Aspies - Are you "ill" ?

Post Reply New Topic

Thats very true. Most of us have tendencies to take things way too personally because we don't have a greater perspective. Its just how we are. It may be hard, but just roll with the punches. Because really, they don't mean a thing. You only think they do.

Last edited by seedub on 06 May 2009, 10:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

I too have that autistic need for correctness.

I need things to be accurate and correct - wrong words referring to wrong things really make me hysteric.

Anyway, where I live normal people regularly call my AS an illness because they don't know better...

I think that has to do with that in German, calling someone ill can be an insult, but it's not a very strong one if used though calling someone 'gestört' (adj. ~disordered/disturbed) is a much worse insult.

And I'd think that why Germans don't like to use the word that means the same as English 'disorder' often. They think it's insulting when it's actually less insulting than illness to someone who's got a disorder, not an illness.

The people who I have met so far, pretty much all of them were trying to be political correct and respectful and thus called it an illness instead of a disorder. Kind of doesn't work out though, because it's just not correct to call it an illness.

Grammar inaccuracies really get to me. The "its" vs. "it's" thing in particular. Fortunately I've learned to exercise restraint. But I think them really loud!

Same here.

Or a disease...
Where I live anyway.




I wonder what it should be called.

It also raises the question: What is illness?

I've read about "culturally bound syndromes" or "folk illnesses".
These concepts seem weird to me because they seem to imply that "illness" can be triggered by cultural circumstances or expectations.
Also that some "illnesses" can exist in some social settings and not in others.

Perhaps anorexia would be an example.

Or "The Blues", creative musical melancholy triggered by a depressing life event?

I'm struggling with the idea of "folk illnesses": I always believed that illness was a discrete biological disturbance caused by a pathogen or the body malfunctioning. I never really considered the idea that the surrounding social culture could theoretically make someone "ill" or delay his/her recovery.

Some of these "folk illnesses" could be described as analogous to computer viruses.
The person's mental software (the mind) could be corrupted and altered by thought patterns, but the underlying hardware (the brain) remains relatively undamaged.

Do you say that your computer is "ill" if there's no obvious physical cause?

What about in humans?

Can some "illnesses" only exist in the mind and not in the body?


There might be underlying biological causes for some "folk illnesses" that interact with the social environment. Can someone be really be "socially ill"?

I'm confused.
Can someone really be "ill" if there's no medical evidence or physical damage?
For someone to be biologically ill, there have to be measurable physical symptoms.
"Ill" in that sense is "an impairment in physiological functioning".

It depends on how you define "ill"...

I personally don't see my social difficulties or my abilities as my being "ill".
I see them as being "me".


The problem with the words using the words "illness" or "disease", is that many lay-people seem to automatically think that whatever it is, is contagious. The idea of something being "wrong" with the body, is loaded with negative assumptions.

Maybe "illness" is too vague a word to describe the complexity of what's really going on here.

Is AS really "an impairment in physiological functioning" (biological "illness), a "folk illness", a combination of both or just a neurological difference?

A difference in perception?

Last edited by AmberEyes on 06 May 2009, 11:40 am, edited 2 times in total.

The Blues could be a chicken and an egg type thing.

Was the music inspired by a sad experience (which would compose of the lyrics)

or were the lyrics inspired by the music itself, which resonated in people as having a sad, melancholy sound.

and man, you could break down the word illness all you want, but I'll tell you, its meaning comes from how the person is using it in the sentence (aka the context)

Would you say that any "syndrome" or "complex" is a folk illness? I think there's merit to that idea.

Edit: also, mentally ill people (like schizos) may not have biological signs, but they are clearly ill.

Thats why I say the best term is 'different'. To them. Technically speaking, if you look at it from out perspective they are the different ones. But, since they are the majority, statistically speaking we are different. Not with any personal meaning, just going by numbers now.

Nah, I don't care for grammar. Can't care with my language and speech issues. It's more the cultural, non-literal meaning of words that I can't internalise and hate because of it.

I always loosely understood it that illness is destroying and progressive, whereas a disorder is a messing something up and a state- not taking any secondary effects that usually are damaging/destroying into account, but just talking about the basic

The two could be combined of course? I'd think so at least.

There are some mysterious changes in some cases of autism.

The state of autism and its structure could come with weakened resistance against other illnesses or could lead to that certain processes that would be stopped/started in a non-autistic brain do not get stopped/started (at the right time) in an autistic brain because autism has re-modelled the brain in a way that doesn't enable it to do that anymore and thus the brain gets damaged if other factors that are stopped/started by these other processes damage the brain.

You know, like, if you change an enzyme to do something else (nothing or something great and productive) it's not a problem by itself. Your enzyme is disordered/differently formed now, but it won't kill you by just being there. It is just there.

But when you/if you ever start the process in which this enzyme must work (say, help with producing new DNA, fight off something bad) which it can no longer do (because it's changed now/it's always been different) it produces something wrong (failure in genetic code) and you might create a horrifying, deadly illness because you got lots of amino-acids that cause you to bleed to death or something.

