Asperger's Syndrome's topics - tribe.net

Creating Jobs for Autistic People

water_muse — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:45:30 GMT

Hello everyone,

I just want to let everyone know about a new project we've started to create jobs for people on the autistic spectrum. It's little more than a month old and already doing very well. Traffic on the website has grown steadily, as have newsletter signups. People are contributing to our wiki and I'm answering email inquiries about the project just about daily.

Our site is http://www.autlabs.com

You can help by contributing to our wiki at http://autlabs.wikispaces.com or by spreading the word about the project via your blogs or any other autism-related forums.

Thus far we've been very successful getting people to blog about the project and that's how we've achieved very rapid growth in just the first month with no money, all just word-of-mouth promotion. A blog or a forum note may not seem like much, but the truth is that just a few words helps quite a lot. So if you have a blog or if you frequent any other autism-related sites, please do help pass this information along. :)

Thanks!

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

Objectum Sexuality on Good Morning America, April 8, 8 AM PST

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:14:13 GMT

Hey there,
Good Morning America tapped me as the appropriate sexologist to comment on objectum sexuality for a segment about Erika Le Tour Eiffel.
It airs this coming Weds.

As you may or may not know, some members of the OS community are diagnosed with AS and autism. I am in the middle of doing a survey study of the group, with the permission and gracious cooperation of Erika and the Objectum-Sexuality Internationale group.

Hope some folks here can watch.
Amy

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

Parenting Aspergers resource guide (Online E-book)???

Ol Soul Young Heart — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:12:36 GMT

Anyone here ever seen the Parenting Aspergers Resource Guide online e-book? It's from a Guy named Dave Angel who has a website www.parentingaspergers.com. He's not a doctor, an MS in social work or something, but claims to have this wonderful, "invaluable" e-book. It sounds good, but also a little too good to be true. The website is more like an infomercial than anything professional. It's only $37 (plus extra for volume 2), but it has that super-hyped flavor that makes me wonder if it's not mostly crap. I'll probably be a guinea pig and buy it anyway, but I figured it might be worth asking around first. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 2 replies

overdiagnosis?

dax — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:09:52 GMT

is aspergers something rare and that should only be diagnosed with specific clear signs?

ive been interested in this subject for some time, when i spoke with someone who shared that they definitely had it, and some of the symptoms fit me. but then, some of the symptoms fit lots of people!

i even went so far as to go to a university and participate ina free test to find if i had a form of mild autism, and the answer was a no.

thanks!

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 4 replies

The Tone Of My Voice!

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:59:43 GMT

It is odd, just how much the way we speak can affect another. I have this problem when I am speaking to our eldest, I have to be very careful in how I emphasise words and the volume. It appears to him that I am being aggressive a lot of the time. It is similar with the little boy.
I have learnt a whole new way of speaking to them so that I do not offend. Most of the time, I don't even realise that I am doing it.
Does anyone else have problems with the Tone of their voice, it appears to be something that those with Aspergers has. I know that I am affected by the tone of a voice, but usually put it down to being Empath as well!

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 7 replies

does anyone else...

chris — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:59:14 GMT

Take cymbalta to help them with their Aspergers?

I am on it and it seems to help me alot... I still have the issues of the black and white literalism...
and the discussion on tone of voice.. I still have that issue.. it sounds alot of times like my wife is shouting at me
when she claims she isnt... but on other things it seems to just mellow me out and help me cope alot better...

Chris

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 1 reply

Bonafide Nonprofit: Asperger's Intimacy Counseling & Education Project

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:32:11 GMT

Hi all,
I haven't been active on tribe or this list for quite some time due to finishing up my doctorate in human sexuality and then taking on hypnotherapy school. But there may be a few on this list interested in knowing that I am creating the Asperger's Intimacy Counseling and Education Project as a bonafide 501 (c)(3) nonprofit -- CA papers have been filed -- and hope to find funding to underwrite sex counseling and couples communication education for folks who know or suspect AS is a factor in their lives.

Any ideas people have about what is needed are always welcome. And if there are folks here in the SF Bay Area who are interested in participating in a small scale, pilot counseling program at no charge, please contact me. Thanks!
All the best,
Amy

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 1 reply

How many in one family!

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:01:30 GMT

I have been told that one in every one hundred or so have aspergers. I have it and my ten year old son has it. Now I am watching a little boy just over two years old show the same Attributes. We have a fun Household at times, but usually we function pretty well!
So, we range from Sixty, Ten and Two......all males. No complaints!

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 18 replies

see this movie!

moonmom — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:08:31 GMT

Mozart and the whale.
Never seen anything that got close to the angst and joy of love with neuro quirks.
I've been that girl, fallen for that guy...and made him crazy
sans the happy ending as yet
But maybe there's hope
free link to movie http://www.watch-movies.net/movies/mozart_and_the_whale/
or just go rent it!!!
I LOVED IT

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 5 replies

Aspies and eating (again)

Ol Soul Young Heart — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 05:03:00 GMT

My son, he's almost eleven, is a high functioning aspie who's almost 5 feet tall, very thin boned, and weighs about 55 lbs. The doctors (and his mom and me) are getting concerned because he's actually lost weight over the last few months, instead of gaining it. He's been checked for cilliac disease (via a slightly invasive stomach lining biopsy!) and wheat and milk allergies, but has shown negative (he hasn't had any diarrhea problems, in fact the opposite). The GI specialists says this is typical for Aspergers, and may end up putting him on a feeding tube from time to time! He's on medadate (and yes I don't like it, but I've seen his school and social functioning with and without, and concede that that it does help, at least for now)and has also asthma, but is otherwise healthy.
He's a great and generally cooperative kid, who will sometimes try new foods, but sticks to his fav's like cheese pizza, chicken fingers, fish sticks, pasta with Alfredo, cheese, hot dogs, etc. a very mid-western starch and protein kind of diet, with some brocolli and carrots now and then, plus cheetos, ice cream, and some chocolate. He doesn't eat fruit (ever), or lettuce and tomatoes, and it's a chore to get him to eat lunch, even though we pack it. When he's with me, it seems he eats enough that he shouldn't be losing weight, usually breakfast (waffles) and a snack or two plus a decent amount of dinner. His mom says she was the same way and build when she was young, but doesn't remember losing weight (except once when she was very sick), but had far less medical attention and wasn't diagnosed an aspie until after he was. So my theory is that he's not absorbing as much of his food as he could, perhaps because of some nutritional deficiency or related condition.
Does anyone have any experience with this? I'm open to anything that has even a vague basis in science or empirical efficacy. Most of the alt medical posts you read online say no wheat or milk, that it's bad for ("or even the cause of") autism/aspergers, but what am I to think when the standard medical tests show negative on those, and studies with a GFCF (gluten free casein free) diet don't show any corroboration of the claims, except in unscientific single-blind studies, and single patient testimonials? There are also some studies that point out that thin boned children lose even more bone thickness when you take them off of milk. So generally what I'm looking for here is not the web-viral hear-say alternative cures that are all over, but some real experiences with approaches, supplements, etc. that might improve either his appetite and or food absorption. Any info or leads on this would be greatly appreciated, thanks

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 2 replies

please come help me

prometheusPAN — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:39:17 GMT

i am an aspie and i have a new bbs. Its an open source think tank. Its going to take some aspies i think to get it running cuz most people
don't get it. NTs just hop in to political cults of personality, and don't think about taking responsibility to solve problems.

I really need help and this is a very awesome idea and opportunity for everybody. Esp for aspies since we are the cure for the common groupthink.

http://mytalktoday.com/forum/forum.php
http://mytalktoday.com/forum/index.php

thanks!

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

Summary Results of Asperger's and Sexuality Survey

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:47:34 GMT

Hi all,
I've finally posted the summary results for the second version of the Survey on Asperger's Syndrome and Sexuality. You can find the link on the first page of my site, www.tantra-intimacy-aspergers.com.
I haven't written a report or summary yet, but thought I'd at least share the summary.
Would like to hear people's thoughts and reactions too.
Thanks!

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 14 replies

Noooooo......dating

moonmom — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:50:17 GMT

I think I might rather be alone then do this again.
What am I missing. Is it supposed to be fun. I think I hate it.
Now what?
And that date went well.
Ohmygod
I feel like I've been dipped in honey and rolled in ants!

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 9 replies

I believe I have been taken advantage of...

pmheart6 — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 00:30:54 GMT

Hi,

I believe I have been taken advantage of. I was dating a lady who's son had undiagnosed asperger.

She also self diagnosed me. (I just took an online quiz, and got a ~185/200. on the aspie and 18/200 on the non aspie.)

She kept me pushed to my stress limits, she spent my money - I had good credit. She didn't so we purchased things on my credit cards. We were going to pay for the goods together.

I feel 1. I was gullible since I never had a loving relationship 2. Since I trust what people say and take it for fact (that she would work harder next week to help pay for it).
3. I was pushed beyond my limits. I ended up lashing out, and she used that as an excuse to spend more.
4. I ended up feeling trapped.

I finally broke free, but have been paying for it ever since, and have not been able to pay it down

She has racked up ~$15k in debts for her half. That has caused my already high stress go through the roof.

Her current partner is trying to say they were "Gifts"
As of now, I only have about 3 more months to sue, but don't know how to go about it.

Any Ideas.

I have a suitcase of negatives and pictures from 30 years of her life. I can hold as ransom. Of course most of the ones she really wanted are already in Scrapbooks.

Thanks

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 4 replies

A Recent Blog -- Feedback Welcome

water_muse — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:56:32 GMT

Hi all,

I just wanted to note, for anyone here who might be interested, that I'm actively interested in feedback regarding this particular recent blog entry I posted regarding AS, my own personal history, the notion of "passing" for normal and my current research into autism and pursuit of a diagnosis.

http://people.tribe.net/water_muse/blog/aa16641c-7632-40ae-a39a-9f250c2739ec?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5Ba3384e24-a77d-4eb6-ad48-1a48c0348d79%5D#comments

Thanks

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

Communication exercise using AS as a model...

charmaine — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:22:22 GMT

A high school student has been given an assignment to develop a communication exercise, and present it in the form of an interactive game. He chose the social/communication interpersonal aspects of AS as his topic.

I rather liked the brainstorming notes that he came up with -- and have included them here to see what y'all think of his idea. :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think it would be interesting to set up a scenario where one person is challenged to interact and communicate verbally and socially with others. Only there is a slight premise. The others speak a slightly different language, and have very different social/cultural customs, etc.

Many students are given cards which outline the intricacies in the proposed language, and their social customs. For example, the gesture of 'thumbs up' may be a huge negative put-down, such as the familiar gesture using the middle finger. Or perhaps, no matter what, one usually laughs when presented with a serious situation, and in this culture, this is the usual manner to diffuse the seriousness of the issue. Perhaps, a guy would be expected to smack another guy on the behind as a simple 'greeting' etc... etc...

Other students do not receive the cards.

Now, one student who is not given a card, is given the challenge to go thru a role-play where they are assigned to interact with a group of students who received the cards. They would have a particular goal to achieve, such as fitting in on the first day of a new job. But they alone have NO idea what the given 'rules of the game' or 'acceptable' and 'non-acceptable' words and actions are. They just do not really 'get' the nuances, and will quickly become lost.

How does this student feel?
Is the interaction 'difficult' and 'stressful'?
Does he become anxious when trying to get thru the social situation and achieve the given goal?
Does he feel unsure as to how to proceed?
Does he feel isolated?
Does he find it hard to make a connection with one or more of the others, due to the inevitable pitfalls?
Does he figure out the 'mistakes' he is making?
Does he desire to just pull away and finally 'throw in the towel' and give up?

Afterwards, discussion might include questions such as:

What were the pitfalls?
What may have made a positive difference in the outcome?
If the student had been able to be more 'aware' of all the different nuances, would it have made a difference in the interaction and the outcome?
How many students without cards were able to guess, or learn, what they were missing? etc...

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

Hi everyone !

James — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 08:01:35 GMT

Hi everyone I'm James.
I joined tribe some time ago but I've just been lurking till now.
I am a diagnosed Aspie and I also hang around LiveJournal.
Great to meet everyone.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 10 replies

hyper-sensitivity to little sounds

火山 (Kazan) — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 10:31:42 GMT

I just thought I'd share this. I have read that people with AS can become quite agitated over little repetitive sounds in the environment that other people can tune out. The ticking of a clock is one example of this.

I find that for me it's chewing noises. I have yet to meet a single other person who is as bothered by them as I am. Often I can't even eat in the same room as other people for this reason. It also limits what jobs I can hold. Perhaps that's why I am making a career out of call centres - if it's your job to talk, usually there is a rule in place that you can't be eating anything at the same time. But sometimes people will stick gum in their mouths anyway. Others don't seem to even notice, but to me it's as loud as thunder. It's even affected my schooling - inevitably there will be at least one person in every classroom that will be chewing loudly on a daily basis. One class I quit attending; the other I actually failed because I would come home so exhausted from the stress of having to hear that all the time that I didn't have any energy left for homework. Even when I'm on the bus I have to select my seat based on who is chewing - I'll usually sit ahead of them so I don't have to see them, and I'll put my music on so I don't have to hear them.

I am on an anti-depressant called Mirtazapine (generic Remeron) which helps to calm me down a little but it doesn't quite take care of everything. I have been like this for at least 10 years, so the best I can hope for is to be in situations where things are quiet and controlled.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 27 replies

Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

charmaine — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:56:35 GMT

On the best-sellers list for hardcover nonfiction:

#10 Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robinson

Has anyone read this?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 5 replies

Aspies and Food

janathemama — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 13:54:04 GMT

My Aspie 18 year old don' eat. - She is bordering on anorexic, being 164 cm tall and only 46 kilo's (5foot 3 and 101 pounds?). But I cant seem to stir her appetite.

She keeps wanting to eat white sliced loaf with honey,- and that only once a day,- and nothing much else. I buy her healthy stuff she calims she likes,- but she says she 'just forgets' its there, and doesnt eat it, and often I have to throw it out..

Any advice?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 32 replies

Interesting article about female Aspies!

poopylungstuffing — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:25:04 GMT

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/magazine/05autism-t.html?ei=5124&en=c14e5673246d52fa&ex=1343966400&adxnnl=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1186340500-OcaLs7s76mHGmbS9A3+55w

Wow! I really might be an aspie after all!

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 2 replies

Aspies in Books

neuroptik78 — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 06:58:27 GMT

I was going to reply to the "Aspies in Movies" thread, but it was already pointed out that books should be a separate thread.

