Questions for Schizophrenics or Autistics...

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It's been studied. Schizophrenia was found to be the most common misdiagnosis of autism, when they screened for autism in the psych system in various countries. I experienced it even after my initial autism diagnosis.

A vigilance level might be defined as a spectrum. If the vigilance level is too high for a given situation, then that's paranoid. If the vigilance level is too low, then that's naive. The trick is to have an appropriate vigilance level in each situation. If you're bad at reading people, you may have a fixed vigilance level which may be too naive in one situation AND too paranoid in another. I've had problems with being too naive, and with being caught off guard when someone responded badly and I didn't see it coming. Now I'm more careful to examine possibilities and limit the damage that can be done under worst case scenarios, and if that's unacceptable I may just avoid the situation altogether.

I always need to shuffle chips when I have them sitting in front of me.

I have been diagnosed being on both the autistic and schizophrenic spectrum on almost every medical record ive had. The specific diagnosis on the spectrums will change though depending on the doctors opinion. Anyways for me its been hard to tell what symptoms are due to what diagnosis. I do notice I have consistant ones and ones that fluctuate. I would imagine that the consistant symptoms are aspergers/adhd and the fluctuating episodes are schizo related. for me i have several weird episodes. I could compare them to doing different sorts of drugs but different. Some are plesant, some are not. Autism is neurological and neurological disorders usually dont fluctuate. Schizophrenia is psychological and psychological disorders usually do fluctuate. That is how I can tell what symptoms are due to which diagnosis. For me schizophrenia is like never knowing what will happen in my mind next. One day Ill be doing great. The next day ill be incoherant, angry, and looking for microphones in my car that someone hid to spy on me.

I do this as well, anything that can be shuffled or re-arranged.

So thinking people could read your mind is a symptom of schizophrenia?
This deeply concerns me.

I think that someone on the spectrum being inside their own world in many ways might think people are thinking something based on external cues (with much less accuracy than others in most situations) and also you could be thinking in your head and start talking about what is going on in your head mid thought which could be confusing and percieved as you thought people could read your mind but really you were just into what ever you were thinking?

Unless that sounds schizo....I do that a lot. Drop people in mid sentence to my thoughts and draw inaccurate conclusions about what people are thinking. Though I know my conlcusions are often wrong sometimes they stick with me and bug me but i do not ask the others what they were really thinking most always.

Last edited by liveandletdie on 14 Apr 2011, 2:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was just diagnosed with high functioning autism/Asperger's at the age of 24. (My psychologist sees no difference between HFA and AS and used both terms in her diagnostic report, so I use the terms interchangeably when I refer to my diagnosis).

People get diagnosed later in life for all sorts of reasons--some people with autism spectrum disorders probably never get diagnosed because it never occurs to them or anybody else that they might have an ASD. The less the symptoms of something negatively affect a person's life, the less likely it is that they will be diagnosed in childhood (if ever). The age at which you or somebody else notices your symptoms doesn't really matter unless the symptoms are new instead of having been part of your life since early childhood.



I have finger fidgets--I'm constantly rubbing the tips of my fingers together. I also rock and pace when I'm upset or excited, and my mum recently informed me that I flap my arms sometimes in social situations when I don't know what to do. Stimming keeps me focused/grounded. I do it to self-regulate and calm down.

You mentioned how you'd heard that stimming has something to do with stimulating your senses. I tend to stim more when I'm overwhelmed or bothered by noise, light, or some sort of gross tactile sensation I can't do anything about (like if I'm sitting in wet clothes when I'm out somewhere on a rainy day)....my occupational therapist explained that when this happens, it's like I'm trying to balance out the sensory input: if I'm experiencing sound-overload, then I seek tactile input to distract my nervous system from the sound.

You asked why your senses might need stimulating....If a person has a certain type of sensory integration dysfunction, then they may need a lot more sensory stimulation than most people. I'm not good at explaining why this is or how it works, but I can give you an example about myself:

I don't feel weight unless there is a lot of weight--I misjudge the amount of force needed to move things, and end up slamming doors and throwing/breaking things by accident when I meant to gently close the door, or gently set something down/toss it lightly. I end up dropping things by accident when I'm holding them for more than a moment and have stopped looking at them--because I can't feel the weight of whatever I'm holding. Also, I need to be lying under a mattress to feel all of my limbs without thinking about it. I like heavy coats, heavy blankets, push-ups, and lying under my mattress because my proprioceptive sense needs more-than-average stimulation to work properly.



I think the idea that autistic people can't make up stories is just a stereotype. I'm sure some people with autism have trouble making up stories, but I'm also sure that some neurotypical people have trouble making up stories. It depends on the person.

Actually that makes a lot of sense. I am paranoid about many things that normal people don't worry about (generally people related things, particularly concerning my neighbours who I don't know, but also any type of large agencies collecting information about me such as store cards etc.), yet at the same time I am quite happy doing things such as walking down my street on my own late at night that most people (women at least) wouldn't do.

My take on it is that the world (or rather society) generates so much every day anxiety in me, that to a certain extent I have learnt to adapt to living with anxiety which most NTs dont. Therefore a situation that causes an NT anxiety, such as walking alone at night, is no different to me than an everyday slightly stressful telephone call or unplanned change of routine, which for them is nothing at all.

People have said to me that I am bad at dealing with stress, because when confronted with something that is generally considered stressful I can't cope at all well, whereas someone else might get over it relatively easily. However, they don't consider that in fact a lot of my every day life is stressful to me, and I am coping with that each and every day, so in a way I am better at dealing with stress than the NT (out of habitude), it is just that life is so much more stressful that it seems as though I am worse at it.