Are you an Aspie if you want to be one?

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What do YOU see as so bad?

Frankly, looking at the diagnosis for AS, it almost looks like cocaine! With cocaine, they talk about improve stamina, being more alert, etc... It sounds REALLY nice! A LOT of people take it to work better/harder. THEN comes the FLIP side! It taxes your system, is addictive, and you need more and more for the same effect.

Now I really feel I have AS. Like Cocaine, it improved my alertness to certain things, certain persistances, certain abilities, etc.... THEN comes the FLIP side! I have things I guess are meltdowns, and social problems, and I am overly sensitive to some things others don't seem to mind.

I guess it depends how good the good is, and how bad the bad is, and how you feel about them. Cocaine sounded pretty good until I heard the flip side. Outside of the social component(which was what got me looking at AS in the first place), AS looked pretty good at first also.

Yes he did sound that way and a bunch of us jumped on him about that, but as the thread continued, though it is hard to say for sure, it also seems at least as likely that he does have AS but because he is so nervous and insecure he expresses himself very badly, making himself sound like he wants to fake it. Perhaps he has had so much experience being judged harshly and not believed about who knows what all including his disabilities that he thinks he has to learn how to express his aspieness clearly in order to have it be seen for what it is. This isn't so hard to understand, after all we spend a few decades hiding it from others and even ourselves, why wouldn't the idea of not hiding it be confusing? We also may tend to overestimate how "normal" we seem to others.

anyway, it just goes to show that it can be hard to judge based on a forum post.

When "myeyesseereality posted the following statement "The sad thing is there are NT nerds that do want AS. It's popular with them to be self diagnosed Aspie. I'll never understand trends of any form. I think they would change thier minds ifd they had a real melt down, or shut down in public."

Thats why I wrote about how I can't understand why someone would want to be bullied, and tormented. I did't know that anyone would WANT to be labeled as AS because of how you get treated by the close-minded majority.

Well, if you enjoy being alienated, virtually ostracized from other people, and if being left out of almost all social interaction because you just don't know HOW, AS is fantastic. If you like feeling there's some secret, something everybody else is in on and you're not, AS is good. If you like not knowing how to act at gatherings of people, not knowing what to say in social settings and getting very strange looks when you do say something in an attempt to fit in, AS is for you. If you enjoy being obsessed with some trivial subject that no one else gives a damn about and you can't understand why they don't care, and you further alienate them when you talk about it, AS is a great thing to be. If you think being depressed and miserable constantly through your teens and trying to fill the social void with obscure interests and hobbies is attractive, you'll love having AS.

The thing about AS is this: Either you ARE or you ARE NOT. You can learn to live with it, learn to accept it, but it's NOT something anyone would WANT. That's just silly.

Well, a lot of the social interaction is stuff that I either don't get, or just don't want. That BY ITSELF means I will be ostracized and alienated.



See above.



See above.



Well, here is where I deviate. My subjects AREN'T trivial. I WAS going to build a career on one, and ended up building on another.



Yeah, you're right. That was kind of bad.




WELL, if you put it THAT way! Like I said, it is like cocaine. You just stated the flip side. I AM HOME!! !! !

I think what Ana54 was trying to say is maybe some people whose life hasn't gone the way they hoped, and who are not aspies would like to consider themselves aspies in order to blame their problems on something. I don't think she was referring to random NTs who are wishing away their social skills.

My uneducated opinion is that IF there is an over-diagnosis of AS, it is in little kids who are taken to a mental health professional by their parents, not in adults who voluntarily seek an AS diagnosis.

I for one am somewhat torn, but would be happy if I was diagnosed AS. At the very least, it explains everything. There is a stigma though, and I almost like how I am almost like columbo. He and I BOTH investigate, BOTH may seem to start slow, and BOTH are underestimated, and BOTH get the job done. Heck, if I ever abandoned computers, I might decide to become an investigator! The only stigma I have really is that that people perceive at first. THAT dissapates though.

And if I wanted disability, I would probably try to get my arthritus registered as such. AS is the last thing I would consider in that manner.

I tell people I should be a private investigator! I would LOVE it! : )

I don't think that anybody can choose to be anything. I have brown eyes. I want them to be blue. I can't make my eyes blue.

Yeah, there are those people who are just finding out about autism and seeing this checklist and seeing it applying to themselves, however, there are also those young and immature kids that look for a clique to jump on into, and in them there exists a portion of emo-esque kids who clearly have none of the real "symptoms" who are just using mental disorders as fashion trends. Posers, in other words.