Geek note: I actually did a ctrl+f in my browser to see if books had been mentioned, and whether others found their mention in that thread appropriate. Yes, I'd do that even if I weren't the moderator of the tribe. =p

I'm re-reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It's a great convoluted tale, and has what I believe are great laughs, especially for Aspies.

One of the main characters is such as Aspie: Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse.

Has anyone else read this, and know what I'm talking about? =)

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

A few questions

water_muse — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:49:30 GMT

Hi all,

I apologize in advance for the blundering I'm fairly certain I'm about to do.

With some initial reservations I've come recently to the conclusion that I am probably autistic. I've been doing some research to try and figure out what it means for me specifically. The most important thing for me to learn right now is how to use this new information to resolve some issues in my life, mostly related to jobs, money (or lack thereof), child support and family law.

So the way I found myself here is that several weeks ago I had a weird conversation with my mother. I'm currently 32 and I have 3 children who live with their mother in the Dallas/Ft Worth area (I'm currently in Austin). I've perceived my mother for many years as being rather a hypochondriac and so when she talks about health issues I tend to tune her out. There were two reasons I didn't in this case. The first is that she described what seemed (at least to me) to be fairly poignant "symptoms" that I apparently grew out of at an early age, like sudden memory loss or being in trance states in which I was unresponsive to pin pricks (no pain response). Basically something like a combination of sleepwalking and talking in your sleep except that there wasn't any way to wake me up because I wasn't attached to the pain response or other senses that would normally wake a sleeping person. The latter is that it occurred to me that an official diagnosis could potentially be helpful in dealing with my ongoing job/money/legal problems (they're all closely related) which have been on-going at a minimum since at least 2000 when I split up with my ex-wife and which in August last year had me so totally frustrated that I was seriously considering suicide (only the 2nd time in my life that's happened - the first was in Navy boot-camp in 1997 which is an experience I'm grateful of for various reasons I won't get into right now). I started researching Asperger's Syndrome and have discovered that many of the experiences that seem to be fairly common amongst aspies are experiences I'd mentioned to people for many years but never considered that they might be related and largely thought they were just innocuous, individual peculiarities of my own. For example I'd told people for a while before researching AS that I don't really know what hunger "feels like" and so I've developed a habit of eating regularly because if I don't then I just keep going until I basically fall over and it seems like a lot of aspies have had similar experiences. Both my ex and my current girlfriend have always complained about my being alternatively very distracted and at the same time very focused on what I'm doing, to the point that it's difficult to get my attention much of the time. This seems to fit into the category of the narrow focused interest that creates savant-ish skills in the chosen pursuits of aspies. I've also talked (even bitched sometimes) about being "honest to a fault" so much so that it's caused a number of problems for me over the years. Many years ago I remember being turned down for a job at Pizza Hut because their psych. evaluation (yeah, at Pizza Hut) said that "no one is that honest" and therefore I must be a habitual liar.

Shortly before I started researching AS I started a thread in the Extreme Honesty tribe to try and locate others who may have had similar experiences with regard to the honesty thing. Having not become aware of AS or that this seems to be a common experience for aspies I didn't have any real foundation for understanding or explaining the issue I've been having and I ended up getting a lot of "you're just playing the victim card" from some of the folks in that tribe (including assumptions that I'm a liar apparently)... which I gather is fairly indicative of some of the issues related to NT's expecting certain types of language or behavior and aspies being somewhat challenged to provide it via the experience of "what comes naturally for you must be learned by myself the way you would learn to play the piano". Having no prior exposure to information about AS of course I was routing around in the dark for a way to explain my experiences, i.e. trial and a lot of error.

Now the whole reason for my having started that thread in the first place, in spite of the perceived "bitching" going on, was to connect with others who might have had similar experiences so that I could maybe learn something that might help me in the future, because it seems fairly obvious that I've been unable to learn how to overcome these social challenges on my own. In looking back over the course of my adult life specifically, it seems to me that at least half the times I've been fired from jobs it's been the result of social blundering on my part related to my being challenged to understand when and how and why people tell "little white lies". Hell, I'm challenged even to understand self-censorship. I'm just a bad liar, so when I censor myself it always feels like people can tell that there's something I'm not saying and it seems fairly often that they assume it's something way worse than it actually is. I don't have any proof to back it up, just anecdotes about how people behave, like the fact that during a set at a local comedy club some guy in the audience felt like the appropriate response to my saying "I'm bisexual" even though he didn't know me and didn't have any reason to believe he would ever know me, was to start loudly looking for crosses and holy water. I'm not saying this to "bitch" for it's own sake -- just that these are the sorts of examples I have to work with. People overreact, I know they do, yet I have a difficult time understanding why or what to or how they'll overreact and so it makes censoring myself very difficult even though I may want to for their sake if not mine.

And the social challenges are a huge problem for me -- they have been since at least 2000 when my ex and I split up because of the child support. Without there being any kind of conspiracy, the judge refused me my right to appear in court and a boss who'd fired me testified in court that I'd "abandoned" the job the day after my wife kicked me out of the house. Looking back on everything that had transpired with that particular job (like all the others), it all makes sense, I understand why things happened the way they did, why I became unpopular with my coworkers and why I was fired (although not why my boss claimed that I had ditched). It's just that 20/20 hindsight didn't help me then and it's still not helping me now. In the intervening years I've done everything I could think of to get good jobs so I could pay the child support and it's not worked for me. I lost several jobs to the companies I worked for collapsing in the economy (post-dot-com) and several more to my own social challenges so my average income since 2000 has been about half what the state insists it must be, bringing me currently over $70k in arrears child support. In 2000 or 2001 shortly after the child support was awarded the state suspended my driver's license for non-payment of child support, which just this last month prevented me from interviewing for what looked like a great programming job here in Austin because their office is 17 miles from the nearest bus-stop (and even that bus-stop is all the way across town) so the owner of the business didn't even bother responding when I emailed him back to tell him I was interested and could work remotely. I wasn't looking for programming jobs, he contacted me because he was looking for a ColdFusion expert to lead a team here in town and there aren't very many people with my background in that field. I stopped looking for software jobs a few months ago because I realized that I couldn't think about pursuing them without becoming violent. At least not in the present tense. This was following having been arrested and spent a night in jail for driving with a suspended license, which if you read the fine print means it's illegal for me to be poor, particularly when you consider that I've received letters from the state threatening to throw me in jail for non-payment of child support, which was the reason they took my license to begin with. So basically, 6 years of working next to and being an important resource for people with six-figure incomes while I lived in slum-like hovels with a continual threat of jail (for not having better finances) has got me to a point where I can't function in that environment currently. (I'm really not "bitching to bitch", I'm just explaining why I'm not working in software and doing my best to explain why I think autism may be at the root of what I've been "doing wrong" thus far.)

I know this can work. I've seen plenty of examples of people talking about autistic people who've been very successful, including speculation about Bill Gates, etc. I just need to make it work for me. Right now I'm working at a gas station down the street while the decade of work I've done as a software engineer goes to waste. The gas station job is problematic too because the TABC have been hammering the store where I work and busted someone just before I was hired and then again just a couple days ago less than 24 hours after a previous "sting" at the same store failed (when the district manager was at the register). People who work for the chain are turning down offers for overtime at my store even if they would normally love to get the overtime because they don't want to be arrested like the girl they busted a couple days ago who was from another store. I've been getting a lot of overtime myself, unfortunately primarily because they're having serious problems keeping the store staffed, and several of my recent shifts I've been alone on shift during a 2nd shift on the weekend when there are supposed to be 2-3 people in the store to handle the traffic. The real issue here though is the concern that I could be arrested on felony charges for failing to pass the undercover cop test, at which point the prosecuting attorneys would also have the option of reviving my felony driving with suspended license charge (which they may or may not do) that I'd already plead no-contest on in order to get the "be a good boy and don't get in trouble and we'll drop the charges" deal.

So here are the questions I've been having real difficulty answering through my own research.

1) What tests are used to produce an official diagnosis of AS or "high functioning autism" (which I'm apt to think is the same thing)? I took the online test, although I'm aware of the issues related to people learning coping mechanisms, etc. (Plus the results made little sense to me -- if the scale is 1-4 how do some traits get average scores of 4.3?)

2) How easy is it today to get an official diagnosis as an adult? I found this blog article that makes it seem fairly straightforward: http://wesnerm.blogs.com/net_undocumented/2003/09/asperger_syndro.html

3) What are the pros and cons of having an official diagnosis?

4) How does the law treat an official diagnosis of AS? Is there potential for me to receive any kind of disability compensation or relief from the child-support debt? I spoke with a guy here in Austin just the other day who said his wife was able to forgive most of his child support debt (and that apparently the state couldn't do anything about it) yet my ex tells me that when she tried to do the same thing she just got treated very badly by the attorney general's office who told her she wasn't allowed to do that, even though the over $70k I ostensibly owe is at least an order of magnitude more than the amount the state has spent on aid for them (food stamps, tanf, etc), with much of what they've spent having been already "paid back" through previous taxes and child support payments.

5) Has anyone found that there are constructive environments in which it's helpful if your employer knows you're autistic before they hire you?

Thanks

p.s. Aside from the gas station job I've also been doing several other things to try and bring in some more income, seeking work as an illustrator or graphic artist and running this cafepress store http://www.cafepress.com/anupwardspiral , none of which have broken even yet financially.

p.p.s. Are there any other ColdFusion programmers in this tribe?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 9 replies

New take on Aspergers

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 00:21:14 GMT

I was going to write this article but someone beat me to it.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Aspergers

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 6 replies

Asperger Syndrome and serious illness?

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 13:41:08 GMT

Got any thoughts on how you'd handle having a serious illness?
How would you want concerned friends and relatives to act? How could they best help?
What would be your way of getting and processing info about your illness and treatment?
How would you want your emotional needs dealt with?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 1 reply

Aspies or Autistic folks in the movies

poopylungstuffing — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 22:55:35 GMT

Can anybody name characters they have spotted in movies who seem like they might be Aspies..or otherwise within the autistic spectrum..whether intentional or non-intentional?
I mean some are obvious..but others might be less obvious..

My favorite is Harpo Marx.
My second favorite is Gelsomina, the heroine of Fellini's La Strada...as she seems that way to me.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 68 replies

aspie telepathic memos to pets

azee — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 04:51:25 GMT

1. When I say move, it means go someplace else. It does not mean switch positions with each other so there are still two of you in the way.

2. The dishes on the floor are yours and contain your food. All other dishes are mine and contain my food. (Please note: Placing a paw print in the middle of my dinner does not stake your claim on it, nor do I find it aesthetically pleasing in any way).

3. The stairway was not designed by NASCAR and is not a racetrack. Beating me to the bottom is not the object and tripping me doesn't help because I fall faster than you can run.

4. I cannot buy anything bigger than a king size bed Locate your inner beast and remember that sleeping animals can actually curl up in a ball, so it is not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other, stretched out to the fullest extent possible.

5. My compact discs are not miniature Frisbees.

6. For the last time, humans like to use the bathroom alone. If by some miracle I beat you there and manage to get the door shut, it won't help to claw, whine, meow, bite the knob, or get your paw under the edge and try to pull the door open. (Trust me, I have been using the bathroom for years...canine or feline attendance is not mandatory)

7. When you see me asleep on the couch, it is not funny to make a sudden leap onto my stomach and drop a chew toy, bone or jingle ball on my crotch, no matter how much that makes the other family members laugh.

8. DOG: Don't think for a minute that making a sad face and whimpering pathetically will get you out of trouble when I find a puddle of pee on the carpet. The face and whimpering only validate that you knew it was wrong when you did it.

9. CAT: My sitting down to bite into a juicy sandwich is not a signal for you to begin gagging loudly and then hocking up the most disgusting hair ball in history.

10. DOG AND CAT: The proper order is kiss me, THEN go lick yourself. I cannot stress this enough. To pacify you, I have posted the following message on our front door:

RULES FOR NON-PET OWNERS WHO VISIT AND COMPLAIN ABOUT OUR PETS:

1. They live here; you don't.

2. If you don't want their hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture.

3. I like my pet better than I like most people.

4. To you, it's an animal; To me, it is an adopted child who is short, hairy, walks on all fours and is speech-challenged.

5. Dogs and cats are better than kids. They eat less, are easier to train, usually come when called, don't ask for money, never drive your car, don't hang out with losers, don't drink or smoke, don't worry about the latest fashions, don't wear your clothes and don't need a gazillion dollars for college. And if they get pregnant, you can sell the results.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

Natural Remedies for Hyperactivity

Thu, 17 May 2007 19:20:04 GMT

Right now I've decided to use a more natural method to calming my 7 year old. I'm giving him an herbal type of liquid called Valarian root mixed in with his liquid vitamins. I feel this is a much better approach to this problem than what Western Medicine has to offer. It's safe too and doesn't cause halucinations.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 36 replies

aspie teen and autonomy

cooldawn — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 19:13:00 GMT

When I was in jr high I took the bus or walked wherever I wanted to go. My son is getting to that age where he wants to "do stuff" and I can't (or don't want to) shuttle him around all the time, so I got him a bus pass last week. I kinda worry about him getting into his book and not paying attention to where he is but he has a cell phone to call in case of emergency or whatever. The times he's ridden the bus he's been fine - only missed his stop once, but the bus driver was nice enough to get him headed in the right direction. Part of me is afraid I may be presenting him with more than he can handle, but part of me feels like he needs a way to be a bit more autonomous (he'll be 14 in a couple of months).... thoughts?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 5 replies

Asexuality?

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 21:55:07 GMT

Hi,
I heard recently from someone (not a Tribe member) who had been diagnosed with Aspergers by more than one clinician. However, he seems to have an additional "set" of "issues' (god, the language is clumsy! sorry!) that seem to be in the realm of asexuality as well. But his therapist told him that Aspies don't have sex drives. I told him this was not true, as I was aware of many people with Asperger's being quite sexually active with partners.

I sent him a link to the Asexuality site -- www.asexuality.org
just in case he might feel some resonance with the information there. And this seems to be an excellent site with an active community, very positive about asexuality.

But is there, in fact, a higher incidence of asexuality in Aspie and Autistic people? I have no idea, and have just begun to research. Any ideas or information will be very helpful.

Thanks!

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 56 replies

new tribes

prometheusPAN — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:08:04 GMT

ever want to participate in a politics tribe but know that the NT bickering isn't something you are up for?

ever want to particpate in a politics tribe that actually does have rules and enforces them against personal
attacks?

i just created a new tribe for politics, and i am hoping that you folks will support me by joining and posting
a batch of threads.

also, i hope that this thread will remain open for people to invite people to assorted tribes...

i just found a few tribes last night that i wish i had know of sooner. maybe you know of some tribes that
might be more aspie freindly than most... let us know where they are...
-----
greetings. You may or may not have noticed the recent conflict on the politics
tribe. I imagine a lot of people haven't read that tribe in a long time, since
its become a troll tribe. Inna just booted me off of that tribe,
after contributing fuel to the trolls flaming of me personally.
(innas answer to my complaint that there was out of control personal attacks
was to attack me personally.)