I'm not good with analogies and explaining but I hope I could convey a bit of what I wanted to say.

We can reverse this question and first ask: What is health?

There's a very interesting article on the difficulty defining this and how the World Health Organisation's definition has several problems:
Problems with the WHO definition of health

Potentially the type of "folk illness" diagnosed is dependent on the culture itself.
How the "illness" is treated is dependent on how medical or spiritual the method of treatment in that culture is. The culture also influences how the illness is "interpreted" such as "an infection" or "a journey into the spirit world".

Where there's society there's inherently "folk illness".




I agree.
It's a difference for me.

I just wonder.
Perhaps humans should be really regarded is tribal animals that originally evolved to live in the same group of (max 100) people for life. A sort of collective "super-organism" where different members had different roles. There wasn't international air-travel then.

It just strikes me that having someone on with highly attuned senses on the periphery of the group might actually be advantageous for the whole group's survival. This person would be observant and could find new food sources/herbal remedies, make tools or look out for danger.

Maybe this kind of role "adapted" over time.
Maybe even a "disorder of adaption" in some cases.

Perhaps different kinds of minds are adapted better to some environments than others.
Perhaps a mismatch between a mind and the social environment could be viewed as an "illness".

Human beings are social animals.
"Illnesses" in the west tend to be treated as if something's physically wrong with an individual's body.

There's a whole social-psychological component too though and some cultures place more emphasis on a kind of collective healing.

You raise the question, how long has this (i'll call it a) condition been around? I'm hardly a evolutionary expert by any means, but I mean, there's no way this was a recent development is there?

What intrigues me about some Blues Music is that the form is technically 12 bars of 3 Major Chords.

I've always wondered: "Why Major Chords and not Minor Chords?"

After all, Minor Chords would sound more "miserable".


I've come to the conclusion, that Blues Music indulges in sadness. This indulgence comes out in the form of major chords or sometimes very jazzy soulful chords (sort of major and minor mixed up, diminished and so on). I like to call some of them "confused" chords because that's what they sound like lol . Perhaps chords mimic a human's emotional tone of voice . It's almost as if "The Blues" was a kind "music therapy" trying to seek a cathartic experience.

Almost if it's trying to make sadness well... enjoyable , but not a "happy" sort of enjoyment and entertainment. It's catharsis. Could the Major chords sort of an attempt to "cheer the person up" or comfort him/her?

This is hard to explain, but maybe this kind of enjoyable catharsis explains why some people "enjoy" watching "weepy" or tragic films. The sadness seems important and recognised if it can be transformed into a theatrical performance.

Not that it's fun to be sad as such, but turning that sadness into a form of artistic expression can be great fun and healing.

I've had to play Blues Music before, but the instructors didn't say:
"Now I want you all to pretend that you have a folk illness and that X has devastated you."

No wonder some of the compositions sounded so fake, "happy" and trite, even if they were all technically sound lol .

We concentrated on the technical rather than the psychological "self-help" bit.

Do you mean "Recent" as in about 10,000 years ago?

I'm really not an expert either, but phenotypes and body structures have to derive from what's come before. Existing structures and functions are sculpted by evolution.

The problem is, minds and behaviours don't often fossilise that well.
All one can do is try to make informed inferences about behaviour and beliefs from tools, burial mounds, medicinal artifacts, art, footprints etc.

The problem is, you can't exactly go back in time to check whether your interpretation is correct!

Behaviours and minds I believe would have had to adapt over time as some societies became more complex, or the surrounding environment changed.

Maybe certain aspects of a modern lifestyle and cultural expectations to exacerbate some behavioural difficulties though.

Having been a music major, I can tell you that major != happy and minor != sad... at least inherently. It has come to mean that only through a modern lens.

Maybe you could explain why James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" ends on a Major Chord sequence with "I'll never be with you"?

I've never really understood that.

That sequence almost sounds as if he's really happy that he'll "never be" with his um girlfriend lol . He should really be breaking down in tears at this point and the music should reflect that somehow. He should be wailing more.

It almost sounds to me...like...I don't know...sugary...like some kind of cheap sappy greetings card.

I found that sequence chord at the end personally ...kind of irritating really, not cathartic.
Maybe it's intention was to be cathartic, but it didn't quite get there?
Kind of confusing really.
And the lyrics were...well bland and cliche for supposedly such a heart rending subject matter. It certainly doesn't sound to me like he's "suffering" from any "folk illness" (to me anyway).

I just personally thought that the chord sequence and notes seemed sort of counter-intuitive and out of place. I just don't "buy it".

No offense to anyone who likes this music, this is just my opinion or perhaps just my taste.

Mediocre people make themselves feel better by choosing to compare themselves to people who are even less happy/competent/successful/good-looking/whatever. It's a defense mechanism. It's called framing. People will stop doing it when they learn to be happy in an objective way instead of in a relative way.

Some wise person said that you should surround yourself with people slightly better than you, so you can learn from them and rise to their level. This is only good advice for people who can tolerate being the omega.