Following on this thread, I wanted to repost this essay from an Aspie on what it is like to live with our condition. It is as heartfelt and evocative a description as I have ever read.
I would reproduce the essay here, but it may trigger some Dopers’ tl;dr responses. In addition, the writer, Lorin Neikirk, has placed a blanket copyright notice on the work.
Also, please excuse the source: WikiAnswers. The signal/noise ratio is epic there, so you may be tempted to disregard or cheapen Neikirk’s words on that basis alone. But try to understand that we neuro-atypicals often find the most inappropriate forums to be the best for our thoughts and our needs. If you can’t read Neikirk’s essay for what it is, or if it exceeds your tl;dr limit, you are free to go on to another thread. In any event, if you do feel this way, please spare us any derisive comments. Thank you.
I have a pen-pal who is significantly Aspergers. She uses the abbreviation “Aspie” all the time, but I wonder if it is considered a bit gauche?
The most interesting thing she said: experiences never change for her. The hundredth experience is exactly the same as the first.
For instance, listening to music. To me, I hear something a bit new in music, every time I hear it. By the hundredth repetition of a work, I’m way down into the minutiae, hearing nuances which I missed entirely the first time. Same with food: the first time I try a completely new cuisine, I don’t really “get” it; after I’ve had it a few more times, I start to appreciate it more intelligently. I only become aware of subtleties with repeated exposures.
In fact, some times, I don’t like something the first time I hear or taste or see it, but come to like it after going back and trying again a few times.
Another example is getting used to a route of travel. The first time, say, that you drive from L.A. to S.F., or the first time you walk from your house to the shopping center 3/4 of a mile away, it seems longer. But when you’ve made the trip a few times, and you’ve gotten used to it, it seems shorter. You’ve “internalized” the details; you know where you are more intuitively.
My friend says nope. She never, ever, changes her mind, or learns from repeated exposures to a stimulus. And a drive or a walk is exactly the same to her the first time as the hundredth time. She cannot “learn” from experiences in quite the way I’m describing. From many discussions, it seems to me that she is not adept at creating and utilizing an internal mental model of the experience.
I call bullshit. She doesn’t have Asperger syndrome. She is trying to sell books and her schtick is “By an Aspie for Aspies”. I find it extremely unlikely that she has ever been clinically diagnosed as having Asperger’s, let alone actually has it. As far as I can tell she is one of those “My social difficulties are because of a DISEASE!” people writing for others that think that way.
She does not appear to have any significant impairments in these areas. She was married and now apparently has a reasonably successful career as a writer and speaker. Then, from her webpage:
No mention of a clinical diagnosis and typical scapegoating of failure.
After that we can begin on her writing. It’s far too elaborate in evoking emotions than what should be expected from someone with Asperger’s. When the main manifestation of Asperger’s is lack of empathy, you wouldn’t expect to see the zeroing in on emotions as in her essay. Plus, it misses the fundamental problem of Autism/Asperger’s. These people typically are happy with their social interactions, precisely because they lack the understanding of social clues. From my experience, they don’t really feel isolated because they don’t even get that they are isolated.
I think those can be learned, with enough effort and motivation; as I understand it, people with Asperger’s simply have to make the deliberate decision to learn them, while neurotypical people don’t, and learning them takes more effort than for neurotypical people. The drivers have to be downloaded rather than coming pre-installed.
I have known some pretty goofy-ass people who are married and verbal. Maybe she has a smokin’ hot body and married someone who’s not particular about personality. And maybe she learned how to communicate effectively through years and years of hard work. By definition, people with Asperger’s do not have language problems (though this is being debated).
The “how” behind the diagnosis isn’t explicit, but I guess I don’t know why you would assume it wasn’t made in a clinical setting. It could have come about through a combination of self-diagnosis and subsequent “professional” confirmation. Women with Asperger’s tend to be overlooked because the symptomology apparently manifests itself in ways that defy the “stereotype” for them. For instance, the very things that make a guy look “Aspie” (being a miniature professor with poor eye contact) are often missing in females. At any rate, I don’t really think receiving a clinical diagnosis is THAT important. Doctors can make mistakes. There are no doubt a few people with formal AS diagnoses that are just lazy layabouts just looking for an excuse to complain. And others who have something else wrong with them.
The remark about scapegoating makes me think of my recent thread about “excuse” versus “explanation”. Asperger’s will complicate relationships and employment. A person with the syndrome, therefore, would be justified in explaining professional and personal failures on the syndrome, at least in part. Just like a paralyzed person can blame their broken spinal cord on their inability to walk up a flight of stairs. Not knowing anything about this writer, I don’t see evidence that she blames every single thing wrong with her life on AS. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if she talks about it a lot, in an annoying manner. As indicated by that awful purple prose!
I think you’re writing from ignorance here. Some people with AS have problems with epathy (the lack thereof). Some, believe it or not, actually empathize too much…which kind of ties into the “sensory overload” dealie that AS folks frequently have to cope with. There appears to be no safe generalization about folks with AS and empathy, I have learned.
