Is Aspergers trendy?

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You care because it is your reality, and it is all you know- you can't experience joy unless you experience suffering to compare it to.

Everything we experience is relative, which is why the poor are often happier than the rich. We are all guilty of looking at people who appear to have more than us and assuming they have it easy because you don't have to live their life. It depends what your priorities are... I am happy being quite poor compared to some in this country because I'm not interested in buying status items. I get a lot more satisfaction from raking around in a skip for an old chair, then making it beautiful again. Success and happiness in my eyes means fulfilling your potential and making the people around you suffer less. When I worry about money I am just reacting to the pressure to pay my electricity bills etc, just like I am currently reacting to the pressure to be able to "survive" in our overly-complicated, ridiculous social rules world. If there was more acceptance and understanding I wouldnt need a label, which to some would sound like a paradox. I dont think I should feel bad because there is someone who is less fortunate- theres always someone less fortunate.

I believe that typical people defend bad manners by saying they have special needs, and being important is always trendy.

This is ironic, because AS people should tend to avoid social interaction.

It's unfortunately a left over idea from Hans Asperger's paper on autistic psychopathy. He made a few opinions and stressed the social value of people with autism. He wrote the paper during Nazi Germany, which is probably why he was eager to stress their social value. Later on he said such people were the exception.

I'm not saying that everyone with autism is doomed to a life of never achieving anything great. I think given the right environment people with autism can flourish. But we aren't anywhere near such a place. As it's not only people with autism who struggle in modern society as well. Plenty of people with mental health issues struggle just as much. But autism is clearly a disability, more so than a difference. Everyone on here stresses we aren't the same.



I've heard different that many scientists actually are very normal people with normal social skills. And that the aspie phenotype is rare amongst them.



You don't know the internet very well. There are fans of serial killers, there are people who make tumblrs romanticising all kinds of disorders. If anything this shooting will cause panic, it will increase diagnoses of ASD. Anyone who is a little different gets pathologised.

And there will be more idiots with a romantic notion of AS being this sociopathic condition, but without the social skills. Even though affective empathy is normal in people with autism. So people with autism aren't sociopaths at all. We're the opposite, if anything.



That makes no sense foxfield - autism isn't diagnosed just because you are quirky. The whole point of a diagnosis of autism is to understand why this group of humans have these developmental problems, and why they differ from the rest. What you're advocating for is we just widen it to people who have the usual problems everyone has, but are a little bit on the quirky side.

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Last edited by Acedia on 25 May 2014, 11:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, many people think it is trendy, expecially nerdy teens who get teased for being nerdy and think they have Asperger's because they want to feel part of a "special club", even though they can perfectly get facial expressions and body language, understand jokes, use sarcasm, don't obsess over things the way people with Asperger's do but just do it in an NT way, don't have any behavioural problems and they think they have AS just because they are shy, introverted, good at school and not good at sports. Well, they just ignore all the others, actually important symptpms.
I can tell you because there are kids like this in my school. I hate them. They make people like me who actually have AS look like simply nerdy NT kids that are looking for attention, while me, unlike them, am actually struggling with a mental disorder every day of my life and am disabled.

Because I have the condition. I'm not just a bit of a daydreamer and have the normal sensory sensitivities that everybody has, mine impede functioning and I had terrible difficulties in school. Read Han's initial paper, those kids all had learning difficulties, mostly due to their autism and one due to undiagnosed dyslexia, as well as autism. Autism alone is disabling.

How AS transformed into being thought of as a diagnosis for gifted types is the problem.



A lot of circumscribed interests are just like that, mine are. Having an interest on its own isn't an issue, but doing something to the exclusion of other things is a problem. And this is common in people with autism.



I don't think that's true, I'm sure OCD entails a certain punctiliousness. And OCD is mostly intrusive thoughts and rituals. Whereas autism is rituals, stereotypies, rigid behaviours and social deficits, and a higher rate of ID, epilepsy, speech/language difficulties and so on.

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Last edited by Acedia on 25 May 2014, 4:42 pm, edited 5 times in total.

I have no idea if autism is "trendy" or not. There's definitely more public awareness of it, but I couldn't say how much, if at all, that affects diagnostic rates. And I stay very far away from blogs and YouTube blather.

As for "difference verses disability," as far as I'm concerned, autism is an impairment. If you are not impaired, you do not have autism. Period. I was diagnosed with an ASD because I have clinically significant difficulties, not because I strolled into a psychologist's office due to lack of anything better to do on a sunny afternoon. If I don't "seem" impaired on WP, that would be the direct result of my high verbal intelligence coming out to play in a written medium. My persona on "Wrong Planet" does not reflect my actual life.

Anyway, I basically agree with Acedia.

I've been surrounded by scientists all my life, and I would say that scientists I know are about equally split between neurotypical and broad autism phenotype, with many undergrad classmates and some professors crossing into spectrum, with displayed social and non-social autistic traits as strong or stronger than most of the diagnosed autistic research participants I know (HFASD), and objective measurements of social and non-social traits indicate a subgroup of scientists who are indistinguishable from diagnosed autisitc people, but their high intellectual abilities and niche society allow them to do well without diagnosis, but they are socially/communicatively impaired in wide world amongst normal people and some are also impaired in the niche, and they also do non-social things quite differently from neurotypical scientists in a not good ef way that seems to work well for science purposes.

I would say that ASD traits are verry merry berry common amongst scientists, and so are ADHD traits, a significant percentage of people (~25% based on some data) having these traits indistinguishable from same traits in diagnosed autistic people. Of the diagnosed autistic people, perhaps 50-60% are more neurotypical than this subgroup of scientists.

