Aspergers or Autism

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Going by social attitudes there is a difference between Aspergers and Autism.

Personally I am more like Temple Grandin personality wise but have to take the label of Aspergers because I did not have delayed speech.

Aspergers has a different public image to autism...different stereotypes and all that.

It pisses me off as people expect me to be logical and serious all the time when actually I can be quite playful. If I am playful then they expect me to be stupid which is annoying.

I like playful, but I liked being smart too (lost some of my iq when i got smacked on the head by a car in a hit and run accident).

Which catagory do you feel you fall in to and should autism be split into categories at all?

My dad was autistic, he reminded me of rainman, but not so much on steroids.

I love my dad, be kind.

I have Asperger's, or level 1 autism, although I don't like being lumped together with autism.

I do think autism should be split into levels or whatever because some people with autism are more disabled than others. It is a spectrum after all, which usually means it can be ranged from mild to severe. Most people fall into the moderate area where their autism is mild in some areas but severe in others.
I fall into the mild end of the spectrum because despite my symptoms I'm still more or less just as capable of living independently as the average NT and I don't need any outside support.

Usually people with Asperger's are more likely to come across as quirky or eccentric, whereas people with classic autism are more obvious. Babies with Asperger's are more likely to approach their milestones at the average stages, especially speech. Usually babies with autism are more likely to be delayed in speech and other development.

But these days most people on the spectrum refuse to accept or believe that there are different severities of autism and believe autism should just be 1 thing.

The dictionary definition of "spectrum" has 2 different meanings.

I am Aspergers-like, but I like Autism or Autism Spectrum because then I am an ally for those with higher-level challenges. It's like people with burns ---- a 5% burn is a world away from a 50% burn but they are both burn victims. The environmental stress for me is some lower percentage than for a "classic" Autistic person but it is a similar underlying experience. The more stress I am under, the more "classic" I get. Likewise, I have seen "classic" persons with supportive accommodations become more "Aspie" like.

Because my mum worked with some SLD kids who were LFA and really found life tough (eg mutism, banging their heads against walls, being 16 and unable to use the toilet independently, stuff like that) and I like most of my autistic traits, I used to think there was a huge gap between being aspie and being LFA.

Coming on this site, I've met LFA people who might be mute but who have rich minds which they express through writing on the forum. They might have some quirks I don't have but I'd be sad to have a world without people like them. I really hope they can do the basic life functioning stuff like toilet though & if they can't, I really hope they have help available to them.

I have no desire for a cure and call myself aspie as it's some sort of a more precise/less pathologised explanation of what I am. (Trying to say this without getting into the 'once you've met one autistic person' territory but...) my own particular type of autism loves specific language. If you have a word to make something more specific: use it and I'll appreciate it.

I sometimes remove the medicalising entirely and just call myself INTJ. That explains my personality just as much and is expressed both in strengths and weaknesses not just a negative thing.

As far as I see it, my disabling part of my autism is my sensory sensitivities. I wish there could be a cure that kept the same personality but got rid of my sensory sensitivities. Although I fear it would change entirely how I see things visually: other people I do art classes with don't see the tones and brightnesses of 'dull' colours quite so clearly as I do, for eg and they tell me they love my 'view of the world'. Literally -

I have not LFA, I can speak rather normally, I even do not have many common symptoms of autism but I do not function high... Rather I am moderately-functioning. Not so bad to be unable of independent existence (for example due to lack of ability of going to the shop or doctor without other person who helps me), but not so good to be labelled as generally mildly affected (I have never had a close friend, even more romantic partner, I am very poor in earning money, I have never driven a car despite being above 29 years old).

I would say that I have a sort of autism, a pervasive developmental disorder, maybe even something like "multiple-complex developmental disorder" because I am diagnosed also with a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder and OCD. My intellectual profile may suggest some sort of NVLD. I might have less-known disorder named sluggish cognitive tempo or concentration deficit disorder since childhood. My sexuality was also peculiar since childhood.

In Poland I have social pension due to my disability which is quite hard to get and an individual really has to have severe mental disorder(s) to have it due to psychiatric reasons. People with only mild disorders just do not get it.

My diagnosis report says High Functioning Autism / Asperger Syndrome

I regard myself as Autistic and use this term to describe myself to others

I just get confused because in threads talking specifically about severity levels and autism it is always argued that there is no extremes and that "nobody is a little bit autistic" just like "nobody is a little bit pregnant" and all that. But then say if I see something in another thread like "autistics die before the age of 40" it's usually that they're saying that applies to severe autism only. So, what is severe autism if autism isn't supposed to have severity levels?

Officially Aspergers.
Actual autism range sits at 'level 1 to 2'. Level 1.5, but that doesn't exist.

Trait-wise, 'both'.
Not really 'either' -- and this is not even a personal observation from myself.


Otherwise? It's just a label to explain and present a complex thing with a simple thing.
I care not unless it serves it's purpose.

The static extremes and further dichotomies do not serve a lot of practical purpose for a lot of cases including mine.



Whenever it comes to labels, the part I truly care about is the purpose that comes out of it and how the context helps that purpose.

If the label does not serve nor resonate, does not truly equate nor aide one's quality of life...

Then the debates are simply meaningless. The stats and stereotypes are also meaningless.

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I am a "classic" autistic person who turned "Aspergian" after about the age of 6. I didn't say a word until I was 5 1/2, and in a research camp.

There are some cases of this.

There's a book called "Elijah's Cup," which is about a child who was very classically autistic until he was about 3-4 years old---then became Aspergian.

I was basically NT until the age of 4, then I was ADHD and AS (not diagnosed), then I was sort of between NT and AS at age 6-7, then ADHD and AS at 8 (got diagnosed with AS then), then I seemed more autistic for most of my teens, then bipolar-like in the first few years of adulthood, now I feel barely AS at all but very ADHD.

I was diagnosed with AS when I was 13. At first, I had no idea what the specialist who was working with me was talking about given I had a lot on my mind at the time.

I kept my diagnosis a secret until my senior year of high school.

It's all autism. Different levels of severity, but those may not be so easily measurable.

I actually think that putting autism and aspergers together and using functioning levels makes sense. And here's an anecdote I like to use to explain why. I go to a transition program for adults with developmental disabilities. My first year there were 3 of us young women who were very similar in terms of our social and life skills functioning abilities and it was easy to see how we all had the same condition e.g. autism. However, we each had a different diagnosis: Aspergers (me), Autistic Disorder, and PDD-NOS. That's because as children we all looked very different. One of my friends didn't speak until she was like 4 and presented very much as classic autism, whereas I never had a language delay and wasn't diagnosed until I was 17. But as young adults around the age of 20, we presented similarly and since we needed the same supports it would make sense if we had the same diagnosis as each other.

Now I am not a big fan of functioning labels. I think at times they can make distinctions where there doesn't need to be distinctions. Functioning labels can downplay someone's strengths in one direction and downplay their struggles in the other direction. However, we are stuck with needing some sort of label because of how huge a range autism is. I'm studying to be a special education teacher and this is the way I look at it. If I'm looking at a piece of paper about a student who is going to be in my class and it says autism, I'm going to need to have some general idea of what level of support this kid is going to need in the classroom. That's exactly what the DSM V functioning labels are all about: level of support needed.