment with my career counselor, who happens to be my teacher, he suggested that to me and i thought it would be a great option. It's a growing field and there is going to be a great demand for it in the near future. I had a grandmother that I took care of from 2002 to 2008, I cut her lawn, raked her leafs in the fall, shoveled her snow in the winter, vacuumed-dusted around the house, i did pretty much everything i could of all year long at her house. this would be great work experience for me to get into.

As far as the marriage thing, it's not what it's cracked up to be, i have been hearing so much on the news that marriage is on the decline. I even saw the cover of the latest time magazine, entitled "Who Needs Marriage?" I'm starting to realize that marriage isn't the best thing and doesn't mean you're a better person than someone. It also means that marriage does not lead you to happiness. It can get annoying sometimes that we live in a culture where we are pressured to get married and have children and it's awesome to have a wife. In my opinion, we need to get over that.

Last edited by Leester on 02 Dec 2010, 10:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Good luck with that, man. As for the marriage thing, I'm willing to go either way. If it happens, cool. If not, so be it.

I'm diagnosed with just autism. "High functioning" has never been added to it officially. "Low functioning" or "severe" often has. I don't personally claim any of those, because I don't believe in functioning levels.



That's not a differentiation between autism and Asperger's. Technically the differences are only about things like language development. There are people diagnosed with low functioning autism who are aware from the moment they meet other children that they are different, and there are people diiagnosed with Asperger's who were unaware they were different.

I don't have a simple answer to the question because I had elements of both, even after I was aware I was autistic. But I didn't think in terms of "different" and "not different" for a very long time, so the question is kind of moot.



I never "found out I have high functioning autism" because I was never diagnosed with high functioning autism. Finding out I was autistic didn't really cause either of those reactions. So none of the above, yet again.

A lot of this is due to the fact that my way of thinking doesn't encompass a lot of concepts that the English language (and language at all) has, so often when I'm asked questions about things, if I have to be honest, however I thought about things had nothing to do with the words in the question at all, just off in a different direction.

And as for differences between autism and AS (I won't say "HFA and AS" because I don't believe in HF and LF), what I believe is that there are dozens if not hundreds of patterns that being autistic can take. Many people, when they see a difference, will shoehorn that difference into "autistic people on one side and AS people on the other". What's funny about it is that you'll actually see sometimes people doing the same differences in different sides. Like some people say that "autistic" people are more social but just don't have the skills to approach people, while "AS" people are natural loners, and other people will say the exact opposite. The truth is that under current criteria which of those you are has nothing to do with that difference. Personally I don't see the point of separating the two. Not because there's no differences among autistic people. But because all the autism vs. AS divide does, is it privileges speech development as the most important characteristic that separates autistic people from each other. And that isn't true in my life and among the autistic people I've known (which is a lot). We seem to sort into those dozens if not hundreds of different categories by ourselves, with little regard to who is "autistic" and who is "AS" by normal standards. This means that the division keeps apart people who are similar and puts together people who have nothing in common except superficial speech development. I think it's better to say exactly what you mean ("I am talking about autistic people who spoke early," or whatever) rather than build up these massive piles of characteristics that get sorted into only two categories when there are really many more categories that ought to exist. So in a way putting us all in one category at least means that we won't be artificially separated by the AS/autism line, and then have a better chance of separating the way we do naturally separate.

(I have noticed that my particular variant of autism seems to be rather uncommon, and thus people who fit into it are diagnosed with every autistic spectrum condition and every functioning label possible. Which shows how little those categories matter. I'm an autistic person who's at times been labeled severe, I have a friend who's been diagnosed at various times with PDD-NOS and AS (I got PDD-NOS once too but it was insurance reasons), and somehow the two of us are more similar than anyone we have ever met.)

I aparently did not speak until I was three or four and was a classic Kanner's or severly autistic until I was five or six. My orignal diagnosis was PDD becuase this was the early 90's before this autism craze and my mother sort of lost trust in phyc people because one phycologist told her it was her fault I was autistic. I was adopted. But anyway by the time I was ready to enter kindergarden, I was "functning" I was just super hyper and couldn't sit still for extended periods. I was only in kindergarden or a week or two at five and was taken out to be tested and mature a little. I was diagnosed with ADHD by the time I entered kindergarden at a diffrent school at six and I had good teachers in kindergarden and first grade. I was eventualy diagnosed with AS at seven or eight but according to my phycatrist, my diagnosis is HFA. He says aside from a speech delay, AS and HFA are basicaly the same thing. So technically, I don't really have AS. But as my shrink said, besides a speech delay, what's the diffrence?

I have HFA. The only difference I know of between HFA and AS is that there is a speech delay for those with HFA and not one for AS. I was diagnosed with AS for quite a few months until out of the blue some papers came out of a dusty old box detailing that I had speech delays as a child. Why my mother completely forgot this info I don't know but now I have HFA and not AS. Really I don't see much difference. I'm still okay being called an aspie. I don't feel any different with the new diagnosis. In fact the people I told I have AS to haven't even been informed of the change aside from my parents and one of my close friends. I almost find to try and explain I have HFA and not AS would be a pointless effort.

To answer those questions...

Before I knew I was autistic I wondered if I was even truly human. So yeah I've felt very different before finding out that I had HFA.

I had no problem being diagnosed with AS and then HFA. If there is any problem it was that my family let a mistake happen by me getting diagnosed AS before HFA. I guess I'm only a bit annoyed because my parents weren't taking the situation seriously enough to inform me or my doctor of me having a speech delay as a child. From what you're asking though, I came to terms very quickly that I was autistic. I was given a thorough explanation of why I had it, I researched it, and I was able to easily see that I had it. It gave me a description of why I've always felt out of place.

I feel the same way except for two things. I want a wife and family, and I'm not in school right now. The only thing I'm really good at is drawing so I might pursue an education in art. I just don't have the support or money to do that yet. As far as the family I feel very inadequate to even be responsible enough or emotionally support/handle a family... and that makes me sad

I have very few interests and those are the only two interests I could imagine going for in life. I think I could draw every day and have a family and be happy... if I can find out how to manage that. Otherwise I have nothing I'd be willing to put effort into because I'm 100% non-interested. Even other stuff I like would seem boring to do for a living. I like video games but would be bored to the max if I had to code them... then I'd just get fired for not doing my job because I would day dream. At least with a career in art I could turn my day dreams into work lol... I'm thinking of being a concept artist. Motivation and me aren't really related though so I have a tough time pursuing even things I like.