I am starting a new tribe for discussion of politics without trolls
and without ad hominems. I will probably be using rules much like the
ones inna has posted, but, unlike her, i will actually enforce those rules.

I am interested in discussing anything about politics, and i am more than
happy to accomodate different points of veiw and different political
affiliations.

If you are interested in a reasoned, meaningful, and polite discussion on
political issues, please come join my tribe. Thanks so very much,
peace and light,
prometheuspan.

ps, sorry,
i would use the invite system, but for some reason the system has now blocked me from
using it.

http://tribes.tribe.net/truthosaurs

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

Classes for ASpies

teamnoir — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 23:26:50 GMT

I keep posting about how wonderful NLP has been for me and how useful it can be for aspies. So it occurs to me to ask...

If there existed classes for aspies, or workshops, what sorts of things would you like to learn in such a class? Flirting? How to navigate cocktail parties? Job interviews? If you could write a title or a syllabus for a 1 day workshop for aspies that you'd like to take... what would it look like?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 4 replies

I'm not dead and I haven't been abducted by aliens....

Michael — Thu, 24 May 2007 02:51:01 GMT

Yep... So wassup my people's - I'm back.... Tight....

Peace,
-Mike

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 3 replies

tick tock tao

prometheusPAN — Sun, 20 May 2007 08:35:24 GMT

Get eight freinds together and try it.
If you practice only a few hours, you should start having at the very least an awesome choral group. And if you go on for a while, you should start making transitions into Theta states of consciousness.

This is called Glossolia. It is a reconstruction based on an intrinsic understanding of several key principles about how mind works. I won't try to explain why it works, I will just tell you that it does.

prometheuspan
4/19/2001 4:27 PM 2 out of 31

The internal dialogue structure of Theta States of consciousness is harmonic-
musical. We know this as people often experience "hearing a chorus of Angels"
when a Theta condition is induced.

Drumbeats at the same cycles per second as a given state are powerful cues
that can help us to enter altered states of consciousness.

The following is a methodology for entering Theta states of consciousness, designed
by yours truly.

prometheuspan
4/19/2001 4:28 PM 3 out of 31

Trybl Vortx Part Two, The Prequal.

Drummers Parlance.

In theory, the Trybl Vortx system by itself should work fine. It is an absolute
description of the variables involved, and a total solution. In practice,
singing like angels is too hard. The requisite skill, or understanding involved
is too far removed from human experience.

Thus, we have "Drummers Parlance", Both a pre-quel game, and a description of a
very specific form of communication.
Drummer's parlance is simply the communication verbally of a pattern or
patterns, which can then receive tonal or musical counterparts. Drummers'
parlance in the strictest sense is non-tonal, or rhythm only. Sounds are
representations of various durations of time.

The duration of time covered by a "A" is a .1 amount of time. The duration of a
"Ta" is.2 duration of time. The duration of a "Ka, or a "Te" is also a .2
representation of time. Then a "Toom" is a .3 duration of time. These
definitions can be stretched, but the general idea is there.

Then, those kinds of syllables are arranged to count time in pattern. The
pattern repeats, and that is what gives us a "Full measure" of time.

For instance:

Tecka Tecka Toom Toom Te Ka Toom Ta La Toom Teck Teck Ta Ta

Tecka Toooma Tecka Ta Te Ka Ta Tooma la Teck Toom Teck la

Ta Tecka Ta Toom Ta Ta Ta La Tecka Tecka Ta Tooma Ta Ta Ta

Toooma Toooma Ta Ta Ta Toom Ta Toom Ta La La Ta Tooma Ta La

Elata Ta Lata Eee La Ta Ee Lata Tooma Ala La Ee La Tecka Tecka

Tee Tooma Tee Tooma Ta Ta Tecka Tooma Elata Tao Teck Toom Tecka Tao

Ticka Ticka Tock Tao Ticka Tooma Tock Toom

Tick Tock Tao Tao Ticka Tao Tecka

prometheuspan
4/19/2001 4:30 PM 4 out of 31

This gets us to 29. I am going to go with the idea that you get my point before
I count to a thousand.
The point is that we have now created 100 "phrases" if we count that high, which
are one or two beats long. The Lengths of the various beats is variable and is
the most interesting part of all of this. If we say that it all just goes from 1
to ten, then Tao-Aum is 13 counts. Rhythms we feel comfortable with are at their
simplest 3 beats long. The heartbeat is Ta-silence-Doom. More complex rhythms go
up into the 20 beat range but not much higher. Any set pattern should repeat
within 20 beats or the human mind won't be able to comprehend it.
Tecka Tecka Toom Toom is six beats, and in the time of the second exploration,
4,1,4,1,5,5 counts long. 20 counts. A pattern at 23 beats;
Tecka Tecka Toom Toom Elati Tati Toom Toom Tecka Tecka Elati Tati Toom.

With a count of 4,1,4,1,5,5,2,1,2,2,2,2,5,5,4,1,4,1,1,2,2,5 for sub- total of
10, 10,11,10,10,10. And a total of 61 counts.

So the point of all of this is to get a mental picture of what is possible for
different kinds of rhythm patterns.
The Idea of drummers parlance is that I should be able to say to a drummer,
"Give me: Tecka Tecka Toom Toom, Elati Tati Toom Tao" And have them go, "Give
that to me three times." And I Go "Tecka Tecka Toom Toom, Elati Tati Toom Tao
Tecka Tecka Toom Toom, Elati Tati Toom Tao Tecka Tecka Toom Toom, Elati Tati
Toom Tao Tecka Tecka Toom Toom, Elati Tati Toom Tao" And Then They are doing it
with me, and it sounds good, because we are both in the same pattern.
Then, I can play my flute inside of the pattern of the drummer, and the next
thing you know, we sound like a rocking duet.

That's only part one of Drummers parlance and it's the most interesting half.
The other half is even more annoying and more like an exercise but it really
works.
This other half is basically as simple as "counting time."

123123123123123123123123123123123
123,123,123,123,123,123,123,123,123
12341234123412341234123412341234
1234,1234,1234,1234,1234,1234,1234,
12345, 12345,12345,
12,1234,123,123,1234,
123,12,123,1234, 12,
And so forth on and on into infinity.

By learning Drummers Parlance, we are learning to think in the kinds of patterns
that we have to use later on in Tick Tock Tao.

prometheuspan
4/19/2001 4:31 PM 5 out of 31

The rest becomes a question of what you are trying to express. The answer is of
course that you are trying to express an emotion, which is really just a state
of consciousness. Realizing this, we are looking at 4 states of consciousness,
and realizing that certain tempos, beats, and tones describe each of these
states. Thus, music can be created specifically to harmonize the individual into
a given state of consciousness.
(But this hasn't been done as far as I know yet, only frauds have tried it,
people who had no real understanding of states of consciousness, or not enough
skill.)

Where do we go from here? We start a pattern, and we show how any such pattern
evolves musically and harmonically, how slow beats have within them the seeds of
faster beats and how fast beats are tied to slower beats. Using the eight roles,
any given pattern can become a total song.

The entire process is in a sense best accomplished in a large group of people.
The 4 track is a great tool, but we don't have 20 earphones and 20 plug-ins for
those earphones for 20 people to participate in recording. So we get the people
singing first, and then once we are really rocking we make our first sample
recording. Then, if we want to, we take that to the 4 track and add in whatever
we want to. Since we don't have 20 people, the best thing to do is to go with as
many as we can get.
The main thing is that everybody has to do his or her homework. They have to get
a real sense of what we are doing away from it all. They have to actually read
the form. Otherwise it's just playing around. The other thing is we have to have
an understanding that we approach things from a very serious level at first.
Sure it leads into fun, but without focus it disintegrates into noise.
I'd love to be able to hang out for 60 years and play with everybody, but I
can't afford to. What has to happen instead is people have to take responsibly
and seriously the information I am giving them for 30 minutes at a time a few
times a week, and then in a week or two it will be the Angelic Choir.
And then we can release the forms and the structure as just a tool that got us
to the place of being able to play at a more sophisticated level.

Thank you for your time and energy. May peace love and light win within us all.
PrometheusPAN

prometheuspan
4/19/2001 4:32 PM 6 out of 31

>TRYBL VORTX (Part One)
Tick Tock Tao
Is a specific form for improvisational singing with a group of people. Using
this structure, We move from simple to complex, with each individual adding
another level of complexity. By attuning very specifically to the pattern as it
all ready exists, we evolve the pattern without loosing each other. Thus we can
be together as long as we use the structure.

The Idea here is that we have modeled the timing and harmonics relationships
that naturally exist with each other, and come up with "parts" or "roles" that
reflect these relationships. Then, we model the natural evolutionary path of a
pattern, as it moves from complexity to simplicity, and we find that in essence,
these roles have an order to them in terms of who follows who and what follows
what.

In reality Tick Tock Tao is thus nothing new. It is simply a way of organizing
things that are well understood all ready. When we look at Tribal cultures all
over the world (or what is left of them after being effected by the global
hive... We find that they have very specific formats for social interaction in
different states of consciousness. Whereas we, the global hive, have protocols
structure or format for existing in only one state of consciousness.

The words "Tick Tock Tao" are culled from inside of a trance space. The entire
sequence was at one time used as a trance cue to enter a specific state of
consciousness. The meaning of the words is as follows. Tick refers to time.
Visualize a clock. Music is all about time and timing relationships. Rhythm is
in a sense just various ways of counting time.
Tock has a double meaning, including Talk. Talking, communicating. Tick Tock Tao
is a way of learning to communicate musically, rather than a way of creating
entertainment. We try to treat music from the very different perspective of the
shaman. We have two hemispheres in our brain, and one side is verbal while the
other is musical. The fact of our attunement to pitch and the ability of our
voices to sing indicates that at one point in time in human history, we sang to
each other as a form of communication
I have taken this presupposition one step further, and have tried to understand
how music can be used as a genuine shamans tool for facilitating altered states
of consciousness. Specifically, in Theta states of consciousness, Those states
associated with spiritual experience and perception of subtle levels of reality,
we can expect the human animal to have communicated musically, rather than
phonetically. The reason is simple and is about personal experience.
In Deep Theta states, the energy of the electrical impulses in the brain comes
into phase. Millions of signals that in Beta states of consciousness are just
going off in their own way in their own time and their own direction all
suddenly come together "in phase" or in harmony. The hum that is experienced is
audible to the ear, as the electrical output of the brain no longer scatters
itself in patterns of interference but amplifies itself in patterns of sustained
harmony.

prometheuspan
4/19/2001 4:33 PM 7 out of 31

Tao refers to the idea that we are indeed changing our state of consciousness
through the use of this exercise. Specifically, we are moving from the yang
waking state to the yin waking state. Thus, the Tao of consciousness is
spinning.

The entire poem:
"Tick Talk Tao" said the Druid to the Drow,
"Be here now and keep your vow to remember.
Do you remember, before you were born?
Leaping through the barley and dancing in the corn?"

"Tick Tock Tao" Said the Faery in the Tree
To the Cave monk sentinel of the cave monk Key
"It's the birds and the bees and the omens I see
That opens the portal of perception to me.

(The poem is an instruction for the ego wall to disintegrate allowing the memory
of pre-mortal existence to come into consciousness.)

Drummers Parlance
Tick, Tock, Ti, Ta, Tia, Ticka, Tocka, Toom, Tooma, are all sounds that are used
in verbal communications of drummers' patterns. This is called "Drummers
Parlance" and is a reality model that was presented to me by a master drummer.
The drumming in the community in which I was operating vastly improved as he
introduced the idea to us.

The Essential Idea
The idea is simple. We can communicate the drum patterns verbally and
phonetically. If we can't do that, we shouldn't be drumming. (At least according
to him.)
The reason is that verbal and phonetic communication proves that understanding
exists about pattern. Otherwise there isn't necessarily and in fact true
understanding. Most drum circles are very chaotic and a-synchronized to the
trained ear.

Instructions
In Tick Tock Tao, there are eight roles. The roles are organized into "Alpha"
and "Beta." Which means "Leader" and "follower." (To some degree. As you will
see, the relationship between Alpha and Beta oftentimes gives the Beta more
freedom and more responsibility too.) The role types are Aummer, Drummer,
Singer, and Whisperer.
These roles represent the natural evolution of pattern. We go from tone, to
rhythm, to song, and out away from order into chaos. Thus, the Aummers start,
and are given time to warm up, then the Drummers Start, and are given time to
warm up, then the singers start, and are given time to warm up, and then the
whisperers start. Nobody is really waiting for them, at least not until level
two.
The Whisperers have a special role. They perform slowly the evolutionary path
of all three other types of roles. When they finish, if the groove is still
going, the Aummers become Whisperers. They get to drum, and then sing, adding
their own parts to the more
>

prometheuspan
4/19/2001 4:35 PM 8 out of 31

complex pattern. Once the Aummers have been singing for a while, The drummers
should feel free to sing also.
In this way, the pattern evolves into complexity.
On the other hand, especially while we are learning how to do Tick Tock Tao,
what will often happen is that the pattern will start to break apart. The
Whisperers are the pattern police. If the pattern starts to fly apart, their job
is to make sure that it flies apart completly, blows itself open wide, and thus,
the energy is released.
Even really rocking grooves must eventually come to an end, and it is the
whisperers job to raise the energy out into chaos and celebration. That way a
new groove can start.

I have written role cards to make this very easy. Each person receives a role
card. (If there are more than eight people, buddy up with the person next to
you, unless that person is a singer, in which case, play drummers.)

Tick Tock Tao in the most formal sense does things the hard way by going from
toning to rhythm. It may be easier to start out with a simple pattern of some
kind.

