Can you have AS traits, but not be an Aspie?

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Would just like to know if it's possible to have Asperger traits, but not actually have AS.

I talked to my psychologist about the possibility of me having Aspergers since I've read a lot about it, and find myself relating to the definition of 'being an Aspie'. I took a 200-item AS quiz and scored a 170, the result of me being a possible Aspie, and I showed my psychologist the evaluation of my test scores.

She said although I do have a lot of aspie traits (social impairments, lack of empathy, no eye contact, obsessive narrow interests, dislike changes in routine, sensitive to food textures), I am not a 'real' aspie because I don't have melt downs and because I'm not 'intelligent enough' to be one.... she still sticks to the 'mild autism traits' she had put on my diagnosis and is not planning on switching that to AS, and she told me to stop being so hypochondriac about the situation.

I am also diagnosed with ADD/ADHD btw. Kinda felt a little let down about this.

Your so-called psychologist needs to find a new profession. And why are they so quick to slap an ADD/ADHD label on everybody?

Your psychologist sounds like a bit of an idiot. I'm diagnosed with AS and I don't have meltdowns (at least I can't recall ever having any). I do have shutdowns if I'm under enough pressure.

As for intelligence, AS only requires that you have normal (or higher) intelligence; you don't have to be a genius.

Obviously, none of us here can diagnose you over the internet, but from your description it sounds entirely feasible you might have AS. You may want to seek a second opinion if this is important to you.

yes, it is always possible to have traits but not actually meet all the criteria.

i noticed you are female. we face special challenges being diagnosed because we manifest autism/aspergers a little differently. when i googled female asperger's i finally got confirmation (for myself, not officially diagnosed). also took a lot of the online tests listed on the sticky at top of this forum and got further confirmation. i actually do meet the DSM V criteria as listed, but we do tend to slide under the radar.

you might try looking for a psych who specializes in female autism, or, bring some of the materials you find on female AS to your current treater and ask him/her to look into it further.

a couple of links i found helpful:

click tables to enlarge - list of female aspie traits:
http://www.help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58 ... d4f6a.html

article on differences in female autistics vs. male:
http://www.autismhelp.info/what/autism- ... 8,1-1.aspx

there's also a thread here on an article published by Forbes, in this forum.

yes if you look like a nerd then thats an aspie trait

One thing that I have noticed is people tend to assume otherwise. If someone (like from history) exhibited just ONE trait associated with Autism/Asperger's, then some people speculate that they MUST have been Autistic. If this were true than just under 100% of the population would be Autistic.

That's what I encountered at first. Apparently since I work full time I'm not impaired never mind the fact that life has been a constant struggle and I make about half what most with my skills do: just having stable employment means you can't have Aspergers. I get so angry when people keep saying that only mental health professionals can say if you are AS: most (if not all) of the ones I ran into don't have a clue what they are talking about and think a license by itself makes them infallible. I knew so many 'licensed' teachers who I had to correct as early as Grade 2 so I learned at a young age that a degree or license doesn't make you an expert by itself. I even had to tell one "expert" how to pronounce it and explain it's a spectrum condition.

Yes, it is very possible to have AS traits but not AS (which is what I was originally told) but I can say with 99.99% I have AS. I literally have every single one of the Aspie traits (right down most obscure ones like "often refuses to eat foods that touch each other on the plate" )yet still can't seem to nail down that elusive diagnosis thanks to my uncooperative mother. I was once reading a professional literature on Aspergers (not an online quiz) and of the 147 signs, I ticked 146 of them. How much proof do I need?

People with an autistic spectrum disorder usually have other underlying potential illnesses because they are unaware of the world around them and are easily gullible. mine have all been physical complaints because i'm too busy using my brain.

Sure, a lot of doctors and psychologists are idiots. It's still more likely one will be diagnosed correctly by a professional than anyone else (including oneself). With AS or anything else.

A lot of teachers are idiots, too, yes. I have a history of teacher correction myself. Some of them were just making assertions outside their own field and trying to legitimise them using their position of authority, but quite a few were clueless within their own field as well. I recall my ESL teacher not knowing the word "flavour" and resisting to acknowledge its existence.



It does seem very likely from what you note here. Obviously, whether it's worth pursuing further depends on what you're trying to achieve. If it's just to explain to yourself why your life is broken, and you feel you match the profile that well, you're golden. If you're trying to obtain some kind of service requiring an official diagnosis, not so much.

I'd noted that uncooperative or absent parents must be a bit of an issue when obtaining an adult diagnosis. Fortunately for me, my mother was very cooperative. I was still turned down for a full assessment when I first sought it in 2006 because their fairly bogus pre-screening apparently didn't make it worthwhile. Then in 2010 they offered to assess me unsolicited, when I sought help for anxiety. They had looked at my history and wondered what the hell their colleagues were thinking in 2006. And so I got my official diagnosis.

