On a scale from 1 to 10, how severe is your Autism or AS?

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I don't know. The doctor that diagnosed me said I was a "typical case" or something like that.

Maybe an eight. I can keep some obsessions to myself but not others everyone in the world must know about, I get paronoid about things, things must be a certian way or the world will end, I don't look people in the eye, I talk like a robot, I appantly have a megaphone for a mouth, I avoid people at all times.

Ha! My son and I are both like that, no volume control. I'll tell my bf "ssssh!" when he gets to talking loud about something I don't want everyone in a place to know, but will turn and talk loud myself without realizing it, and my son yells everything he says.

I have no clue, as I've barely been around anyone with AS, and I'd need an objective scale.

I guess I'd be 1-5 in there. Occasionally I still think I'm just an NT who's a complete freak and can't understand anything. (Usually think that whenever people talk about AS symptoms I don't have.)

I'm not sure how well I pass myself off. I'm starting to think it's not as well as I though it was.

I'm really glad the people who are on the upper half of this scale are able to participate on here!

Most of the time it's at about a 1 or 2. It influences my decisions, prevents me from having a great time but doesn't really stop me from doing what needs to be done. When I'm stressed it goes up to a 4 or 5. I'm entirely useless and will just make your life harder for being in my presence.

Academic-1 (That was my strong point. No significant academic problems, except that I lost interest in math after about seventh grade. I managed to get an A in Accounting by working hard, but never took any really challenging math.)

Social-Probably about a 5. I was told that I was very social as a small child, but had a lot of trouble with bullies in middle school. I have some close friends and am active on an Internet cat site.

Vocational-Now, I would say a 3-4. I have been working at the library for almost five years. Before that, I worked as a proofreader for my local newspaper, did some freelance editing and taught junior college English. What would make me a complete success in this area would be the attainment of a full-time job. I need to improve my interviewing skills and my self-confidence to get that full-time job. I have high hopes when the new library is completed next year. (I would say I am at a 1 in my current job. Overall, a 3 or 4 because there are new goals to accomplish.)

bwa ha ha, okay, I'm a 10 in all of them really.... got to thinkin about it, I've only talked to two people in 5 years for the most part. The occasional wave to the neighbor (once a month) probably doesn't cut it, and my regular meltdowns in the grocery store.... It took me 5 months to finally go register for college and only because it's something I absolutely have to do and the deadline is in just a few days, lol, and I had to go 3 different times just to complete it. I wouldn't have done it if my mom wasn't up my butt about it. I don't hear anything anyone says to me for the most part-I just space out the second they start talking, when I do hear it, I instantly get overwhelmed.

as far as academic, I do really well in English, but horrible in classes. I can't get math for the life of me, or science... or history... but I do well in the artsy stuff that I can also do at home and are my obsessions anyway-so I don't know if it counts to do well in something you are obsessed with. I can't learn anything that I absolutely have to when I need to learn it.

...and I've already mentioned the job thing, lol.

I'm very independent, on the other hand. If I didn't have that certian problem, I'd say 3-5.

I don't know precisely but I would think towards the higher end of the scale, just hanging on by my fingernails here really. Communications are quite difficult and sometimes I feel like being completely silent.

This is pretty ricidulous.

For starters, if your'e AS, you are high functioning. That's part of the dx criterion. And if you weren't high functioning, you won't be on the computer, typing up posts.

If this is a scale for autism, everyone here could not be worse than a 3.

If this is a scale specifically for HFA or AS, then most everyone here would likely have be a 5 or better (there are/have been a few of members here that I might class as a 6).

AS gets much more "severe" than what I regularly see on forums like WP. Someone with severe AS would find even communicating on a forum like this thoroughly confusing and frustrating. So if you've neem a regular memeber for longer than, say, a day, you aren't that bad. There are AS people who need a LOT of assistance with their social interactions, even though they are verbal, have relatively good cognitive functions, can dress themesleves/feed themselves, etc. These are the Aspies largely not represented by these forums because both of their rarity and of the severity of their AS. I work with a couple AS kids like this at the schools, ones that need their own aide just to get them to class, the bus, etc., because if even though they are HF, if they aren't guided, they just got to the library or outside, off campus, or whatever, because their AS is so severe they cannot prioritize enough just to get through a day at school on their own. Then there's the issue of their very low stress threshold, sensory issues and impulse/emotional control - they can have quite explosive and violent episodes when frustrated or confused, where they are much more likely to hurt themselves than get online and vent at The Haven. In most of these cases, you won't see these kids at a public school, because of the level of assistance they need. Mostly, they get sent to special schools/institutions or are homeschooled.

Fortunately, 1) AS cases that severe are rare, and 2) by the time they hit puberty, their AS is less severe. The ones that remain severe after puberty are usually true AS savants, like Matthew Savage. Matthew is more severely AS then probably everyone here. Although he's HF and gifted, espeically in regards to music and his other obsessions, he has many seriously difficulties that may preventhim from ever living independantly. For example, he has to be homeschool because regular school is simply not an options, and just walking down a busy city street, even one he's familar with, can readily overwhelm him. I would say Matthew's a 8-9 on the AS scale (and probably a 10 when he was younger).

