Do your Autistic Symptoms disable you?

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Ive been noticing a lot of people who are getting diagnosed who just function very well on their own and frankly it makes me confused, Autism is a disablity yet some people are just annoyed by it.

I used to think i did fine on my own until i moved on my own a few months ago, it turns out without a schedule in place i cant even feed myself, My anxiety gets to the point that I have to leave school. i Cant work because the demanding Stress causes me to panic and makes me physically sick, I cant even tell when im happy or sad or angry until its got to the point that i explode. I really tried to do well on my own but i keep shutting down, its awful.

how is it that people on this site have Families and jobs and careers when i cant even finish the 12th grade on a specialized course??

Technically speaking, a person can't get a diagnosis of autism if the symptoms don't have a significant impact on their daily functioning, so I'm a little confused by this notion as well. Perhaps it's just that some people received diagnoses at a point in their lives when it did impact them, and they've learned to cope with it well enough that it doesn't so much anymore. I'm not sure, I still need a lot of support, and probably wouldn't fare well if I tried to live alone either. Out of curiosity, why did you move out? 17 seems a little young.

Sort of, but it might mostly be GAD that getting in my way, my learning style is fine, it's just group work and going to class can become too much for me sometimes so I'll skip. I'm fully autonomous though in taking care of my day to day needs, it's the complexity of the modern social world and the need to get a higher education and career that are causing me issues.

Autism isn't a disability, it's an impairment.

Being diagnosed doesn't require that you are unable to function normally, just have difficulties is enough; most on this forum are either HFA or aspergers (the distinction is muddy), which implies that they are able to function in society (albeit with difficulty/support). if you are actually disabled, you are diagnosed with "medium to low functioning" autism.

This makes a lot of sense
+1

The Doctors, Psychologists, Researchers and Teachers at the school for gifted children I attended when I was a child, ingrained within me the principle that forms the very core of my belief system. That Autism is a gift to be capitalized upon, you need only know how.

Of course, it's easy for me to adhere to the ideal that Autism is gift, and not a disability, largely because I can perform basic functions such as controlled movement and speech.

To the worst suffers of Autism, those that can neither move or talk, spend all their time bedridden, and to whom the very basic functions of keeping their eyes open a given length of time, will not only disagree with that belief, they won't be able to comprehend it.

Fortunately the spectrum is vast, and that form of Autism is so rare it's almost completely unheard of.



I can immediately think of two possible answers.

The first, is that a lot of people with Autism, only have a very minor form of it. Most of the time it does not impact their lives, and on those rare occurrences when it does make an appearance, it's nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

Then there's people like myself whose form of Autism is typically very low functioning. However, with proper guidance and instruction, we can be taught how to manage our Autism. Nullifying the negative traits, while promoting the positive ones.

Disability in is extremely difficult to get in any country. Nobody gets it, if they are functioning very well. You have to be evaluated by health professionals who agree that you are disabled before you can get it.

It requires an impairment in functioning, so people no longer impaired no longer have an active form of it - they have a residual form, which is not the same and I wish they'd make that distinction when talking about it. Autism, even in its higher functioning forms, is still a disability and causes significant impairments in functioning. Took me a while to realise this was why I couldn't relate to people talking about how it's just a difference, that it's a gift even though I'm high functioning.

Second to last one is a good point:
http://www.lettersfromaspergia.com/2015 ... nt.html?m=

Bye bye accommodations, a group of residual Asperger's people think they speak for every autistic and because they're not disabled, none of us are.

Yes, mine disable me. Not as much as a lot of people, but enough that I have problems in functioning. I would be unable to live on my own, at least at the moment, 17 seems too young to try though - how'd it end up that you moved out?

even if it seems like someone is doing well on the outside it doesn't necessarily mean they are doing well on the inside. I am supposed to graduate from university this coming spring, I have two part time jobs, moved out of my parents house and became financially independent when I was 18, and I have a boyfriend as well as a few friends. on the surface I don't seem like I'm struggling at all, it seems like I've got myself sorted out. but underneath that I can't keep track of my budget for s**t, with rent and bills and groceries and special interest supplies (without these what is even the point in life) each paycheck gets used up like a week before the next one comes. sometimes my utilities get shut off because i forget to pay. I haven't had internet at my house for over a year because I can't deal with the cable company. I owe Comcast 300-some dollars because their service didn't actually reach my house and they never fixed it so I never paid, and tried to sort it out with them for months but no one there was willing or able to help me. my house is a f*****g wreck, I haven't done dishes in a month and there is trash and dirty clothes everywhere. the only reason I've gotten this far in university is because I'm majoring in sculpture and it's not as academically structured. I still have to take finite or calculus for my degree, which I will have to do the summer after I'm supposed to graduate. The head professor of my department bullies me and treats me like I'm too stupid to understand basic concepts, and he gets away with it. even in sculpture, I can't fit in with the NTs. they are so invested in deep conversation art, direct social and political commentary, the business of art, basically making art for other people and not really spending a lot of time doing it. everything has to have meaning, and if it is a straightforward and poignant meaning that can be put in a white box it makes it better to them. interacting with people in my daily life and working my ass off to maintain this (overcompensation?) stresses me out so much, I shut down and oftentimes don't "wake up" until after my morning class has already started, or melt down and
cry until i shut down. other times I'm so overwhelmed I stay up all night scratching my skin off and occasionally going on long tangents on wp. sorry. I know I qualify for disability support but it's the same conundrum you're describing, i obviously have the capability to sort myself out and if I give up then I'm a piece of undeserving s**t.