Yeah, there are those people who are just finding out about autism and seeing this checklist and seeing it applying to themselves, however, there are also those young and immature kids that look for a clique to jump on into, and in them there exists a portion of emo-esque kids who clearly have none of the real "symptoms" who are just using mental disorders as fashion trends. Posers, in other words.[/quote]


Yes, young and immature kids are doomed to be annoying for a time no matter what they do, aren't they? They want to be "real" but the only way they know is through imitation and...fashion.

Sooner or later they will mature. Some of the "fake" aspies may turn out to be real aspies once they drop the act. Some will drop the affectation and the purple hair dye and get jobs. They aren't likely to turn into bullies or tolerate bullying in their kids though. Once they figure out that they are NTs after all and reconcile themselves with that fact they should still have a certain fondness for the "follies" of their youth and for people on the spectrum.

Fashion is a kind of play after all, and it can be broadening.

Bullying is a part of kid culture, and that's why it is so hard to root out. Kid culture, passed down from older kids to younger kids when adults are not around, governs how kids act when "adults" are not around. Adults can only affect kid culture indirectly, because it is an oppositional culture.

Like Goth and Punk before it Emo is an expression of kid culture that dissents from the domination of football players and cheerleaders and provides kids with an alternative model. Now I am not a fan of it myself, I'm too old and my deepest rocknroll hero worship is tied to the sixties, the Beatles, the Byrds, Bob Dylan, and grows spotty from there on. But I have seen that Punk in New York in the late seventies gave haven to a lot of very real and sweet folk. And Goth and Emo gave some young aspies I know ( authentic and diagnosed friends of my daughter) support and nonconformist models for existing happily in the world. They were not poseurs. Whether some of their friends were poseurs or not makes no difference. What is so bad about being admired? Ok, inaccurate admiration can be annoying, but it still represents progress. Admiration comes with success. So what if it smells like teen spirit, eh?

I like you EmergingArtist. You have a wonderful attitude! : )

(I use the words "you" and "yours" quite often but I do not address anybody directly, that post got way too long but I had to tell my opinion before I would burst)

Nobody who really knows how it is to have AS would wish to have it. The issue here is that many people who think they have got it cannot really know how it feels. I can tell how it feels: For the most things everything appears very normal. Accepting the idea that once sensory sensations or other impressions differ from those of other people is neither easy nor natural. You are supposed to see your perceptions as right, not as wrong.

People take the aspie quizzes and get think they have got autism because the questions are well comprehensible. "Are you fascinated of slowly flowing water? Yes, it is nice" The alternate: "Does it appear hypnotic so you watch it for 30 minutes? He, what?" I can take those quizzes easily and go as NT because I know the right answers just the same way as I can pretent to be somebody else at a job interview or at team meetings.

Yes, you might have AS and become a superior computer programmer or a great scientist but the odds are very much against you. You have to go through school, college and university. Those institutions are not made for you and you know that. You watch other people and it will be obvious to you. You do not likely achieve great things because you have autism, it is more likely you do average in spite of being an aspie. The other case is the exception.

You know how it feels when people you know accidently watching you pacing and having tics. They have always thought about you being just another odd guy but they suddenly realize there is something not right with you. Such an event strikes hard. People will change their behaviour and how they interact with you. You cannot do anything to change that. You do not have to look into their eyes to see they are more than surprised and you know that you did not want them to see that. Sure like hell.

I am sure if somebody who wishes to be aspie would know how it is to have such experiences then he would instantly stop that. He would say thanks for being NT and be happy that a life with AS is not made for him.

Telling whether you are autistic should not be hard, but you have to look for the bad and nasty things. There are quite a few. Perhaps the real aspies should talk more about them here so the "wishers" get cured. To want to be autistic is such an incredible idiotism that it almost qualifies as a mental disorder of its own. There are personality disorders matching this behaviour yet.

Everybody who really has got AS knows about the bad things. The nifty stuff like better memory, spatial abilities or creativity are really just little nifty gimmicks, I am sure most aspies have to look very carefully to even find them. You are more busy with scheduling daily activities or worry how to enter a room full of talking people while standing in front of a closed door than inventing improved laws for gravity. Making use of those special abilities is still another big challenge. School, college or university are likely of very little help. You may likely spend more time at the social skills group.

I only know about what is supposed to be my superior engineering skills after I had other people telling me so and when I got a job with help from a professor who could see my issues. I never thought about having any touch of any superiority, that idea would not have made sense, reality usually was the other way round. I am now graduating at university at the ridiculously late age of 29 and I did not have any jobs after school, did not go to parties and hardly did what is called having fun at all. I was just struggling with life, clenching my thumbs in my fists as soon as I sat a foot out of the house.

I would not have succeeded at university without help from people who could see my issues. Being successful in life without such disability support is certainly the better way and it feels better. But life with AS often means not succeeding without help.

