Highly Intelligent versus Autistic

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Hi all,
I've been struggling a bit lately just trying to get an appropriate diagnosis. The more I read, the more clear it is that for all practical purposes I'm autistic, It's also increasingly clear that the only reason why I might not ever get an appropriate diagnosis is that there was an overblown concern about too many diagnoses being given and that it was just easier to nuke the AS diagnosis from orbit before lighting the whole thing on fire and burying it at the bottom of that mine they used to hide tsars.

To an extent, I do get the point, AS was likely over diagnosed in individuals with higher IQs, it's part of why it never occurred to me to look into anything autism related until I was in my late 20s. And why it's only been this year in my early 40s that I've gotten serious about it. Being highly intelligent does add a similar gap to social interactions that you'd see with autism, as there's a constant need to guess the emotional state of those around. Unlike with autism though, for the most part, these are individuals who have more options for things like employment and for living independently. Even if, social interactions tend to be rather unpleasant due to people getting offended or insecure that somebody seems to have the answers and a lot of tongue biting when people are wanting to do stupid things and a similar preoccupation with interesting topics.

I always assumed that the IQ test score I got was artificially high because it was an online test and online tests are often not properly normed and can read higher than they should. And because it was so very easy. But, I'm starting to wonder if I just feel that way because I spend so much of my brain power working around things like that I can't recognize myself in the mirror and go through periods where even just basic reading is a challenge. And, I do have a couple graduate level programs under my belt even as I'd spend periods where I wasn't able to read barely at all.

Now that I've rambled a bit, does anybody have any idea why neither the highly intelligent, nor the high masking autistics nor the people that are both got a say in rewriting the criteria? Because it seems to me that a better fix to AS over diagnosing the highly intelligent and under diagnosing the people with ID would have been to simply add a qualifier that the traits not be better explained by intelligence level and be done with it. And allow for the age deadline to creep up a few years in cases where the intelligence level dictates a greater ability to brute force through social situations.

Thanks for reading.

I don't know what my IQ is because my mother refused to tell me and the school district has long since discarded any records. I was in Gifted classes in elementary school which requires at least a 135.

I'm sure my IQ obscured my ASD. NT people can intuite social interaction. ND have to deduce it, but if you're smart enough you can learn to deduce with decent accuracy.

High IQ people without autism shouldn't have trouble reading other people. Their socializing difficulties would occur because they're frustrated by others inability to understand or even be interested in the advanced concepts they're dealing with.

Thank you, I think you've stated it better than I did. That's a large part of my point, it should be possible to tell the difference between those that are highly intelligent from those that are autistic from those that are both. It just might take some time.

Instead, what we got was a bunch of people thrown under the bus without any sort of effort made to reduce the harm.

A non-autistic person with a high IQ can be very good at socializing but an autistic person will find socializing a lot more difficult and stressful even if they do have a high IQ.

That's a regular 'It's so hard being gifted' type of comment on the gifted subreddit.

Diagnosing Autism is incredibly complex when it is done correctly. It's not that simple. It's not just about social difficulties and IQ levels.

I don't disagree here. But by the same token that's like 90% of why AS got the axe, rather than maintaining the status quo that did over diagnose the higher IQ people a bit until such a time as research could provide a more clear dividing line, they made it very hard for some of us to get a proper diagnosis due to the arbitrary age restrictions. I've begun to wonder if I'm even the only one in my family that's so affected. I've got a cousin that's got an IQ that was so high when he was tested that he didn't get any of the questions on the test wrong. His mother was also my absolute biggest supporter ever that seemed to think that everything that I was doing that was quirky was just sort of normal, and my cousin doesn't really seem to have the sort of social skills that most of my other relatives have.

The complexity of the diagnosis is a large part of why it was so foolish to make such an abrupt change with no provision being given for those that should be provided with treatment, but didn't yet have any sort of diagnosis.

Unfortunately, it's set to get even worse as the kind of standard misdiagnoses of schizoid personality disorder is likely to disappear and not receive an autism side option for those that aren't eccentric or anxiety prone in this aspect.