You are living on your own now? That is great. It's hard, very hard. You have to remember that Autistics who have families and great jobs did most likely did not have those families and great jobs at 17. Each step in your life will take a lot of time to get used to and to be able to handle and you will have to gradually grow a little at a time and eventually you might be able to have those things as well. But it is always a big challenge. I have been married for almost 15 years but it is extremely difficult and there are so many times when I don't know if I can do it. I also dropped out of school so I never finished college because it was too hard with my Aspie issues. I started my first two years of college as African American valedictorian at a school that rivaled Ivy League. Then I left because the pressures and stresses were too much. Then I went to a small school and ended up flunking out. Then I took years off and went back to college once more time and made Dean's list every semester until my final year. It took me about 6 years to complete the first three. In my final year I dropped out with a 3.48 GPA. Then I spent 26 years trying to work but could not keep a job for more than a year at a time. I got married during that time and it's been very difficult keeping a marriage and a household. I did not get diagnosed until a year ago and looking back I now know that most of the troubles I had, if not all of them that kept me from succeeding were due to Autistic reasons. I had to drop out of university permanently because I was having meltdowns every day.

I think in a way it was good that I did not know I was Aspie even though if I had known I would have been able to have accommodations and help and would have most likely graduated with all kinds of degrees and honors and perhaps been able to have a great job that I would have been able to hold on to. But without knowing, what I did learn was to persevere and never give up and that I can survive anything no matter how hard it gets. So I don't know that Autistics who have families and jobs have it easier, I think that they have just figured out how to keep going and have found situations that have been able to work for them even with their disability.

But you can do it. It is very hard especially in a new situation when you have to figure out new routines and coping mechanisms to get by and succeed. That takes time. But you will get it. And each time you have a significant change in your life like living by yourself for the first time, or marriage, or job, or children, you will need to again learn new routines and coping mechanisms and compensations. So it's a never ending journey. But you can do it.

yesss im noot full answer

There is a lot of misuse of terminology. Disability does not neccesarly mean inability, it can mean in inability, but more often then not it means impaired ability. Disadvantaged does not neccessarly equate to disability. If you are black in America you may have plenty of ability but may not be employable because of descrimination compounded by an arrest record because of "driving while black" . Many very able Autistics because of a combination of bieng so small a minority and thier different abilities in the area most people consider most important social communication are going to function in society as if they were severely impaired. This does not mean there are no real impairments in autism. Lack of planning ability is going to hurt you in any society.

Sensory can be a difference that increases ability but as it gets severe becomes a disability. Most Autistics have a combination of disadvantage and disability sometimes in closely related areas. In each autistic what and how much is disabling and what and how much is a disadvantage is going vary.

Summarizing the above "it's complicated" . Another words both those that say it is just or for the most part a disability and those who say it is just or for the most part a difference are both wrong and thier views hurt autistic people. Those who have assumed Autism is just a disability have hurt autistic people by non reconigition of ability, institutionalization and harmful treatments and "cures". Autism is just a difference/gift thinking is often an overreacation to it is a harmful disease disability thinking that has predominated since the 1940's. This line of thinking has ailiened autistics who have real disabilities. It has distorted the meaning of nuerodiversity and increasing numbers of autistics now associate the Neurodiversity movement as not as accepting differences as intended, but as elitism excluding them. Since the only other predominate way of thinking is the impairment thinking it has caused many autistics to think of themselves as broken and not to recognize how much ability they have and how much of their troubles are really the result of disadvantages and not disabilities.

This is the best way I can describe life for me:

Let's say person A has a capacity to reach 80 and I have a capacity to reach 100.
Person A gets going and reaches 80 in 20 minutes going right along.
I can't get going and stress and deal with anxiety and disorganization, etc., etc. for 15 minutes and then reach 100 in the last 5 minutes.
It *LOOKS* like I didn't have any struggles because I achieved something more than person A, and people assume that we both put in the same relative effort to reach our capacity.

But the inner reality is I do have a deep struggle to get through all the obstacles in order to accomplish anything. It is only my capacity for learning and understanding things very quickly that has allowed me to overcome the obstacles and still look like everything is fine. Some others may struggle and struggle and struggle to reach only 60. We have different capacities for achievement, but the outward achievement is not and indication of the amount of struggle to reach it.

If I had no limitations, my ability to reach 100 in five minutes would allow me to do four times as much in this hypothetical situation. But, I do have struggles and limitations that limit my own personal achievement.

I'm not going to whine about it, because I do understand that I am still achieving more than most. But I also live with limited social outlets because I *still* have a hard time making and keeping friends even though I want them. The few people (my family) who know me very, very well see the struggle. It is mostly internal and private (except for whatever social thing I'm doing that limits friendship), so most only see the outward achievement.

