Slashdot and aspergers discussion

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Not 100% where this goes but i thought it should be posted

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?s ... 18049066#1

p.s dan dan the dna man is my boyfriend

Yeah basically they said aspergers is not common in IT, you should not self-dx it and
that having autism is no benefit. Granted this is few nameless faceless web posters to a popular IT site who said that.

WOW,

I hope he is more civil with YOU, although he seems to know your problems and isn't afraid to mention it, which is a good sign for you. I am ukenkerl. I was civil, but tried to temper his comments. MOST of what he said was true and justified but I think he was unfair to wikipedia and AS.

Steve

He’s just fed up with people calling themselves aspergers when they aren’t, as he sees the hell I go through. Wrong self diagnosis can be damaging to people who really do have AS.

It was just too personal to him, that's why he flipped like that. I can understand that. I have my own triggers like that. I think it's good he sticks up for his girlfriend like that and I can understand how he feels.

I don't know. I went through the whole thing in the different tests and still found the same thing. I don't see the benefit of getting a diagnosis since I'm functional (well, I wouldn't be in a mall or grocery store) enough to suit me and I just don't see where it would do anything but get a label stuck on me so that was all they saw. Plus, I have no faith in the current diagnostic techniques. Too much varitation in testing, admitted variation in diagnosis and being observed by people who have no idea what it's like in my mind or why I do anything. They just seem to be guessing to me and I've seen nothing that makes me think otherwise. I'm still with show me a fMRI while you test me and I'll believe what that says against NT control scans. Otherwise, it's just an opinion.

Slashdot is where I first heard of aspergers I never for one second thought I had it.
I just got curious what it was. And then found the wrongplanet link I guess on wikipedia if it was there in June 2006. If I meet the criteria for aspergers is debatable but no question I'm on the autism spectrum but if I'm not I doubt it is harming you.

My guess most people who think they have AS live very isolated lives and have never mentioned it to anyone. Though we have had past threads on WP which suggest a large percent of voters think the self-dx are one step above cow manure.

WOW, what a way to put it! I'm with ZanneMarie! Show something not open to debate. If I don't have AS, I don't know what it could be. And what I have is SO much like AS that it would leave AS itself in doubt if I didn't have it.

I'm with dan, with regard to the fact that MANY self DXrs that bend things, but I am not in that group and many here obviously aren't either. I think cow manure is a real exageration and injustice to most.

Steve

I can not say that you are harming me as I do not know you

However sometimes when I say ‘ I have aspergers syndrome’ some people snigger or look at me like I am using a pathetic excuse. And I am sure this is partly caused by the increasing amount of people that claim to have Aspergers syndrome and use it at any opportunity. This is where it is damaging.

I'm more civil with everyone actually, but I felt a need to vent there It was in response to another comment that said that basically in order to work in IT you had to be 'a bit Aspergers'.

Being a computer scientist of sorts you do meet a lot of people who display what would be described as the 'social' AS traits, and I have on campus several times heard people being described as 'a bit autistic' (out of earshot of the colleagues in question of course). What I was disputing is that AS traits are some kind of bonus in the IT community when the reality of AS (at least of my experience with it) is that it causes people great difficulty on a day to day basis.

I am meeting in forums an increasing number of people who are describing themselves as AS with no diagnosis. This also worries me, and that was what prompted some of the comment.

For the record I love Wikipedia, I regularly contribute, but the availablity of medical information to the hyperchondriac and the effect on them is visible in doctors surgery's across the world. I guess these things are doubly annoying to me with my background being in clinical and medical genetics, and developmental neurobiology.

regards,

Dan

Yeah. If I DO get diagnosed, it will almost certainly be to assuage concerns like the ones you express. You ARE right, and no insult meant to anyone here, I would NEVER have wanted to be associated with autism. BTW note the past tense. I have learned a LOT. Even some of the wierdest maladies are expressed by some nice people here that seem to have a good head on their shoulders. It DOES explain how I can be emotional, and NOT, at the same time though. I always thought that was wierd. NOW, it makes perfect sense.

Steve

The cow manure doesn't bother me since it's basically what I think of the current diagnositc techniques. I mean, that can't make people who are diagnosed feel good either. It's just my need. I need something more concrete.


My feeling that I have it really isn't based on my severe isolation, my job or any of that. To be frank, my personality profile would account for that. I didn't think I was normal, but over the years I saw different things as I researched them to write and I didn't feel that was me. I honestly never had that feeling before. I always had a sense that I was a social idiot and my synapsis were misfiring. Those would have been the descriptions I would have given you and sometimes whether you asked me or not. That was how I explained it.

I'm not so sure those NT geeks had an EEG done at nine to try to figure out why they passed out so often. I think it's interesting though that in the 1960's my family doctor did that when it was so common to just think those things in females were emotional or hysterical. I did figure out what triggered them as time when on. I couldn't be in extremely crowded, brightly lit and noisy places. It's like once all of those factors were met, I would get the sensation of going into overload, say I was going to pass out, then do it. Before that would happen, I would start to rub my forehead in a certain spot and my eye would twitch unmercifully. I always thought I shook my hands and amazingly I thought that would release the stress. I didn't realize that was hand flapping until I saw it on Mozart and the Whale two days ago. See, I would have answered no to that because that's not what I called that. I needed the visual. Many of the stims on the test I didn't recognize as stims, but now that I know, it makes sense. I do those when I am stressed with overwork or I'm going into overload. I'll even do that if people are too emotional around me. Looking back though, I wonder if they knew about non-convulsive seizures. You can distinguish that from a regular convulsive seizure by an EEG. That is what they use to distinguish in diagnosis. So, I wonder if they did the EEG now if they would have seen something. It makes me wonder. I didn't start screaming in those situations, I just passed out. I do curl into a ball and rock even now if I'm extremely afraid.