AS can be seen as a difference and not as a disability but let us face the truth: Of course it is a disability. As soon as you have to stim or begin to have tics you know that. This is not a cool feature, it is visible to others and you try to hide it as long as you can. Who would object to this statement?

Having AS is not like feeling to be different, it means knowing it and it means knowing about the inevitability of that condition and how it feels to suffer the consequences. One of the best things about AS is that you are born with it and that you do not suddenly get hit by it after having a different life. That is the only really good thing I know. It almost never means thinking to be superior to other people in everyday life, here it means quite the opposite because you bump into walls where other people use doors not made for you (just a picture).

You can fight against self-confidence issues and maybe you can get rid of them but they stay in your heart, there are many little events every day letting you kow that AS is still there. But you are used to it, so it is not even hard for you to live with it. You do not have a choice anyway.

If it would not be so extremely scary not to know how the world would look and feel like when being NT you would likely take the magic pill that makes you NT and if you would have a time machine you would take that pill before you go to school and before you fully realize what it means to be different from others because they tell you so. You know that life would have been easier all the way.

Being autistic does not mean you did not want to have friends in school or that you did not want to engage in team sports (just an example). It means that you are doing so helplessly and obviously worse than others in those activities that nobody would want to have you in your team. That is not your choice. You are likely denied the other way.

Your attitude towards people of your age changes because you experience failure, defeat, confusion and rejection at so many occasions that you cannot even think about befriending your peers anymore. There is a point in time where you are reliefed for being ignored. You can be 10 years out of school and you still feel uneasy when walking through or passing by a chatting or laughing group of adolescents, you can go past a schoolyard in your car and still feel some pain in your mind allthough the related events happend long ago. If those things sound totally exaggerated to you then feel free to receive my congratulations.

AS does not mean making the wrong choices. It means not having some. The symptom list only begins with social interaction issues but it ends with so embarassing things like body movements you neither want nor have control over.

AS does not mean of being able to focus intensely on some activity, it means you loose awarenes of everything else when you focus too much. What you focus on can be art, history or quantum physics but in everyday life it likely is only the flashing direction indicators of the cars waiting in front of yours at the traffic light.

If anybody really knows and understands what it means to be autistic and still seeks to get diagnosed then I have little doubt that this person might really have it and that person should have every help and ask for it here on WP.

But I also think that those who just stick to a self-diagnosis might have no real urge to know, they may not really seek to have an explaination for the very hard things in their life but readily take the first one that appears to be valid.

Only a true diagnosis can tell you that you have got it. We should hope we will have accurate tests one day to make it easier. The well minded person would look for a diagnosis that excludes having AS and those who really have got it would not stop before being sure about that. You may encounter experts telling you a "No" and you can say his explanation does not convince you. But you do not stop and tell "Oh, I know I have it. I read it on a website."

Last edited by byrlawson on 12 Sep 2007, 12:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Everyone with half a brain knows the tests are only a guide or help. Tests of this sort never REALLY prove ANYTHING!



Well, I AM a programmer and superior to most, CERTAINLY. You are WRONG there!



Tics are TICS! They aren't an A symptom. As for the rest, it isn't so obvious with some.



Well, there are extremes on both sides.



Actually, I don't ***WANT*** to be anything. It is just that it is nice to see so many quirks, etc... that I have had EXPLAINED! Let's say you were female, and just started menstruating, like carrie did in carrie. That is SCARY! Are you bleeding to death? Cancer? WHAT??????? BUT, if you were say 9, and KNEW about it ahead of time, you might even look forward to it. If you study a thing, and can't understand a concept, it would be nice to know that most others can't also.

Well, all my life has been WIERD! People seemed to single me out. Certain people seem to want to be close to me. Others just want to hurt me. I find some simple things hard, and some hard things simple. When OTHERS think it is a GOOD day, I say TOO MUCH SUN or that it is TOO HOT. I go out in some weather without a coat or a care.

It seems that many places I have to call HATE ME! They have this wierd frequency, either through a beep, music, or some persons voice, that feels like a KNIFE in my ears. I can only imagine that it must be something NT people find pleasant or at least are not annoyed by.

It is just nice to see others here that feel the same.



WOW, what is the gimmick? When my memory was better, it just HAPPENED. Even today, some stuff just STICKS!



WAIT A SECOND?????? UNIVERSITY??? BUT...BUT...



There's that word again! You said that was SOOOOO Difficult!



You HAVE to stim?



Well, I don't know how often you bump into walls, or to what degree, so I can't judge that. With ME? Sometimes I DO forget to duck(I did this on a regional jet one time 3 times! I did that perhaps every time in a 2 month span) I sometimes bump my shoulder or arm into a doorjamb. Is THAT akin to what you are referring to? I don't do it all the time, but enough to make me wonder.

