"You're not autistic, you make facial expressions!"

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i have an overly expressive demeanour. i am also a chameleon. i am also an ace mimic.

i have weird facial tics and expressions and i stim a lot when i am stressed.

SOme people with AS have overly expressive faces. Flat affect is not found in everyone.

get a new psychologist. better still, bop em one from me!

Funny you should say that, because I wondered myself. Not that she "acts" autistic/Aspie but she often tells me "I do that!" or "I'm like that, I'm no good at parties or social situations either." She just constantly tells me how normal it is to flap hands, have poor understanding of social cues, poor social skills and eye contact! So yeah...maybe she is on the spectrum herself, or at the very least is a somewhat anti social person.

Danielismyname: I'm not sure I agree with "nearly all cases there is no expression." I work with an autistic child who definitely has flat affect (her mother does too), but she can make facial expressions and she's much more severe than me.

I think another thing to consider is how "aware" an Aspie is of social behavior. If we pay extra attention to making sure we use eye contact, correct facial expression and tone of voice, I think we will do a much more convincing job of appearing "normal" than someone who is completely unaware or does not care about social behavior.

She really does sound like she is on the spectrum. Either she is clueless or is in denial. I mean she is a therapist, I'm sure they learn about that stuff when they take psychology in school. They learn about people and how their brains work. I'm sure they learn how people read through body language and how people do eye contact and what it means, etc.

I think the knowledge that Aspies can have unusual facial expressions, and that this is actually quite common, is missing in many professionals. I'd never heard about this when I tested it in Aspie-quiz a while back, and got it confirmed that it is a common trait. I even would guess that many of the "flat affect" Aspies actually have suppressed facial expressions because they were misunderstood as children when they used unusual facial expressions. I think I'm like that myself.

well my face is made with muscles, attched to nerves, under a flexible surface..so whats keeping me from making them

good to hear your input on it rdos, given your access to the data with the quiz.

and to add - my nephew who is HFA has the broadest and biggest and most beautiful grin you could ever see.

I'm not sure how my facial expressions are but I have been told I look sad or upset and my bf sometimes thinks something is wrong when there isn't anything wrong.

yes, and more so: schizoid or schizo-typal pd
come much closer!!

[EDIT: ] despite my productive use of (even satirized) facial expression, i have always, and on the border of consciously, KNOWN that this however is only (even authentically) part of my ever varying palet of persona, maybe rather than personi, -ae?
(chameleon always, but soon became [i]authentic in that, (hetero) selfmockery expressed in the selfcoined nickname the pink chameleon (they seek him here they seek him there, the scarlet pimpernel), which was also logo to my business called oblio.iii (iii is the one secret about me)

these are the pseudonyms, however closely related to self

isn't it tellingly remarkable how all these point always directly relate to SELF

i have always felt my real face to be other than the seen ('reel') face - it is why i cannot be with any other - it is my aloofness -
when toghether i am more awarely alone & alienated from me

that may be the structure of autistic loneliness:
the realization that the autistic aloneness IS[/i]


however, the facial expressiveness is noted,
i believe in the 'official' debate as well;

[[EDIT:] it comes with (however slothly) increasing awareness of varied autistic fenotypology - and this is in fact on the official agenda in Holland, where no one understands how we are the only place in the whole wide world and the whole worldwideweb with a 1% populace figure of autism diagnosis

remarkably; the first thing i told my autisocialworker upon the official dx and appendices came in and i read the reporting rather than the concluding: "actually, reading this, all those misconceptions"
[i.e., all those prejudices, the lack of critical self-evaluation, the mistakes in that very superficial hetero-anamnesis (is that the correct english? i'm not bothered)] all those mistakes of fact - official data have me now born in The Hague and in The Kongo (they are mad!)]
"all those flaws, i cannot believe they actually got it right"


my point ON-TOPIC in this:
it looks like they are getting something right in Holland (but certainly still underdiagnozing) but THEY DONT KNOW WHY

so they wouldnt know an auti if Lienda Balla did take off that mask, i guess [END EDIT]]

in which case i would file it under mimicry and chameleonism


if to be explained away and be more HFA than Aspic
(i dont believe there is an essential difference, do 'feel'
for some reasons there is a difference)
then i would look in the area of tourettiness and autistic ticcing,
which can also be part of the entire stimming spectrum

HA, i believe i did once very early mywpdays coin the phrase

STIMMICRY


just thinking out [email protected]

Last edited by oblio on 02 Feb 2009, 4:22 am, edited 2 times in total.

