First time in history!! !! The NT/AS open hotline ! !! !! !

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Hiya, I'm new so I hope you don't mind me answering.

For me, the appeal of being able to tell my close friends/family that my husband has aspergers means that I would hope they would be able to understand his behaviour better and be less offended when we visit and he doesn't interact with them or seems to shun them for his ipod/laptop/whatever or says something that isn't quite appropriate. It isn't something I would feel the need to broadcast to the wider community, but those who you see often or have a lot to do with your life would probably gain a lot by knowing that you have AS. It would probably make life a bit less awkward as they wouldn't be expecting the same levels of social interaction, or wouldn't feel you were being rude.


If you don't mind me asking a question to those with AS?
How did you find out that you had AS? Did someone suggest it to you? Did you come to the conclusion yourself? Is there a good way to bring up the subject with someone you suspect of having AS?

Well, I found out really young, because after realizing that school wasn't working for me, my parents had me evaluated. The first diagnosis given was NLD, but that was quickly changed to Asperger's, which better reflects the reality of the situation anyway but, more importantly then, allowed me to get services.

What sucked was that my mother grabbed onto that first dx and held on with all her might, even though it's completely inappropriate to label anyone with NLD because almost all of them would be able to receive another label anyway (generally Asperger's), and because the NLD community is a toxic, toxic place that will trash your self-esteem and convince you that you can't succeed in life. Excuse my soapbox, but seriously, avoid the NLD community at all cost, even if it means never getting any services and never meeting another person like you in your life. Even if the alternative is dying in the gutter. (Well, maybe you could have a brief association with them if it's necessary to save your life. But cut it short the instant you're no longer in immediate danger.) Don't believe me? Read the literature. Academic success is an "illusion of competence," belief in your ability to hold down a job is an "unrealistic assessment," you have brain damage and you're never going to be able to do the same things normal people can. Whenever you're ready to move past the self-pity, NLD community... whenever you're ready.

Anyway, stepping off my soapbox, I think you should tell them, and I think you should present it how an Aspie actually would. Tell them about the good points as well as the bad, or better yet, phrase it in terms of thinking style rather than ability. (If you do that right, you're likely to get a response like "but EVERYONE does that!" That's your cue to give them a harsh dose of reality.)

This is for AS/NT:

Suppose you're having a conversation with someone you've met for the first time. The conversation lasts about an hour. Will you be able to recall what they look like after that one conversation?

recall as in: recognize the person if you run into him again?

usually.

depends on too many things (how memorable the person is - i rely a lot on style / haircut etc and distinguishing characteristics to recognize people so if it's someone with a bland look i might not remember at all; how long before seeing the person again; nature of the meeting and where, same or different locale second meeting? and so on)

if you mean just recall as in be able to cull up a picture of the person in your head, in my case no. i'm very visual and can picture things very well, sometimes with a lot of detail, but not a person's face. i can sometimes remember specific features but not all together.

i don't know if i actually have prosopagnosia (mildly) or if i don't see the whole face (and in some cases, spend so little time looking at someone's face i don't notice much about it).

Interesting. I was talking more about the ability to imagine that person in your head, and what you said is very similar to the way it works with me. I can also remember details, like dimples, locks of hair, teeth, and stuff like that. The funny thing is that the easiest way for me to think about someone's face is to try to remember a photograph of that person.

When it comes to recognizing them, however, in my case I've found that seeing that person just one time is not enough to be able to immediately recognize them in settings other than the original setting I've met them in.

yes. same with the photographs. i was going to mention that.



this is a hard one to test because it's rare to meet someone a second time in a new setting or in the absence of someone you know in common. it's hard to pick this stuff out - how much you rely on other things to cue you vs. what the person actually looks like. i've found that i have so many unconscious workarounds for the things i have difficulty with (such as recognizing faces) that i don't always realize the problem until i go looking for it, and then it's obvious i've had the problem and i understand why some things have been so confusing. last year i failed to recognize someone i was working with every day when he came in with a different haircut. i worked with him for half a day thinking he was someone new. (he's very quiet. i would have recognized him by his voice.)

off topic, (or on the topic of a very deeply ingrained coping mechanism) but i also am unaware that i am speaking to people from a "script" or have rehearsed speech beforehand until they say something i didn't expect, and then i'm completely lost as to how to respond. i've just done these things all my life without knowing the reason.

Question for all the NT's: It is always stated that NT's have superior empathy, so why do you never seem to be able to empathise with me and others with AS?

