I want to interview people with these disorders:

Post Reply New Topic

ADD and/or PDD, ADHD, High-functioning Autism, Cyclothymia, OCD, and PTSD.

EDIT: I am willing to interview Aspies as well, just to get a better understanding. No two Aspies are exactly alike.

*Please read the entire post before replying*

The reason I want to interview people with these disorders is because I'm preparing to write a book. I have friends with some of these disorders, but they're out of reach for me at the moment. If any of you have these disorders, please PM me and tell me about your disorder, it would help a whole lot with the book that I'm preparing to write. I have books right now that describe these disorders in detail, but I also want to know how they affect you. You know yourself better than any textbook in the world, so I want to get some input from those who have these disorders.

Please provide information from reliable sources so I know that your statements are accurate.

Thanks in advance.

By the way, if anyone is wondering, I have Asperger's Syndrome.

Can I ask what you mean by reliable sources?

(Why "high-functioning" autism specifically, also?)

I'm not who you want to interview (I'm an Aspie, so I'm about to be written out of the DSM)

Now I get it. I thought you were about to proclaim yourself an expert and write a non-fiction book.

But isn't a lot of it really subjective? Plus, there's a lot of misinformation on websites that look expert.

I could not help you out without specific questions.

What about Non-Verbal Learning Disorders?


I've had several neuropsychological evaluations and i've never been officially Dx-ed with
an Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

But all the psychologists who have tested me believe I fit the general characteristics of Non-Verbal Learning Disability and that's clearly stated in the results of my evals. Many experts believe Non-Verbal Learning Disability and Asperger's are the same disorder.


I'm not qualified to have a professional opinion about all that though.


All I can say is that I do exhibit many, if not all, of the traits often associated with Asperger's and I have also been Dx-ed with Schizoid or Schizotypal Personality Disorder depending on the particular evaluation.

If you want people to tell you about what their disorder is like for them, as opposed to getting your information from textbooks and such, then why do you need them to cite their sources? Surely the most reliable source for a person's own experiences is the person themself?

I agree with that. Making people cite their sources to discuss their own internal experiences, shows both a lack of trust in the people concerned (normally in conversations about experience, nobody has to cite their sources for anything at all, so why should disabled people be different?), and an over-trust in the ability of professional "experts" to get their views of life with a particular condition accurate enough to match the experiences of those with the condition.

Many advances in the study of autism have come, not because autistic people cited their sources every time we described a personal experience, but rather because we have insisted, often over the opposition of professionals who didn't believe we could possibly be accurate, on describing experiences that professionals had never heard of or written about before. Over time, studies have been done that confirm some of these experiences existed. But if we had been restricted to citing sources to prove that our experiences were valid, these changes never would have come about -- it would have been a vicious cycle in which we couldn't describe anything that wasn't already described, and thus couldn't describe anything new or interesting.

Additionally, there has been a long history of disabled people being told that we have no right to describe our own experiences, that professionals know best about us, and that we are constitutionally incapable of having insight into our own lives and conditions. Or even that we are incapable of telling the truth (an idea that showed up when people diagnosed with mental illness began writing about the poor conditions in insane asylums -- the superintendents decided to start that myth in order to protect themselves from accountability). Insisting that people cite sources only continues along those same lines and reinforces these prejudices against disabled people. Is that really what you want to be doing here?

If you still insist that people cite sources, you will not be getting the genuine experiences of the people you are talking to. You will only be getting those experiences that match what you could have already found doing research into what professionals believe about our experiences. You will also be restricting yourself to the experiences of those people who are capable of doing the kind of research that results in the ability to cite sources at all.

Several things that would not have ever been found unless autistic people had given our experiences without citing sources:

* Perceptual differences from nonautistic perception. (Including but not limited to what people call "sensory issues".)
* The fact that autistic people do usually have theory of mind (the ability to understand that other people have minds of their own).
* The fact that autistic people do usually have empathy.
* The fact that autistic people do have an inner life at all
* The fact that autistic people have imaginations
* Knowledge of the many strategies that autistic people use in order to get by in a nonautistic world
* Knowledge of the internal experiences of autistic people who pass for normal
* Knowledge of the internal experiences of autistic people who are seen as so severe that they are assumed incapable of describing internal experiences
* Knowledge of what it is like to use a sensory-pattern-based way of understanding the world rather than a conceptual-based understanding (this is for some people only of course)
* Understanding that autistic people's sensory differences are not the sort of thing that psychoanalytic theories can account for (for instance Gunilla Gerland protesting Swedish psychoanalytic thought about her own biography, such as the professionals deciding that the way she enjoyed running her hands over smooth rounded surfaces was really a longing for the curves of the mother)

And much, much more. Some of these things are now accepted by many professionals in the field, and some still have myths built up around them. But all of them come out of autistic people going "Screw the sources, this is what I really experience and you will listen to me." Many of these things would never have been remotely guessed by nonautistic people until autistic people did the work of insisting that these things were real, regardless of what any professional may believe or of what received wisdom tells nonautistic people about autistic experiences.

So if you want our real experiences, ditch the "cite your sources" thing. It penalizes those whose experiences are outside of what professionals say about a condition, as well as those whose experiences are in the minority for people with a condition (but still representative of some people with that condition) whose experiences, while genuine forms of that condition, are less likely to be recorded elsewhere. And for pete's sake, don't assume people aren't telling the truth when they discuss their experiences with you. At some point just trust people. I'm involved in actual research studies that depend on things like personal accounts by autistic and other disabled people of their experiences with the medical profession. And even we don't require some kind of proof that the subjects' statements are accurate. If people's word is good enough for us, it ought to be good enough for you.

Solicitations of this type are not allowed without prior permission from the site owner. Am locking until can confirm whether or not such permission exists.