Why are so many aspies mild?

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Accepting without question that AS can be mild, where is the research that demonstrates that 'so many' people with AS have the mild version?

I would have much preferred to have found out before my health got screwed up in what looks to be a permanent way. I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons why getting detection before "hitting the wall" is much preferable.



Surviving doesn't necessarily mean blending, and blending doesn't necessarily mean "looks normal." And not blending doesn't necessarily mean "will be recognized as autistic, labelled and accommodated appropriately."

Some people are surviving only because they're ripping their guts out every day (in a way that isn't sustainable). And when they do hit the wall, the real reason may still not be recognized. Some are probably surviving by being homeless (no landlord issues) and scrounging (no employment issues). Others, by 'maintaining' at work 8 hours a day, and then collapsing at home at staring at the ceiling all night too tired to make food or otherwise properly take care of themselves.

There's a story somewhere, with "anonymous" in the title about someone who was mis-labelled and locked out of any assistance. They survived, but went through utter hell (including prison -- yet another way to "survive").

There's a big gap between surviving and not needing help.

Such a simple observation yet so profound. The concept of disability is really relative to what society requires. Before litracy became mandatory, dyslexia didn't exist, although I'm certain that people with the relevent neurology existed. But if there is no expectation, there is no disability. It's all in the mismatch, and that mismatch can vary from time to time and from culture to culture even if basic neurologies stay about the same.

And then there's your observation that the difference between meeting society's requirments and failing to meet them is awfully small. So true. I am very math- illiterate (dyscalcula? back in my day that didn't exist yet and teachers just said "not trying hard enough"). Luckily calculators have been invented so my dyscalcula doesn't impair my ability to function because I just carry a calcuylator in my purse and use it in stores and in any situation that calls for calculation. But if I were just a bit more dyscalculic I wouldn't be able to use a calculator correctly either and I would enter the realm of true impairment because I wouldn't be able to shop or bank and it would be easy to cheat me out of money. Of course I'd also be in trouble( impaired) if calculators didn't exist. Luckily they do and they are cheap so I can replace them very easily.

I've noticed that thing about how thin the line is. In fact sometimes there is no line at all. Sometimes whether you are considered severe or mild depends on what your life situation has been, who assessed you, and other factors that have nothing to do with your innate traits. There are a few people I know where I am pretty sure the "vast" differences most people see between us, could have gone the other way had we exchanged a few life events. And other people considered similar because we shared a few labels where we could not be more different in reality.

My Autism is mild, in the sense that it is not impairing my language or mental development, but I am completely socially blind, I've studied it and been able to determine that I'm around the same level as a 4 or 5 year old there, because once the kids I've helped raised get to be 6 or 7, they clearly surpass my abilities to read interaction and respond properly.

I'm quite certain that the reason I have ALWAYS preferred the company of little kids is due to this, I've always had amazing patience with kids, and they always seem to register that "this adult is more like I am" which makes them love me.


My Asperger's is full blown, of the symptoms required for diagnosis I exhibit all but one or two of the subcategories, often to quite extreme lengths.

Mild Asperger's is like saying mild mild autism... which is like not saying autism at all, suggesting that perhaps they meant to say they exhibit traits often connected to Asperger's, but not at a level which would get them diagnosed.

I said this in an unrelated thread, but part of the issue here is the unsuitability of the word 'spectrum'. People think of that like a rainbow, something linear. But the rainbow is a poor representation of all the possible colors out there: there are shades from light to dark, hues that blend colors, shades of THOSE colors, another dimension being gray content (primary blue vs. teal blue), and of course all the browns and off-whites nobody associates with rainbows. The once primitive color wheel has been reworked into a crazy-looking cutaway 3-D diagram with x, y, and z axes. Surely the 'spectrum' of autism is at least as complicated. This is not a trivial point - brains trained with a simplistic model often are hard to retrain with the proper sophistication. The general public is likely to stay hung up on that simple spectrum model for a long time.

I find that I'm very mild, compared to what I see, around the area that I live. I still don't believe in a cure.

Old thread, but I'm going to reply anyway.

It's an interesting question, and one I have thoughts on. I'm 28 and was diagnosed earlier this year. The path to diagnosis for me started last year when I moved to Perth to start a Uni degree. Perth is apparently the most isolated capital city in the world, and man did I feel isolated while I was there. Not so much geographically, but socially.

Once I did get a diagnosis, the psychologist told me I was "severe". Which shocked me. I thought I would just barely be on the spectrum. In other words I thought of myself as very mild. I think the reason for this is that I've only ever known how to be me. This is what 'normal' is to me. Even if I do have certain struggles in life that others don't seem to have.

So my guess could be that if most Aspies are identifying themselves as mild it may be a bit of a middle ground between how they see themselves and how others may perceive them. At least that's the case for me.

Aspergers bieng "mild" is a stereotype that is a case of a something bieng said often enough it is believed. The beginning of the stereotype goes back to the person the condition is named for. Hans Asperger to persuade his Nazi bosses that some autistics can be useful members of society used as examples his four mildest patients. He used the phrase "little proffessors". Lorna Wing popularized the term "Aspergers Syndrome" and was influential in getting the label as an official diagnosis. She did this to get undiagnosed milder autistics diagnosed. She stated that the Aspergers label would carry less stigma then the Autism label for parents thus they would be more willing to get thier child diagnosed. While the actual diagnostic criteria for Aspergers allowed for a wide spectrum of severity that popular portrayel of Aspies was of the socially ackward genius. Clinitions are paid by people who have these false stereotypes and of course that is a factor in how they label. Now that Aspergers is not an official label anymore people need not care about the inconvinient truth of the old diagnostic criteria. Us moderate to severe aspies specifically and not so mild but not severe autistics in general are back where we started, unrecognized. I suspect many in this category are bieng misdiagnosed.

In reading the 6 year old posts I felt I was reading a completly different forum. Those posters were talking about disability bieng defined by functioning ability as defined by society rather then just impaired skills.

Another way of looking at it:
http://thechimericalcapuchin.com/why-yo ... ism-wrong/

I know I'm new so most people don't trust me and possibly don't like me because of my matter of fact personality, but I actually do have Asperger's pretty severely, and I think one of the main reasons you can't tell on the surface is that when I was a kid my parents would identify behaviors they thought were strange and make me aware of them. For instance they would say all the time when I was even in Kindergarten "stop rocking, it looks odd", they did that until I stopped, also at the dinner table briefly I would point at things I wanted (so did my father) but my mom shut that down by saying "do not point that is rude, you say may I have the salt or please pass the corn". Because I am totally egocentric I think very highly of myself and want other people's approval, therefore I am very aware of how others perceive me and I am always aware of how I act when other people are present (especially women).

Maybe because Asperger's is a milder, higher-functioning form of autism, and people don't make a spectrum within the spectrum just for it.