Stress, overloading and spectrum (NT-- ADHD -- asperger)

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Just wondering whether the actual number of people on spectrum is much much higher than what you would ever imagine

I've sometime heard that nowadays the diagnosis ADHD is becoming more and more popular and that even 10% of the children are somewhat conspicuous in that direction

Apart from that many aspies are probably wrongly diagnosed as ADHD type of persons

there is also some kind of bridge on spectrum between ADHD and Asperger.


At least I know some people that are ADHD (or wrongly diagnosed aspies)
and they have some traits in common with me.


Now, what I wonder

Is there a much higher amount of people on spectrum earlier without symptoms
and nowadays they start to be more and more.

Nowadays the stress level has risen to quite bad levels even for NT
And more and more of the spectrum people without symptoms are diagnosed either as aspies or ADHDs

Is all this just related to some kind of overload (working memory or similar)
and everybody that overloads will develop similar aspie-like symptoms?

I mean what you read for example in wikipedia is nothing compared to what you realise
when you are reading peoples experiences

Now, the text in wikipedia is not very good.
What about ADHD, is it similar?

What if it is just totally difficult for NTs to study ADHD or Asperger
because they have never been there they dont know it how it is to be one?


I could almost bet that these criteria that are nowadays used for both ADHD and aspie diagnosis are just
wrongly chosen and there is no real tools to say either or

Are all symptoms in the end just stress related?
(Some overload very easily and switch off whilst for others it first starts at much higher stress)


and why the hell should our society stress so much, more and more and more
Just to get nice numbers that say nothing about how people feel?

Unbelievable!

...I'm not quite sure what you're asking.

ASD and ADHD symptoms are more visible by stress, but that's with all disorders that way.
But they are not caused by stress.

So far I know is especially ADD related to ASD, not that much ADHD but there are still some conections.
But there is no spectrum from NT - ADD/ADHD - ASD how some people imagine.
Those disorders are still two seperate disorders.

It's like bipolar and schizophrenia for example.
They are totally different, but genetically they are connected and there also exists schizoaffective who is between bipolar and schizophrenia.
I could imagine that it is similar with ASD and ADD/ADHD.

I have ASD, but not ADD/ADHD, but I was also once missdiagnosed.
But I have the feeling that they look more on the outside similar sometimes, but have different causes mainly.

ASD and ADD/ADHD are getting just more recogniced. 20 years ago they just didn't get diagnosed because noone really knew anything about it. The connections to other diagnoses and how they differentiate and how we can diagnose them more corectly and so on are still not totally clear.

So I see those diagnoses I have more as a theory how I propably function and why.
This took me a while, somehow they are still important to me, but I aranged myself with the fact, that I'll never know some things for certain about myself or how my brain works. At least not in the near future.

Well...

mostly that spectrum disorders (autistic disorders) maybe are not separable into adhd asperger classic autism
but the level of affection is continuous even from NT to worst affected classic autism cases

and that we have all in common some kind of stress reactions,
which are not normally triggered in NTs but probably also the same problems start to appear at some stress level.

Now that the world is getting more and more uncertain
also those on the spectrum that are only very little affected will get these kind of symptoms
especially children when they are supposed to unnaturally supposed to function like machines in school.

And the longer you are in that overload state the more it will affect your character especially as kids

The symptoms would be thus typical coping reactions as a result of experience with the shortcomings
and they would develop over years and years

And the more stress there will be in our world the more people will be affected (in a similar way although at higher stress brain load)
Switching off type of reactions at overload
and through that focusing on only certain things
behaving weirdly loosing contact aso.

Just treat all children unnaturally and they will have similar problems in their youth and as adults.
Will get bullied because they'll put themselves under stress, all that things

Any clearer?

Do you know is there any studies on brain related differences between ADD/ADHD and Asperger/ASD
Obviously if you are less affected, then the symptoms might be also different
ADD/ADHD is probably much better studied in brain research than ASD


Ok here I found something



http://www.child-psych.org/2008/01/brai ... drome.html


Well maybe I am wrong and the people I met and who told me that they have ADHD were just Aspergers as well
or then I have just ADD??

And then there is this story
http://www.retrainthebrain.com/autism.html

well 3 children 2 ADD and 1 ASD
both disorders are inheritable or thought to be...
blingbling

Well maybe we should make some connections to people in ADD/ADHD forums and see how many of them are actually aspies???
If it is really different then there must be a big difference in feelings as well...

