How Many People Here Are actually Autistic or have Aspergers

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Don't you just love it when people say they have been "formally or officially diagnosed". Wow, sounds so impressive!!

I was dx by a clinical psychologist with all the trimmings. Didn't feel too official to me. lol

Correct me if I'm wrong, all diagnoses are unofficial unless court directed for legal purposes.

Lmao about the monotone voice comment. Just hate it when someone replays my recorded voice. It is a shocker, so drone and boring. Only time it changes is when I get over stimulated and it screaches freaking everyone out.

Last edited by EvoVari on 15 Dec 2008, 4:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

When people say "officially diagnosed" they mean they actually had tests done by a professional psychologist who then diagnosed them with AS. This is meant to differentiate them from the people who are "self-diagnosed" since the self-diagnosed folk tend to actually not have AS at all and only think they do because they have poor social skills and like the identity of AS because it gives them an excuse for having no friends and lets them feel smart and special at the same time (I'm not saying all self-diagnosed people are like this, but it is a trend that many people have noticed).

Anyway, back on topic, I myself was diagnosed with AS back when I was 9 or 10. I think I've grown out of it for the most part since then, however, since I don't have a monotone voice, I no longer have any trouble recognizing body language (though when I was first diagnosed I was completely oblivious to it), I've gotten very good at recognizing social rules (I can pick out when someone is getting on people's nerves and I can always tell exactly what they're doing wrong), people are a lot warmer and amiable to me now which leads me to believe I must have improved since it wasn't even a year ago that people found me very annoying and would do their best to avoid me, I no longer have obsessions, I don't suffer from sensory overload anymore (though I did have a single episode a few weeks ago) I have no issue detecting sarcasm or double meanings (I've been told I have a great sense of sarcasm by friends), and for the most part I feel natural in social situations (though I still use scripts in a few situations).

The only reasons why I still identify with AS is because I do have trouble making friends (not that people don't like me, which used to be the case, but rather that I have no idea how to go from small talk to "let's hang out"), I have trouble keeping friends (or at least I used to...things seem better now though it's still too early to tell), I hate making eye contact (I just look at people's foreheads or noses instead, or just glance around in their head's general direction), I like to stand and sit in very weird postures, and a few other issues such as slang usage and navigating certain social situations (I know this seems at odds with what I said in the last paragraph, and I'd explain why it's not but it's complicated and I don't feel like typing it all out).

Of course... I love it when people point things out to me. I learned something from that exchange.

Is that Rabindranath Tagore in your icon?

Yah, it becomes somewhat less impressive when you've had different medical professionals tell you you have different things, which I think is an experience a lot of us here share. It's not even a case of "noone is infallible"; there are plenty of circumstances where the information available is simply insufficient to definitively say that one thing or the other is the case. And, of course, the definitions of the various parts of the spectrum are hazy to begin with, they have to be. It's not like you can narrow mental stuff down to "oh, the left aortic spleen hypotoneuse has ruptured, we had five of those last week."

i have it 4sure i was diagnosed 2 years ago

I have Asperger syndrome and ADD but I am not an Aspie...I am loborojo. Now I was also diagnosed with Allergies and asthma. I wouldn't like to be called an athmatic so that I can identify wiht the Astmatics. You see what I mean. No labels please, but yes, a name that defines us as a person not as a syndrome.

You're assuming that gay dar is about visible things...AN innate knowing is like feeling vibrations, dignals from another perosn that he is gay, no need for effeminate behaviour or a floppy hand gesture. YOU JUST KNOW HE IS....

What does gay-dar have to do with this thread?

Someone posited 'a-dar' as a means of detecting autistic persons many pages back, and in doing so, they used gay-dar as an explanatory analogy.

I wasn't trying to spot people, I just wanted some statistics.

They didn't do 'formal diagnoses' until fairly recently (well, to me... the head-shrinking tribe just said I was knucking futz...

Based on my life vs. the conditions of AS in general, it's the simplest theory that covers the facts.

In another thread in a separate catagory somebody asked about self diagnoses so I posted this reprint from another site:

Self-diagnosis is the process of diagnosing, or identifying, medical conditions in oneself. It may be assisted by medical dictionaries, books, resources on the Internet, past personal experiences, or recognizing symptoms or medical signs of a condition that a family member previously had.
Self-diagnosis is prone to error and may be potentially dangerous if inappropriate decisions are made on the basis of a misdiagnosis.[1] Because of the risks, self-diagnosis is officially discouraged by governments,[1] physicians, and patient care organizations. Even physicians are discouraged from engaging in self-diagnosis,[2] because doctors too make mistakes in diagnosing themselves.[3] If the self-diagnosis is wrong, then the misdiagnosis can result in improper health care, including wrong treatments and lack of care for serious conditions.[4]
However, self-diagnosis may be appropriate under certain circumstances.[5][6] All over-the-counter (non-prescription) medications are offered on the assumption that people are capable of self-diagnosis.[5] Some conditions are more likely to be self-diagnosed, especially simple conditions such as headlice and skin abrasions or familiar conditions such as menstrual cramps, headache or the common cold.
Complex conditions for which medications are heavily advertised, including conditions like ADHD in adults,[7] present a more challenging situation. Direct-to-consumer marketing of medications is widely criticized for promoting inappropriate self-diagnosis.[8][9] Other conditions that are commonly self-diagnosed include celiac disease.[10]

I'll just let it stand on it's own accord as I don't have a personal opinion one way or another. I was just curious.

I do not disagree with the reprint entirely, however, I think in the interests of accuracy, it should be pointed out, that many of the premises are equally true of diagnosis (sans the 'self').

a'ok...if I could pick a disorder, I'd pick the common cold, I would be over it in a week... I've been wondering for a long time prior to this as to what I have. I've looked at various conditions, but they didn't feel 'correct'.

I haven't met but one fellow Aspie (and that for a few seconds, and she was about 6... so I don't have a baseline for comparison. One day I'll get to stop and talk to someone, and maybe get a feel for commonalities. Or maybe I am just knucking futz...