Why are so many aspies mild?

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I actually tend to agree with you - it's not just a unidimensional axis, it's likely a lot of different genes and environmental influences. However, even in a multidimensional space, the statistical argument still applies. I simplified to a single dimension to make the argument easier to understand; sorry if I inadvertently seemed to be reinforcing a unidimensional model.

Airheads.

I love balloons.

Severe issues would probably prevent them from posting in the first place. One could also posit that the disjointed style of some posters - separation of phrases with blank lines rather than with punctuation and such - had something to do with it, though my guess is that that particular issue is more strongly correlated with youth.

Something funny,

One psycho at Attwood's said I was higher functioning than most of the people who go to their group meetings (AS). :/ That kinda caught me off guard. However, I think she was mistaking "appearance" for "ability", as people often do.

I know someone with ADHD does that so it's easier for other with ADHD to read her posts.
I actually picked up better punctuation from mimicking other people's writing style.
You are right that is a young person's thing. In my late teens I used to write like that a lot.

You seem pretty at easy with what you have and how you choose to deal with it so i hope you don't mind me posting this.

From reading your posts and how your life is affected, i don't understand how you could consider yourself even close to mild (this goes for most people, not just you). From what i've read your life would possibly be affected less by being blind, by being deaf, certainly by being in a wheelchair. Are these also mild conditions?

I don't think you have mild anything, i think you have at least standard/moderate AS and if we're calling AS a mild condition then you me and the rest of us must have a severe case of it.

Most with AS don't work (adults), most live at home or in institutions, and most have few if any friends. This is from all of the outcome studies I've read, and I've read pretty much all of them.

That's normal for AS.

People will retort with, but what about all of the people without a diagnosis! Well, if they're getting along fine, there's no need to have one.

Hello Daniel.

I've seen mention that most Aspies don't work or are in institutions in other posts many times on WP.

Could you direct me to a published research report that confirms this please

Thanks

I'm also interested in reading the results of these studies.

If it's true, it makes me so much more determind to be on the other side of the statistics.

Hello Brittany,

Yes, I work although I may be in the minority.

If these statistics are correct, then there is clearly NOTHING mild about AS.

I have developed some very idiosyncratic coping skills, including for my business, but that should not mask the fact that underneath all of that I am very socially impaired.

I know lots of people who have been labeled severe or low functioning (some agree with the idea of functioning labels and some don't) who post to places online. Some people you can tell by their style of words that they are different and some you can't. Same really as for people more readily deemed milder -- posting styles vary incredibly person to person. One woman I know has a vocabulary bigger than most autistic people I have ever met and she uses it while writing as much to prove seh can, as anything else.

The main thing is that they often don't post in places like this. It is very hard to come somewhere and constantly see people making pronouncements about people with the same labels you have worn. Even when the pronouncements stem from ignorance rather than malice. It can end up being a matter of picking your battles, or avoiding having to explain and justify stuff over and over. So this becomes one of many ways the online autistic community is divided.

In my case not only do I have professionals frequently calling me severe or LF (I am one of those that doesn't believe functioning labels are valid) but the sort of autistic person I am doesn't fit the main stereotypes either of professionals or of most of the online communities. But I put up with the comments people make because it's important to me to show people there is a whole lot beyond the stereotypes. (Both stereotypes about autism itself and stereotypes about what actions can be taken and how we can look at things.) But not everyone has the time, energy, or inclination to deal with this stuff.

One of the things I used to run into here a lot was people not understanding that my difficulties were real because they seemingly couldn't imagine some of them. And since they didn't appear to grasp the perceptual states that routinely prevent me from doing "easy" things, they made up emotional reasons for it. One person even said that because I had had trouble figuring out how to eat food that I couldn't see behind a cupboard door, then I must have a death wish. Others assumed self-pity. But for me those were just normal parts of my life which were caused by cognitive, perceptual, and movement issues and which had no emotional causes. (In talking about this I'm not looking for apologies or sympathy just stating facts).

I haven't encountered any of that this time around but I can easily see autistic people avoiding a place altogether after an experience like that. I can be more stubborn sometimes than most would in such a situation. Add onto that the constant references to "LFA" and "severe" in ways that can be far from the reality (and I am aware this isn't everyone nor a coordinated effort but it all adds up).

So there are lots of reasons some people who've been labeled severe wouldn't come here, besides inability. (And inability or lack of computer access is probably something that affects lots of autistic people regardless of label.)

But there is a huge difference between not being in those situations and getting along fine. I have known lots of late diagnosed people who were not in those situations but had lots of problems and needed a diagnosis for something.

Also there seem to be a lot of autistic people who manage to fake being nonautistic (or something weird looking but still passing because of the assumptions of the people around them) who eventually burn out in their 30s 40s or 50s and end up with serious problems. But for all that time they are often either undiagnosed, only superficially doing fine, or were diagnosed early but after they learned to pretend, their diagnoses were hidden from them. Also many who aren't diagnosed until they have an autistic child.

So "what about the undiagnosed people" seems like a totally fair question to me that can't be satisfactorily dismissed with the answer you gave.

When they hit that wall, that's when a label is required.

It'd be good for the less severe folk to know that they have an underlying condition, and it might manifest more severely due to external/life events, so they can then implement things beforehand. However, when you blend in too well....

The spectrum model is just that. A model. It's a tool to explain where behavioral psychologists stand regarding autism. Spectrum doesn't mean we literally give you a number then pull out a chart with a rainbow on it and draw an X depending on how bad you have it. We don't know exactly what causes autism, either, or all the genes that lead to having traits, so we can't quantify it perfectly.

Yeah, it's more of a multidimensional spectrum. It's just we've not got any easy visual analogies to talk about it that way (and don't have enough physical dimensions in any case), so we say "spectrum".

There's really not that much distance between mildly and severely disabled autistics. I don't mean that it's the same thing, just that there are so many things that really only need to be skewed a tiny bit in another direction, and suddenly you get "severe". Disability is defined by what society requires of you, not directly by your own basic skill levels; and the difference between meeting those requirements and failing to meet them can be awfully small.

I've been very conscious of this lately. The only reason I can go to school is that I get pretty intensive assistance from the disability services office, more than some quadriplegic students (something which most people would call a "severe disability"). It's not just that I get help with testing; I also had to be shown things like how to buy food at the cafeteria, and have had help with all sorts of new situations, like basically being led through a career fair. I've basically got an open door there to duck into a testing room and lie on the floor if I have to, before I have a meltdown, and even then have had two major ones already. I wonder, really, how much difference there is between that and not being able to figure out how to get dressed because somebody has moved your clothing to a different drawer; or the difference between me standing and flapping because I can't figure out what to do next while I'm fixing dinner, and somebody who gets stuck like that for hours instead of minutes. I don't know that there's much difference between the way I mix up words when I'm upset or tired, and the way some people mix them up all the time.

I guess I just don't get the idea that there's this huge paradigm shift between mild and severe disability in autistic people, because there are so many similarities, so many things that just have to be turned up a single notch in intensity before you start requiring a heck of a lot of help just to make sure you don't end up dying. I cannot presume to know what it is like to have a severe disability, because I don't have one, going by the fact that I can live alone and take care of my own basic needs (and those of two cats besides). But that doesn't mean that there is something diametrically different about being able to do those things... it seems more like chance that I got a skill set that lets me do them. If things had skewed just a little differently in my development, maybe I'd have gotten the prerequisite skills to write poetry instead of the ones I use to pay bills and do dishes...