I dont trust so much tests, I mainly believe in similarity of feelings

And how should NTs ever be able to fully understand our feelings, when we are ourselves
not even always able to get them clear or express them to others

Perfect would be if people with ASD themselves would make the research about autism...

That's pretty deep onk, quite philosophical. I wish I could provide some better insight...

Well I am just convinced that aspies are in principle the best ones to research Asperger syndrom, just because of the connection to the for Nts unbelievable world...

You have some point there though that if you dont know yourself about it, what is it anyway?

It is feelings that aspies know that are difficult to experience as an NT ...

There are so many things that are going like
"I cannot explain to you but I know that this is right"

just like NTs have that too, I guess. Only different world...

I studied history as an undergrad and so I try to understand the perspective of issues over time. I'm now in grad school for education. If this makes any bearing on my opinion, I am an NT. My older brother studied comp. engineer. and in retrospect, I can safely guess that many of his peers had aspergers because of their social interactions, or lack their of.

Alright Onks, let me try to go to the original question.
Is there an increase in the level of people being diagnosed with aspergers or ADHD because of stress...
Or
My alternative perspective is that there have always been the same percentage of people with aspergers, autism, adhd but as a society, we've become much better at recognition.



So, the first thing schooling (i'm in education afterall). Lets go back 50 years ago. Except for perhaps a few researchers, people had no idea what aspergers, adhd or even autism was. They of course had no medicine for ADHD. What happened to these people in school?
Corporel punishment and a high drop out rate. 50 years ago, the best a teacher could do to deal with a kid that couldn't stand still was to paddle his ass, literally. Now we view that as barbaric and we haven't done that for quite some time. We now KNOW what is autism, aspergers and adhd are. There is some medication to allievate some effects of adhd, and there is theraphy and special ed teachers now. It's not easy but it's much better than paddling.

Every teacher in most states in the US have to take at least one survey course of special education. Early childhood and elementary teachers are more likely to recognize these medical conditions than anyone else because most undergo significant training.

This is just the point im trying to find out. How much is there autism related genes in our society? maybe that percentage is quite high after all.
Earlier there was no diagnosis so just people were weird.

And aspies will be attracted by similar kind of personalities. Or thats what I realised when I look back what kind of girls/ women I have been attracted by. adhd and aspies are relatively similar. so there is probably also some kind of intermixing there. If they are not of same origin genetically just different levels of affection.

Life in the last year tenth has been considerably easier, more clearer. Both adhd and aspies are suffering from additional stress that is coming up and pressing everybody to be unnatural. I guess both those two disorders make people go crazy about expectations that they cant accomplish.

More and more will realise their problems and starting to find out what is wrong with them, respective their parents will.

and since it is a spectrum you'll have everything from very weak spectrum to severest problems.

And nowadays aspies are quite often mistaken for adhd.

If there is any difference in the genetic origin or not remains still unclear? allhough it is said that with adhd drugs will help whilst for aspies it wont.

Anybody here with newest results from research discriminating adhd and asperger? Or some brain related insight into what is going on with either of those?

Now, everything is classified by symtoms, as usual with disorders.

But still you could see them as typical resulting psychological problems, that are not necessarily with everybody.

And even our brain develops, so for the more affected aspies brains, it could develop differently then for less affected adhd
(and you can have both).


What however astonishes me is the not being interested in others characteristics of aspies. It might be for every aspie, more or less, i just wonder...

Anybody that remembers that kind of thing from childhood/youth?

I still have it somehow, tend to still be very convinced about myself.

Is there something similar with adhd?

I'd just like to say that the expression "popular diagnosis" irritates me a lot. I understand it's true meaning but it could easily be misinterpreted as meaning that people on the spectrum choose to be the way they are.



Don't make such assumptions without providing evidence. The quotation above could easily offend.

Anyway, as for your theory that ASD can be caused by stress levels; well, it's an interesting one but I don't think it's true. I exhibited many Autistic symptoms from a young age and I was not stressed at all back then.

I don't think this busy world with an overload of stimuli causes ASD or ADHD, but rather makes it manifest.

I grew up in a quiet village in the legendary Dutch flower growing area. These nurseries are in the hands of a number of families that have lived there for centuries and are all interrelated. I'm one of them. Many of my elder family members had traits that were just traits back then, but now might be labeled ASD. One of my grand uncles was mute, but he could work 12-16 hours a day in the greenhouses and had an astonishing botanical knowledge. The only time he wasn't mute was when you asked him about roses. He would go on and on and on.

