Intellegent female vs. female aspie

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This is demonstrably untrue. No, I'll restate it - this is a big controversy in neuroscience. See:

RICHARD DAVIDSON —
Investigating Healthy Minds
Neuroscientist Richard Davidson is revealing that the choices we make can actually “rewire” our brains. He’s studied the brains of meditating Buddhist monks, and now he’s using his research with children and adolescents to look at things like ADHD, autism, and kindness. http://www.onbeing.org/program/investig ... vidson/251

The above is not a peer-reviewed source, but is a good introduction.

Androbot, I think it would be best if you state "this was not my experience with CBT, and in my case I required antidepressants [or whatever] to get better." That gives readers a more factual basis to make their own decisions. I would whole-heartedly agree about individual people needing tailored therapies. In my own personal case, I have grown through therapy but I have also been on antidepressants for about 35 years and do better when on them.

For anyone that's interested in rewiring their brain, here's another source: http://www.rewireme.com/explorations/ri ... ndfulness/

That's interesting. But I liken it to this: CBT is to physical health as exercise is to physical health. That is both can make things better, but neither can cure an illness.

I guess I just assume that it's obvious that it's my experience. If it wasn't I would surely say so.

Furthermore, few have the financial resources to pay for years of psychoanalysis. No insurance plan will pay for that. Say what you will about insurance companies, they are known for expecting a statistical improvement in outcomes relative to dollars spent.

If you're going to use that analogy, I would compare CBT to a fitness trainer, not to the actual exercise. By going through CBT, you learn new skills, just as you would by working with a trainer. It's still up to you to apply the skills.

You hit the nail on the head, Ann. Indeed, depression frequently does not have a "cure." But there is much room for improvement. There's no reason to give up the ghost.

Same with congestive heart failure, which has a "cure" rate of about zero.

Yes kraftiekortie. I know some people with congestive heart failure and I always tell them it's all about management. Same with diabetes - your outcomes range from excellent to dismal, it's a matter of management mostly. You can "cure" depression in the short term, in the sense that the person may return to their normal level of functioning, but it's always there to re-emerge and you must be vigilant about that. Personally, after several trials of discontinuing antidepressants under a doctor's care, I finally concluded I do need to be on them life-long.

Angnix, I feel like we have gone off on several tangents. How are you doing, and did you get ANYTHING from this thread?

I just don't want you to be forgotten here.

Yeah, fine a fitness trainer teaching the skills of exercise.



That's not what I meant by my analogy. I guess it wasn't very good. lol

I mean that CBT cannot treat depression. I don't even think it can help to improve the patient's experience. Rather, I think it worsens it because the depressed person is made to feel that they are not "applying the skills." Meaning they are not trying hard enough, or they don't wan't to get better.
I think CBT has done more harm then good because it is too often used for something it cannot aid in.

Indeed, it's possible that CBT might not work for at least some people. If that is the case, then alternative treatments must be sought. Treatments, ideally, should be tailored to the individual person. Ideally, as well, various methods would be combined.

If a therapist gets bogged down by an all-abiding belief in one treatment philosophy, then nothing will get accomplished. Think about B.F. Skinner's relationship with his family. Skinner got bogged down with behaviorism. Therapists could get bogged down with CBT, or Freudian methods, in the same manner.

As for the OP's question: I believe some Aspergian symptoms could, instead, be indications of normal human variation, rather than a symptom of a disorder. Moreover, I believe, with great frequency, that one could be an intelligent female and an Aspie at the same time.

Ouch - a competent therapist would never let this happen. If the patient doesn't seem to be responding or doesn't seem capable of applying the principles at the current time, a competent therapist would suggest that "maybe a different approach would be more useful for you." I'm sorry if this didn't happen when you needed it to.

Of course, NTs may have depression and so may autistics; but it stands to reason that clinics will see many more NT depressions, just because autistics are in the minority. So some therapists may very well fail to take into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of autistic functioning - or even different learning styles. That's too bad.

You know us Spectrumites--always going off on Tangents!! !! !!

There is a fine line here you are not drawing. It is akin to one that was told to me regarding rape. One is never responsible for their own rape. That doesn't mean that perhaps if you had carried pepperspray that that would have made the difference between being raped and not being raped. In this analogy the pepperspray is cbt. If you are depressed you should try whatever tools are available. But just because a tool is not used it didn't make the depression ones own fault. Much like if I'm raped I don't go around blaming myself for not carrying pepperspray, or if I had it but still got raped, that I blame the peppers pray for not working right. The rape/depression is not one's own fault in any situation.

Right, but if the pepper spray is defective and when used explodes and injures the rape victim, it could be said that the pepper spray made the situation worse.

As far as intelligence and Aspie-ness, here are my thoughts.

I know enough people that are extremely intelligent who seem to have no social problems at all.
I know other extremely intelligent people who have social problems.
What makes the difference?

I think intelligence and ASD are two separate things, even though many attributes of ASD are on the lists of characteristics of gifted/highly intelligent people (they overlap 1/3/-12, what gives?!) I think this is a problem because a lot of the difficulties that (some) intelligent people have are blamed on the intelligence, so they don't get help! This was my experience when young (although I grew up before Aspergers/HFA was a thing.)

Based on my experience, if my intelligence was the *cause* of my difficulties, then being gifted should be it's own category of mental disorders. Rather, I think that being on the spectrum and undiagnosed because I didn't look like a classic case of autism has contributed to my difficulties.

OP, there are therapists who also specialize in working with gifted people. Maybe one of those can help you. Even if you don't end up with an ASD diagnosis, they might be able to treat you more appropriately.

20 or 30 years ago, psychologists were still talking about intelligence in terms of a WAIS-R IQ test, with verbal subtests and visuo-spatial subtests. But I think today, there is a wide acceptance of EQ (emotional IQ) or emotional intelligence, and this would be something aspies would not be good at.

But always consider the age and years-in-practice of your therapist, and compare that with the timeline of concepts in psychiatry and psychology. I don't know of a single timeline source you can go to, but we all know that AS began to be widely talked about in the mid-1990s, and then by 2014 or 2015 (whenever DSM V went into practice), AS was no longer a diagnostic category but just ASD. (this is all in the USA)

If your therapist has been practicing for 20 years or longer, so let's say on average they might be age 45 or so, they probably did not get training in EQ and adult autism. I am very interested to know how a therapist with 1-5 years of experience differs in perspective from one with 20-30 years of experience. While, sure, there is "continuing education" that should bring skills up to date, that's maybe a couple seminars a year on any of a gazillion topics, so I don't think it will really alter most clinicians' perspective.

This is not to say choose green over seasoned therapists. The seasoned therapist with 20+ years of experience is probably pretty darn good at what they do. But I would question them and even educate them about trends in autism theory.