Alpha Aummer
Everything begins with you. You breathe deep and hold a base tone.
For three full breaths, The Beta Aummer matches you. The Beta Aummer Tones the
same tone exactly, and covers you while you breathe. Then The Beta Aummer picks
a new tone, and the two of you take turns. When the drumming starts, you will
begin oscillating between the first tone and the second tone, for the duration
of a full measure. For instance, the drummer will say
"Ticka Ticka tocka teck toom tock
doon" The drummer will do this over and over, and you will tone for the duration
of that pattern a single tone and then another single tone, back and forth. As
things evolve, you can bring in more single tones for the full measure of that
pattern. Eventually, once the singers are really going, you can chop the pattern
into smaller chunks and tone for the duration of those.
Your part may be boring for you, but remember, you are helping everyone else
keep time.
In level two of the game, you will pass your card on and receive a new card, and
a new role. Maintain your old role until you fully understand your new role.
Then switch roles.
Remember to listen to the tone the Beta Aummer gives you, and try to take turns
breathing and toning with them. (Take your breathe on a given beat.)

prometheuspan
4/19/2001 4:38 PM 9 out of 31

Alpha Aummer
Everything begins with you. You breathe deep and hold a base tone.
For three full breaths, The Beta Aummer matches you. The Beta Aummer Tones the
same tone exactly, and covers you while you breathe. Then The Beta Aummer picks
a new tone, and the two of you take turns. When the drumming starts, you will
begin oscillating between the first tone and the second tone, for the duration
of a full measure. For instance, the drummer will say
"Ticka Ticka tocka teck toom tock
doon" The drummer will do this over and over, and you will tone for the duration
of that pattern a single tone and then another single tone, back and forth. As
things evolve, you can bring in more single tones for the full measure of that
pattern. Eventually, once the singers are really going, you can chop the pattern
into smaller chunks and tone for the duration of those.
Your part may be boring for you, but remember, you are helping everyone else
keep time.
In level two of the game, you will pass your card on and receive a new card, and
a new role. Maintain your old role until you fully understand your new role.
Then switch roles.
Remember to listen to the tone the Beta Aummer gives you, and try to take turns
breathing and toning with them. (Take your breathe on a given beat.)

prometheuspan
4/19/2001 4:39 PM 10 out of 31

Alpha Singer
You listen to the Alpha Drummer, whose pattern is slower than the beta drummer.
You listen to the tones created by the Aummers. You Mimic the Alpha drummer
until you are sure you have the pattern. Then, you begin to add tones. Your
first tone should be the same as the alpha Aummers, and your last tone should be
the same as the beta Aummer. Next, you fill in that rhythm with tones. You
create a song that becomes the master tonal pattern. If level two is achieved,
your choices become the
Underlying pattern that everyone else follows in the creation of song.
Remember that you are listening to two elements and blending them. You are
listening to the rhythm first, to pick it up, and then to the tones the Aummers
are using, so that it all stays in harmony and key.
Synthesizing these two levels is the hardest job in Tick Tock Tao and one that
it can't work without. If you end up feeling overwhelmed by the task,
Switch roles with somebody else.
The difficulty of this job is made easier in that your song is with the slow
beat, not the fast one. This is very key to your success. Pay attention only to
the Alpha Drummer,
Not the Beta Drummer. Beta Singer
You listen to the Alpha Singer. They will be singing a slow song. You mimic
their song until you are certain that you have it. You will notice that they are
in beat with the alpha drummer and in tone with the Aummers. Put your attention
next on the Beta Drummer, who is your pal. They are doing a beat that is faster
than the Alpha Drummer. Separating yourself now psychologically from the alphas,
follow the same pattern you have but bring more beats into it and evolve it so
that it is in time with the faster tempo.
This skill is all about taking the singing pattern and adding "flams" and
"perks' to it. If the long pattern is going "Teck Tooma" while the fast pattern
is going "Elata Ladoonta"
Then you are simply adding two syllables. Maybe its "TaTaTa Tooma
Tecka Tooma" for the fast pattern. Now you are essentially multiplying two by
three, three syllables for each of the main two.
Each Of the Alpha singers tones becomes the base note in a chord.
You are filling in the rest of the notes to form a whole chord.

As a Whisperer you mimic the Aummers. This is your chief job, but of all the
jobs, your job changes the most. If the pattern makes it to a full on groove,
with the beta singer completely in for a while, you go ahead and begin to evolve
along the path. Spending

prometheuspan
4/19/2001 4:43 PM 11 out of 31

If you are paying attention you will have questions about things that got accidentally cut, and then I will be motivated to explain a bit more.
If not, I'd be wasteing my time...

This all appliesto telepathy rather directly, as the art of MIMICKRY that you have to employ, of listening to the group, of not letting your ego interere, but rather, giving over to the true center, these are all the same skills you need for telepathy.

Further, if you attain theta this way, in a social environment, two things will happen.
1. You will be able to hear the angelic choir
2. You will have limited telepathy with the people you are doing it with.

Good luck.
If ANYBODY actually takes me seriously and does it, you could have profound
results in only the next few hours.

I have for myself eight cards, on which I have the eight roles written down.

Thats a great way to go, as then you can switch roles without even talking about it.

DJ43
4/20/2001 11:40 AM 12 out of 31

I take you quite seriously, and I am going to have to print these posts out so that I have them permanently.
However, it will be days before I can attempt to do the actual process, not a few hours, sorry.
Thank you for so much detail.
One question, just so I am clear, I need to be sure to gather seven people together, or may it be a number less than eight including myself?
Respectfully,
Denise

Prometheuspan
4/20/2001 9:34 PM 13 out of 31

There are eight roles in the game as described, I think about four is the bare essential absolute minimum. There is no real maximum, but you will ahve to work out organizing it yourself.

You can easilly have two or three people fill each role.
Group them together of course, and make sure they follow each other.

Best of luck!!

And thank you so very much for getting to it at all!!

The real take off for this area will be the results you achieve.
two more weeks for the area and counting...

iammeinabody
4/21/2001 3:30 PM 14 out of 31

Thanks for the info. It clarified some experiances and gives me something to work on. I'm having a great time trying to keep up on all this. Now I just need to expand time so to include practice. K

prometheuspan
4/21/2001 3:52 PM 15 out of 31

yes, but does anybody have any questions?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

Using Aspergers to deflect

Sat, 12 May 2007 20:07:54 GMT

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rbgUjmeC-4o

This kid seems to be using his diagnoses to deflect encouragement to read (study?).

Since when is having an aversion to reading a part of AS symptoms?

It sounds like he has ADD caused by too much TV watching to me. When I was his age I was the same way. I could not sit down and read a book for the life of me, and watched TV all the time. Reading actually made me anxious. Attributed to having ADD. Then I stopped watching TV, because I had no where to watch it for a few months, my mind became much less muddled, and eventually I became a voracious reader.

Having an aversion to reading and liking TV instead seems to be common to NT and AS. This kid seems to be using his AS diagnoses to deflect encouragment to read, and it kind of upsets me. Because in the comments there are a bunch of people saying "I want to show this to my student with AS". But how many of those kids, like most kids, NT and AS, are looking for any excuse to watch TV instead of study are going to try and use this pseudo-symptom as an excuse to deflect encouragment to read?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 5 replies

pack deltas pack psychology school

prometheusPAN — Sun, 13 May 2007 07:02:51 GMT

this is a tribe i have created to explore pack psychology and to help people who have a hard time
in NT social situations.

Please come post your insights and help to create some interesting and useful threads.

http://tribes.tribe.net/packdeltas

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

Anyone suspect...?

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 04:14:12 GMT

Seeing the video that the VT gunman sent into the police, I suspect he may have been an aspie. Isolated, unable to connect with people, and had little awareness of whats socially acceptable (with his stories). Just a hunch.

There was a random shooter a few years in my area who actually was an aspie.

Has anyone seen anything in the news about it? I mean, he obviously had some other problems, but I wouldn't be suprised if he was aspie.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 31 replies

Aspie World

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 07:44:36 GMT

Let's give ourselves a break from soul-searching, and have some fun in this thread.

What would a world be like where the AS / NT ratio which we have now were reversed?

The Olympics and Ballroom Dancing would take a knock for a start............. :)

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 8 replies

How Accommodating Should People Be?

火山 (Kazan) — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 04:53:07 GMT

I've been thinking about this quite a bit today. Some people see AS as a disability, others see it as an identity. In either case, how far should institutions go in accommodating - as one of my friends put it - the "quirks" of an Aspie? Should the unique needs and challenges of someone with AS be considered in categories such as equal opportunity employment, anti-discriminatory laws, special needs classes, etc? I find that even the most enlightened people I know snicker when I tell them what my needs are because they obviously think it's all very "stupid". What is it going to take to get people to understand what kind of suffering we undergo just trying to function from day to day? I wonder if someday we'll be seeing ad campaigns on TV similar to those which try to promote awareness for epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, etc? It's almost as if...in order to get taken seriously, you have to be *so* autistic that you're banging your head against the wall...*sigh* I suppose I'm being a little self-pitying, but perhaps it's due to feeling misunderstood by the people that I'm supposed to be able to trust the most...my friends.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 24 replies

Guessing at what "normal" is

khrysso — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 23:15:32 GMT

I've seen discussions of this in this tribe and have talked with my BF about it, too, and I think that it's really important to acknowledge the point that there is a difference between "pathological" and "dysfunctional."

About 20 years ago, when it began to become fashionable to be "codependent" and to talk about being "Adult Children" from "dysfunctional families," there was a book that I found really helpful by a psychologist named Janet Woititz. It was called _Adult Children of Alchoholics_.

Dr. Woititz eventually dropped the phrase "of alcoholics" because she began to find that adults who had been children in all kinds of dysfunctional families had grown up to have all the same characteristics.

It is important to note that during this time, the common wisdom was that it is not the severity of the condition that makes the condition "dysfunctional," but rather the extent to which the condition was denied or ignored or lied about. The typical phrase was, "A family is as sick as its secrets."

I came to believe at that time, and continue to believe, that any time a child is brought up without reference to his or her particular needs, that child probably ends up qualifying as an "Adult Child..." [of fill-in-the-blank].

By that token, because I was a gay child of str8 parents who had no clue about how to raise a gay kid to gay adulthood (why should they?), I had particular dysfunctions in my upbringing that my siblings, as str8 kids, didn't have. I had to re-educate myself as an adult when I came out, with a whole new set of norms.

I absolutely do not believe that homosexuality is a pathology; however, I do believe that, in the heterocentric context in which I was raised, I was a dysfunctional adult until I came to terms with who I was.

Dr. Woititz, who has passed away, wrote some books that I've really enjoyed, and in most, if not all of them, she highlights these characteristics of Adult Children. One of those characteristics is that Adult Children have to guess at what normal is.

I know, from the reading and talking I've been doing, that Aspies have to guess at what normal is. But having to guess at what normal is isn't a specifically Aspie trait--it's a trait that Aspies have in common with lots of people, AS and NT alike, who grew up without certain clues as to how to function in society.

Woititz's family keeps a web site with resources that she published and supported:

http://www.drjan.com/

The 13 characteristics of ACs that she identified are at this link:

http://www.drjan.com/13char.html

Here are the 13 characteristics, along with her commentary aboout whom they apply to:

"Adult Children of Alcoholics was originally written with only children of alcoholics in mind. Since its first publication, we have learned that the material discusses applies to other types of dysfunctional families as well. If you did not grow up with alcoholism but lived, for example, with other compulsive behaviors such as gambling, drug abuse or overeating, or you experienced chronic illness or profound religious attitudes, or you were adopted, lived in foster care or another potentially dysfunctional systems, you may find that you identify with the characteristics described here. It appears that much of what is true for the children of alcoholics is also true for others and that this understanding can help reduce the isolation of countless persons who also thought they were "different" because of their life experience."

--Janet G. Woititz
Adult Children of Alcoholics - The Expanded Edition

1. Adult children ... guess at what normal behavior is.

2. Adult children ... have difficulty following a project through from beginning to end.

3. Adult children ... lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.

4. Adult children ... judge themselves without mercy.

5. Adult children ... have difficulty having fun.

6. Adult children ... take themselves very seriously.

7. Adult children ... have difficulty with intimate relationships.

8. Adult children ... overreact to changes over which they have no control.

9. Adult children ... constantly seek approval and affirmation.

10. Adult children ... usually feel that they are different from other people.

11. Adult children ... are super responsible or super irresponsible.

12. Adult children ... are extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved.

13. Adult children ... are impulsive. They tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences. This impulsively leads to confusion, self-loathing and loss of control over their environment. In addition, they spend an excessive amount of energy cleaning up the mess.

There are a lot of reasons, I think, both physiological and environmental, for Aspies to have these qualities. I draw your attention particularly to #10, to make the point that though you may feel isolated, you are definitely *not* alone in the quality of feeling like you're on the outside looking in on a group of people who have some secret-to-normalcy. To some extent, NTs can have this feeling, too--a lot.

One of Woititz's books that speaks more broadly to these things is called _The Intimacy Struggle_ (or, in older editions, _Struggle for Intimacy_). It is less specific about alchoholism and may allow you to feel more included if you like the concept but shy away from the "child of alchoholics" part.

I hope this helps in some way. I think it's really important to know that part of guessing at what normal is is discovering that not everything that applies to your non-normative state is actually abnormal in any way.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 10 replies

Formal diagnoses

Klaatu — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 07:32:47 GMT

I'm just curious, how many people in here have had formal diagnoses and what all these diagnoses entailed.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 14 replies

I'll Just Start Here

khrysso — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 06:30:44 GMT

I just joined this tribe and haven't been able to figure out where to just jump in, so that's why I'm starting a new thread to introduce myself.

I've been involved in a pretty intense cyber-and-phone romance with a Tribe friend (we're both gay men) for a couple months now, and he's told me a lot about his social anxieties, and I have noticed some patterns of his that can be very irritating, like when he checks out for a day or two. (I am very extroverted and like to be checked in with fairly frequently.) The differences between us brought us to a critical point in our relationship in the last few days, and we were able to talk them out and he was able to establish some very insightful empathy with me.

Then the other day I woke up from a nap and it hit me: go Google Asperger's and see if it fits him. I did, and it seemed to, and I immediately directed him to do the same, and he said that every single characteristic in the Wikipedia article was like the story of his life (which I kinda knew because we talk a *lot* on the phone, but I wouldn't presume to "diagnose," so to speak).

So we've been talking about this a lot and I joined this tribe and have invited him to it, as well. I suspect he'll be joining it, too, in the next day or so.

I'm particularly worried about sex and intimacy, since I am 20 years older than he and quite experienced in the sexual arena, and I am fairly adventurous. He, on the other hand, is quite inexperienced and has little history of enjoying some of my favorite activities, including deep-kissing. Now that I know what I know about AS, I'm worried that he may never develop a broad repertoire of enjoyable activities, and I fear that I could get frustrated or bored.

Fortunately, we're both into lots of physical affection, cuddling and snuggling and such (and I never get bored with those!), but I don't even know how to construct cuddly-talk fantasies. We're both, I think, at the proverbial "sixes and sevens," kind of nonplussed: it's like I have to start all over, too, to imagine what our erotic life might turn out like if we get our desired scenario and are able to live together (in the same country...) someday.

