Re: Functional?

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I wonder about how my level of functioning would be perceived by a professional. I do okay, but by whose standards? I have no career, no romantic relationship and no social life. I'm okay but mainly because I've stopped beating myself up about what I can't manage to do. Do you have to keep trying and failing? What if you don't try because you don't have the psychic energy? The way I look at it is, the fact that I don't drink anymore doesn't make me any less an alcoholic. Thoughts?

In what sense are you an alcoholic, if you don't drink? If you've content the way you are, I'm not going to say you have to do any of those things! It is your life!

That's semantics. That's not my question.

Nothing is expected of us beyond that which we have been given ... and we do best by not expecting any more ourselves ... and that fact that I no longer have to drink in order to feel okay seems to prove a steady balance between actual ability and reasonable expectation.

Thank you-but I'm sorry I even put in the example of the drinking. It really has nothing to do with my question. It was just an example of how a label can be true and not true. How does someone determine someone's level of functioning in life? Who sets the standards? That is my question. ( for the purpose of a diagnosis.)

That's.. a really good question.
I wonder about it a lot, honestly. I realized the other day that for the first time in my life, I'm actually not depressed. Of course, that's probably because I have very little contact with anybody besides Kris. I'm fairly certain that if I were thrust out into the world, I would sink and drown.. like I always did before. I'm not going crazy because I avoid stress and I'm sheltered. I don't have people putting me down (besides, occasionally, trolls..) because I don't have much contact with many people.

I know this wasn't any help, 'cause all I said was that I wonder the same thing as you do.. I don't have any answers, just the same question.

Actually, I thought of a different way to phrase it in relation to the drinking.
I don't have a problem with alcohol right now because I don't drink but...
If I did take a drink I would have major problems...because I am an alcoholic.
Am I considered functional because I don't fail-which is only because I don't try?

Even if it might go slightly off-topic, I think your alcoholism analogy was a fairly good one. It kinda addressed the issue of how a disorder still exists even if you avoid the things that trigger increased symptoms, and the disability that can result from having to avoid those triggers in order to not completely lose your mind. It wasn't a perfect comparison, but it wasn't a bad one either.

There's also that question of how you explain a disability and demonstrate it without having to go through something horrible (again) to do so. I seem better than I used to seem, but if I were thrust back into the environments that turned me into a total wreak before, I can't imagine that the results would be any better. It's really a catch-22. Kinda like how in order to be properly tested for celiac disease, someone has to have been consistently eating gluten for awhile. If they stopped eating it and started doing better, the test may come up negative even if they do have it.

I just feel like I function because I can work and pay bills etc. But it takes everything I've got to maintain a very small little life.

In relation to alcohol, I also don't drink it, apart from with my parents on special occasions, since I only drink it to get drunk, otherwise. Nobody with any understanding of these things would consider you a failure for not drinking if you were an alcoholic. Who are you asking, anyway? Why are you subject to their judgement, whoever they are? Are they God?

I don't know what it means to be functional. Is it the ability to survive in this world? Or the ability survive and be happy as well? I wonder how many people are truly functional. There can be other reasons for not functioning besides autism. In my own case depression is more debilitating than autism. There are too many variables to consider.

My question had little to do with alcohol- I was using it as an analogy only.

Sorry if I'm missing the point but...

You're functioning to the best of your ability at this time, right? Isn't that all anyone can ask? It can be easy to judge yourself by other people's standards, but it isn't always fair to yourself to do that.

Functional in terms of assessing disability. I know there are guidelines, but is the college graduate who works as a janitor less functional than someone with Down's Syndrome who works as a janitor? They would not be assessed by the same criteria, I think. How do the professionals decide?

If the analogy is a good one, the answer also applies to whatever the analogy was for. Whose judgement do you want!?

All of that is both relative to need and subject to ability. Some of us need to function better than others, hence we suffer more even if our inabilities are no greater than theirs. Then in my own experience, trying harder just makes the next failure more painful. And of course, all of that is additionally subject to the perceptions of the one doing the diagnosis in relation to our actual needs and abilities ... and that is why I said what I did about a steady balance between actual ability and reasonable expectation.