I think many different kinds of people have various internal struggles that limit their achievement. Perhaps it is regular anxiety or depression, perhaps it is a physical limitation, perhaps it is psychological trauma, perhaps it is economic disadvantage. We need to stop looking at outward achievement as the definition of who people are or what they can do. It is not fair to say "Well, that person achieves such-and-such wonderful thing, so they must have no struggles. It *must* come easy for them!". Neither is it fair to say that because another person does NOT achieve a lot it is a sign of disability or even a character flaw.

I don't find that I'm disabled by my Spectrum symptoms.

I find that I'm impaired, though.

Here is a great article that I found while researching Autism Burnout a few months ago. I posted an excerpt below from this article that can be applicable here in this thread.

http://archive.autistics.org/library/more-autistic.html

Here is the excerpt that I think applies to this thread:

An Analogy for Some Kinds of Autistic Skill Acquisition

The following is only an analogy. The real world is much more complicated than this, and this is not true for all autistics.

Pretend there is a way of measuring doing a certain skill, so that there is a "resting performance level" in that skill and an "active performance level" in that skill. The scale is from 0 to 10.

9 or 10 is the way people are expected to perform in that skill.

Most NTs have a resting ability of 7 to 10 in a skill they have either learned or been born with.

Many autistics have a resting ability of 0 to 3.

In order for an NT to do that thing, it takes either very little effort or no effort. If their resting level in that skill is 10, then they don't even realize that they are using that skill.

In order for an autistic to do that thing, it takes considerably more effort. It takes the degree of effort that it takes NTs to do things that they usually have a resting ability of 0 to 3 in, such as multiplying large numbers in their head.

But when an autistic gets practice, they get used to pushing themselves.

They may push themselves so that in public they are functioning at between 7 and 10 in that skill at all times.

The NTs around them, taking for granted that 7 is the lower limit, don't even recognize that the person maybe had to climb all the way up from 0 to get to 7. They start taking for granted the autistic person's ability in that area, because it is within the limits of the only range of abilities they even know. The autistic person's effort gets unintentionally ignored, and NTs wonder what's going on when the autistic person gets exhausted and overloaded from doing "normal" things, or suddenly stops being able to do something they were "good at" before.

One example of a thing that NTs are usually at a 10 at is recognizing the objects in front of them. Unless they have had brain damage (at which point they're not technically NT anymore), they usually can easily and effortlessly perceive and differentiate between familiar objects and name them.

Some autistic people, in order to do that, have to do things like decide to look at something, see a garble of shapes, start differentiating individual shapes, focus in on one of the shapes, figure out that the shape is a Thing, figure out what the Thing is, and figure out what the Thing does. And that's all just to get to the bare minimum of what NTs do automatically, and it's leaving out things like differentiating one sense from another and doing this in a non-passive setting.

Doing that kind of thing all day with all your senses can be very tiring and overloading. That does not mean doing all the things NTs do to function all day, mind you, it just means understanding our surroundings. That's the background that a lot of autistic people have to work up to to then do the "ordinary" things like go to school, obey teachers, do schoolwork, housework, and stuff.

Some autistic people can get extraordinarily good at holding this together to the point where it becomes pseudo-automatic (doesn't require conscious effort, but takes a huge energy drain), or can devise ways of dealing with the world that don't involve having to perceive all of it all the time, but there are usually things going on that an autistic person is doing consciously that are a lot more basic than what you're used to thinking about. It's not necessarily always in the area of sensory perception; that's just one of many things that can be like that for us.

It doesn't often get recognized that even if an autistic person gets up to a metaphorical level of 7 to 10 in a skill, and performs that skill in that manner on a regular basis, in all likelihood they are still performing all of the complex maneuvering consciously. We are less likely than NTs to just get used to things, and even when it becomes pseudo-automatic the drain on our resources does not necessarily go away.

The natural inclination of many NTs when they see an autistic person at a 7 to 10 in that skill is to believe that that skill has been "mastered" and is now fully automatic, requiring very little effort. They then push the autistic person to pile more skills on top of that skill, into a really big stack. The problem is that the more skills get added that the person then has to monitor and deal with, the more likely that the lower-level skills will falter and bring the whole metaphorical "house of cards" down. That can look like overload, shutdown, or meltdown when that happens.

When it happens for a long time and some of the skills do not get built back up again, then it often gets called "regression", which is not a word I'm fond of. I suspect that's one reason that autistic people sometimes shut down on skills we've supposedly mastered a long time ago when learning new things. Skill mastery simply doesn't work the same for us.

^^^Very well said.

When I was in elementary school and junior high, I did well in school easily.
When high school hit, the amount of stuff I had to keep track of overwhelmed my executive function ability.
In college, too, I had a very difficult time managing things.
I *DID* it, but it cost me a lot, mainly in terms of extreme stress and meltdowns.

My mother once told me that "Well, smart kids slow down." That is not my experience. I didn't "slow down." I got to my threshold of being able to cope. My EF skills maxed out. It wasn't because all of a sudden I wasn't as smart or I didn't learn as quickly.

That is just an example of other people wondering why you can't do what you used to be able to do.