Psychiatrist: "AS or BS?"

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I had an interesting encounter with my psychiatrist the other day. First some background information:

I am capable of colloquial speech; and I can use it. I learned it during my first year or two of college (five years ago). However, I feel that "slang"/"modern English" is much less imprecise than my usual "Aspie" mode of speech, which is perfectly grammatical, uses "big words" (which are more precise) and fewer contractions, and generally sounds as though I am reading a book out loud. It also makes me seem more intelligent than I actually am.

Consequently, I prefer the more eccentric mode of speech. In a way, it is my "first language", and the "NT talk" I use for interactions with people on the street seems like a stilted sort of pidgin English that serves for small talk and very little else.

When I can, when I know I'll be understood, I talk the way I want to talk.

This includes the time I spend with the psychiatrist, who regulates my meds and was the one to diagnose AS for me to begin with (some months ago).

At my last appointment, I replied a compliment in a particularly Aspie way ("I accept your attempt at encouragement"), which I wouldn't have said were she a fellow student who isn't comfortable with my eccentricities. She replied with "Stop being so AS!" and commented on whether some of my AS mightn't be "BS" (bullshit--in other words, an act). I was rather unsure how to respond to her, but I replied that I talk the way I do because it's more comfortable for me--despite the fact that I can talk somewhat like an NT, if I want to.

I asked my roommate about this, and she confirmed my idea that I may actually enjoy having some of the AS symptoms that I do have--that I deliberately display my own eccentricity as a way of saying, "I don't have to be a carbon copy of everyone else. I act the way I want to act; so you'll just have to live with it." It's a sort of social defiance, I think.

My reasons? After the years I spent trying to fit in while I was growing up, I'm just tired of trying; and while I'll stop short of anything I think might be hurtful, I'm going to be as eccentric as I darn well please, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

I think that perhaps, with my skill at acting NT, I could probably have easily avoided a diagnosis of AS if I had acted that way during my first diagnostic appointment. But I don't like to act NT; and when I'm tense, I tend towards much more AS-like behavior.

So perhaps what I have is either mild AS or a very well-compensated-for moderate AS. My special interests are still a big problem for me--some of my posts here have been about my bad grades, despite normal intelligence, being caused at least partially by obsessions with things that don't contribute to my schooling. I do have some problems with social situations; I prefer to be alone; and I'm easily stressed when I can't have privacy. But, other than that (and with the avoidance of crowds, polyester, and unexpected physical contact), it seems that with the proper "NT act", I could probably fool most people into thinking I was a little strange, but not an Aspie at all.

The thing is, I don't want to fool them. I want to be who I am.

Is it like this for any of you--that you deliberately don't act NT, just because it's uncomfortable, annoying, boring, etc.?

Or do you think, like my psychiatrist seems to wonder, that perhaps some of my AS might just be BS?

I know what ur talking about and i can relate to the things that you say. But what u said about "deliberately don't act NT", well i am the opposite. I try extremely hard to act NT and always fail, but i kind of have an obsession to act normal and have done ever since i can remember. This has spelled trouble for me as people expect me to be normal but i struggle with all the things NT's do in life like speech, body language etc.

We're not prone to BS-ing as it is. I think NTs who "understand" AS simply want us to stop being that way sometimes. It's probably as annoying to them as mindless chit chat is to us.

I feel like it's more of an act to use Modern English and slang because I have to constantly think about what I'm going to say. It's so much easier to use the big words and sound like I'm just so smart. I know I don't know everything, but when I'm comfortable with someone, the Professor-speak just oozes out. It's an effort to use slang that I haven't incorporated into my pattern of speech.

If you're more comfortable speaking like a professor rather than like your peers, you're not BS-ing. It's when you speak like your peers that you're faking it. Am I right?

I think many Aspies can learn to "pass" but that doesn't mean it is your natural response. I tried very hard after I graduated from high school not to be strange because I had a diagnosis not of being on the spectrum but in the mental illness catagories. So it was not something that I felt particularly good about. Although friends considered me to be weird or a freak it was in a good way and took those comments as more of a compliment. However - when I was working I was occasionally medicating and did not have other responsibilities so I could rest and recuperate more from the efforts of the social interactions. Then even before I heard of AS or HFA (when my son was diagnosed with HFA) - I decided that I had other things to concentrate on and acting a certain way to fit in better was not one of them as my husband and family are used to me eccentricities. So - I would say that just because you KNOW about your AS now that does not mean anything different except that you perhaps are more comfortable being who you are naturally. I think for ease of moving through certain social situations however we tend to put on a persona or certain way of behavior that just makes things easier. I know the "difference" between regular speech and what would be normal for me because people responded negatively even in school - like I was trying to be a snob or something or laughing that I was weird. So learning to curb that was natural in order to avoid strange reactions.

Exactly.

I suppose the only "BS" about it is that it seems as though I'm more Aspie than I really am. It is often assumed that I will always act as "normal" as I possibly can--and when I don't, my actual level of mastery with NT-style social skills (I have good social skills for an Aspie, bad for an NT) is hidden.

Get a different therapist!

