Am I an unusual high functioning aspie?

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When I was first diagnosed and came on this site I was aware that we are all effected differently in various individual ways but I was more or less presented with the same challenges as most people here.

However after being here for a few months Ive seen a lot of posts by a lot of people who appear to be more severely effected. I may be "high functioning" but still.

For instance

-I can maintain my job
-I have a boyfriend and there haven't been any problems
-I have several close friends
-my sensory issues arnt horrible, annoying, but if I try I can deal with them
-Im very very good at reading people and understanding them. Most of my friends call me their therapist
-Although I was more disastrously socially awkward and less understanding of social things when I was younger I have a pretty damn good hold on them now and Im just 19
-I wouldn't say I have meltdowns. Occasionally Ill have too much excitement and anxiety built up from good/bad things during the day and kinda freak out for a bit but I can get it under control in less than a hour.

I have many of the symptoms associated with AS but for the most part they are all very muted and I have a good control over them.

I was wondering if anyone else was this way or if I was possibly misdiagnosed

Last edited by Chickems on 20 Nov 2011, 3:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

That describes me pretty well, it's a spectrum and were on the very edge.

I wasn't diagnosed till I was fifty-plus, and have earned a living for most of those years - I just don't do social very well.

From that perspective, no - you're not unusual. Is the diagnosis useful?

Hmm thats good to know. I havent found it useful per say. It hasnt done any harm to me and I was glad when I got it.

I think (and I'm not a medical processional, so don't take my word on it), the fact you have a fairly stable social and general life is, in part, responsible for your high functioning.

They do say that learning social cues and spending time with the NTs lower autistic traits. You can't erase Asperger's, but the more you are integrated the easier for you it is. If nothing else, if you have an emotional support from your partner, friends and family, and if you have a job and can control the general aspect of your life, it does make your life easier.

I know this is a catch 22 and a circle: Aspie's often don't have friends because they lack social skills and they lack social skills because they don't have friends.

While I do think the level of functioning goes with everybody's individual way the Asperger's manifests for them, I do believe the rest of someone's life (family, friends, romantic partner, job, hobbies, the overall life experience) can help an Aspie function more. Or, if they're lacking, the life circumstances can make it worse for an Aspie to start showing more Aspie traits.

The ones bolded describe me well except I have a husband and we rarely have problems but what relationship doesn't?

I just have a hard time getting a job but yet I can keep one.

I also have meltdowns sometimes but they don't last all day. My social skills have also gotten better and they were poor when I was a child but they got better in my teens. I worked on them myself. I now say they are good for an aspie. I read and learn from experience and I have learned more on here by reading posts. Plus I also copied things nice people do and not do things what bad people do. Watching movies helped too.

How and why were you diagnosed? Cause there must have been some "issue" going on in your life which lead you to seeing a therapist and getting the diagnosis. I do believe there can be some mis-diagnosis that are made because my sister who's clearly not aspie was diagnosed as borderline aspie.

But then I would think that a person must have symptoms that clinically interfere with there life or a history of that to technically have aspergers. I believe aspergers/autism is a spectrum, where theres a very blurry line between aspergers and NT. As in theres people out there with aspie like personality traits but there symptoms don't clinically interfere with there lives.

Are you attractive? If so, there you go.

I haven't been diagnosed yet but I am looking into it and I am much the same way as you, except that the full time job thing is an issue as well as the social thing, when I meet up with anyone and they turn it into a game of "who has got a girlfriend?" my mind will invariably draw a blank...

I do not think aspies have to be low functioning vegetables, probably half the reason I have struggled all my life in the shadows is that I am a high functioning "something" rather than the classic vegetable most people are used to seeing in film and television (and I mean no disrespect with that, I could've instead chosen to use Mr Cruises classic line of "screaming ret*d" but decided against it)



I pretty much taught myself things from experience and books and movies too, if I am focused on watching body language then I am excellent at it, if I am not I am terrible and never seem to get it right, except sometimes i may see a facial micro-expression then spend the next 20 minutes analysing that and missing half the conversation lol

I avoid bad people like I would avoid Sheldon Cooper with a dose of the plague, but sometimes they seek you out...

Don't know if I have ever had a meltdown, maybe a complete shutdown until the zx80 in my head finally reboots :p

To add, I was never a good performer in school, most of it was spoken with backs to the class* (so I couldn't judge context), long boring droning about facts and figures that had no context; I am a visual thinker/learner and it is so much easier for me if a story is woven out of dates instead of a comatose inducing whine.

*Imagine the scenario, while I am of course vastly simplifying the issue it is still pretty much the same. You are given a spoken spelling test, and a teacher has his back to your and asks you to spell a word, without knowing the context how do you choose whether he wants you to spell "there" or "their"? This is the main reason I struggled in school even though I am by no means a stupid person; I simply had no idea what any of the teachers wanted half the time and they never bothered trying to figure out why when I was in primary school I was consistently doing very well academically and when I went to secondary I dropped off face of the world.

Last edited by Sparhawke on 20 Nov 2011, 4:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

I didnt get diagnosed because there was a problem in my life. I noticed autistic traits in myself after working with autistic children in a elementary. Plus I had suspected it in me before. So through the help of my aunt we got a appointment and I got diagnosed. I just wanted it to know for sure. You dont NEED to have a serious problem to get diagnosed

I thought that the criterion "The disturbance causes clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning" is like a master switch, and if you can't fulfill this it doesn't matter how many of the other symptoms you may show - you're not AS. Is this wrong?

Chickems, which bits of your behaviour do you think would trigger this criterion? I ask because I too have enough symptoms to fit an AS diagnosis, but wonder if I'm too high functioning to make it "valid". My social anxiety is quite significant and my skills are poor but my other criteria are, well, nerdy and a bit obsessive but lots of NT people are like that.

I havent looked into it. However I do have a official diagnosis. I dont see why they wouldnt anyway. Being in the autistic spectrum is just that, a spectrum. Not everyone in it is not going to be able to function in some massive way in one area. We are born with it, so they cant deny we dont have it just because some of us get through life a bit easier.

Do you feel your symptoms clinically interfere with your life or did they once. Like do you have a childhood history of your symptoms clinically interfering. Remember aspergers is technically a disability, if the disability part is not or never really was present, i dont think you shoulda received the diagnosis. Just my opinion, hope i dont offend anyone.

That's an interesting point. Like you I've read lots of posts on here and realise I just aren't that "disabled". That criterion is sort of a stumbling block for me, it might make the difference between me saying "I have lots of below-threshold AS traits" and "I think I may well be AS".

I think if I went to my GP and said I would like a diagnosis, I'd get laughed out of the surgery. Although, he doesn’t know me outside of his consulting room and in fact there's probably only my wife who knows just how much I struggle with stuff that other people just get on with.

I can maintain a job, I have one close friend, my sensory issues aren't horrible either and I can sort of control my meltdowns. However I'm very socially awkward and anxious, I'm bad at making friends and even worse at romantic relationship. There's a lot of other things as well.

When it comes to reading people I can't say that I'm very good at it but I tend to notice little things and recognize the patterns in their behavior so sometimes I'm better at explaining something they do or predict their behavior than most people who "read" others naturally.
Some friends use me as a therapist as well. I think I'm good at it because I can analyze someone's behavior and recognize patterns purely logically without any emotions involved so usually I can offer a completely new perspective on things.

Well actually from the time I was 8-12 I had very severe OCD habits and ticks. I was petrified of everything and worried about everything in a intensely unhealthy way. However my parents never took me to a doctor for it. Also from the time I was 13-15 I was depressed.