Look for another psychologist. The woman doesn't know what she's talking about. With a score of 170 and the symptoms you describe you're almost certainly on the spectrum - at least AS, if not classic autism (don't know where you live, in the US and other countries that use the DSM-5 diagnostic manual it's all autism spectrum disorder [ASD] now, anyway). I don't have meltdowns either (at least nothing even remotely as strong as described by others here) and the only intelligence requirement for AS is that you're of at least average intelligence - which starts at an IQ of 70! You will however only get a diagnosis if you have significant impairments (i.e. problems on the job or out of work, no friends/relationship, persistent difficulties with social interactions, and so on).

That said, yes, one can have autistic traits without being on the spectrum. It's called the broad autism phenotype (BAP). But that's people who score 100 on that test, not 170.

With regard to: "stop being such a hypochondriac about it" -- I have noticed that some doctors and nurses use this tactic. I think it is with good intention but it annoys me a lot when it happens to me.

The tactic is that they are trying to avoid a wordy and complex discussion (sometimes argument) by using figures of speech that try to appeal to your common sense.

It can range from the hypochondriac comment, to comments about laziness, body weight, clumsiness, etc. ("No, you don't have anything wrong with you, you just need some confidence. that is why you cannot catch the baseball")

They are just trying to be realists about it, and they think if they can get through to you on that level maybe it will help. I still think they do it out of good intentions, but in most cases I wish they wouldn't.

WThF!? I think she's "not intelligent enough" to be a professional psychologist. That statement is outright stupid. Asperger Syndrome does not automatically confer high IQ. That is a stereotype, not a medical fact.

I think it might be closer to the truth to say that we have a tendency to use language more precisely than most people, and obsessively acquire extensive data on specific interests, therefore we may often seem to be smarter than we actually test out to be.

As for "Meltdowns" - that is not an actual medical term, it's a Pop Psychology buzzword and it can cover a lot of different behavioral phenomena. It doesn't necessarily mean a loud hysterical tantrum. One can be overwhelmed by a single incident, and spend an hour having an anxiety attack and weeping, or curled in a fetal position in the dark with a stomach ache and I'd consider that a "meltdown."

In the end, Autism is a neurological dysfunction, NOT A SET OF BEHAVIORAL QUIRKS. The atypical behaviors are the result of a SENSORY PROCESSING DISORDER and that can be empirically tested. Any Mental Health Professional who makes a declaration or diagnosis of AS or NOT AS without testing you for atypical sensory processing is a jagoff who is not doing their job.

No one can determine whether you have High Functioning Autism or not until they have tested your BRAIN and that can be done with a series of simple tests to determine whether or not your gears are turning at the same speed as a normal brain's do. If you're old enough to remember this, these tests are kind of the psychological equivalent of banging a patient's knee with a rubber hammer to determine whether their involuntary reflexes are normal.

In short, you need to see a more competent Psychologist.

That's not actually true either. AS/ASD is not a sensory processing disorder. AS/ASD is a developmental disorder. Neither the DSM-5 nor the ICD-10 require sensory issues as a symptom, but sensory processing disorder is often (not always) comorbid with AS/ASD.

ASD might be a neurological disorder, but according to my research and my psychologist the diagnostic criteria is based on observed impairments in at least one of three main categories, which is a highly subjective and I might add rather unscientific way of determining whether one has this disorder. Whether I am successfully been able to pass as NT or not (I have tried and failed miserably) should not determine whether I have an ASD or not but given the current criteria, that's exactly what it is. Conversely, just because I (or someone like me) couldn't find a job for years doesn't mean I must have an ASD by itself and might be because of terrible luck, a bad job market or just being a really crappy worker with a bad attitude that nobody wants but I know someone diagnosed almost solely on being unemployed.

Yet another reason why I stopped beating myself up for not having that piece of paper. It's not like Type 1 Diabetes or Down Syndrome where you either have it or you don't. Any specialist who can't figure it out if you have either of those things should have their license immediately revoked but ask ten different "experts" about ASDs and you will get ten different opinions. While I give more weight to a licensed professional, they have been wrong more often than right in my experiences.

You can most definitely have autistic traits without being autistic, although your psychologist's reasons are suspect.

Well I was going to start off with my reaction to your psychologists' words.... but I'll just let that one pass me by.

There is no way to diagnose from a 200 question test, 15 minute interview, etc. and to be dismissed so readily reflects her lack of knowledge and experience in making such diagnoses.