I'm also very aware that as a very extroverted NT, I will fall naturally into a leadership role regarding basic life-skills, and he will trust me to provide some cues as to what "normal" is. It is an awesome--in the traditional sense of the word--to be entrusted with such a sacred duty. He would be especially easy to exploit, and I am rather afraid that I won't be extra-careful enough with him. I'm already sad that I've been a bit hard on him, before I realized that normal social conventions can't be expected with him all the time.

Fortunately, I am a person of goodwill and deeply in love with him, but still, his faith in me is staggering: there's still so much we don't know about each other, and there are many ways in which he has more to lose if I prove to be not what I seem than I do if he is not. I am deeply, deeply moved and honored at the trust he has placed in me thus far.

Right now the plan remains to talk a lot on the phone--he has an extraordinarily good long-distance rate--and, we intend, meet this summer, once I get my passport and can travel from the US to Canada. He has dual citizenship since his parents were both Yanks, so it would be easier for him to move, once he got his paperwork in order, though we'd be allowed to marry there, if we wanted to. But I am also committed to a longtime platonic companion in the States, so I need to stay here for the foreseeable future.

His situation is complicated by the fact that he was orphaned by the time he was 17, and so his natural reclusiveness was compounded by losing the last of the tenuous familial ties he had. He has been without any kind of built-in ties for nearly 10 years now. So intimacy, which is enough of a challenge between two NTs, is a considerably trickier challenge for us, and he runs a great risk, tying himself to me, because if I provide emotional stability for him and something would happen to me, he thinks he might feel an even more profound sense of disconnection. (Though I am only 47, I have Metabolic Syndrome and am already a heart attack survivor.)

So we are very happy to have one another's love and affection, but there are a lot of new things that could go haywire, and we're both feeling our way along now...

So that's me, and, I guess in a few days it'll be that's us...

Khrysso

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 10 replies

Child With Aspergers

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 17:46:26 GMT

I have a son who is 7 years old and is an Aspie. He's hyper at times and throws things around just to get a reaction out of me and laughs about what he does. How do you get around this? Any advice? I also have a 5 year old son who sometimes copies his older brother but tries to help me out other times. I love both my boys equally and show a lot of love to them by hugs and kisses and saying "I love you" to them. I try to reinforce this because my husbands family is so unemotional and I want to instill quality emotions into these boys. Mind you, only one is an Aspie, not the other. I have seen the Aspie open up to affection already.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 19 replies

The online AQ test of Simon Baron-Cohen

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 23:56:31 GMT

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html

I just took this and scored 34. 32 and above indicates a diagnosis of autism or Asperger's might be likely. (The online test doesn't serve as an official diagnosis, but a score of 34 tells me that think I might be an Aspie---I've never been diagnosed--is not JUST a weird idea in my head.)

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 25 replies

sayings

janathemama — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 16:01:48 GMT

"people dont care how much you know- until they know how much you care.."

does this mean anything to you?
Or know of any other sayings which seem to mean a lot to many, and not much to you?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 15 replies

making a difference

☼Sunshine☼ — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:11:45 GMT

www.drspectscan.com/evite/

Parents of autistic children live with tremendous stress. They need biomedical information, as well as personal assistance. When I helped a mother put a shoe on her resistant son and saw him immediately rip it off and throw it across my waiting room, I decided to act. That’s why I, J. Michael Uszler, M.D., assembled a team of Autism experts to discuss new developments and coping tools for Autism and Asperger syndrome. You can attend this information-packed, online event in the comfort of your own home. The specific, insightful steps and new strategies will make an immediate difference in your life, and in the life of your autistic loved one. I promise you, the “Autism Caregivers – your S.O.S. has been heard!” event will live up to its name. Experts are J. Michael Uszler, M.D., Jeff Bradstreet, M.D., Valerie Paradiz, Ph.D., Stephen Shore, M.A., Robert Krakow, Attorney at Law ...

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

Autistic Adult Picture Project

moonmom — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 20:11:45 GMT

This is a really cool thing. I posted it back in '05 I think but it got swallowed.
http://www.isn.net/~jypsy/AuSpin/joina2p2.htm

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 3 replies

Aspie Career Corner!

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 11:59:57 GMT

At the tail end of the "Unlucky in Love" thread, there was a good post from TeamNoir about Engineering. That there were quite a few Aspies in Engineering classes and the professions associated. I thought it might be a good topic to start up by itself!

What ARE good Aspie career choices? Why do those careers seem to be attractive to Aspies? What are your own experiences with jobs you've had in your life? What aspects are most rewarding?

This can be for those of us who may want a career change. It's never too late. My mum (not an Aspie) went back to college in her mid-40s to pursue nursing. This can also be for parents of Aspie kids.

I'm not a parent, but the thing I'd want most for a child (if I had one) would for them to be happy. It doesn't matter what they do. So I wouldn't want to be forcing a child into anything, but if there were several career choices in which there were a higher percentage of Aspies, I would do my best to make that available. A place where they WOULD fit in, and not feel left out or odd. A place where the gifts of Asperger's can be utilized.

There ARE gifts. That intense focus on a subject, for instance. Even when reading novels for pleasure, I often can't put down the darn book to sleep, I MUST finish the book. So anything that allows me to focus on something and continue to work on it without being disturbed is good for me. And if that wasn't present in whatever job I've had, I'd find something to do. I couldn't just stand there and chit-chat with other people.

So, what careers have you folks had success with? What other kinds of jobs do you think would be suitable and enjoyable from an Aspie perspective? Are there any that you would say "NEVER work as a such-and-such" or in a kind of business?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 32 replies

other-awareness

babalon — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 01:25:42 GMT

my thoughts are percolating on an idea... whic may or may not be accurate at all. so I want to type something out and then i can leave for school.

NTs may have a continual lowlevel awareness of others, an "other-monitor" that Aspies lack. it's not so much that we lack a self-monitor, it's that we lack the other-monitor.

i remember my mother complaining that i never thought of others - i did, but when i was actively *thinking* about them. NOT when i was doing something *else*. others simply didn't enter my mind when i was deciding whether *I* wanted to do something or not. their emotions and thoughts about what i wanted to do was not simply dismissed, it was not simply not considered, it was so totally irrelevant that it would never have occurred to me to even consider it. OTOH, when i was thinking about another person or people, they were usually mad at me for having been "thoughtless" and "inconsiderate".

i think that's possibly one of the basic disconnects between aspies and NTs. it's like - why would i care what others think when i'm doing calculus. equally, why would i care what others think when i'm doing anything else, unless that something else actively involves them - unless they're directly relevant to that activity - like, buying a gift for them or soemthing.

anyways - i haven't gotten much further than this - just wondering how much it fits with NT or Aspie readers' experiences. NTs: *are* you aware at a low-level of others potential reactions, feelings, etc, at all/most times? is other-awareness part of your decision-making as a default at some level (even the active choice to dismiss or discount how others might react/perceive/respond/feel)? is this something that's always been there or something you developed as you grew up?

I'm not talking, btw, of making noise that bothers someone next to you - I'm talking about things like deciding to go shopping without considering how my shopping will affect my roommate, or reading at a family gathering, without considering how others might view it.

My hypothesis is that NTs may have some kind of "other-monitor" that runs at a low level all the time and that, when they do something without concern for others, it's because they *chose* to dismiss that consideration, whereas that Aspies don't have the other-monitor and so the thought of how others might view something never even arises... except in cases of direct interaction.

To me - if I'm interacting with someone directly, then their reaction/feeings/thoughts, etc are relevant, otherwise, they're not. But it's not a conscious active *choice*, it's just that it never occurs to me to consider. (Although, after my mother and various lovers and partners over the years telling me that I should do this, I've gotten more into the habit, but it's still something I have to actively remember to do, where I think the NTs may have to actively choose *not* to do it.)

Anyways - what do you guys think about this? Does it make sense? Does it fit with what goes on inside your heads?

BTW - I don't care about whether others reactions are good or bad or whether they should care or not, just about whether the "consideration of others" when the others aren't directly involved in an action is a built-in default or not for aspies/NTs.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 3 replies

New Tribe, Sex, BDSM and Tantra for people with disabilities

annann — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 09:06:42 GMT

New Tribe, Sex, BDSM and Tantra for people with disabilities

http://tribes.tribe.net/sexbdsmtantra4peoplewithdisabilities

I have started yet another Tribe and this one may be the most important one yet.

It is for people with disabilities of any type, physical, emotional, mental, social, visible or hidden who engage in sex, BDSM and Tantra.

This is a place where you can discuss whatever you want to regarding these two subjects. How to do it, prejudice you may encounter, healing, whatever.

For the purpose of this Tribe, disabilities can be any type, physical, emotional, mental, social, whatever you or others see as a disability. Anything that has hindered your ability to function or to be accepted by others.

Sex, BDSM and Tantra are often oriented for so called "normal" people, people who do not have any kind of disability. It can be a challenge for those of us with any disability to partake of these activities.

Have you found that sex or BDSM or tantra has helped your disability improve? If so, share about it in this Tribe.

These activities can often be healing for people with disabilities but they can present special challenges that others often do not understand.

Disabilities can often be hidden, not visible to the naked eye, the person is not in a wheelchair, has all their limbs, is not blind but is still dealing with living a disabled life but others do not realize it and assume that person to be "normal".

Chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, learning disabilities, depression, Asperger's, etc are all examples of hidden disabilities.

Anyone is welcome in this Tribe, with or without a disability, to learn how to deal with their own disability or others disabilities.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

New Year's Eve Social Situation Survey

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 19:21:37 GMT

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=446203077075

A quick 28 question survey about social situations and New Year's Eve.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

Anyone Else This Unlucky In Love?

火山 (Kazan) — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 03:52:20 GMT

I apologize if this topic has been covered somewhat in another thread, but this is something that is at the forefront of my mind today.

For as long as I can remember I've had exceptional difficulty making friends. I have never, ever had as many friends as the people around me. I tend to be very exclusive to just one or, at the most, two friends at a time. I put everything on to one person. So, it should come as no surprise that I approach love and dating in exactly the same way.

I will get super, super attached to (obsessed with?) one person and fall deeply, hopelessly in love with them. Maybe it's partly a result of the extreme isolation I felt during childhood (raised Jehovah's Witness - not a happy thing to put a child through, when you're given no choice but to stick out like a sore thumb and refuse to participate when the rest of the class is eating Halloween candy). If you're lonely for too long you start holding on more tenaciously to the people who do care about you. If you're a really different breed all throughout your childhood, the people who are kind to you are indeed few and far between.

A lot of people that I have liked have run in the other direction when they sensed my unusual focus on them and the intensity with which I felt feelings for them. But I'm not sure how much of this is upbringing and how much of it is a natural predisposition to be that way. Perhaps this is a bit assumptive, but since mental illnesses of various stripes run in my family, I'd actually be surprised if I *didn't* inherit some atypical neurotype from somewhere.

That being said, in addition to the circumstantial stuff, I suspect that my true nature is to be obsessive. It was probably just brought out by my environment. So very very many girls have said no to me, usually not in a rude way and not because of anything specific, but just because "it wasn't meant to be" or they didn't "feel the magic" or some variation thereof. I guess it's because I'm just too much for them. But I can't help being so intense. I've asked so many people what I've been doing wrong, hoping I could fix what was wrong with me and be more like other people, and they tell me to have more confidence and be happy and people will be drawn to me. Yet, how can you base confidence on experiences that have taught you that every girl you really like is 99% likely to turn you down? People seem to interpret the asking of these types of questions as weakness of character or lack of confidence but I'm honestly just trying to learn consciously what others seem to just instinctively know. *sigh* I can't win. Nobody has been very helpful about "training" me to integrate better. I've asked lots of people, including professionals. One psychiatrist said that I just "had issues". Pbbt! Anyone could have told me that...

This solid trend toward rejection in love keeps happening, and it is so distressing. I really am trying to be the best person I can be, perhaps trying too hard, because I see people with no inclination toward self-improvement pairing up all the time. It's like...nobody can relate to me or something...

And that's why the most recent incident has gotten me so down in the dumps. Last night, the girl I've been in love with for nearly 2 years made it clear that she will never love me back. Here, I thought I *had* found a girl with narrow, intense, creative interests just like me. She seemed socially awkward just like me and into her own very emotional world most of the time just like me and had a strict upbringing just like me. So many factors were there. But it is all one-sided. She is firm about not wanting to give me another chance (there was a bit of a spark between us one and a half years ago, which adds to my confusion). I feel like an outsider among outsiders.

I have been so lonely for so long, and I don't know why, and nobody has the answers. Every time I get turned down by someone I have been deeply in love with, I feel physically ill, like I don't want to function or even live anymore...I know that can't be normal but I continue to experience this over and over again...

Can anyone here relate to this, at least? If so, perhaps I truly have found my "tribe"...

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 16 replies

Sports

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 07:19:58 GMT

It is received wisdom, in these relatively early days of AS analysis and categorization, that AS people are dreadful at sports, lacking the co-ordination skills which most athletic and team games require.

I believe the position to be overstated. Although not very good at it, I took up boxing and competed semi-professionally in my early Forties. I can run in a straight line, and manage not to drop the weights on my head at the gym. On the other hand, I never could work out team games such as hockey and soccer, and was the classic "last one to be picked" throughout my school years.

What is your experience in this area?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 9 replies

I deleted the survey thread because...

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 06:32:05 GMT

Hi all,
I deleted the survey thread because my entire survey got posted on it, and many of the questions are very sexually explicit and not everyone may want to read that stuff. On the survey website, people go there knowing they will be asked sex questions, and are warned to expect explicit language. In other words, they are making a choice to deal with that kind of material. Here, on tribe, it's another story.
Hope no one was offended. I know the person who posted the survey in its entirety meant well, but I think this is not the right venue.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 7 replies

rudy the red-nosed aspie

oatwillie — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 19:26:17 GMT

The parable of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer shares striking similarities with the Asperger condition. Think of the parallels...never being asked to join in any reindeer games (perhaps due to perseverances about one's own "games"). Dang bully reindeer, laughing and calling Rudy names. Good grief, this is soooo familiar to Aspiedom!

Then that wise old elf notices Rudolphs unique gift. The illumination, that in spite of not being like all the rest, his special talent shines the best

Merry Christmas, my Aspie friends! This time of year presents unique challenges to us all, and in it, may you also find new ways to open the gifts of our condition.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 2 replies

coaching and diagnoses

Lout_Sue — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 01:47:37 GMT

I heard a show on NPR about mingling, and another about manners that both freaked me out, in that I would never ever go to the lengths they suggested to be polite (swallow the lobster that was "off" even if it kills you).

