High Sensitivity vs Asperger's

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A long time ago, before I'd ever heard of AS, I thought my symptoms were due to high sensitivity, of course now I understand that AS makes way more sense, because it explains the symptoms I have that were never addressed by sensitivity. My question is, do you think it's possible to be both? According to the admittedly rather brief assessment found here: http://hsperson.com/pages/test.htm (pretty much the only test in existence to establish whether or not a person has the trait) I still score a 22, with only 14 being needed to indicate high sensitivity. Looking at the list of symptoms, a lot of them match up with symptoms found in autistic people, so I'm wondering if that's the only reason I scored so high, because I don't have the deep emotional response or heightened intuition for people expected of HSPs. Do you think you're both AS and HSP, or do you chalk your sensitive traits up to your autism? I suppose it doesn't matter too much, I'm just having a mild identity crisis.

Autism is hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli. Everything else we deal with as a result of AS/HFA stems from that basic fact.

Yes, but hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli and being a "highly sensitive person" are two different things. 15-20% of the human population and of many animal species such as fish, dogs and horses among others have a genetic predisposition to heightened social, emotional and physical sensitivity to their environment. It is not the same as being autistic; highly sensitive people pick up on social and emotional cues that ordinary NTs are unaware of, they have a heightened intuition for human interaction and can read peoples' emotions far more effectively than normal people, they have very strong emotional reactions and a heightened sense of empathy, both cognitive and emotional, and they have a heightened sensitivity to physical stimuli, just like autistics do. Take a look at the link I provided, it will explain the phenomenon in more detail. My question was, do you still count as highly sensitive without the social and emotional aspects of it, as the questionnaire seems to suggest?

I've often wondered if I may fall under the "highly sensitive person" category. Then I realized that it was a different way of looking at the same thing. So the better question here is, which would you prefer to view yourself as? Which would make you more comfortable with you?

From the perspective of an AS individual with highly sensitive traits, I suppose it does effectively amount to the same thing. As far as getting understanding and necessary support from others, I would probably use the AS label in favour of the HSP label because AS is an identifiable, medically acknowledged condition, whereas a self-diagnosis is all that's really needed for a person to be labelled HSP, not to mention, there are a lot of people who disdain such "new age" concepts as "high sensitivity" treating it the same as "indigo children" and "past lives" etc.

Having one of those self doubt moments? I'm just trying to find out what caused you to post this. Were you thinking something or did someone say something or just a random thing you thought would be interesting to talk about? (Sorry I have been told I should ask those kinds of questions.)

It is hard to say where one similar trait stops and the other starts.
I have been separately diagnosed with autism and dysparxia.
But the symptoms for dysparxia very close to those of autism.

I had a dalliance with HSP a few yrs back.

I reckon it is a new agey catch all that aron invented as a hook to hang a few books and a career on, and that it has no greater validity than that.

I'm going to take a guess and assume you meant "shouldn't". It's fine, it's the sort of thing I would ask. It was mostly just a sort of random thing I thought would be interesting to discuss (psychology is a special interest of mine), as well as being something I was curious about for my own self-understanding. For a long time I tried to "fix" myself by using the solutions recommended for HSPs, but it was mostly internalising visualization stuff, and that has never really worked for me. My problems finally started improving slightly when I began implementing methods designed for aspies; physical acommodations for sensory issues, keeping a notebook full of important social points to remember, etc. and I suppose I was just curious to see if it was even possible to be both aspie and HSP, or, if I was, if it even mattered as far as taking steps to make my life easier went. I just find it a little curious because for two or three years, I fully and wholeheartedly identified with the HSP label, only to find out later it was largely inaccurate. It's really just my aspie hatred of letting things go at work.

Personally, I believe HSP to just be a sub-clinical form of Autism. Sadly the author/inventor of the term is obviously ignorant of What ASDs are really about, despite admitting it runs in the family (Coincidence? I think not). She goes through what she considers makes ASDs and HSPs completely different things on her site (search for autism on it, sadly can't post links yet). As she correctly states, "sensitivity to sensory stimulation or sensitive sensory processing is never mentioned in the diagnostic criteria for ASDs.". A fact which anyone with an ASD would know is highly misleading if you read it that way. I haven't found a single trait she attributes to HSPs that isn't also common to some extent in ASDs. She just seems to hung up on the misleading stereotype of autistics as devoid of empathy to ever acknowledge she'd have anything in common with us.

The most uncommon would probably be the emotional intuition, almost empath-like quality. If you've been around here though you'd notice a lot of people with ASDs also claim to be able to sense peoples emotions, although interpreting and understanding it all is a whole other matter. My mother claims I used to be like this when I was younger, that I could walk into a room and just "soak up" all the feelings inside in a sense, and in the case of negative emotions I'd promptly leave the room. I'm not really sure to what extent I still do this, but it's not anything I'm self-aware of at any rate.

My father (who in my opinion is at least as autistic as I am) still does this, and has at times an uncanny ability to identify what other people are feeling. However, he also (which he'd never admit himself) sometimes projects his own feelings on others, as well as misinterpreting the reasons for what he's picking up as well as the more complex nuances of said feelings. He personally believes that he's to some degree "psychic", which is so wrong in so many ways it annoys me to no end whenever he brings it up.

My sister on the other hand, identifies as HSP, a realization she did around the same time I was diagnosed with Aspergers. It's possible had the idea of Aspergers come up sooner she'd have conformed to that instead, but to me it really doesn't matter as it's all just labels describing pretty much the same thing. And if she finds she has issues HSP can't answer then she now has an obvious second alternative to consider. Unlike me she has a seemingly functioning existance at least, so I couldn't say whether a diagnosis would help her or not.

Now of course it might just be that in my family we're all both HSP and autistic, but from all accounts of hanging around here and on other AS sites for over a year I'd find it more plausible the two are closely related.

Anyway, the way I see it all, and which conforms to the "Intense World Theory" of autism, it's all just different stages of sensitivity. The more sensitive you are, the more your brain sort of shields parts off to manage,creating the spectrum from mild to severe Autism. And in the case of HSP there just isn't enough sensitivity to induce the safety-mechanisms that cause the issues that defines ASDs.

No, I spoke correctly. I was told I should ask, "Maybe you should be asking what rather than why." (In a discussion about identifying emotional needs.) Though I may need to clarify that with him. I took it to mean I should look for the cause rather than the result so that I could connect the two and be more "aware" of the emotional needs of others. I don't know I will ask him Monday when I see him again.

I'm pretty sure I have both.

Ah okay, I misunderstood, when you wrote, "Sorry," I took it to mean you were sorry for broaching the subject. Whoever told you to ask what rather than why has a good point; it's similar to Carl Rogers' humanistic approach to psychoanalysis, open listening. You effectively repeat what the person has said to ensure you interpreted it correctly, "This is what I hear you saying" before attempting to ask why, because "why" assumes you already know the answer to "what", which may not be the case.

I was apologizing for asking and we (therapist and I) weren't talking strictly about conversation if we were I would have said so. Though I too believe active listening is critical to effective conversation. I'm going to extend that we agree that we are at different places and leave it at that.

I would agree with many of the posters in that high sensitivity IS Aspergers. Before I suspected having Aspergers I had read a book about Highly Sensitive People because that seemed to "fit" me. Then my now husband started calling me Aspie when I would do certain things or display certain behaviours and NOW, with my son possibly going to end up being diagnosed on the spectrum and doing actual research into Aspergers then yes, it all started from my initial premise of being HIGHLY sensitive..