What is autism? (Diagnosed but have no clue)

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I am currently 18 and was diagnosed with autism when I was 2 or 3 not sure which...
Anyway no one has ever spoke to me about it... My dad told me to read a wiki page since he has it etc
But I read it and still don't understand what It is...

I can't look people in the eye, engage in conversation without the other person first conversing with me, go out in public without feeling anxious or even go out in public at all if I'm alone...

I also never really smile...

This is from the new book, the DSM-5.

All of the following symptoms describing persistent deficits in social communication/interaction across contexts, not accounted for by general developmental delays, must be met:

Problems reciprocating social or emotional interaction, including difficulty establishing or maintaining back-and-forth conversations and interactions, inability to initiate an interaction, and problems with shared attention or sharing of emotions and interests with others.

Severe problems maintaining relationships — ranges from lack of interest in other people to difficulties in pretend play and engaging in age-appropriate social activities, and problems adjusting to different social expectations.

Nonverbal communication problems such as abnormal eye contact, posture, facial expressions, tone of voice and gestures, as well as an inability to understand these.


Two of the four symptoms related to restricted and repetitive behavior need to be present:

Stereotyped or repetitive speech, motor movements or use of objects.

Excessive adherence to routines, ritualized patters of verbal or nonverbal behavior, or excessive resistance to change.

Highly restricted interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus.

Hyper or hypo reactivity to sensory input or unusual interest in sensory aspects of the environment.

Symptoms must be present in early childhood but may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed capacities. Symptoms need to be functionally impairing and not better described by another DSM-5 diagnosis.

Symptom severity for each of the two areas of diagnostic criteria is now defined. It is based on the level of support required for those symptoms and reflects the impact of co-occurring specifiers such as intellectual disabilities, language impairment, medical diagnoses and other behavioral health diagnoses.

Wow, you found it! I've been searching and failing to find.

Can you give me an url? I'd like to read the section on PTSD as well.

Thank you!

Sorry. Didn't mean to mislead anyone. The information I have is actually from the American Academy of Pediatrics as the DSM-5 isn't itself on the internet yet. Here's the link.

http://aapnews.aappublications.org/cont ... 20130604-1

If the DSM exert does not help you, then it may help you to think of autism this way (though the below is a very generalized explanation) :

Your brain is wired in a way that the brains of most people are not; it sees, hears, and experiences things so much sharper than most people and is really good at picking up details and noticing patterns; it picks up more patterns and more details than most brains. There is so much information flooding into the brain, however, that it cannot make sense of it all, which can overwhelm the brain and make you anxious (this may also be why you have "meltdowns" or "shutdowns"). To conserve energy, your brain has to sacrifice some functions, so it sacrifices some of the social aspects; it would be too much for such a detail-oriented and sensitive brain to process information coming in from facial expressions, non-verbal body language, and other subtitles, so the brain does not capture all of these details as well. Because of this, socializing is a bit more difficult for you, as your brain is not wired for optimal socialization. Your brain, however, is really good at a lot of other things, such as categorizing information and noticing small details, which makes you very smart in specific ways.

In short, autism is basically thinking and perceiving the world with different mental software.

There is a disability service for families and children near were I live. They have a poster of autism the future is bright on their wall and bedside that is a poster about child abuse and the affect it has for life.
There are no other posters and a professional I was recently talking to said they believed a lot of autism and ADHD diagnosis are false and their problems were caused by trauma.
I believe that people can have deficits caused by abuse. However, some children with an autism disorder or ADHD who have difficult backgrounds would still have ADHD or autism behaviour, if they had a good childhood. Is that because they have no trauma or are likely to have better treatment available?

Some one asked me "what is autism?" I asked them do you have a disorder or diagnose of the mind? They replied, "no"
I asked, "do you think differently than most people," they replied "yes, I am an artist"
I said that is your answer then 'to what is autism'
They said "so aspergers is normal?"
"Like Vincent van Gough?" they asked. I said yes it could be but you don't have to have an extreme difference of normal.

Some people really latch onto psychogenic theories about autism and ADHD, because they simply do not want to accept that a human brain can develop that way without being pushed to develop that way. I think such approaches cause more harm than good because they deny the obvious in favor of a pet theory.

I think it would be more helpful if they focused on how trauma and such can serve to exacerbate conditions such as autism or ADHD by potentially causing the emergence of co-morbid disorders such as depression, anxiety, and/or PTSD, or even just making it much harder for a child to learn how to cope because they're forced to deal with constant stress in addition to having disorders that likely make them more vulnerable to such stress in the first place.

thank you all for the replies.
most of it was useful.