Then, we were doing a work day in the classroom with our students (mid sch hi func aut) and the one who was organizing the library (very neatly) brought out this teenage etiquette book called How Rude, and I got completely immersed in it, especially considering that I was going have to attend a couple of Holly Day parties that weekend for my newish job teaching at a film school. I really wanted to make a good impression, and so was desperate for some tips.

My sister, whose classroom it is, responded to my avid interst in the book by saying, "Ya know, you can get some coaching for all that." With my new job I now have health insurance and so am considering trying to get an official diagnosis and then some sort of support. Anyone have any experience with negotiating a diagnosis from an HMO and/or any experience with social coaching?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

What about pretend play?

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 23:43:56 GMT

I've read that autistics don't engage in pretend play. Do aspies?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 15 replies

Is there a relation between Asperger's and schizoid personality disorder?

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 21:53:14 GMT

The two psychologists who know me best---one professionally and the other as a college prof who became a friend--incline to the schizoid personality view of me rather than an Asperger's diagnosis. However, both see some parallel and both admit Asperger's isn't something they're well versed in.
That sound like anyone else's story?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 3 replies

the social cage and the hundredth aspie principle

prometheusPAN — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 03:03:04 GMT

order and chaos.
swimmingly dancing
ehcolations of fractal equations
hopping in song up and down scale
bopping quantum frothy hyperholography
spin and memory
quantum information
pattern and chaos;
self replicating forms of order and biochemistry....
a fractal holographic universe;
echolating patterns of time and space and scale
infinities of staircases built in a thousand shells
concentric circle superbubbles in tenth dimensional
hyperspace

the distal and proximal stimulus!
what is the true nature of reality?
for all we can know is subjective to our lens of perceptions
and all we can do is according to what we can thus know

the mind, sleeping in its permutations of instinct and
social order and civil law; the great grand effort to have a civilization?
where is it going and what has it wrought?

as we tumble down the corridor of the fate of mere fractal chaos permutations as they tumble down space time and out the door of the "now"

As we live lives in biochemical supersuits of
spacetime called bodies; self aware and thus
self observing;

matter can be transformed into energy;
matter is composed of energy.
Matter is the strong force which is a knot of a loop
of bouncing fractal quantum particles entangled with each other and thus stopped in apparent time space
due to their entanglement;
the universe is pure energy; matter is an illusion.

but wait, it gets worse.
because those quanta are fractal bubbles hopping in fractal hyperspace; none of their true properties can be known other than in mad scientists experiments.
Nobody knows what atoms are actually doing or how they behave until we smash them apart, or use radiation to fly past it and make a false image negative
print.

There is no determined quantity of energy for any photon, and every electron is a shell of potential identities until interaction with another particle causes a force collapse into particle behavior.

the quantum scale is layers of fractal scale doing concentric circles with each other.
As an electron orbits a nucleus, so does a planet orbit
a star as does the strong force have a moon called the
weak force and so on through the forces.
A photon? a wave a mile tall and wide until measured;
a singlurity when actually observed.

Virtual photons abounding;
there is no actual "energy."
Just the quantum memory of probability of the feild opening and closing in a frothy fluctuation....

all matter is energy. All energy is Information.

We are potentially God awakening;
we are behaving like the worst case scenario of the
spoiled brat civilization;
our potentiate as infinite as colonizing the galaxy;
our destiny uncertain as we fall back down the tunnels
into mortal instincts
and the entropy of social and civil order
and chaos
traveling in language through space and time
a million propagandas
and a thousand paradigms
keeping time with each other in our collective heads
as consciousness imprints itself upon the quantum level;
by virtue of having some"thing" be the observer;
we are here to see the universe;
and we are thus its caretakers just as we are its gods.
we are RESPONSIBLE for it, not just ON TOP of it;

We are capable of awakening; from a collective dream;
from a hival herdal monkey mind fooling itself to thinking its civilized by having technology and apparent law and order;

to the actual disorder, entropy, chaos, we actually
see as evidence before us in American Politics;
the most corrupt administration ever finally being overturned by bored near democracy;
the levels of control dispelled by the growing evidence
of simple cause and effect building up its blueprint on reality;

they had and have it all wrong. They don't know how to run a civilization. They don't know right from wrong, they don't know how to make peace, and they don't care.

Civilization is run by bad rulers. They are bad mostly because they are ignorant and arrogant; not by intention, but the outcome is the same so it doesn't matter that they don't mean the rest of us harm.

Their laws and traditions and customs and ideas about the nature of reality?
They are just maps and nothing more.
They are reports by some person of their experiences
subjectively, commmunicated subjectively and experienced and interpreted subjectively by an oberver.
They are not objective realities; they are only the best
answers somebody came up with at some time or another.

And so everybody makes their way as best they can
via maslows hierarchy of needs as it might translate into a pure causal actual architecture; we are the beings who are made of materiality; biochemical chaos.
and we are thus biochemical machines; requiring biochemical sustainence.
we need. We need air, we need water, we need food,
we need sleep, we need some variation of the right conditions for our temperature to be just right;
And instinct even tricks us into thinking we NEED sex.

We need Physical, Social, Emotoinal, Mental, And Spiritual Levels of stuff.

If a baby doesn't get its social needs met, it can die;
(accidental early nursing experiments...lol.)

The human animal meets its needs one need at a time. And most of what anybody ever does in their whole life is to meet their own needs.

Thats what drives everything ultiamtely; some form of selfishness. And the only way to beat it is written like an echo to the instinct in the mammalian brain; COOPERATION.

When a civilization can make as its first priority meeting the needs of its civil population; then the needs of the civil population will cease and crime will stop. But the rich and greedy don't want to take a chance on turning their proffits. So we slide down the slippery slope toward social entropy.

When a civilization can make as its first priority meeting the needs of its civil population; then and only then can we be said to have graduated out of oligarchy
and into genuine democracy. We live in an oligarchy.
A very small number of people determine what the rest of us get to do, see, hear, think, or react to;

and they sell us a million and one things as promises
to meet our needs, but; their success hinges on not giving us the real thing so that we keep coming back for more.

And so life slides in American civilization down the tubes in a rush of work and no time; and the "nuclear family" is actually made itself into a batch of perfect strangers who hardly ever see each other.

Pack psychology and Egotism ensue;
and what is left?

a thousand bodies of information which are incontrobvertible and a million propaganda bodies of information which are trying to sway the populations minds not to see what the real solutions are and really how simple the puzzle is.

The truth of science;
and almost everything else.

two forces; fighting for the soul of humanity like lucifer and God.

every propaganda is simply what somebody said to cover the truth, distract from the truth, or sway somebody to do something.

the truth of science;
propaganda warfare;
order and chaos;
spinning like the tao
tossing over the real questions that are the most fundamental ?

what is true ethics?
what is right and wrong?
how do we as a civilization define ourselves as different from the law of the jungle?

This "I"ness that one experiences as the subjective
center of the universe; and the universe;
as above, so below, as within, so without;
as the universe; so the soul;
the astronaut and the psychonaut;
each of us travels both paths
each of us makes two journeys;
one within us, and one outside of us.

Do you know where you are going?
because 99 percent of the population is participating
in pushing human civilization to the brink of ecological armageddon, and all we need to do to really solve it
is get these damn alpha dominant jerks to chill out and masturbate.

Cooperation; Competition. The secret truth;
every competition is a waste of time.

All of this fighting for oil?
black tar stupid.
all of this posturing and bullying and bickering?
ape dumb.
All of this propaganda warfare?
The life of trolls?
The big batch of noise they have made to keep us in a box;

this social cage is the bubble thats got to pop sooner or later.

Beyond the social cage is everything called freedom.
inside of it is for 95 percent of the population a way of life backed up behind having a nuclear family and a 9 to five job. But wait, do you ev3n bother to notice that you end up going "out" to the "Social scene"?
Humanity ends up recreating the tribal experience;
but they trick you and end up making you pay for it.

And there out at the social scene? what do you find?
people who don't want to see, don;t want to talk about
don't want to have you stir up the herd.

People who are invested in the system; invested in the box; in the big god of deception, they will fight for the system.

They are nearly self identifying. "con" - Servative.

Civilzations being run by literally a million and one propaganda artists.

The last thing they want is for you to explore inner space and actually get somewhere. The last thing they want is for us to actually get humanity colonized into space.

They want people HERE on EARTH to be SLAVEs to the grind.

the social cage; ideas and paradigms and the tower of babylon we are collectively building;
lighting drifting like fire down in a spiral expression of
DNA.
our instincts and our needs and what we will do to each other and the rules that they could think up 4000
years ago are falling that way, just like rome fell before us.

As we fall, we can stop the fall by awakening.
But the bell curves of possible futures meet there at their own sharp arc.
At some point, there is a point of no return;
at some point the diabolization of women becomes
the slavery of gender and mother nature;

at some point the concepts as descriptions become
only just the perfect boxes; frighteningly false in their
false implications just as they are beautiful inside their
contexts as poetry.

as the psychonautic journey progresses, we can either choose to be ego invested, or we can choose to be cosm invested. This is ultimately the true definition of ethics; wether we invest ourselves by force of attention to selfishness or to service.

Behind that apparent paradox lies a riddle of the difference between knowing the path and walking the path. There are a million jesus impersonators camped around the self realization that the ego is just
an illusion, thinking that thus they are the one and only true god and the rest of us are beholden beneath them.
The truth is the reverse; the universe is awake where it
most strongly self observes.
Any one of us is contributing to the observation; and thus driving the end product of the fractal chaos decision process.

the truth is that YOU are god.
the question is whether or not you have the personal
power to embrace that, or settle for being something
thats just a body.
you can be your body; or you can be fractal holography.

you can't have your cake and eat it 2.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

John Moorman's Autism/Asperger's Theory

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:46:52 GMT

A recent correspondent, John Moorman, sent me this original theory of his, and gave me permission to post it here and on my blog. I think he's got an interesting take on this topic, and is addressing a role of the social/emotional feedback loop that is seldom articulated. I also think his description of the power of "preferences" to be quite profound and worth greater discussion and consideration. There are huge implications in what he says. These are his words:

"I believe that the autistic spectrum is a heritable trait primarily characterized by preferences for certain activities and aesthetics over
others. I think the scale slides from people who developed extremely strong preferences at a very young age (Imagine if a week-old child strongly prefers to look at anything colored green over looking at anything that isn't green, and doesn't watch his mother's mouth while she talks to him. He may never learn to move his mouth properly, even if he learns to understand speech), to developing milder preferences as we mature (The milder the preferences and the later in life they develop, the more neurotypical the person is considered to be).

The diagnosis of a disorder on the autistic spectrum merely indicates that the preferences of the individual are not preferences which will benefit the ECONOMIC situation of corporations or the state. For example, if a child who showed adeptness at smithing were to be transported from the 1800s to modern time, he would not buy a great deal of toys, he would want to collect scrap iron at junkyards and spend time at the nearest forge. This doesn't involve cellphones, iPods, etc., and if he is given an apprenticeship with a smith he will likely end up manufacturing wrought-iron furniture, staircases, and cast iron cooking utensils for wealthy people who enjoy handmade items. This is acceptable as long as there are only one such individual in a million, but if there were to be a great many craftsman of this sort then quite fewer people would be inclined to purchase items at their local Walget store. One of the best
ways to discourage unwanted behavior is to shun or ostracize the individual. For MOST people, this is sufficient to keep them focused on the socially approved activities, but not for those persons whose preferences are especially strong or who develop preferences earlier in life.

The ostracization CAUSES the primary social deficit because the only cues learned are either irritation by your presence or smiling and laughing, when they are actually inventing a cruel joke at your expense. I think that for many Aspies they would agree that they worry they are irritating people or that if people smile at them it may be insincere and they are inventing a cruel joke. I don't believe it is a coincidence that the only activities which will not turn you into an outcast are sports and anything else which is not actually useful or productive, and ideally necessitates purchasing new items at regular intervals. The radio and television have been the most effective ways of transmitting the information on what is currently the fad, and people without strong preferences can easily make the switch- BECAUSE they have LESS capacity to feel fondly of their own current lifestyle.

Now I will make an imaginary case study of someone who has undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome. This person develops an intense interest in the sport of football early in life. Because this is one of the socially ACCEPTED interests (And by the way has virtually no chance of creating a monetary conflict with the NFL and Budweiser, because success in this activity will only cause you to become an employee of the NFL and sell Budweiser), this child will have a large peer group, who will be continually accepting of his behavior, and even EMULATE him, thus turning any quirks into "coolness points". He will have no trouble interpreting the subtle facial cues because HE IS EXPOSED TO THEM ALL THE TIME, and they are UNAMBIGUOUS in meaning. He will tell his teachers with convincing sincerity that he really is TRYING his best on activities he doesn't prefer, and they will secure the help he needs or fudge his grades a bit, instead of scolding him. He will never be diagnosed with Aspergers, EVEN THOUGH only a change in his PREFERRED ACTIVITY to aerodynamics would CAUSE HIS LIFE TO CRUMBLE AROUND HIM. If he never becomes a professional football player, he will invariably have no trouble finding romantic relationships and good employment which will allow him to WATCH FOOTBALL and DRINK BEER and buy his children the TOY OF THE WEEK. These activities will not cause anyone to be singled out as a mental deviant, because they are mainstream and they move MONEY by the BILLIONS from NT people to the mega-corporations."

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 2 replies

OT: Hardwired Gender Differences

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 06:16:04 GMT

Hi all,
This book (below) is fascinating, and based on scientific research (for a change). I'm posting it here simply because there's some interesting implications for learning, some of which may jive with and/or conflict with what is suitable for AS folks.
--------------------

Hardwired Gender Differences
Examples paraphrased and taken from “Why Gender Matters” by Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D.

1. Females hear better than males.

--Hearing studies of newborn babies, girls have acoustic brain response 80 percent greater than newborn boys.
--Studies showing teenage girls hear better than boys.
--Eleven year old girls distracted by noise levels ten times softer than noise levels that boys find distracting.

Example of possible consequences of misunderstanding this: Boys may be mistakenly diagnosed with ADD because they demonstrate “attention deficit” which may actually be due to not hearing the teacher with a soft voice, not to an inate condition.

2. “Left brain verbal, right brain spatial” is less true for women. Men’s brains are more compartmentalized, women’s are more globally organized. This is not due to hormones. Evidence seems to suggest male and female brain tissue is “intrinsically different” (genetically programmed) in humans, as in animals.