(My non-expert hypothesis is that AS is a pretty heterogenous group and that more thoughtful parsing would show that the non-empath AS folks have a different cluster of symptoms than the empath/high-empath AS folks.)
Re happiness, people with AS are not stupid. They may have a blindspot to certain things, but most intelligent people generally know when they are being ignored or condescended to. Or hell, downright bullied. And I’m curious to know how you would know that people with AS aren’t capable of feeling isolated. A person doesn’t even have to have high self-awareness to feel lonely and frustrated about being odd/different. Simply watching people holding hands and kissing can make someone who’s never experienced those things feel isolated.
You’re missing the point. Without clinically significant impairments she simply does not have Asperger’s. That’s part of the definition of Aseperger’s.
Believe what you want. Me, I wasn’t born yesterday. I’m not buying the “Aspies by an Aspie” bit for one second. She seems like a fraud. And frankly, a pretty dumb one at that.
A person can be diagnosed with dyslexia due to having difficulty learning to read. They can learn how to read, however. And may actually become rather good at it. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t still dyslexic once they become literate. It just means they have coped with it in some fashion.
I think you’re spot on with the bolded section and I’d go even further, in fact, and say it’s very hard to find a safe generalisation with AS and anything. The criteria for diagnosing Autism Spectrum (Aspergers is a fairly clearly definied subset, but sort of blends on the edges) is difficulties of any sort with communication, flexibility and repetition, and an extraordinary range of types of difficulties “counts”. Too much empathy, too little empathy, won’t talk, won’t shut up, can’t focus on anything, hyperfocus to the exclusion of all else, and so on and so on. Really about the only characteristic that I could, hand on heart, say is shared between all the AS people I know now is “hates change.”
Anyway, I have nothing to say about whether the woman who wrote the linked piece is Aspy or not, but I do think that anyone trying to give the definitive word on “this is what it’s like FOR EVERYONE” is chasing a moonbeam. If the piece speaks to you, specifically, BoD, then great, but that’s not to stop a whole heap of Aspy types coming in here and potientially saying bollocks it’s not like that at all.
Just in case anyone here is an aspie (or you think you are) and you haven’t noticed this yet: There are several entire message boards run by and for aspies. I mentioned one in grude’s nearby thread on the subject. I’m not sure if I’m really allowed to link to it (no driving people to other message boards!). So, for whomever may be interested, just google up “Aspie Hangout”. There’s that one, and others too.
THIS ain’t necessarily so. Aspies aren’t a monolithic all-alike bloc either. It’s possible that some could dope out the empathy/relationships issues, but not necessarily in real-time. That is, it’s possible that some could chronically fail at social interactions because they can never get the hang of doing it on-the-spot “IRL” yet maybe be able to sit home alone afterward and think it out and write about it. Not sure how many could do this, but a few. And that is what you see – a few “aspies” (officially diagnosed or otherwise) getting into the commercialized “aspie” business.
And as for:
Well, THAT ain’t necessarily so either. You could find plenty of aspies (again, officially diagnosed or otherwise) who are satisfied and reasonably content with their near-total lack of any social life – – And then again, you could find plenty others who sit home alone, or engage in solitary activities all their life – with few or no friends, so love, no affection, so love-life – and are PLENTY DAMN NONE-TO-HAPPY about it. Plenty. A great many aspies damn well know how socially isolated they are.
What skin is it off your nose, other than that she might profit materially from her book? Do you have a spectrum condition yourself? Or do you perhaps feel jacked around by people who (say they) do?
I’m going to guess the latter. My own mother was so unwilling to admit I had a problem that she went straight to the internet, looked for the DSM-IV definition, and began lecturing me point by point on how I didn’t meet it.
Well, I DO generally try to fix spelling errors if I get it in the edit window, and I DON’T usually bother with an extra post just to fix spelling errors if I miss the window. But this time I will. I meant:
. . . with few or no friends, NO love, no affection, NO love-life – and are PLENTY DAMN NONE-TO-HAPPY about it . . .
ETA: And it took me several rounds of corrections to get even THIS correction right! :smack:
And following on treis’ reasoning, if such people don’t fit the DSM to a tee, maybe they should stop crying AS and start blaming their sorry, misfit, not-quite-human selves, accept their misery as their lot in life, and save society the burden of having to give a shit.
I am generally pro-science and anti-bullshit. It moderately annoys me when people spew woo-woo nonsense and others believe it. This doesn’t seem to be damaging as the anti-vax people, but I don’t think amateur psychology diagnosing is helpful to anyone.
I tried to add a similar comment to my just-above ETA but missed the edit window again. I am glad to notice, just now, that somebody else did beat me to it.
My comment was going to be (and now is): Those of you who neither are, nor think you are an aspie, don’t need to be opinionizing on how happy or not aspies are. Everything you think you know about aspies may be right – or maybe not.
That’s a good position for what it is, but you can hold it without stomping on someone’s impressions and emotions about their own life. Unless, of course, it makes you feel even more righteously anti-bullshit.
I’ll have to read around on Ms. Neikirk’s book site and see what strikes me as woo-woo. Any hints before I do?