Thats an interesting question, I do empathise with many struggles people with AS have such as difficulties with relationships, sadness, frustration, and other things that I have experienced myself but maybe I cannot empathise with aspects of the condition itself since I don't know what that's like? I don't know what it's like to not be able to 'read' people for example and understand their intentions. I can try and imagine it, but I guess that's not the same.

I do empathise with Aspies like yourself and my children. Maybe you meant why do some NTs seem to never empathise.

Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings of others and share them. Since Aspies have trouble with social perception they don't always know what others feel. My eldest son has been able to work on that and can often figure out other people's feelings by different cues he's learned to watch for. It's not easy or natural for him but he is a people person so has been motivated to learn. Once he knows people's feelings he is fine about empathising. The disconnect isn't about him not caring or understanding feelings it's in his ability to read feelings.

Not everybody is a people person. Not everybody cares about the feelings of others to the same degree. The abilty to empathise varies a lot in NTs as well as in Aspies. I think the only real difference is in the social perception, and for many there are ways to overcome that.

This statement and its inferences are untrue.



The fact that I contribute here respectfully, positively, and with intent to be helpful refutes the question. The fact that I am raising a well-adjusted and mostly happy child with an ASD diagnosis also refutes your question...I am able to empathise with him and others I have met on the spectrum quite nicely.

This is yet another good reason not to over-generalize. I am sorry if you have not met any nice NTs, but it is a mistake to generalize the negative qualities of a relatively few bad people to the population as a whole.

Emphasis added.

NTs sometimes don't show empathy for aspies because anyone (NT, aspie, or other) has an easier time having empathy for someone who thinks like them than for someone who doesn't. Empathizing with someone who thinks different than oneself is not automatic for NTs, and some of them at times don't choose to make the effort.

This was an informal forum post, not a mathematical equation. However, if I prefix the word "always" with the word "almost" and the word "never" with "rarely", does that help?

And actually, given that one of the commonly quoted major symptoms of AS is a lack of empathy, doesn't that imply that those without AS have superior empathy? I have read this many, many times, I'm amazed that someone would 'refute' it. Although recently there has been some debate that those with AS *do* have empathy - sometimes even more than typical NT's - but this is quite a radical development and is not a common belief.

Once again, I just don't feel that an NT is empathising with me at all...


Yes, this is what I think must be happening. It seems to mean that empathy isn't something that happend by a person getting genuinely inside the inner state of another. It happens purely inside ones own mind and the more similar two minds operate, the higher will be the level of empathy. Only guessing...but as we often read empathy as being some kind of 'connection', it's interesting to wonder if the connection is more apparent than real.

I'm thinking we can sum all of this up with one statement: "Because people are jerks." That's a good answer to pretty much anything wrong with the human race--it's not about any one group...it's about the fact that people are jerks. Comes with the DNA.

Terribly sorry about being rigid with language, but all I had to go on was the written words. To answer your question, no, prefacing your words with qualifiers doesn't really help or change my opinions. As an NT, and speaking only for myself, I don't consider myself to have superior empathy to anyone I've met, whether on the spectrum, NT, or otherwise. And I've met several people on the spectrum whom I believe empathize very well, and maybe even better than me. Also, I've both empathized and sympathized with people on the spectrum practically my entire life, so when you asked "...why do you never seem to empathise with me and others with AS?" I felt the need to point out that not all NTs are like this by using myself as an example.



Just because I didn't understand your written words does not mean I don't emapathize/sympathize with you...

I'm feeling a bit lost and I'd like to ask a question, for NTs and Aspies:

How do you know if you are reading faces and social cues correctly? How do you know if you are NT, AS or somewhere ijn the middle?

Last edited by Kiseki on 02 Jul 2010, 6:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sometimes you can't tell that you're misreading things. Sometimes, you can tell because the situation is utterly illogical. Sometimes, you can tell because you can't get any information at all.

Like, if you're talking to someone who's been making an impassioned pro-neurodiversity speech and then they say "yeah, let's all bow down before the altar of Autism Speaks and pray to be replaced by easy-to-deal-with NTs," if you don't get the sarcasm, you can at least realize that this situation does not make sense. If you know that you don't get sarcasm, you might ask the other person, "are you being sarcastic?" (Of course, they might sarcastically say no.)

And sometimes you know because you can't derive any meaning at all, and have enough experience to know that other people derive meaning from this.

Another thing is that you might repeatedly make the same mistake. I'm wary of my ability to read facial expressions, because I identify the vast majority of facial expressions as "deep in thought" or some variation thereof. (The rest seem angry to me, but generally I miss faces that are actually angry.) I can succeed at multiple-choice tests because they never have "thoughtful" as an option, and I can succeed in real life because people keep moving and speaking and I have the context.