Getting along with other aspies

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Nope, not jealous at all. This is retrospect, I can analyze situations in retrospect a lot easier than I can in the moment. Also, you only explained it halfway. You didn't explain why she didn't fit in with the other disabled kids.

'Tis true, it appears aspies have better insight in retrospect than in real time.



I'm pretty sure that her "Strange, Eh?" comment was directed at the contrast between "fitting in with the volunteer NTs" and "Not fitting in with the Youth Group NTs", and that's probably what she would've been most interested in.

This is a solid point.... ^

If I were around you long enough, I could diagnose you, if indeed you/anyone as having ToM issues. I watch people and note their strengths and weaknesses.... it is just something that catches my subconscious eye.

sw, from what you have posted here in the way of your personal ToM anecdotes, you 'miss the mark.' Some of them I do myself, but I do catch them myself, without an outside aid. Mine center in ED issues .

You definitely have ToM issues that are un-NT like. You have + 2 standard deviations of IQ on the new WAIS, and this doesn't mesh well with your realtime performance in the ToM department. Two deviations is a Harvard grad's mean IQ. It is unlike ADHD, it is unlike any one condition.

It could be a cluster of these others, but I really doubt it.........Someone with ADHD and, say with dysthymia, and say all combined with OCD. Do you miss ToM? Yes you can with ADHD, but you can and will bring it home yourself in an un-aided self understanding.

Just because your aspie doesnt mean your gonna nessarily get along with other aspies. But I'd say other aspies might be more understanding towards your "odd" behavior. They are less likely to take offense to it. Whereas NTs might think your ____________(insert negative term). Thats really it. But if you have nothing in common or just dont hit it off, meh oh well.

Maybe it's like prodromal schizophrenia. The entire body of evidence seems to suggest that schizophrenia is more likely than autism, considering I got along with my classmates in elementary school far better than the average male aspie on the forums, and my "rigidity" scores are far lower than the average person's, and I understand the intent behind rules and stuff and people I was able to converse with 2 years ago in real life, they seem to be scared to converse with me now, and I do naturally think of what other people are/might be thinking (Even though I might be wrong sometimes). And, my parents are NTs and autism is supposed to be hereditary (Coincidentally, both my parents are math/tech talented and I suppose there may have been a "synergy affect" which may have increased the autistic expression in the offspring; my sister scored 28 on the AQ test which is at the 5th percentile for females, whereas both my parents are near the 50th percentile.)

Of course, maybe it's BAP.

Coincidentally, I find your posts a bit harder to understand than most people's posts here, and if I assume your language patterns are "NT" with more 'phrasing ambiguity' as the cause of the difficulty, then I guess it'd be understandable I would find them harder to understand because I might be more autistic than normal.

(Wait, does that last paragraph "sound like" an insult? I didn't mean it to.)

I think it was mostly because the other teenagers there were really disabled, not just mild like me. One girl had Cerebral Palsy, and she couldn't move and had some speaking problems because she never looked at anyone or spoke to anyone. And there were two twins there who had severe speech delays, and there were a few people in wheelchairs, one couldn't speak at all, and there was just lots of others with different disabilities what I couldn't really get friendly with (at least they didn't judge me though). There was one girl who literally didn't have a voice at all, but she was still very demanding and used up most of the attention. But I think she also had some sort of Mental Retardation because she used to carry dolls around with her all the time (she was 17).

But then I went to college, I was put in a group of students with other special needs, but were mild like me. One was Dyspraxic, one was Dyslexic, one had mild Autism, one had Fragile-X, a few had ADHD and ADD, and some had learning difficulties, etc, and I fitted in perfectly with them.

Jannisy is BAP ( something she's posted). But with none of these problems though. We are in the traits zone for BAP, nothing related to "impairment." You clearly have an impairment. PDD-NOS will get you a Dx without the other symptoms, eg, sensory, rigidity, etc.

That is interesting comment about my writing style or lack thereof. I think it is me and not" NT."
I posted something on another board and the thought was: "Huh, I think I get it..... maybe....."


----->Bottom line: BAPers are unimpaired.