I don't mean to be snide, but I seriously, seriously doubt anyone here is as severe as Matthew. I think a lot of this assumpting that your AS is severe is out of ignorance, as it seems many of you don't realize how bad it can get. That's not to dismiss any of your personal struggles, but to say, there's definitely Aspies out there who have it harder.

Well, the problem is we don't have this available to compare to, lol, all we have available is stories of others, or things we see-you can't really just walk down the street and run into a group of people and compare to that, so unless you work with these types, then you don't know the difference-therefore I agree.

I can talk with typing, I rarely talk vocally. I do explode quite frequently as something is ALWAYS going on around me-I'm 24/7 stressed, literally. I come across as extremely high strung even if someone asks a simple question. Typing more or less is sorting out my thoughts on something. I'm communicating and responding, yes, to an extent, but my posts tend to become very long very fast, and by the end of it I'm talking about something of my situation, not even regarding what the post was about to begin with by the end, I have to reread it and edit 5-10 times before it looks okay to me as a response, and still I feel a bit awkward about it.

I'd consider me to be pretty impaired, the things I do I do because I have a family and have no choice but to do them. Before I had kids, I never left the house and just kind of sat there. Homeschool wasn't an option, mom couldn't afford things like that, but I probably would have been a lot better off there-my teachers let me pass because I was nice, not because I'd learned anything, and they could see the effort I did put in was all I was capable of.

I'm not trying to argue, but just saying that as well as we don't know of others' conditions outside of here really (unless someone works with people or has a really good idea of what is being asked), no one knows how anyone here actually lives their life. I am here because the net is my obsession-I talk here because people seem intelligent and I can relate to some of them very well.

I dunno, it's kind of hard to say you doubt it seriously when all you *really* know about anyone on here is that they can type and read. But I don't doubt there are some worse off than I-I just haven't met them, so can't really say how bad off I am. I just know of my own experiences and see very little outside of them to compare. It's also strange when I talk on here, because I generally do think of it as just typing, I don't think of it as actual people responding, I just connect the avatar to the response, lol, so that also makes it easier-no offense meant to anyone, it's just not quite the same as actually talking to a person in my mind.

I know that. In fact, I'm kind of sorry I even brought it up. I kind of wish I could delete it, but I can't.

You couldn't really predict anyone was going to get into the facts and such-it's interesting though and makes for more interesting views-at least that's what I think.

I don't know how I really rate on a scale next to someone else, all I know is what I think I'd rate. I know I haven't worked in 5 years despite the fact that I have 2 kids to support and feel horrible for it, but CANNOT seem to do it. I fail every time or don't even make it out the door to try.

I know the only reason I do half of what I do is because someone asks me 15 million times to do it and I finally do just to shut them up.

I can't figure out how to prioritize sitting down and playing a computer game over filling out an application.

I don't hear my own children talk to me half the time, and when I can listen, it stresses me out because I don't get what they are saying.

I love my kids but cannot stand them touching or climbing on me.

I love my boyfriend but have no clue why, and hate talking with him about anything i'm not interested in because it confuses me.

I wear the same clothes for a week sometimes just because I keep putting off doing my laundry.

It took me 2 years to learn my next door neighbor's name, and I still refer to her as "the neighbor".

There are a lot of other things, but it's hard to compare when you don't know exactly what someone's life is like.

Yes it is. Don't presume to know people.

You're making a lot of assumptions though.

Okay... to start off, I don't believe in a flat blanket severity of autism. I believe in different levels of ability and difficulty at different times in different skills. So I have trouble with your characterizations of blanket levels of this and that as if one skill is tied to another and they all must be evened out the way you describe.

But okay. At this point in my life (and some of my abilities have gotten stronger and others weaker over time -- I've had an increase in certain kinds of comprehension and also an increase in sensory overload and decrease in motor planning ability and speech over time -- so please don't assume you know my whole life story from my current life) I am 26 years old. I type to communicate rather than speak. I live in an apartment that is staffed during the day and has electronic surveillance at night. On a test of daily living skills where the scores go from 40 to 130 where 100 is average, my score is about 45.

I get assistance (ranging from doing it for me to verbal or physical prompting for each step of the process) with showering, getting around outside, shopping, meal planning, meal preparation, brushing my teeth, general hygiene, taking my medications, starting the process of eating and drinking water, communicating with unfamiliar people in certain situations, cleaning my house, toileting, cleaning and using medical devices, money management, laundry, etc. I get this assistance not because I'm too lazy to learn but because I can only handle a relatively narrow range of input (by NT standards -- it's actually a good deal more input than NTs get within the same "narrow" area) before my system shuts off entirely and becomes even less able to do things. I also have difficulty with learning in the standard way that is putting conscious symbolic ideas into the mind, things just don't stick until they've percolated slowly into the back of my mind, and often they just plain don't stick at all (so that if I learn something, I might have to learn and relearn and relearn and relearn it as if I never knew it before). I have a lot of trouble with standard comprehension of things (verbal or otherwise) in realtime. I have to use Depends because I can't reliably track toilet sensations or get to the toilet when I do track them. I have had so much trouble communicating about internal states that I have experienced several severe medical emergencies without being able to tell anyone what was happening, and people had to guess by my behavior and do something, usually at the last minute (I am getting better at this within the past couple years, but it's still an issue). I can't take public transportation without assistance (or sometimes with it). I can't even leave the house alone much anymore because ever since I was a teenager people have thought that I escaped from a group home or something and need to be taken back, and they call the police in an attempt to be good samaritans or something.