Well, I would never have gotten the idea to test this if it wasn't for personal experience and the hypothesis at the time that stims and odd (non)verbal communication could actually cluster together. I needed more proof for this concept, so I just added the question about odd facial expressions as a question that could potentially settle the issue. It did this nicely as it clustered closely with other odd traits like grinding teeth, rolling eyes and such.

I find it really odd that lack of facial expressions is considered to be autistic, while "grimacing" and tics is considered to be Tourette, and odd facial expressions are considered schizoid. There is no logic in this at all. It only makes it impossible to settle the issue when the traits are spread out in three different syndromes. The truth is that these traits are highly correlated to each others and thus should not be diagnostic of three different syndromes.

ha ha.
now, my facial expressions are quite "jagged." I do not have a smooth flow from one exrpession to the next which means the facial expressions can be perceived as a little odd and out of kilter. I suspect i am actually a bit tourettish - with a nose scrunching tic i have had my whole life and someother things and some funny shoulder twist things i do. some days it is very bad - like last week - lots of stimming and heightened stress and tics and then sometimes it eases.

danielsmyname is just plain ignorant...with all due respect --- and needs to do a lot more reading to counter his current viewpoint.

Of course I can do facial expressions!

Your psychologist is a fool!

eh... no, Millie

o, and please read mypost again (amply edited)

btw, why cant i get my txt-formatting correct, that should be able to offer much more control than it does
o end it shouldnt hop up if i italicize something lower than on-screen in-window

excellent stuff rdos, thanks!

as to danielismyname:
he is maybe the one i most respect on this forum;
i consider daniel OUR scientific conscience

daniel may be a stickler not just for the 'fact' but also for how it is worded. He rarely paraphrases and QUOTES

untrue actually, that last remark
imo, daniel, since maybe already late Eurosummer is changing rapidly. BUT i am glad every time he joins to point out the position we have to deal with

i attempt to work with this the other way round:
i am in attack of traditional triad though, fiercely so, and i hope i can make especially daniel see my point
that is all granted, it is why i started writing the way i presently am

it will require good logic to convince daniel
and that is precisely what i am looking for on this site

but more importantly:
i often find myself FEELING so remotelybutessentially akin to daniel, that i MUST acknowledge this feeling and design a perspective of.from.on&into autisme that somehow allows me to almost literally=physically encorporate daniels autism into mine

so, millie, corrupt? maybe; sceptical anarchy? yes

but respect where respect is due, allways

PSYCHIATRY, despite everything, IS NOT THE ENEMY

THERE IS NO ENEMY

ANARCHY IS A STATE

AUTISM IS A STATE


RobertO.iii

I can say that I do. And I don't.

When i'm relaxed, you can read my demeanour by my expression and psychiatrists have described me as an expressive person. When under pressure, I start to 'zone out' and stare at one spot off to the side. I can also fix on either a grumpy look, or a slightly bemused look, and not lose it until i'm feeling relaxed again.

Lastly, I sometimes come across as super sincere, something which appears to other people to be overacting. No idea why this is.

Inconsistency, thats the key.

ok - that is interesting. from a personal perspective i suppose i see them all on a continuum really....interesting to mention bruxism (teeth grining.) i have abnormal bone growth build up in my lower and upper palettes caused by my "night stimming." i wear a night plate now, so i don;t destroy my mouth all together. it is all a part of the same energy excesses that cause the facial expressions and tics and the stims and the grimaces.

thanks for the rdos quiz too. it really is extremely thorough and well respected by many of us who have used it in the initial stages of the self diagnostic --->diagnostic process.

Of note, my words prior are in relation to social interaction and making appropriate expressions for the social and emotional context. As far as I'm aware, the nerves that control the various muscles that make facial expressions aren't affected, so it's definitely possible to pull a frown, grimace, snarl, whatever, by copying someone. However, it'll probably require too much mental effort to apply this to a social situation correctly unless it's scripted like a play (even if you can manage one or several appropriate expressions, you'll most likely fumble in regards to all of the other nonverbal cues that dictate social interaction, due to focussing so much on getting that one aspect correct).

My words prior come from a neurologist who knows far more about the manifestation of verbal autism than most generic psychos/psychics.

ok. thanks for clarification here. i can understand this.
cheers.