I have ALWAYS known I was different. As for thinking I am superior, I do only in certain ways. And it isn't unrealistic. In fact, some tell me I am far better than I think I am. Others tell me that others told them so also! Admittedly though, I see some aspects in some people that make me think WOW, and I just resign myself to being satisfied with where I am. In some areas, I won't try to be as good as some. So I don't think I am superior to everyone overall. And YEAH, sometimes I have been in places where I feel I am the dumbest one there. Thankfully, that is RARE. I prefer to be in places where I think I am almost on a par with everyone. Not much dumber and not much smarter.



Well, you have THAT right!



I can certainly give you that. I used to have GREAT stamina(now I generally don't), and was actually pretty strong starting out. NOW, I am so/so. In some areas I am VERY strong, in others probably weak. As for coordination? FORGET IT! I don't like sports. I never have. But, frankly, I am not good at them anyway. I have said here a lot that I can't catch.



AGAIN, we agree!



Again, Tics aren't a listed symptom. As for the rest, another hit! My mother always pushed me out of that hyperfocus, so I USUALLY catch myself and come out of it. Still, it happens sometimes, and I wonder how much time I have spent like that.



HEY, I'm a programmer! Some bugs HAVE become features! Who says a "malfunction" is bad? YEAH, I know MAL means bad, but in WHOSE eyes?

As for the self diagnosis, etc... Psychiatrists give opinions, and you HOPE they are educated. I have toyed with trying to get a brain MRI or CT scan, to see. It would be interesting. But the US has some funny laws, and they cost more than a psychiatrist might.



WHO KNOWS, maybe I'll luck out, and they will. But you shouldn't discount someone that thinks they have explained ALL their problems!

HECK, drugs, even simple ones, often don't work, or work the same, on me! Autism EVEN explains THAT!

I don't see the point of wanting to be something you're not. That includes non-autistic people who want to be autistic. It also includes autistic people who want to be non-autistic. I've known autistic people who have a lot fewer of the 'bad things' than I do, who go on endlessly about how they want to be non-autistic, whereas I really don't want to be non-autistic and so I get assumed by some to only experience the 'good things'.



Non-disabled people get a ton of support too, it's just invisible to them.



I would object.

I don't consider it a 'cool feature' but I don't hide it either, I don't happen to have the energy, if I hid it or wasted energy being ashamed of it I would not function at all.

Also, disability is a form of difference. I don't see a contradiction between difference and disability. Disability just means that your form of difference is not planned for or respected in certain ways by the society you live in.



I am self-confident and quite aware that autism is still there. If you have to hide the fact that you're autistic from yourself in order to be self-confident you're going for the wrong kind of self-confidence.



A lot of people wouldn't.



Maybe you would be helped a lot by stopping being embarrassed by them. Not easy when you're getting messages that tell you to be embarrassed by them all the time, I know from experience. But it is a horrible mistake to take it as a given that these things must be awful and embarrassing. You were taught that.

You should read disability shame speaks, as you have disability shame written all over you (which is not anyone's fault in this society but people ought not to promote it as the only way to feel).



Totally not true. I was diagnosed long before I accepted that I was autistic. Only understanding autism well enough can tell you that you have got it.

Seeing the amount of caps and exclamation marks in your post I have to think I attacked you. But I did neither deny your status of having AS nor did I explicitly deny anyone else's . I do not know anyone here so I cannot judge anyone specifically and I did not do so. But there are people thinking of having AS without good reason. I am sure it is positive and actually helping them to get on with their life to make them thinking about it. If I have to stress the disability aspect to do that then I will do so.

I did not tell you that you cannot have AS if you do not have tics. The implication "NO TICS -> NO AS" is yours, not mine. I wrote about tics because I have got them. I might say "sorry, no offense intented" but I do not see why. If you question yourself having AS by reading my post I have to deny this being my fault. I am sure my tics are related to AS because they occur in close relation to stimming and pacing.

I may be ashamed of having a disability, this is true. When I have to pace when thinking intensely about a problem, for example an algorith or data structure so that I have to leave my computer workplace and when I further go to have tics the moment I enjoy having found a solution for something and have forgotten to be in a public place while pacing then this is disturbing and not welcome. It attracts attention and I do not want to answer questions like "are you allright" from the well-meaning and I do not want to be looked at from the not-so-well-meaning who are negatively touched and are right to be. The solution not to work in public places or avoiding to focus too intensely is not a good way out.

I am confused about the question whether I would have to stim. There are situations where I just do, a solution is avoiding those situations. That very much feels like having to do it. I am not at all negatively affected by it but I do not live alone on this planet. It disturbs other people, for example in class or during a lecture and it is hard to stop it once started. Stopping breaks my thoughts and focus at least.

I am glad you agree with me in some ways, though.