On the other hand there are things I'm good at, or at least not horrible at. I am good at typing. I am good at mapping out patterns of things. I am good at singing and decent (not great, not awful) at some musical instruments. I tried baking (not cooking) recently and when I am able to bake at all (which isn't consistent) I bake as if I've been baking for years even though I haven't. I am good at writing about things within a few specific ranges of interest (human rights, autism, some of my past perseverations), although the consistency of my writing skills is less than you'd think sometimes (at times I can't write anything at all). I am good at a lot of specific aspects of perception. I am fairly self-aware. I have a good sense of humor. Etc.

Moreover, these things are always in a state of flux. Generally at any given time there's one or two things I can do well and nothing else, even if the "something else" is something that, when that skill is online, I can do it. That means that even if I can do something, I can't necessarily do it with any consistency. My brain just doesn't work that way. My abilities have also shifted around over time, my suspicion being to optimize the ones my brain found important and discard a lot of the rest, so I've gained and lost some major abilities over time and never know what will be next in either direction. Also, on any given day, the amount of input that I have to deal with means that I can easily go from having all kinds of areas of functional competence to not being able to figure out where my body is enough to move on my own at all (which depending on what the background movement is, means either going extremely still, or running around without any control of my body while it attempts to find equilibrium on its own by a lot of very vigorous movement). I have a wider range in that regard than most people I've met, in that I can show more competence in a particular area than most people have, but then at a slightly different time or in a slightly different situation I can show no outward competence at just about anything. (This has, again, to do with overload.)

I can't predict how things will go. On the large scale, I've had some dramatic permanent shutdowns of things I could do in the past, and I've had skills suddenly come online equally dramatically, when I didn't know they were percolating around in the background waiting for a chance to pop up. On the small scale, my abilities fluctuate day to day pretty drastically based on things like level of overload and where my brain seems to be pointed (and not pointed) at any given point in time. They're also highly dependent on familiarity in many situations: I am far more competent in my apartment and my neighbor's apartment than just about anywhere else. The more new input I have to deal with, the faster my brain declares all input incomprehensible. It takes actual effort to make things into something comprehensible in any standard sense, let alone figure out what to do with them.

I don't believe in functioning labels. The only label I actually got on paper though was low-functioning. I don't know why I got it, I found it in my records, and it's from a time when I was more competent in many areas than I am now, at least superficially (I had more speech, certainly, and my IQ was higher than it is as an adult, etc). I would not mind measures of functioning if they were something like "At this point in time, in this particular skill, you can do it in this manner, and with this degree of ability." But they're never like that, they're always these blanket "severities" that gloss over the messy realities of life being not that simple.

But it is wrong to assume that you know all about people's skills from their ability to write or what they write about on the Internet. You would not know either the things I'm good at (besides writing), or the things I'm bad at, unless I was explicit about them. And the same is true for every other person on this forum. For that matter I know plenty of people deemed "lower functioning" than me in things like writing skills, whose daily living skills are excellent, so it goes the other way when you're judging people as "low functioning" just as you are judging people here as "high functioning" -- you miss something about the pattern of people's abilities when you pretend it's possible to flatten them out like that.

When I said both ends of the scale, I meant it for individual abilities. I am typing this long involved and complicated post right now. Sometimes I would be incapable of coming up with words, moving (or moving on my own) enough to type, and/or following the writing on this website. I swing wide in both directions, but often don't experience a middle, which is why I said (for any individual skill, not for the whole thing because I think the real ridiculousness is in thinking you can rate autism-as-a-whole on a scale like that) I'd be 1, 2, or 3, or 8, 9, or 10, but not a lot in between.

(Oh, disclaimer: I don't feel bad about the way I function, so please don't take any of this as an attempt to get people to be all emotive about any of this. I am just stating facts so that someone will know them.)

People are often wrong when they assume two particular things:

1. That a person they have pegged (based on a tiny and narrow range of skills) as "high functioning" will not have difficulty in certain areas.

2. That a person they have pegged (based again on a tiny and narrow range of skills) as "low functioning" will have difficulty in certain areas.

They are not inside that person's head. They can't know what the person does and doesn't know at any given time, let alone what they can and can't do. It is wrong to view autistic people's skills as fixed, static, and all level and even by neurotypical standards, because that's not how things work out at all. It is wrong to say things like if you can type on a computer you belong in this particular category of person, because you can't categorize people just by their computer-typing ability with any accuracy at all. Similarly it's wrong to assume that people who can't type on computers are globally incompetent, illiterate, uncomprehending, and will never type on computers.

ah, nice to see you here anbuend I was actually just getting ready to find that video of yours and refer to it Hope you don't mind-but the typing thing reminded me of that.