I also looked at the other commonly misdiagnosed disorders for AS to see if I fit those symptoms better. I didn't. For instance Schizoid is distinguished from others by a true lack of empathy. I come off as rude, but I actually do have empathy, I just don't know how to go about showing it. If you said your mother was dying, I would feel horrible inside for you, but I would struggle with how to respond to that correctly so that you would know how I felt. All my life, I said and did completely inappropriate things in those situations, then felt horrible that I didn't do the right thing and made that person feel worse. That's not a symptom of a Schizoid at all. I do think if I had gone to a doctor when I was young, they might have diagnosed that. I write well, but verbally I can be pretty non-communicative and come off as very cold, harsh, abrasive and uncaring. I just talk in facts and my tone lacks emotion. My face is usually blank. Emotion is baffling to me, but I do have empathy. Does that make sense?

I do keep trying to read about it. It's a new disorder so diagnosis can and should keep changing as they discover more. I keep checking back to see what's new.

I think if you are a true Aspie and you look at the disorder, you will actually methodically go through all the information and sort it out as applicable or not. I think we're just too detailed to only look at a couple of symptoms and think that is us. If anything, we'd dissect the diagnosis to the enth degree, then start again. If we have any kind of Scientific bent, we are actually going to try to disprove the theory.

But, one thing I do think he was absolutely spot on with is the fact that undiagnosed or even diagnosed high functioning Aspies hurt those with dibilitating symptoms. Society is too prepared to look at those people on the spectrum and say, "Well, why can't you? They can! You're just lazy, stupid, <insert word here> to get a job and live on your own. Look at those people. You could do it if you really wanted to." That makes me angry. It's not fair and I know that people do that. I don't ever want anyone looking at me and using it to say something like that to someone else. They'd get to see some empathy then! It might be inappropriate like dan the dna man's was, but you know what? I don't think I would care any more than dan did.

I can understand that. It is why I am seeking diagnosis as if I am going to pin myself with a label, it may as well be one that fits lol. Where were you diagnosed, out of interest? I am trying to get in at CLASS, the Baron Cohen one.

To tell you the truth, there were a couple times I saw diagnostic criteria for Autism and it seemed to fit well up to a point. AS added the missing pieces. Well, dan makes it sound like AS is all bad. It isn't. Some might here me and figure it is almost all good. It isn't. It varies between two extremes. One is better than mine, and one is worse than his. Heck, I had an umbilical hernia all my life. NO PROBLEM! The last operation I had gave me an abdominal wall hernia. NO PROBLEM, USUALLY!! !! A hernia could be a diagnosis nobody believes, or a DEATH SENTENCE! Autism is similar. It could be something nobody believes, or debilitating. That is true of MANY things!

Steve

If AS is 1/150 or 1/166 and perhaps higher in males 4:1

Let assume the population or 16-65(work force) year olds has about 50% women and 50% males.

4/375 males AS 1/375 females

4/375 x 100% = 1.06 % of men have AS
1/375 x 100% = 0.26% of women have AS

so an IT company with 750 workers (50% F, 50% M) would have 4 aspie males and 1
aspie female working for them if the IT company is the same as the general population.

True, but I still wouldn't want to be the person who said, Oh, I have a hernia, I'm just not bothering to get it diagnosed because it's not bothering me and they don't hurt anything, then have people look at you, Steve, and say it's no big deal. My aunt died after her hernia operation not quite a year ago. I used to think it was no big deal. Not anymore!


But, I will say this, people deal better with things like hernias then they do with things termed mental disorders. It makes them think of things induced by nerves. Brain disorder is better, but they still have a hard time with spectrum. People are patterning seeking. They want concrete and simple things. The spectrum doesn't lend itself to that. Wiring and voltage passing through it is the best illustration I've found to explain it. It forces them to see the person isn't "doing" anything to cause it. It just happens and they probably don't know why. It gets it down to something they can deal with. There's gating and receptors and all the things you need to explain variation in symptoms. I think that until we get a Carl Sagan type to get on TV and explain in that kind of fashion, there will always be misunderstanding and high functioning individuals will only add to the lack of understanding for low end functioning individuals.


I didn't feel that Dan was making it sound all bad at all. From my perspective, he reacted in a very similar manner to the way my husband would. He feels both defensive of his gf and protective of her. He feels he needs to protect her from people who say such irresponsible things that cause others to look at her and snigger because her brain has messed up or missing wiring. He's in Neurobiology and Genetics. He sees what is happening to her for what it is. That makes it doubly insulting to see people just offhandedly say such foolish things that will come back and hurt her. He's not trying to be politcally correct. He's trying to protect and support his gf who is obviously really feeling the effects of AS. He does qualify that in here and says in his experience. We say alot of those things from our experience as well. We get more reactive sometimes. Most of all Dan is NT and he's behaving as a protective NT. I found his behavior very familiar and I felt for them both. It just made me think this must be how my husband often feels about other people where I'm concerned.

Heck, it was even making me angry over how she is treated and I am one of the people who didn't bother to get a diagnosis. I wanted to go yell at them too and I don't even know hattie. I can only imagine how he feels when he loves her. Nothing wrong with that. I say, Good for him. If he hurt their itty bitty feelings, too bad.

I think they should do a test on them. I think that work might draw a different crowd then the normal population, but that would have to be verified. It could throw the statistic though.

You could also use another statistic. INTJ personality type is less than 2% of the population and less than 1% is female. So if you applied that only to the AS population, you would get a female INTJ being less than 1% of the 0.26% in that work force.

Either way you look at it, my percentage keeps getting lower. Pretty soon, I'll diminish into nothingness. Hmmm