Oh, that's bull. http://autism.about.com/od/autismterms/g/phenotype.htm

"The term broad autism phenotype describes an even wider range of individuals who exhibit problems with personality, language and social-behavioral characteristics at a level that is considered to be higher than average but lower than is diagnosable with autism"

And, you've already discovered that there's variation in various autistic traits in a given person in another thread when you were speaking with Sora who (supposedly) had a complete ToM (But yet she has sensory processing issues or something?), and you know that the ToM of the average male is below the female average and most likely shows a wider distribution, so a BAP male with TOM/social impairments getting "close" to the aspergers range shouldn't be unbelievable.


Btw, my childhood is so inconsistent with autism, it's pathetic. I mean, I guess it's not "entirely inconsistent" because I had my autistic-esque goofs here and there (Man, I royally screwed up trying to play football one time), and I did fit the "socially detached inventor/investigator" stereotype a bit at times and girls had a nasty habit of calling out my weirdness whenever I spoke to them or even looked at them and I seemed to have an unhealthy attachment to my coat in High School and I was not personally invited to birthday parties, but I occasionally hung out with friends, and we watched movies together, we played video games together and we traded pokemon cards and I was the wall ball master. Some popular 8th grade girl even said I was "Soooooo cooooooool!" because of her memories of me from 6th grade summer camp.

I can think of some reasons why someone with Aspergers would have this history. Guys get status through competence in socially approved activities, and high status people can get away with things that get lower status people slammed (a low status girl with x-number of sexual partners is "a slut" -- point out that a high status girl has the same or more sexual partners, and she's not a slut, she's "cool" and "popular"). So if you were a "wall ball master" in a group that conferred high status on that, you could show a fair bit of Aspie awkwardness without it being a big deal.

And Aspie friendships are based on doing stuff together, as are casual male friendships, which is why some Aspie girls are more comfortable hanging out with guys. It's when "hanging out" means "not doing anything but social talk" (gossip, weather, etc.) that Aspies fail. Watching movies together, playing video games, and trading pokemon cards are all classic Aspie-type friendship activities.

Personally, I think a lot of engineers think like people with Aspergers, but they'd never be diagnosed because it isn't impairing their lives. They still "don't get" why they should try to dress fashionably, they don't do social chat, they are not motivated to conform to social standards, they don't speculate on what other people think or why other people did something they find weird, their facial recognition is iffy and they have no grasp of body language, and they otherwise show all kinds of signs that their brain is just working differently from an NTs. They've just achieved enough status through sheer competence in a field society finds useful that people accept these things about them and so they've never needed to wrestle with the whole issue.

Lol, it seems you honed in on the primary weakness that I observed when I was a wee one like a Tomahawk heat-seeking missile. I'm wary of inferring that the underlying deficit of all possible conversational problems is aspergers/autism, though...

We do have anecdotal evidence on the board of BAP's showing an un-impaired color..... Couldn't meet the criteria. There is another that came forward with a child on the spectrum - same with some traits.

You have posted here significant and probably diagnosable problems with ToM.

So the real question is: How many BAP's, though unbeknownst to them at the time, walk into the Psychiatrist office asking for help with their BAP symptoms?

I have hunch none zilch, zero.......short of hypochondria.

Did I tick you off? Sorry dude. Btw, I totally knew that saying "that's bull" would've done that, so I guess that means I'm neurotypical. PLUS ONE for the home team!

(Did this post tick you off, too?)

....whatever you say, what ever you say. I think that your general ignorance of Asperger's, but your insistence on thinking that you are right about it, and your rather black & white view of the autistic world is actually a sign that you might be autistic.

No. I read it as denial. I knew you wouldn't like like it, but I shoot from the hip and say er like it is. Say, does this phenomenon of "say er like like it is" mean I'm on the spectrum? Or Possibly BAP ?

I've only known one confirmed diagnosed aspie, and we get along fine. That person didn't grow up in the same area; I only met them like 2 years ago.

There were no other aspies while I was growing up, looking back in hindsight. Nobody "got" me and I didn't "get" others.

Now I find aspies online (and the one I know IRL) and we "get" each other.

I actually found out a friend of mine has AS too really recently!! ! We had helped with something for a school-club we're both in and she was confiding something in me. She said "I have Aspergers" mid-sentence so I got excited and actually said "OH SHIZNIK! ME TOO!" We were both really surprised and really happy. We had each known that there was something different about the other person, but we didn't know THAT!! !! We talked about it for a long time

I don't think I've known many other people with AS. Of the people with it I know I've met, I was friends with some of them and I wasn't compatible with others.