AS Community vs. Doctors on AS

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Hopefully this doesn't duplicate...

I may be confused as to what a verbal IQ is, and pardon if I have, but I don't think it has anything to do with whether you're on the spectrum or not
My brother was correcting people's grammar at age 2, learned to read at age 5, is a genius who skipped high school and went to college at 13. He's never had any difficulty with language or academics (aside from never doing homework) and has taught himself many different languages.
However, no one would dispute his being on the spectrum. No one ever has. He's still living at home with our parents, I think it's impossible for him to actually live alone.

Whereas for me, I have a lot more problems with verbal intelligence (I can type far better than I can speak and even then my ability to communicate, and understand others, isn't as well as social people would like), yet I can pass for NT (I think? They usually just think I'm quiet, shy, and a bit weird). Still, I managed to get a BA in Visual Communication 3D animation and successfully worked for 4 years in a public library.

The first psychologist I saw described me as being a perfect fit for the DSM5 for high functioning, but then said she doubted it because I could recognize the facial expression of a cartoon frog. That there made me doubt her credibility, since even my brother can recognize basic expressions (actually, he's the one who helped me out in understanding the science behind expressions).
I think people tend to downplay their own severity, because that's what they've known their entire lives. At least for me. It doesn't feel as bad as it sounds when I write it down because I've spent 30 years with myself. And then, like with pretty much everything, people will associate anything with it if someone else says something similar. I was in a group for parents with Gifted kids and they kept saying certain traits were because the kid was gifted, not just a co-morbid or not even related at all.

It stands to reason that a group of people with weaknesses in particular areas would also have some difficulty evaluating their performance in those areas. Precisely what are the measures of "normal functioning" that we are comparing our performance against? If these are difficult for us to fully understand, then our ratings of our own relative abilities are likely to be "off".

For example, I may think I only have a mild social impairment because I am simply unaware of a lot of mistakes I am making (and spend a large proportion of my life with no idea why I have so few relationships because there is nothing wrong with me).

The type of autistic person I would generally trust for accurate information about autism or realistic perception of autism would be a rational, moderate adult who does not view autism as their identity, does not blame autism for anything bad that ever happened to them, and can eggsplain their autistic traits without eggsaggeration, hyperbole, or fantasy.

The type of psychologist I would trust would be one who has years of eggsperience assessing/diagnosing people with autism, perhaps providing therapy to autistic people, and does not write books on autism or give paid presentations on autism.

I would also trust researchers who have spent a lot of time running autism research projects on brain/cognition/behavior, including neuroscientists and eggsperimental psychologists, but not neurobiologists who primarily work with rodent models or scientists from other fields not specializing in the brain.

I'm diagnosed with ASD level 1, and my VIQ is 134, one point below the cutoff for giftedness. I think the people who performed your diagnosis either had only experience with lower functioning individuals, or have a rather narrow view of what autism means. It is a spectrum after all.

What I've found is few doctors know much about Asperger's. Kaiser has no help for it, I've asked. What I found and liked about WP is there is a wide variety of topics and many people very similar to me. I've found that I 'see' new things about my condition that I hadn't seen elsewhere. It helps me flesh out what is and what isn't part of this condition. It also helps tie seemingly disparate differences together. It's both a bit of a curse, but also a blessing and a relief to better understand this disorder and my life...

It is hard for me to judge the level of my symptoms. I have a job and a husband, so that would seem to indicate high functioning. By some criteria it would mean I am not impaired enough to get a diagnosis.

I am not sure how to measure the level of stress and difficulty things cause me. There does not seem to be a way I can compare what I feel with what you feel. I can only company my good days with my bad days.

I do a lot of stuff to help keep the severity of some of my symptoms down. But most of the time I do not think about them because they become routine. So I am not sure how to count this.

This is a tricky question, one that I often struggle with myself. I think part of this issue is that different people use the term autism to mean different things (not just talking about severity here). In the autism community, people tend to use it to refer to ways in which our neurology differ from the norm (ie traits). But in the mental health profession, autism is more in reference to how much those traits disable you. If you have a lot of autistic traits, but they don't negatively impact your life at a certain level, you're not considered autistic, at a clinical level.

This is further compounded by the fact that different mental health professionals have different concepts of where that autistic/non-autistic boundary lies with respect to how much it impacts you. Out of the three I've been to, two have recognized my diagnosis and one refused to.

There's also the issue that how much your traits disable you are highly dependent on a lot of things that have nothing to do with your neurology. I am well educated and gainfully employed. However, I'm also white, male, well above average IQ, from an upper-middle class background, and have almost certainly benefited from nepotism in the course of my career trajectory. How would someone with my same neurology, but from a different background, fare in the work force?

So when you're discussing autism, I think it's important to make the distinction which definition of the word you're using. I don't think either is more valid than the other. Each has their own use.

When I went to see my third therapist (after seeing the one that refused to acknowledge the diagnosis), I was having a lot of trouble in my marriage. I told the therapist that I was well aware that my traits may be considered "subclinical" by the standards of some in the mental health profession, but that's little comfort to me if they still contribute to the loss of my marriage.

There are a lot of people who have autistic traits that aren't severely hurt by them. But they still stand to gain by better understanding themselves and their relationship to autism and neurodiversity. For them, I don't think this broadening understanding of the spectrum is a bad thing. I don't think it's necessarily negative for those who are more disabled by their autism either. People just need to make sure that the stories from people on the "mild" end don't cover up or erase the stories of those who have it harder.

PS - Your psychology friends weighing in on your diagnosis is completely unethical on their part. People debate self diagnosis vs professional diagnosis a lot, and each has their pros and cons IMO. But a third party diagnosis from a non-professional is all cons. They have neither the window into your own mind that you have with self diagnosis or the necessary background that comes with professional diagnosis (and yes, the difference in experience between a student and a practicing professional, especially a specialist, is enormous). As many have pointed out in this thread, some of the specific objections they raised to your diagnosis are just flat out wrong too.

I may be subclinical because I can hold a job. That does not mean it does not impact my life.

My biggest issue is sensory overload. One of the ways this impacts me is that things with big groups of people are a problem for me. There are events I would like to go to and places I would like to visit that I have crossed off my list because I do not think I can handle them.

I find this interesting to contrast with people with physical issues. A person in a wheelchair could hold on office job. Yet we would still consider her disabled because there is lots of stuff she cannot do. And because some stuff she can do is harder for her because she is in a wheelchair.

There is stuff I cannot do and things that are harder for me. Yet many people would say I am not impaired enough to get a diagnosis. Because I can hold a job.

The subclinical is a awkward place to be. I may not official have it. But I have multiple symptoms and it affects my life in major ways.