Intrinsic difference due to proteins derived from X and Y chromosomes. Men’s brains contain proteins coded from Y chromosome that are absent in women’s brain tissue and vice versa.

a) Gender breakdown of Janel Caine’s master thesis studies of the effects of soft music on premature babies showed this only worked on girl babies, but the gender difference was not noted, only shows up in data tables. The boy babies did not show any positive effects, such as leaving the hospital earlier. (Florida State University) Later studies have confirmed this. (See hearing, above.)

b) Women use both hemispheres for language. Men don’t. (Studies of stroke victims.)

c) Correlation of larger brain size with more intelligence only applies to males.

d) Females have higher brain flow per gram of tissue than men.

e) In some crtical areas of the brain, women have larger brain cells that receive more inputs than in men.

f) Brain imaging studies show women use the most advanced areas of the brain for many tasks, while men use the more “primitive” areas.

3. Vision differences
--Females intepret facial expressions better than men. Studies include those done on babies on the day they were born. Boys more interested in a mobile than a young woman’s face.

--Ganglion cells in the eyes differ in females and males. Large magnocellular (M) ganglion are wired to rods (black and white) and function as “motion detectors.” Parvocellular (P) ganglion are wired to cones for texture and color.

P cells send info via their own part of the thalamus to a region of cerebral cortex that specializes in analysis of texture and color. M cells send info
via another pathway to a different region of cerebral cortex, one specializing in spatial relationships and object motion. Each step in these pathways is different in females and males.

Human retina is full of receptors for sex hormones. Males have thicker retina, because more M cells. Females have more P cells.

Implications: Children’s art work. Girls use more colors, draw things. Boys use monocromatic schemes, draw action. Dolls more appealing to P cells. Trucks more appealing to M cells.

4. Navigation. Women use cerebral cortex for navigation. Men use the hippocampus.

5. Boys use amygdala in rough and tumble play. Girls don’t.

6. Emotions. In children, negative emotions resulting from unpleasant visual stimuli activated amygdala (mostly). In teenage girls, a larger portion of brain activity associated with unpleasant emotions moves to cerebral cortex (and language and reasoning functions). It doesn’t happen in teenage boys and young adult men.

Postive and negative emotions are processed differently by the brains of females and males.

7. Male humans and male monkeys are far more likely to take risks and act aggressively.

--“Fight or flight syndrome” works differently between the genders. In females, the autonomic nervous system is more influenced by the parasympathetic nervous system, which is energized by acetylcholine which causes a nauseating feeling. In males, the sympathetic nervous system provides the “adrenaline rush” in response to stress.

8. Pain perception.

--Exposure to stress reduces pain perception in males. This does not work for females and in some cases increases pain perception.

-- The cellular mechanisms that mediates pain perception is structurally different in males and females.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 6 replies

Out Issues

teamnoir — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:16:22 GMT

I haven't heard anyone use this term around here yet. So I thought I'd throw it out.

In some other subcommunities, the idea of "out issues" shows up. That is, the idea that one gradually recognizes what one is, then decides whether or how to present that to the world, one's family, etc. These patterns show up in the multiplicity community, abuse survivors communities, eating disorders communities, gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, transsexual, and kinky communities, pagan communities, tantric communities, just to name a few.

There are politics to being out. Being out makes it easier for other people to come out by presenting positive role models to the world, but those who might be like us without having noticed yet as well as to those who aren't, and don't know who we are yet. But at the same time, being out is risky because it makes us targets of ridicule, of bigotry, or prejudice, and we aren't even a protected class. That is, it's illegal in the US to discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion, etc, but it's not currently illegal to discriminate on the basis of neurotype.

Just to push the idea of out issues out there a little further, I'd like to ask the standard "out" issues questions.

To whom are you out about being "on the spectrum"? To whom are you specifically not out? When did you come out? Was it difficult to accept coming out to yourself or was it a relief? Are you out to most of your friends and family or no? Was it hard to come out to them?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 23 replies

Um...I began a 'Hidden Disabilities' tribe

moonmom — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:12:07 GMT

Not to confuse the issue or dispurse ideas too thinly, but I think that many of us struggle with that 'hidden' part.
Perhaps it may have made a better thread, but there are so many hidden diabilities I thought the diversity of the issue was worthy of a tribe.
http://tribes.tribe.net/hiddendisabilities

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

Crime and punishment

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 15:00:19 GMT

As a lawyer, with a developing interest in human rights, I find very little in the literature on AS conerning crime and punishment. In his Complete Guide published this year, Tony Attwood touches on the issue, but there is a dearth of research material.

Are you aware of published research material, or of Court or prison-based AS awareness initiatives?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

another sex question on staying connected

69 — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 18:25:05 GMT

I'm a recently discoved aspie and I've always had a problem in being able to receive sexual touch if it is not turning me on the entire time during lovemaking. My body seems to have an on/off switch, and if I'm not being touched EXACTLY the way I want to be, then I tend to check out from my partner(s) and drift off into my own world. It really takes a lot to turn me on sexually, and it's a very fine line between what feels like a turn-on and what feels numb or irritating. If the touch feels relaxing/nuturing (which is 80% of the time) rather than stimulating/erotic/orgasmic (only 20%), I start to get restless and begin to notice other parts of my body that feel uncomfortable(like my legs are starting to cramp, the music is too loud, my head starts to feels itchy, etc.). Also if the touch goes for too long only being relaxing/nuturing, I begin to tune my partner out and behave as if I'm just getting a massage. Sometimes this is ok, but for the most part, my lovers want to stay connected with me during the lovemaking act (ideally I do so with them) and if I respond as if I'm just getting a massage, then they feel like I'm checking out and that I'm not there anymore.
On the other hand, if the touch feels stimulating/erotic/orgasmic, I focus all my attention on that specific act, and I then have an obsessive need to make sure that part of my body becomes orgasmic. Nothing else matters in that moment, not even my partner's comfort level. Once again, my partner notices I am checking out and this time, feels as if he is being used as a masturbation tool. And so we are disconnected again. I read a book about Aspies and long term relationships, and there was some info on touch and over/under sensitivity. I've tried the give-and-take model like the book recommended, but now I've exhausted that approach and want to be able to join forces with my partner and make love, rather than feel like what we are offering to each other is an act of service.
Any advice?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 10 replies

anyone know of a good Aspie therapist

69 — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:39:01 GMT

in the SF bay area?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 1 reply

Anti-discrimination, autism, hate crimes...

teamnoir — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 22:26:51 GMT

http://www.wpxi.com/news/9832801/detail.html

I wonder if crimes against the disabled are, or should, qualify as hate crimes.

The article just says that the targetted kid is autistic, though. It doesn't actually say whether he's disabled. Which also begs an interesting question imo. Should non-disabled autistic people also be covered by hate crime legislation?

Opinions?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 3 replies

ASD & Indigo

fj — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:07:50 GMT

Very recently, the Indigo thing has re-entered my awareness a few times in various online communities and other media sources. I have read bits and pieces about it in the past, and haven't really formed an opinion. I am curious to know what folks here think about it, specifically with regards to how it might tie into your beliefs about ASD.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 15 replies

Best way to convey love to a partner with Asperger's?

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 05:36:39 GMT

Hi all,
I know this is NOT a one size fits all question, but in all of your opinions, what might be a general answer to these questions:

What works best for a non-Asperger's partner to communicate love or other emotions to their Asperger's lover? Touch? Tone of voice? Words? And what is an effective way to communicate wanting some reciprical communication? Is it best to simply ask for what's needed?

Thanks!

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 99 replies

Help

april — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 07:04:00 GMT

What's a good way to deal with an aspies first dentist trip????

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 4 replies

Pros & cons of written communication

fj — Tue, 16 May 2006 21:05:23 GMT

http://search.csmonitor.com/search_content/0515/p13s01-stct.html

Excerpts:

"...The answer, the professors conclude, is sometimes 'no.' Though e-mail is a powerful and convenient medium, researchers have identified three major problems. First and foremost, e-mail lacks cues like facial expression and tone of voice. That makes it difficult for recipients to decode meaning well. Second, the prospect of instantaneous communication creates an urgency that pressures e-mailers to think and write quickly, which can lead to carelessness. Finally, the inability to develop personal rapport over e-mail makes relationships fragile in the face of conflict.

"...[People] assume others experience stimuli the same way they do. Also, e-mail lacks body language, tone of voice, and other cues - making it difficult to interpret emotion."

These kind of comments seem to be sweeping, when you consider the benefits an Aspie often may experience when given the opportunitty to communicate in writing and avoid the common AS-specific pitfalls that exist in verbal/body dialogue situations.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 6 replies

Sex and Sensory Overload?

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 05:34:00 GMT

I heard Jack Moran, author of The Erotic Mind, speak the other day. He said something that really struck me and I want to bounce it around in this forum.

He said that most (all) media portrayals of sex and romance glorify what I'm going to call a "mutual and simultaneous" model of sexual activity (I forget what language he used to describe this). You know, both people stroking, kissing, etc with each other at the same time. Then he said that the model of sexual activity that is just as valid, but practically never portrayed, is one where people take turns giving pleasure to each other--one person being an active giver for a while, the other being a more passive recipient. The result is we think the mutual and simultaneous model is "The Way It's Supposed to Be:" It's the cultural ideal, particularly when completed by simultaneous orgasms.

So this got me thinking. Could this "taking turns" model of sexuality be more appropriate for people with AS and/or other sensory overload issues? Could this model be a suitable option to present in a course on sexuality for people with sensory overload issues?

Also, he has an interesting way of breaking human sexual activity into three main types: partner engagement, erotic trance, and role playing. Any thoughts on this? Could erotic trance (just getting deeply into what you yourself are feeling) or role playing (set roles, format and something like "a script" of behavior) be easier than partner engagement (having to relate intimately with another in a spontaneous manner) for people with AS and/or other sensory overload issues?

I'm asking these questions in a casual way, but also as a formal student of Clinical Sexology. That's the discipline that asks: what do people do, and how do they feel about it? There's no judgment here--only inquiry.

Anyone want to respond to this topic? Thanks!

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 17 replies

Curious parallels - aspergers vs multiplicity

teamnoir — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:17:27 GMT

I've been noticing recently how the politics, vogue, and fashion of aspergers and autism diagnoses seem to parallel those of multiplicity from a little over a decade ago.

For those who don't know, multiplicity is the word used to describe the superset of people who have been diagnosed as having Multiple Personality Disorder, (MPD - the pre-DSM-IV diagnosis), or Dissociative Identity Disorder, (DID - the post DSM-IV diagnosis), or who self diagnose, or who simply have multiple personalities without necessarily being "disordered", or "clinically significant", (which is a nice way of saying that they never show up in court or a shrink's office because of it).

In both cases, what was previously thought to be a rare condition was suddenly being diagnosed for much larger population than it had been previously, by several orders of magnitude. In both cases the DSM diagnostic criterion were in serious flux. In both cases, the diagnostic criterion were at one point thought to be so badly out of date that many professionals were diagnosing the more general categories rather than the more specific - (asd, or ppd-nos for us, bpd, bipolar, or dissociative nos for them). And in both cases, the support communities were blossoming at least as fast as the professionals were clueing in to what was happening.

My guess is that aspergers will continue to follow a similar pattern to the pattern of multiplicity. Once the frequency of diagnosis evens out, there will still be an ongoing question of which people are sufficiently disordered to merit a diagnosis, and which are "subclinical" - perhaps having the patterns but without requiring professional help, which will constantly call into question whether they are really "one of us" or just pretending. There will be ongoing debates about whether it's possible to self identify or whether it requires some external authority to validate. And there will be ongoing debates about whether the presence of the diagnostic criterion necessarily constitute a disorder, (or debilitation or disability), or whether it's possible to have the traits and be healthy concurrently. And the question of whether a "cure" is even appropriate will likely continue forever with some wishing they could be rid of their debility and others being relatively satisfied with their "gift", depending in part on how well they are functioning at the time.

Also, some people do "get over" being multiple, either by fusing themselves into singletons or by learning to operate as a functional team. Just as many aspergers folks learn social skills and how to operate in the world even enough to pass as NT for much of the time. The only significant difference I see here is that multiplicity can be "cured", or rather, the fact of it's being necessarily a disorder can be changed. Whereas currently, once you're diagnosed with AS/autism, you're expected to carry that label for life, regardless of your level of disability or functioning.

Just some observations. Seems to me that we, as a community, could benefit from recognizing the repeated patterns.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 1 reply

Sillicon Valley Docs?

teamnoir — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 16:03:52 GMT

I'm giving some serious thought to shopping for a diagnosis. Does anyone have any recommendations for an AS savvy doctor in the sillicon valley area?

I don't think I'm looking for ongoing treatment, tranquilizers, or even head shrinkage at this point so much as I'm looking for validation. So a dx, probably under an assumed name, would be sufficient for me.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 9 replies

Are accomodations a limited resource?

teamnoir — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 02:53:48 GMT

Swede brought up an interesting question. He suggested that accomodations are a scarce resource and that if more and more people request them, then they won't be available for the people who really need them.

Of course, diagnoses aren't a particularly scarce resource. And in my opinion, much like child abuse in the '80's and multiplicity in the '90's, the reason we're seeing more and more people recognized as AS isn't necessarily that the incidence of AS is rising, but rather that the sensitivity of the system for recognizing AS is rising. Recent estimates put AS at whole percentage points of the population, and as high as perhaps 10% of some areas like sillicon valley.

One of the questions I asked recently is why people get a diagnosis. And I can see two reasons so far.

One is validation. Recognition that we really are different. Validation from some arbitrary authority, and one who hasn't even quite figured out how to classify us.

Another is accomodations. And I think this one is the one about which Swede was expressing concern.

Here in the US, if you are sufficiently debilitated, you can be declared "disabled", which can get you money if you can't work, health care, etc. And one step toward becoming classifed as "disabled" is a diagnosis.

Personally, I don't need that kind of aid. I don't need a special parking spot. I don't need special health care, (I don't think, haven't found any treatments worth the bother), and, in general, I can arrange for the work accomodations I care about simply as a matter of perks - (working at home, quiet work space, etc).

Which begs the question... what is it that I'm using up?

I mean, sure. It's possible that I'm only mildly autistic. I do pass. I can pass. And I don't consider myself a lost cause. I'm still sorting out a lot of this for myself, though. Like does it matter to me whether I'm AS? Would I live my life any differently if I had a diagnosis? So far the only difference I see for myself is that I could speak in forums like this one with a different level of authority. And if someday, I find an accomodation worth asking for, I might just do that.

