For those that believe ASD is Only hard wired/genetic

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Some kind of help is the kind of help that helping's all about,
And some kind of help is the kind of help we all could do without.
--Free to be You and Me

I don’t believe that ASD is solely caused by genetics or hard-wired brain connectivity issues. However, I can easily explain fluctuating or worsening ASD symptoms in my life. When I did a physical therapy clinic in outpatient, that challenged my extremely poor motor and fine motor skills, not to mention I had to learn spatially and my spatial abilities are extremely poor. So I had to kick the living crap out of the analytical side of my brain to compensate for these limitations. I also needed to curtail my attempt to appear NT and in fact demonstrate an extremely limited personality during the six weeks of this clinical.

Heck, towards the end of the clinical, it wasn’t even an OPTION concerning my personality, I literally became a cariciture from a TV show. If I was presented as an autistic TV personality, I’d have been accused of exaggerating ASD symptoms and stereotyping ASD symptoms. But I wasn’t, I was just wearing down the analytical side of my brain. Now I’ve been out of the clinical for two weeks and my personality is beginning to come back. I’m still having trouble making eye contact, but I’ll get there.

And I’m just giving you one example. I’m sure there are ways my ASD symptoms can improve or become worse.

No worries. I’m enjoying this thread.

I have plenty to respond to at a later time when I have an hour or two to dedicate to WP. Maybe in 2-3 days.

Of course you are.

I'm pretty sure he has the popcorn out.

I just meant the manic part.



Normally I wouldn't say that. But when someone goes on and on about how well ordered they are and calls autistic people lazy whiners for not doing what goldfish21 does, compels me to point out to him that he's messed up in ways that don't seem to register with him. My fools errand is trying to get it to register.

It's pretty obvious you set up this thread to get this kind of attention ie trolling. And now you're going to go hibernate in your cave while digesting all the feeding you've been given in this and other threads.

Ezra, I think you're being a little unfair to the guy. My take is that he's found something that works for him and is keen to share, that's all.

Seems like we're just getting into that area of different experiences of those with more severe autism to those with mild.

People like me with very mild, I guess we have a tendency to compare ourselves to NTs and see that we're "nearly like them". We want to fully participate in society the way the NT's do and it seems like maybe we could do it, if we could only get over a few of our traits. And some things have improved for us, with time and experience and care with our health. So we get tempted into thinking our autism to be at least treatable, or even potentially curable.

I'm guessing that all gets a bit irritating for those with more severe autism.
But feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

^^^QFT

There is an excellent and comprehensive book that explains the etiology, neuropathology and genetics of autism spectrum disorders and has interesting brain imaging too called "The Neuroscience of Autism Spectrum Disorders" by Buxbaum and Hof. It's well worth reading in order to gain an understanding of the biological and neurological aspects of autism and it deals some with microstructure, biochemistry and neurotransmitters as well. I read it cover-to-cover to better understand my autism and it explains a lot.

I’m one of those folks who has strived to be behave NT in the past, and I’ll still selectively do so when needed. However, I think we should fight the temptation to feel like we are so high functioning or borderline NT or whatever. Believe me, if you use your autistic brain to try to learn material that is difficult for autistics to learn, and you do so for long periods of time, I think you’d find your autistic traits would get more prevalent, at least for quite awhile.

I’ve had days where I was totally in tune with the world. I was quite with comebacks to whatever random things NTs said to me. I could read social cues like I was a highly social NT. I put a smile on people’s faces, I made their day better. I also had days where I couldn’t read obvious social cues, had an extremely flat affect, couldn’t even look people in the FACE (let alone the eyes), and displayed extremely poor fine and gross motor functions.

So whether I’m “high functioning” or not depends on the day, and what I’m attempting to do or achieve.

Agree with a lot of this. My goal is not to become as NT as possible because I am not NT. But I am not one of those people with the attitude of I gotta be me and if that hurts you f**k you. "NT' passing" skills are tools to accomplish things nothing more, nothing less. I do not see being nice and autistic as mutually exclusive. Being nice or trying to is quaint in 2018 and gets you stream rolled a lot, a sacrifice I choose willing to make knowing full well the consequences.

Now that I've learned about AS I can see it up and down 4 generations of both sides of my family so I think there is a very strong genetic component in my case. My severity has fluctuated massively throughout my life. Hormones have a huge impact on my desire and ability to socialize. Stress is another huge factor for me. After my burnout from my last job I couldn't handle people at all for about 8 months. If I felt any amount of pressure I would be hiding in the bathtub under a blanket. I stopped acknowledging my boyfriend and even though we were still living together it was like we were living separately. I am so thankful he was patient and didn't leave me through all of that horribleness before I learned about autism. Chronic health issue flare-ups also greatly impact my energy and when I have no energy I can't handle people either and can't process anything. I just went through healing my gut issues ( SIBO/IBS-C ) and hadn't realized just how sick it made me until my health started returning. Now I'm trying to learn how to calm myself and be more authentic so I can use my energy for things that I want to do instead of trying to be NT. I don't think it ever worked very well but I was completely oblivious. That's just my story. I'm not diagnosed either so you might not think I count.

You count. Self discovery is an important life process.

I was probably too harsh. But this thread isn't anything new. There's a few threads like this one that go on for for several pages about goldfish's autism fix. They never go over well because of what goldfish says and the way he says things. And he himself has been harsh towards other members putting them down for not being willing to try it, basically calling them lazy and whiners who like to wallow in misery and so on. He's outright picked on people in the Haven putting them down for having problems. He starts a threads like this, they go sour, and then he starts another one.

Like he said outright, he enjoys these negative outcomes.

This isn't the case of someone innocently suggesting a certain approach. Saying something like 'I believe this has helped me and maybe it might help you'. He is conceited and condescending regarding it. There's another member who also basically does the same thing and gets the same kind of negative reactions.

I never said that. Please refrain from misquoting me.

I said I’m enjoying this thread and have a lot to reply to later when I have the time.