I don't feel anything in common with non verbal low function

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I was diagnosed with asperger's and I recently saw some videos of autistic children where they couldn't talk, and started going into rages where they would hit themselves, bang their heads and generally seemed as if living is painful.
I don't feel anything in common with those people. I don't understand why it's classed as the same condition. I know I will get the usual parroting of how there are levels, but surely there has to be some similarity. I don't care if people try to talk me into it being the same because I know it isn't.

to me, when the apa decided to merge a bunch of previous developmental disorders into just one "spectrum" diagnosis, they were basically admitting, "alright folks, we don't know s**t about all this. we know there's something in common, we know there's a difference, we know there are borderline cases in the middle between one thing and the other, and that's pretty much all we know"

Good point.

It is basically the same condition, just that people with high-functioning autism have it less severe and are able to cope better in life. I have meltdowns, sensory sensitivities, difficulty speaking, stimming, narrow interests, and repetitive behaviors just like those on the lower end of the spectrum, though it's less prominent. I used to beat myself in the head during meltdowns when I was little, though I've grown out of that. The degree to which people have autism varies greatly.

I can understand how it can be the same condition. That sense of panic that I feel in a crowded place is kept under control, for the most part. I get a bit 'snappy' and agitated, but I don't tend to let it show much on the surface. I can imagine if that sense of panic felt so much stronger and I really struggled to keep control of it, I could end up having a big meltdown.

Likewise, I have always described my talking as being 'sent through a wall'. There are wonderfully formed sentences planned with my brain, where a very eloquent person lives. On the way out, everything I say hits a wall. Some words get through - enough to make me conversation work quite smoothly, but as they're filtering out a lot of the words get left behind, others get mixed up, some just turn into stammering or 'um' and 'ah'. Now, what if the holes in my wall that allow some words to get through were not there? What if I could form the words in my mind, but none of them made it through the wall? I wonder if that's the experience of being non-verbal.

Getting a paper cut is nothing like like getting run over by a truck but both are described as pain, nobody seems to have a problem with this. The prostrate cancer experience can vary greatly between people and certainly the experience is quite different from my tongue cancer experience but it is still labled cancer, nobody seems to have a problem with this. But with Autism people have all these problems with it. It is the partly the DSM's fault in that they made Aspergers a seperate diagnosis instead of making it a sub catagory of autism then they compounded their error by "subsuming" it and effectivly renaming it "ASD Level 1 without cognative and language impairments". They confused people and validated autistic people who are in denial that they are autistic.

there's a difference between a cateogry and a condition though. cancer is a (very broad) category, which encompasses a huge variety of diseases. they all happen to have at least one key mechanism in common, but the causes, the evolution and the best treatment will be very different between different types or cancer

if we're talking about the current state of the available diagnoses, then it would be more fair to imagine if "cancer" were considered as a condition in itself rather than as a category. it's easy to see how "mild cancer with no pain so far" would be fairly useless in clinical terms. it basically just tells you that you're not healthy and that's it's probably going to get worse

asd is a placeholder diagnosis. genetic / neurological research will split it again into a more refined / consistent categorization eventually

It's very simple. Autism is a Spectrum. There are widely varying levels of functioning.

This occurs with many other conditions. there are mild, moderate, and severe forms of many conditions. Still, as stated above, you have the condition.

I might have more common, in a sense, with a "low-functioning" person than with a "high-functioning" person who believes he/she is "evolved" and the "next step in evolution."

I don't have much in common with some autistic people; I have more commonalities with some people who are "neurotypicals." Having autism, in and of itself, does not automatically mean that I feel commonality with a "fellow traveller."

It's the person that matters, really, not the condition.

Having autism doesn't have to give one a Scarlet Letter. It's not something that's necessarily a tragedy.

Yes I know they say it's a spectrum, but that's like saying headache is a spectrum. Headache from an accident, brain tumour, stroke or tension are a spectrum, but they aren't the same thing.
I'm nothing like those people who can't speak, have a low mental ability and go into rages banging their head and everything.
How can the people who need to wear a helmet from self harm be the same as others they say have autism like Einstein or Bill Gates? It isn't the same thing and there are more differences than similarities.

I used to be almost completely non-verbal and I still don't really talk much. I mean, I know how to type obviously, but then I've always been able to read technically. For most of my life, I was pretty much only able to ask for things or to go somewhere. Other than that, I struggled to talk to people on the internet, and I didn't start doing that until I was 17 years old. Now, I can actually speak to a therapist without using a keyboard. He's been teaching me how to talk in person and I've fortunately been getting somewhere.

To be honest, I have trouble relating to people on this forum. But I'm trying to climb up the ladder.

The core traits are the same the wide variation occures with severity and presentation and different if poorly understood causes. With cancer there is also with wide varation in severity and presentation and causation and it has only one not several core traits cancourous cells but we still call it cancer.

There is denial with cancer because it is a condition even with mild and no pain often leads to horrific painful symptoms and that is too much to handle, not because my cancer is not cancer. 99 percent of the diagnosed eventually come around when the symptoms become too noticable to ignore and there are proven treatments. While there is autism denial for traditional reasons there is the I am aspie not autistic type of denial not existant with the vast majority of conditions. IMHO the reasons are with most conditions you get sympathy, with autism you get stigma, that makes people want to disassociate themselves from it. With autism for adults there are not really solid proved treatments and the condition is poorly understood making it easier to disasociate oneself from it.

You have a spectrum of stroke survivors.
10 percent of stroke survivors recover almost completely
25 percent recover with minor impairments
40 percent experience moderate to severe impairments requiring special care
10 percent require care in a nursing home or other long-term care
15 percent die shortly after the stroke
https://www.christopherreeve.org/living ... sis/stroke

The only difference between the folks at the top and at the bottom may be what part of the brain the stroke occurred or how quickly they received medical treatment. Some people are in such denial that they fail to receive any treatment. In some cases, they tried to get treatment but the medical help failed to identify the stroke.

It isn't too big of a stretch to postulate that Temple Grandin would not be where she is today without tons of special help that most autistics don't get today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin
A speech therapist was hired without delay and Grandin received personalised input from the age of 2 and a half.[9] A nanny was also hired when Grandin was aged 3, to play educational games for hours with Grandin. Grandin's mother actively sought out and paid for private schools with sympathetic staff who were willing to work with her daughter's special needs[10] and thus, she started kindergarten in Dedham Country Day School. Her teachers and class worked towards adapting an environment easy for Temple to adjust to.

Last edited by BTDT on 07 Aug 2016, 1:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well do you have any difficulties interacting with others or trouble handling stress and getting overwhelmed? or is it ever hard to communicate with people due to your condition. If so than you do have something in common, just to a lesser degree than the kids you looked at videos of experience it. What makes you think there is no similarity?

It's all about severity in presentation as others have said. The similarities are all there if you examine your most challenging moments or traits. It's just the degree of severity.

Your most challenging moments or manifestations of traits will have the same elements as that other person who is more severely autistic, the only difference being theirs produces more extreme presentation while your worst place you can be kind of takes up where their milder presentation is, although that's not to say that it still doesn't feel challenging and awful for you where you're at, too.

Last edited by BirdInFlight on 07 Aug 2016, 1:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Pretty sure those headaches would not be considered on the same spectrum as each other, however there are likely different severity levels of each different one. Also seems its more you don't want to be anything like 'those people' not that you have any real basis for claiming they are separate conditions with nothing in common.

I don't feel one bit autistic, even though I'm on the spectrum.