Nobody in my family was critised for being quiet and antisocial, or having odd mannerisms and vocalisations. It was just the way we were.

Ok, well, I don't know much about people with aspergers being misdiagnosed with ADHD or visa versa BUT, I have read on this forum, people having both. And that seems quite possible. They're both neurological conditions.

-Mis-diagnosing the two? Each is it's own unique condition with different characteristics, some of which are the exact opposite. It seems unlikely.

To continue off of NewDawn's part about over-stimuli (environment):
-I know people's brains develop/grow until the age of 25 (personality and intelligence wise) but people can of course acquire knowledge, memory and experiences throughout their lifes. People are born with both aspergers and ADHD but how their life experiences affect their personalities, intelligence, knowledge et cetera is effected greatly by their environment....

Nature versus nurture huh? In psychology class I loved to have "fishbowl" experiements about what if a child with ADHD was raised in a family that was anal retentive and visa versa. How would the child come out...

-Do you want to make a fishbowl experiment about a child with aspergers raised by a family of comiedians (masters of jokes and sarcaism) or salesmen or card-sharks (masters of reading people and communicating)? Or the opposite a born salesman or just a regular NT raised by a family of people with aspergers?
(This is just an interesting thought experiment which provides no answer with merit) .



-My current girlfriend has aspergers. Oh and I am 100% sure her father has it but grew up in a time when aspergers was relatively unknown. Her only other past boyfriend has aspergers. So that makes half of her boyfriends reserved intelligent men with aspergers and the other half are impulsive, loud and funny boyfriends (me).
-Onk, if there's a certain type of girl you go for, I think that makes a personality type, it's not as if you "smell" or "sense" that the girls you like have aspergers.


Sorry for the book of a response that I wrote.

Those conditions are highly overlapping in a lot of areas and a lot of psychiatrists don't check you for hours. They ask you a fiew questions and so on and then they picture you in a certain way until you believe it or notice that something isn't quite right.
This is how psychiatry works.

I've been described in the past in all kind of different ways by different psychiatrists. Now I have decided to make up my own mind about it and how my brain works and don't care that much about those psychiatrists with their different opinions anymore.
And strangly this works best for me, because I know myself best.
I see those disorders like a "floading concept" all somehow conected to each other.
Psychiatry is highly interested in telling the people that all those disorders are totally different and so on.

This is how it is in my family:
- A lot of people in my family have dyslexia with or without speech delay and some sensory issues. They have been toled that this all is typical of dyslexia.
- My grandma has OCD/OPD
- My brother and propably also my mother have ADHD
- my other brother had schizophrenia and I have a lot of people with schizoid/schizotypal traits in my family
- I also have people in my family with ASD or BAD

And I have ASD, but how I see it, I'm a combination of the speechproblems that often go along with dyslexia, my grandma with OCD, my mother and brother with ADHD and those schizoid/schizotypal traits, but since birth and in my case it is called ASD.
But for me it is nothing more than a mixture, because I share with all of those people a whole bunch of characteraistics and they with me and all those disorders are even somehow genetically related to each other.

This isn't any different with my bipolar sucpision, they are a result of some depressive tendencies from my father side and the schizophrenic tendencies that made me to a bipolar. And even bipolar and ASD are somehow related to each other in the end, so that I could continue like this...!

It's probably harder to diagnose ADHD now because digital technology can change an NTs brain enough to show similar behaviours. But it is not a developmental brain disorder.

The symptoms of ADHD and AS are similar because they share genes and in both the frontal lobes are affected. Many of these frontal lobe disorders have similar symptoms. It just matters which are the worst symptoms and what diagnosis they fit more with.

I have both ADHD and autism by the way. I can separate my symptoms neatly in two groups.

For my ADHD assessment I had to have an MRI, qEEG, IQ test, a drug trial and answer some questions about my childhood. This was no quick diagnosis.

I was diagnosed with autism after being seen by a psychologist for anxiety over 4 months. Her notes went to the psychiatrist that officially diagnosed me. He asked me some questions.

I group autism into repetitive behaviour, which involves a fear of change, then there's intense interests and poor communication skills. Sensory processing issues would be in here too.

ADHD has less social issues, there are some still there though. The main symptoms are lack of focus, poor motivation, interests but very short lived existing to stimulate the distracted mind. Internally the mind chatters. It's a brain on autopilot which they have no control over. They have the skills but can't always execute them. There's a window of focus which gets exhausted quickly.

Thank you for that answer!

Can you describe your feelings that are related to ADHD? And what do you think, are they different than aspie feelings?