Do your comormids cause you more difficulty then autism?

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Do your various co-morbid disorders cause you more difficulty then autism itself?
What are they?

Mine are anxiety disorder, dysthemia, OCD, dyspraxia.

Yes. Depression.

same here. that and social anxiety + hormone induced hulk-rages = big ****ing mess is what my life is.

My anxiety and (current) depression cause me more problems. My AS isn't really a big problem.

I would say no because I feel more disabled by my autism; the meltdowns from sudden change or loss of emotional control, the need for routines, the social withdrawal and when around people the social confusion. Not to mention them shutdowns after a long social encounter.

However I do have epilepsy which only seems to trigger every couple of weeks of from exposure the flashing lights, or having too much stress, or sugar/caffeine/ alcohol. It can be avoided but sometimes it pops up randomly. It does increase paranoia (from auditory hallucinations) and puts me out of commission and the next day my brain is still recovering.

There's hypoglycemia too which can also be avoided if I keep to a strict eating routine.

There's ADHD which can be irritating but can be managed through medication and supplements. My hyperactivity leads to restlessness and the inability to be able to focus and I'm impulsive and have very little emotions, and my more inattentive symptoms make me more lethargic/ snappish/ less motivated/ maybe depressed. It's frustrating for the most part but not disabling. Without my meds I think the combination of autism and ADHD would be.

There's PMDD which is severe pms which can make me more angry than usual by things and depressed accompanied by occasional suicidal thoughts. But it's a few days to a week.

There primary dysmennorhea which is severe period pain one day of my cycle but it is managed by taking codeine.

Still, I would say the disorder that affects me the most is my autism. I think my symptoms are the most severe and constant and really affect my life.

If I'm not on my medicine, yes. My anxiety is a severe disability if I'm not taking medication - it sends me into panic attacks and disrupts my entire life. However since I'm on medicine, it doesn't do much beside make me a little paranoid on occasion, something which I can brush off. Prosopagnosia is annoying, but I wouldn't say it's too bad of a disability. It just makes me a little embarrassed and nervous when approaching someone.

Yeah, the ADHD is much worse than the troubles produced by my AS symptoms.

Yes, very badly too. I was diagnosed with ADHD, a slight learning disability and Extremely severe anxiety. A lot of people don't understand the conflict it causes for my autism when these all act up at once. I mean its not as bad all the time but its worse in public because I feel as if they are tested with all that goes on around me, I am more timid and easy to startle... depending on my moods.

It's hard because people usually only see me as being autistic too. My autism is mild and it doesn't affect as much but with all of those other disorders I have combined... lots and LOTS of major problems that you wouldn;t even believe.

I don't know if my depression and mood swings are totally independent from my autism. I can kind of link the two together as my most prominent "autistic" symptoms are in the "obsessive/rigid/perseverative" category as opposed to the "socially inappropriate" category. There's also some overlap in terms of introversion / social disinterest. Not all autistics are introverted, but it seems most depressive people are highly introverted. I guess I don't know if it's just coincidental overlap or that the symptoms that are common to both autism and depression tend to have a multiplicative interaction. Thus either one by itself is not as severe as the combination of the two. At least that's how it seems to me.

My depression causes more problems for me, than my autism does. A lot more problems.

body dysmorphic disorder/pure obsessional thoughts
depression or bipolar depression, whatever it is
social anxiety
generalized anxiety/panic attacks

I voted yes but I think these are unentangleable from my Asperger's in me anyway.

BDD is severe and disabling for me but I wouldn't have it were I not so obsessive, detail-oriented, and all-or-nothing, attributable to Asperger's.

Not really. I'd say my biggest problems are those related to AS specifically. If I could communicate as well as a normal person then I might as well be a clone of Jesus. Well, not really, but my socialization problems really are the only thing standing in my way from being able to live the life I want. My executive dysfunction, anxiety, obsessions, and depression really aren't that big of an issue, although occasionally they do present problems.

Last edited by SammichEater on 28 May 2011, 8:34 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I forgot to mention I have BDD aswell, it's severe enough for me think about every hour or so, not severe enough to be medicated.

No.

I have diagnosed:

Asperger's Syndrome, ADHD, anxiety disorder (not particularly specified, but not sure if it would be NOS), depression which has been diagnosed as both major depressive disorder and depressive disorder-NOS.

I have undiagnosed:

A chronic pain condition that may be fibromyalgia.

If you combine all my comorbids, then yes, they do cause me more difficulty. Individually, I don't know. I spend a lot of my time trying to map out the consequences and symptoms of each condition. Some things overlap in ways that can make it difficult, though.

Specific things I know:

* I managed to fail to pick up a lot of common life skills (activities of daily living) without realizing it. I understand this is common on the autistic spectrum. A basic skill I missed is knowing how to ask for help, although I am better about it now. Not knowing that has caused me a lot of trouble over my life.

* Even with the skills I do have, it's hard to shift my focus to doing anything with them. I think both autism and ADHD can cause this, but I think the weight of this goes to ADHD. Fibromyalgia can also impact concentration, focus, and other related things, making executive function all the more difficult.

* AS, ADHD, and fibromyalgia can cause sensory problems. I don't know how severe my problems are (but have been told they sound moderately bad), but having two conditions that typically cause sensory sensitivities and overload, and a third that has a good chance of doing so...well, I don't think they stack in a linear fashion so much as it just makes it pretty certain.

* I have spent a ton of energy building coping mechanisms and maintaining them: Managing my suicidal ideation, defusing anxiety before it became severe, defusing panic attacks before they became severe, ignoring and working around pain, trying to sustain social facades for interacting with other people, trying to keep track of the things I should and should not say in social situations, ignoring and working around sensory overload. It's pretty exhausting to try to focus so much cognitive effort on just trying to function around disabling conditions. I'm not even sure if I managed to build up any coping mechanisms for my ADHD. As far as I can tell it responds to medication and little else. Or it may be I just don't have the cognitive bandwidth to spare for that on top of everything else.

One of the effects of learning that I have these conditions is that I've noticed the things I was ignoring or holding back, and once I noticed them and acknowledged they were there and real, it became harder to maintain mechanisms. The pain is more noticeable all the time. The sensory overload is harder to get around and a lot of things I used to do are more difficult because I am more aware of the impact of doing them. I let go of my social facades, although not so much my "social scripts." Not sure I could let go of those.

One of the biggest barriers I've had to getting work is that I can't interview. That is, I have never been hired for a job that I've interviewed for. This has had a pretty big impact on my ability to support myself. Admittedly, all kinds of other factors play a role once I have a job, although I think primarily AS and ADHD have made it difficult for me to hold jobs (or stay in school). Medicating my ADHD made it possible to stay longer, but I still ultimately burned out.

So I don't know. I don't think it's so fuzzy that it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. I do think that each plays off the other to make things harder than they need to be. Trying to manage a lot of pain makes it much harder for me to focus on filtering my social responses, for example. And for whatever reason, whichever combination of factors, sometimes just opening a can of food and microwaving it feels far too complex, let alone actually cooking food on a stove or in an oven.

So, I don't really know which one is more impairing. Considering I spent most of my life not even knowing some of them were there - and the pain only came into the picture 7-9 years ago (during my burnout ), I'm still working out the impact.

I agree with this. How can one separate the anxiety, etc. from AS/extreme introversion? I also have BDD/GAD/SAD but all three aren't severe. I'm taking Lexapro but still have problems at work due to issues that kinda have less to do with above but more to do with multi-tasking, sensory issues, I think.