Thank you! I was just coming in here to post about that as I started looking into it myself. I’ve been confused by the conflicting studies - and discussion of them is a bit beyond me.
ETA: I filled it out because my therapist told me to. I don’t know if we are going to discuss it or what, but I found it very frustrating, personally.
Like others here, I hate having to answer questions where the only options are all or nothing. Though I think worse is when they ask you to rate things on some arbitrary scale. How am I supposed if something is a 6, 8 or 10?
I actually quite enjoy normal multiple choice tests, where there’s a right answer. I’d much rather do one of those than have to decide which of several wrong answers is closest to correct.
I’m really curious, why do you think flirting is a terrible thing to do?
Meant to reply to this earlier, but the thread is moving so fast it’s hard to keep up!
I wish I knew how to do this. Sometimes I notice a person is being left out, and I’d like to be able to help, but I really don’t know how to improve the situation.
She seems to have pretty normal five year old interests to me, in that she likes princesses, mermaids, and pretty things. She has been fairly obsessed with playing at being a cat for the best part of a year, now, but it’s not something she does constantly; more like a favourite game that she comes back to often. What I’ve observed while dropping her off at school is that another child will say hi, and she won’t answer. Or they’ll ask her to play, and she refuses and hides behind me. I really don’t know why. I tell her that she needs to reply when people speak to her, and should play with other kids when they ask if she wants them to be friends with her. It’s really difficult to tell what’s going on, since I don’t get to see her interact with her classmates much.
We don’t have a paediatrician; in the UK kids get taken to GPs as first port of call. I think I need to speak to her teachers again - last time, they seemed to think she was doing alright, but I has hoping she’d have made some closer friends by now.
The discussion section in the Jones article is quite good.
TLDNR version - biggest issue may be that while ASD can be comordid with a variety of other conditions, other conditions also can “mimic” ASD. The implication is that the instrument may be able to well discriminate between a population that is both “neurotypical” and without those conditions and ASD, but it is poor at discriminating between those who are “neurotypical” with anxiety or OCD or what have you that have some ASD like features and ASD.
Could be shyness, but in my son’s case he is VERY different with peers than adults. The explanation is that adults are all too happy to meet him where he is whereas kids are less likely to adapt. By this point he has a pretty strong grasp of conversations with adults, though you’d notice a slight pragmatic language deficit. He has trouble expressing himself non-factually at times. But his social skills with peers are still very limited.
This is what I’m worried about. There is no question that I have social anxiety and ADHD as well as PTSD from trauma that started in very early childhood. I need to understand if I’m going to be diagnosed as autistic why it’s not a combination of those other things.
She did a good job differentiating my hyperfixation on my fiction as uncharacteristic of ADHD and instead characteristic of autism. I have some pretty marked problems with perseveration. And I don’t think significant sensory issues and these meltdowns I’ve been having can be explained by either. I’ve missed four days this past month because of sensory shutdowns.
Arguably this past year is the lowest my PTSD symptoms have ever been, so it doesn’t make sense that I’m having these incidents because of PTSD.
Just gotta keep having this conversation I guess.
You have a clinician who has been considering the complete complicated you. Their attaching the label to you sounds like the result of a considered process, not a rush to squeeze you into an available box
But more importantly - you have a clinician who has been considering the complete complicated you! The label is not who you are to her. She hopes the label may help you in some way, but she has become aware of the longhand you and, from what you’ve described, is basing her care based on the whole complicated picture. Your history, your anxiety, your strengths, your everything…
Yeah. Speaking of perseveration, I haven’t been able to focus on anything else all week, and it’s exhausting. We’re meeting tomorrow morning, so I imagine this will be discussed. I’m hoping one of the things we can discuss is how to stop perseverating.
Thing is I gotta return to my original question. What if the label is incorrect? What if you have some ASD traits but not ASD? Would her treatment plan be different in any way?
And that completes my perseveration!
Because, as flirting has been explained to me, it involves a lot of misdirection like saying or acting different than what you actually feel in the hopes that the other person will “catch on”.
I can’t speak for her, I’m not sure, but I see your point. It’s this uncertainty that I find so difficult, though.