Also, blind people tend to have higher verbal IQs and deaf people tend to do better on visual spatial tasks. There are savant abilities in some brain damaged people. People with William's Syndrome tend to be very personable and good with music. ASD is NOT the only disorder with strengths that come along with it, absolutely not, though many people seem to have that notion. What makes ASD better than other disabilities, then, so special? There's no reason for people who say "ASD is just a difference" not to say the same of blindness and William Syndrome and all developmental or neurological conditions.



I agree.

Haha great, this argument again. I would think by now people would stop using this tactic. Worldly perspective does not make one cured. I am only familiar with my problems since I am the one experiencing them. Do you honestly think I give a s**t about people half way across the world?!?!? Should I be thinking about these people ever second and drown in self loathing for living in a country that has its s**t together? I did not cause their misfortune so why waste my time thinking about things I cannot change.

^
Well, it's just not a cogent argument to dismiss ASD as unimportant because people have bigger problems in other countries. The same could be said of all disabilities, including Down Syndrome and Intellectual Disability. We live in a country where our basic needs are met so we worry about meeting the basic needs and what we consider basic human rights (going beyond the minimum amount of food to subsist on) of people in our country, including that of those who have trouble providing these things for themselves. You can be charitable to ppl in other countries but that doesn't render the problems of people in your own county unimportant if they aren't as dire.

Often people in such developing countries, with developmental disorders, are dumped in horrible institutions or abandoned by the street. Fewer mouths to feed. So it's not like their disorders aren't a problem in those countries. These disorders cause problems here and there.

So is someone who lost their legs, but then got prosthetic ones, still disabled?

I feel like if you lose your legs you can do something physical to un-do that, but Autism is a whole different ball-game. If you have so much going on in your head every time you try to make a decision, like which washing powder to use, and you need to make hundreds of those decisions every day then you're brain function will be harmed. Going to the supermarket, for example, is an essential part of life and can FEEL impossible- you have to consciously think about all of these things at the same time-

*walking and appearing "normal".
*Controlling stims under bright lights and stress
*pushing the trolley around corners without twisting too much and pulling a back muscle! i cannot work out how people do this so easily!
*remembering and organising a list in your head or remembering to refer to your list (even making the list may have taken an hour, and it still might be missing the only 2 essential things you need)
*looking out for people smiling/interacting with you and working out if you know them (you dont want to seem rude by not recognising them) and reacting appropriately either way.
*Finding the product you are looking for in the aisle
*working out where other people would have categorised the product you need- the arrangement may seem illogical to you and you will spend hours looking in the DIY section when you should be in the pet section. When you realise what you did, you will always think "argh how did I get that wrong?" and feel annoyed at yourself on top of it all.
*when choosing a product you have to think of everything you know about each option while you whittle your options down. (I look for deals first, but then check if there are others that are cheaper by the kilo (and im pretty slow at mental arithmetic) then I check the ingredients. If im allergic to it then I start the whole process again. If I'm not, I will then doubt whether I need the product, sometimes deciding I dont when I do. I sometimes find myself just zoning-out, staring at a product in my hand for too long).

The checkout- the worst bit. If I am so exhausted that if I cant get into a focused "quick-mode" then I feel the whole queue's eyes on me, analysing how fast I'm going. The cashier will probably be asking lots of questions too, and then I need to decide how to pay and not forget my handbag/card when I leave.

I seem to do it all with a smile on my face and just a few stims. But I will suffer the consequences when I get home and have to put it all away when I just want to sit with a heavy blanket wrapped around my legs (extremely fatigued and needing the sensory stuff I guess). After all that, and £100 spent, my boyfriend will notice the ingredients are next-to-useless because we cant make more than one meal from the lot... and neither of us can be bothered to cook anyway... so we get a takeaway.

I'm not sure how I can ever do all of what a person is expected to do without negative consequences, or be un-disabled, or absolved from having to do each step, no matter how hard I try. How do you stop your brain from thinking too much? As I get older there is more information in there to process, and my body is more tired.

There is no accommodation, other than physical human assistance, that could make it easy. I dont like internet shopping because I dont like people coming to the house. I might give it a go again soon though.

Wealth needs to be eventually generated from within. Unfortunately these poor people expect handouts/infrastructure from charities and they will continue to do so. Those countries are better off going back to tribal living instead of trying to create their own modern society. They jumped the gap from tribal to modern without even having an agricultural/industrial revolution.

How are you finding it? Were you living with your parents before?

Interesting, have you noticed any trends in scientific disciplines people with autistic traits are attracted to?

Also would you say being from a wealthy background can make being on the spectrum easier to accomplish goals? I imagine most scientists came from fairly good backgrounds. I know that Donald Triplett did better than others diagnosed, but his family were quite wealthy.

Once you have been taught basic good manners ie. not hurting people intentionally, then there is never an excuse for anyone to be rude, ever! Manners are subjective though, like when is swearing acceptable? I swear in front of my gran sometimes as she doesnt mind when it is to express a point, but most people would never do that.

I hate the fact people use any excuse to be rude- even PTSD doenst often excuse violent reactions. If the person understands what theyre doing, then they should be doing it with good intentions.

I think there is also a cluster of ASD sufferers on the creative jobs side too- people who appear to have mastered their quirkiness. some of my BAP-type friends seem to be able to do both, but in different ways, depending on their experiences and genetic abilites. I have never been able to tell if I am left-brained/right-brained- I think art is a science and vice versa.

It is definitely easier to be rich and an Aspie, because you have the option to pay someone to do the essential things for you- cook, clean, food shop, organising your diary etc. You can spend all your time on your special interests and your health wont suffer as much.