When I speak, I do so with uncolloquial language and perfect grammar. It's more natural for me to speak like that because that's the way my mind thinks. Whereas when I speak colloquially I often have to modulate the message. It also seems unnatural hearing it come from my mouth, as if it's faked. So I can very much relate to your experience Callista.

I suppose that because people generally don't speak the way we do, our way of speaking may seem unnatural and forced to them. I don't think you should get mad with your therapist for saying what she did though. She only spoke her mind. People's first understanding of someone else's mental state tend to become based on their own experiences unless they can relate to the other person's experiences, so probably this woman simply isn't all that experienced with AS. Maybe she learnt something from your response, but remember it's also her job to be skeptical. I wouldn't take what she said too personally.

Ah cut to the chase of the matter here

Key word you said. Psychiatrist. Well lets get down to the BS of psychiatry, its one person with an academic qualification that gives them a pseudo-clinical bit of professional power and its down to personal ego and opinion if your A condition B syndrome or C lunatic

Case closed, get someone who knows what there talking about its the most over subscribed qualification in the western world theres more where that one came from

I am like this.
I tend not to act so much anymore.
It never really gets me anywhere anyway, because sooner or later everyone notices something, and makes a big deal out of it.

I remember being told to "stop being so weird!"
By a "friend" who apparently thought that it was all just me wanting to "be different."

I like language, linguistics, sematics, using big words, playing with words, being very sarcastic. It is possible to write an absolutely true statement about someone that they will take as a compliment and you (and people who know you well) see as an insult. I think those are the best insults.

I do annoy people who don't know me so well because they sometimes need a dictionary to read my posts. I also annoy them by questioning their malapropisms (using the wrong big word for the intended meaning).

I have a hard time tolerating ambiguity - and some slang speech really does become very ambiguous. And the writer when questioned about intention - gets mad because somehow I'm supposed to know what they meant.

When I'm being considerate of those who don't like big words, I will either use smaller words but this isn't as much fun, or put the meaning in brackets after - as I did above.

The English language has much potential for being extremely precise, I don't like it when it is misused. The exception is in matters of love and affection - where most of the words are so abused they are totally ambiguous.

I do like the occasional double entendre - so most of the time if I write something ambiguous - I mean all the potential meanings though I may only admit to one.

I speak in a very formal and eloquent way, compared to to my Peers, and even the NTs in my Family. They might think that I'm stuck-up, but I speak to people in a way that I understand. Not in the way that North American Society wants me to do so. I refuse to use the Slang and the Speech Patterns that are used by NTs. Their way of Speaking sounds very flakey to me. It sounds very fake. Nothing is worse than having a Mom who talks to me like she's Fifteen Years Old. I love her, but I wish that she could realise that not every young Female in North America is a Valley Girl. It got the best of me, after Dinner, tonight and all that I've felt like doing was stimming, by working on a colour Sketch of one of my London Routemasters. London and her previous Buses have become the answer to all of my troubles, which are mostly Social, as apposed to Food. I wish that Canadians would just speak with the proper Grammar that I used to hear, in Canada.

I used to love to read the dictionary when I was a kid. I used to stay up late and read tons of books, but I just found words fascinating and with the dictionary there was always another exciting word so it would be hard to stop (lol). Even now when I was showing my son the finer points of dictionary usage I remembered fondly my adventures. I used to love diagramming sentences too. I don't doubt that must have appeared strange to the other kids.

I was just writing about this on another board earlier today

Briefly: You are not faking it. She's messing with your mind.

I speak like that too. It's how we're wired. Just cus we can cover it with a bandaid - speaking NT - doesn't mean we're not Aspie.

I too will act as weird as I damn well please as long as I'm not hurting anyone. Life is too short to deny yourself simple, few pleasures just because "someone" out there might be "offended."

Kate

While I am a tad Militant about my Aspieness (I was this way before I even knew this place existed. Heck, give me some time and I can probably find an entry or 5 in my livejournal), I don't actually get people in person that are condesending about it in person.

People did pick on me a fair amount in highschool, but for the most part they didn't understand AS. For the most part, it doesn't seem to come up unless I bring it up.

I suspect I would have been picked on a lot more if I wasn't scary. My icon over there? The attitude expressed in there is hardly anything new. (Also, I'm a LOT less angry then I was back then.)

I did however make a concious effort to be strange, and continue to do so Though it's not really an Asperger's Specific thing.

Do you like her as a person, and are you comfortable with her?

I know what you mean. I've embraced my minor eccentricities (not my major ones), long before I came across the AS diagnosis. People who got to know me have always thought I was odd or eccentric, but in a happy-go-lucky sort of way. I just let myself loose, laughed at a variety of things and had, at times, a dry wit and humorous edge to my speech. It's just the way I was, but it wasn't something I let loose at just any time. It depended on the sort of environment I happened to be in, and if I felt secure, I just stopped acting normal.

One must realize that for someone who is considerably anxious and tense most of the time, I just need to see the more happier sides of people. Discontention annoys me, and I don't understand the nature of disagreements most of the time. So, I do things to extract certain responses from people. It's fun.

Internally, though, I am much more serious, extremely hypervigilant and intensely alert, a bit different from what people might see in me at an external level.

- Ray M -