I hate flirting. I do pick up on it but no idea what to do with it. My husband flirts, we’ve been married nineteen years and I’m still just crickets. We do tease each other a lot though, which is more enjoyable and kind of flirting adjacent.
He’s at a business conference, he said people were doing karaoke but the line was too long for him to join.
I said, “It’s probably for the best if you’re trying to make friends.”
He responded with the proper memed acknowledgement of my sick burn.
That’s what passes for flirting for us.
I always thought it sounded like objectification and harassment. Not if you do it right, apparently.
I’m not sure we’re thinking of the same thing. My understanding of flirting is trying to convey interest in a subtle and deniable (and if it’s reciprocated, escalating) way. Mostly via non-verbal signals. The point is to establish if the other person is interested before saying something more direct, to avoid the unpleasantness of rejection.
I can pick up on it at least sometimes (wouldn’t necessarily know if I missed it), and I put more effort into avoiding doing it than trying to do it deliberately, seeing as I haven’t been single in almost 20 years.
This is funny because for as long as I can remember I did not flirt. When I was interested in someone, I a) secretly obsessed until I could stand it no more and finally b) just flat-out asked for what I wanted.
I know that supposedly makes me less desirable as a woman, but it shook out okay. My husband didn’t know how to do romance and required several whackings with a clue-by-four. If I had been less direct, I may have missed that opportunity altogether.
I really haven’t had that many teen/adult relationships. I went on one date with a much older man when I was 17, I was with another guy for three months and that was, in retrospect, pure lust - he’s probably domestically abusing someone right now - and I had one several-day thing with a friend who had at least as many psychiatric issues as I did, but I don’t think we even kissed. He told me, and I quote, “I’m sorry, but I can’t bring myself to be physically attracted to you.” And also, “We’re both way too messed up to make this work.” Not wrong. We stayed friends.
My husband had even less experience.
When I look at how my husband and I came together it really seems like a miracle. We’re two peas in a pod. Well now we are three peas.
Nice to be at peas with yourself! 
(Also was clueless at flirting. Ancient times.)
Spoke with my therapist.
Aaaand… she needs more time to make a determination.
Which is good. I prefer accuracy over speed. We discussed some of my social issues and she thinks a lot of it could be explained by trauma, which is the reason I sought her out, so she’s doing her job.
I just have to focus on something else for a while. Somehow.
Yeah, the trauma in your situation complicates things – a lot of your issues could have multiple explanations. I’m glad that she’s willing to try to delve into it and not just jump to one conclusion or another, it sounds like you are in good hands. I’m sure it’s frustrating to have to wait though!
I think we’ve discussed how clueless I am in the flirting department. Even when someone I ended up dating told me she’d been trying to show her interest for months I didn’t get it. There was nothing she’d done that made me think she was interested. As a twenty something I actually did flirt with older ladies (think sixties and older). Maybe I was just an old soul. These ladies always wondered why I didn’t have women lining up down the block.
And in today’s world, it is actually quite dangerous for someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing to even try flirting. Funny story, at least to me, I had a buddy who was accused of sexual harassment at work. One of this co-workers said he wouldn’t stop flirting with her. He said he just likes to smile at people and say “hi”. So we were at the grocery store one day, and a really beautiful woman, who was by herself, was strolling in the opposite direction. He looked at her, smiled, and said “hi”. And it was about the creepiest thing I ever saw. “Don’t ever do that to me” is what I told him.
To me, it sounds like you and I said almost the exact same thing. The concept of “conveying interesting” in a way you can “deny” is deception.
I apparently used to accidentally flirt a lot. Apparently, when you’re trying to mimic others’ behaviors to be accepted socially, that’s inevitable.
I’m struggling to imagine how that could be creepy, but it does illustrate the dangers. On paper, he wasn’t doing anything wrong, it’s all in the non-verbal signals.
If showing interest in a less obvious way is deception, then hiding one’s interest entirely would be even more so. I don’t accept that. No one is obliged to communicate their feelings, either at all or in a more blatant manner than they are comfortable with. It’s only deception if they are intentionally trying to mislead the other person.
Did you eventually learn to read and send signals appropriately in a romantic as well as non-romantic context?