So many people have implied both professionally and personally that they believed my IQ to be high ...
But lacked most all social skills growing up ...till late twenties then started to deduce that this was a issue and started to try to configure ways to mask,without knowing the concept .But requiring on the spot rapid deductions can be extremely tough ( most often for me). for most all social situations .But time has passed and being older gave
me much experience,at this skill , So nowadays can make it look almost seemless in all but the most daunting situations. And the fun part is ; i can see the situations as they appear between people ( myself & others) And even
give myself , sometimes alittle pat on the back for recognizing and addressing the situations accordingly .
Its the persons intentions though can be hard to read . ie. people with drug habits or intentions of bullying or theft of property .Even courtroom prosecuetors seem to be the unexpected ones that I watch for ! As over the years due to a higher than average rate of victimization put upon me ,Have ended up in court for a variety of unexpected ( ever) in
my real life issues . The deductive stuff sure did help as I progressed in dealing with these types ,mentioned above.
(And a big personal Naivete issue . cause me to be in those situations to begin with )

but on average have done well personally in court against at least two professional Lawyers , and caused at least one Courthouse to lose its status to prosecuete high level felonies. According to this other dishonest lawyer i tried to employ to recover losses in a traumatic situation regarding loss of life of late hubby . And subsequently followed up and sure enough , My written complaint to the Federal gov. here in the USA caused this to happen.
(3 cheers for Aspie Pragmatism)

Another variable is that social interactions are highly gendered!
I find it much easier to socialize when presenting female, as I have feminine figure and voice.
Not surprisingly it helps if my mannerisms match my appearance and voice.

The struggles you are describing (not recognizing your face in the mirror sometimes, problems socializing with others, etc.) are not something that most intelligent people have to deal with. I went to the highest-performing magnet school in my state, and so I was surrounded by high-IQ people. I can tell you, most of them didn't struggle with stuff like that. I did, and maybe some others, but certainly not most of us. As such, the statement "better explained by intelligence level" has in it some causal assumptions that aren't necessarily correct.

Unrelatedly, I have never met another person with face blindness in person, though a lot of people here report experiencing it. It's not part of the diagnostic criteria for ASD, but ~80% of people with face blindness are autistic.

This above quote maybe very true in lower level daily day to day interactions, but have seen repeatedly that in Public venues including city counsel meetings the deferrence seems to go to male opinions. But except on the rare occassion when Females outnumber the males by a large margin , in these same venues .Even then,no guarrantees of whose opinion (in those same venues ) prevail . Worse in the Bible belt.

I'm not consciously aware of ever having 'masked'. I don't make micro adjustments in real time to give a more positive impression of myself. Basically WYSIWYG with me.

Different standards for male and female. Height is a huge factor for guys. I'm too short.

I have a size 2 hourglass figure with slightly long legs and a thin waist. Very easy to shop for clothes.
Often make a good first impression just on appearance!

A lot of this is my curiosity and quite honestly, I don't think there's nearly enough attention paid to it. Especially when there are so many people excluded from diagnosis and support based on a failure to just write criteria that clearly distinguish it from autism.

In the case of prosopagnosia, you see some similar issues with OCD causing a scrambling of the way in which the brain interprets the face. People typically go from the ouside inward, which allows for a much quicker processing time as the brain can stop when it gets enough to know the person. People with OCD tend to go the other way around, which is part of why there's often issues with cleanliness where a single germ or piece of dirt can make it seem like the entire room is soiled.

That's certainly possible. I didn't think I was doing it, but the more I think about it, I'm not sure that I ever don't mask. But, looking back on it, I just started really early and then pretty much avoided spending time with people whenever I could. Which is probably while the schizoid character traits are more easily identified than the autistic ones are.

^ That wasn't to dispute what you,or anyone else has said on this thread. It was merely to suggest that masking and high intelligence don't always necessarily go together, or perhaps go together in a way that's not readily identifiable as such.

The Uncanny Valley isn't just for movies.