So what is it that I'm using up?

Is it credibility? Are people concerned that if I'm not a basket case, and I claim to be AS, that I give you all a bad name for being slackers if I can do things you can't? Or if in 40+ years of struggling, I've actually found some processes that work for me? Would I really raise the bar to the point that you couldn't cope?

What is it that I'm using up? Because if claiming the AS label, (with or without dx), means that I make someone else's life more difficult, then I'd like to include that in my considerations.

Where's the scarce or finite resource?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 1 reply

what's the medical difference...

69 — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 03:21:37 GMT

between Autism and Aspergers?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 7 replies

"Asperger Syndrome" tribe...

teamnoir — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 21:41:39 GMT

I noticed that the "Asperger Syndrom" tribe, (not this one - notice the subtley different spelling), had no moderator. So I stepped up. http://mindblind.tribe.net

However, I'm not seeing any particular need for another AS tribe at this time. So I'm encouraging anyone from that tribe to join this one instead. Unless someone can show me a particular need for another tribe, my intent is to kick everyone off that other tribe in a couple weeks and then petition the Tribe Ghods to reap it.

Just fyi. Please feel free to pm me if you do see a need for it to remain.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 18 replies

Diagnosis

teamnoir — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 22:01:05 GMT

I'm curious. How many folks here have a formal diagnosis of AS?

Of those who do, how has it been useful for you to have such a diagnosis? Has the diagnosis itself been problematical in any way?

And how did you come to have one?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 1 reply

NLP vs Aspergers

teamnoir — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:19:46 GMT

Has anyone else noticed the similarity between NLP and exactly what many folks with Aspergers Syndrome need with respect to interpersonal communication?

It's uncanny. Makes me wonder if perhaps at least one of the founders were aspergers.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 3 replies

All Things Considered story on asperger's

wil — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 15:22:45 GMT

I heard on Morning addition that there's going to be a piece on autism this evening ( june 26) on All things Considered. What i heard indicated it would largely be about asperger's.

You might want to listen for it. If it's any good, and they archive it, i'll post a link.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

AS & competative sports

fj — Tue, 16 May 2006 20:58:13 GMT

I realize LaRoche's situation may have elements that diverge from what we experience here in this tribe, but the issues his differences seem to help create, in a team environment, raise the same kinds of concerns ours tend to do.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-braves-larochesdilemma&prov=ap&type=lgns

Could an Aspie sports team actually be competative vs. an NT team, with no CAMS whatsoever? I think it's only a matter of time before we see a similar article involving someone with AS.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 2 replies

Interesting mathematical theory of nervous system and behavior

Tue, 09 May 2006 04:37:00 GMT

http://www.stevenharris.com
Essays about his theory, including how he links it to autism. He's Aspie.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 1 reply

Awsome article, neuroactivism

moonmom — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 19:11:42 GMT

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1639392,00.html

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 4 replies

Weird Girls: Women & The Autistic Spectrum

moonmom — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 00:46:03 GMT

So we all know what the DSM says about Asperger Syndrome and how it effects mostly boys. But Tony Attwood proposes that girls are less often diagnosed due to natural gender differences and cultural expectations.

http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/barclay/64/id26.htm

So, what in your experience and opinion is different about AS girls compared with boys.

Of course there are basic similarities but manifestations of the DSM criteria seem to vary for women and girls.

What have you noticed?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 2 replies

The Autistic Adult Picture Project

moonmom — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:29:48 GMT

Check this out, maybe join
we are strong, capable and....viseable!
http://www.isn.net/~jypsy/AuSpin/a2p2.htm

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 3 replies

Alternative Interprations of Thoughts & Feelings of Others

nordmann80 — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 03:41:59 GMT

I've noticed over the years, that as someone with AS I don't always hear that little voice that pulls you to the side and asks you if what you're about to say or do is appropriate or how the person will react. If I do, it's because I have to force myself to manually put myself in anothers perspective. I will not usually do it automatically. It's something people without AS don't realize how easy they have it, i.e., a reflex, conscience et cetera that steps in before they say or do something they shouldn't.

Since I cannot read complex facial and body language I've noticed that my mind has developed a sensitivity to the emotional inflexions in peoples voices, so I get a "vibe" more or less, that gives me an impression of how they are thinking and feeling. I can tell if they are happy, sad, condescending, angry, or selfish to a point. And by this I can sort of know how to react and if I should or should not socialize with that person in that moment. It's not an exact science or the best substitute for reading body language, but it suffices at times. I guess what i've described is a lot like what psychics call "Empathic" more or less.

I'm wondering if others with AS have had simular mental developements and experiences socially?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 10 replies

Not a tribe blog: Tantra, Intimacy and Asperger's Syndrome

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 18:46:01 GMT

Hi all,
I've been inspired by various things and people (including Moonmom) to create a blog on a topic of great interest to me, and hopefully to others. I really invite comments. Please go to http://waihili.livejournal.com and check out the first few posts. All comments appreciated!
Thanks!

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 2 replies

What happened to me

Patrick — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:29:05 GMT

My childhood, upon mature consideration, can best be described as catastrophic. I won't go into the details, and I have heard of children less fortunate than myself, but catastrophic is an apt word taken all in all. The aspect which most stands out for me today is the way my experience was shaped by my borderline autistic condition, Aspergers Syndrome. I will refer to Aspergers as AS for the sake of brevity. For my purposes AS is best described by the phrase "standing behind the door when the instructions were passed out". After some thirty years have gone by and I have developed some mental and emotional "tools" to compensate for my condition I can specify a little better what the differences, the symptoms are that created this condition, but for a child of ages five through thirteen I was quite unclear on what was different about me. The effect was that everyone was behaving in a manner similar to each other, as though responding to cues that I was not receiving. Today I know that this is a form of brain damage, neural scarring that has eliminated certain parts of my perception enjoyed by most people. Those parts of my perception that are missing have to do with understanding social cues; the problem is thus reduced to its elemental form.
Emotionally for the person with AS, there is a problem with many ramifications that are mystifying and in no way elemental. Even today I don't have any first hand experience of the way that neurologically typical people apprehend human behavior. This gap in my understanding of fundamental basics of human interaction is on some level very disconcerting, even frightening even after all these years. As a child it was catastrophic. In the same way that I had no idea what signals I was not receiving the children around me had no of knowing either that I was not receiving them. Even with neuro typical brains, they were struggling to learn how to interact in the manner of the human animal. It is human nature to become irritated with people who are not "with the program" and they had to assume that my social incompetence was willful. I was a gentle and sensitive boy who wanted to do the right thing, but I was badly hampered by the relative poverty and chaos of my family of origin. For many years I ascribed my failure to properly integrate socially to my family situation, and certainly the violence and neglect constituted poor parenting when I might have benefited from good parenting.
the irritation of the other children resulted in me being ostracized into a group of one for many years, which mad it much more difficult for me to observe how neuro typical people interacted. Later on in my early teens when I changed schools I was, after a period of intensive observation, able to learn to imitate this phase of human behavior until it became second nature, although I continue to learn more every day. In my group of one I was completely in the dark about why my interactions with people were so different from the people I saw around me, who were having satisfying social experiences. It was clear the problem was me on some level, but I was also aware that they seemed to be capable of a kind of cruelty that was foreign to me. I know now that this is because it is part of the nervous system that I lack, a social response that causes the neuro typical to ostracize those who are different. This reaction is good for human society because it helps to insure that people all act the same. Lacking that human trait and being the victim of it made my fellow children seem monstrous to me, so that I did not want to fit in with them, to play their reindeer games.
At my school there were bullies, as there are among all children. These bullies saw me as fair game and due to the peculiar nature of the neuro typical I was. There were perhaps six boys who were able to strike me at any time without fear of reprisal of any kind, from me, from my parents, from school authorities or from any legal consequence. I did not respond because I was not trained in violence in my family as these boys were, because I was a gentle person, and because the entire society was united against me. The fact that these boys were not constrained in any way, made no effort whatever to be secretive made it clear that their behavior was condoned at every level. This was far more disconcerting than the impact, the sense that every single person knew it was alright to assault me at any time without any fear of intervention. No school authority at any time in nine and a half years ever made any attempt to defend me, and the reason is I didn't know the proper social skills because I have AS.
In spite of my emotional pain and fear I was able to cope, although I self medicated daily from the age of twelve which went a long way towards allowing me to gain some equilibrium. I armored myself emotionally as well as I could to protect my inner vulnerability. It was very clear I was different, and so I embraced that difference and decide I was different in ways that made me "better" than the people around me. Predictable efforts, but effective. Over time I began to see that the neuro typical act in very predictable ways - that is the essence of being non AS is that your social behavior is predictable. It was precisely my unpredictability that made me ostracized. I made a nerds game of learning to emulate them, and because it was all an act and I am a clever fellow, I was able to turn the game on its head by winning, by learning to be extremely charming under controlled conditions with certain people for periods of time.
This emulation has in some sense made all of life a lie for me, but with my early experiences I don't think I would trade it to be neuro typical if I could. The human animal social behavior does not that bear close examination unless you have a strong stomach, and I have examined it as closely as anyone. In some way it has made me cynical and then taken me beyond cynicism into the philosophical realms of free will and determinism. And it's true that I have no idea what I am missing, that the pure pleasure of fitting in and knowing whatever those people know would amaze me if I could know it. But I just could not stand to be one of them, to behave like a robot the way they do, so easy to predict, with no of knowing they are somehow stuck. From some other vantage of greater neuro dysfunction I no doubt appear the same as they do to me, but even knowing that there is something so chilling in human animal social behavior that I am happy for however much room I have to play with it, even if it diminishes my overall happiness. Sometimes though it is as if I can feel in my brain the scar where the human information would have been and I know this is no blessing.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 10 replies

A book about how girls bully other girls

Sat, 01 Apr 2006 20:17:48 GMT

Hi all,
"Queen Bees and Wanna Be's" by Rosalind Wiseman is an excellent book for understanding the ways in which NT "popular girls" bully and manipulate other girls--whether those other girls are NT or AS. I read this book aloud with my daughter when she was entering sixth grade and it really helped her to see the patterns of behavior that had hurt her in the past (as early as preschool) and to devise coping strategies in advance for middle and high school when confronted with archetypal "Queen Bees" and their followers: the Banker, the Sidekick, the Wanna Be, etc.

I don't think my daughter is AS--but shy, bright, focused kids who are not engaged in mainstream struggles for popularity are singled out, bullied and ostracized just like AS kids. Jana is right--kids ARE cruel.

And I want to say that "Queen Bee" dynamics certainly can operate among women in the adult world as well. A couple years ago I was singled out by a woman in a Hawaiian dance class who even went so far as to assault me with a toxic chemical (she knew I was chemcially sensitive) right before a performance. I was sick for weeks as a result. Eventually I had to leave this class as the teacher would not help me. She was one big "queen bee" and I was on her radar. She has since also forced other women to leave this class as well.

Anyway, this is a helpful book if you or someone in your family is being bullied by someone who is oh so popular, and her gang...
Amy

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 0 replies

did not fit in at a autism support group i went to

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 00:20:59 GMT

hey all. so, about 2 years ago, in a geometrically progressive way, i became aware of asperger's syndrome as a variation on the autistic spectrum, and it clicked, bookwise, 100%. i did a ton of research about it, lots of reading, talking online, and my next step, completed this weekend, was going to my first autism/AS support group. i was so looking forward to it.

i did not fit in at all. the majority of the people at the group were... on the lower-functioning end of the autistic spectrum. me even bringing this up, i am going to sound so elitist. i don't think that anyone is better than anyone else. what i am trying to address here is an issue of commonality. i found i didn't have anything in common with the majority of the people at the meeting. the entire meet was staccato, barely anyone there, hardly any conversation skills, nobody connecting, awkward and interminable, and one guy, to be honest, freaked me out, and i'm not easily freaked out.

i came away from there desperately wanting to be around neurotypicals, wanting so much to just be able to have a 'normal' conversation, where there's a relatively, comparably easy give and take, interaction. where it's faster-paced. so i went to a bar i go to sometimes, and sat there, by myself, as usual, not fitting in. because i never do. just cuz i'm used to the neurotypicals, it doesn't meet i fit in their world.

felt very much in a quandary, still do.

has anyone else in this tribe experienced this? did i just go to the wrong meeting, or is there a possibility i really do not have asperger's syndrome? has anyone here doubted their own diagnosis?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 3 replies

What is your best learning situation?

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:04:38 GMT

Hi all,
Are there general ways of conveying information, or gathering info, and different types of learning environments that are more favorable or preferable to those who are in the AS constellation? What do you like? What do you dislike?

And in particular, in dealing with relationship/emotional/sexual information and issues, what would be the best types of "learning?" How, for example, does one help prepare an AS teen to navigate these strange waters?
Thanks!
Amy

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 8 replies

when neurotypical mentoring goes wrong

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 20:17:29 GMT

there's someone that i've known for years: i met her thru a group of people at a bar everyone i knew at the time used to hang out at. helped her move, she helped me move, she'd come over and talk to me when she saw me sitting by myself (as always), and when i moved to the east coast for 2 years, she kept in touch with me via email.

having moved back to sf, she, during the course of our conversations the previous year, became privy to the realization that i am of the aspergerish ilk. which is why she always saw me sitting by myself; now she understood. having found this out, we started talking, and realizing that i am utterly confused by the most basic of social interactions, she took it upon herself to be a sort of guide. what to do when someone calls me, whether i should call them back or not. how to respond when somebody asks me the dreaded, "how are you?" question. remember to always smile, look in the eyes, say hello. etc. i honestly am confused by the stupidest things, and whenever we'd be hanging out, and some social interaction i was clueless about presented itself, i'd take her aside, ask her, "how would a normal person respond to this?"

objectively, you'd think, wow, incredible somebody would volunteer their understanding, and what an awesome person she is for doing this, to offer to help me out. the bizarre thing i am finding, however, is that i am annoyed by it. reason being, i am crucially, every moment of my life, aware how different i am, and the closest i can come to any sort of salvation is to just plant myself in the midst of a social environment and keep to myself, to be left alone, not singled out. i find a sort of peace in that. it's very lonely, and not too happy, but at least it's peaceful.

so, with this person "helping" me, i find that i am having it constantly being brought to my attention how dysfunctional i am, and i am starting to resent this person because of this. but, if i push this aspect of her away, it might negate her involvement in my life, and i truly would be alone. and so i wonder, would it be better to be misfit, awkward alone, or is it better to be singled out and have my deficiencies paraded as an intriguing subject?

ever encountered this in your own life?

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 13 replies

Understanding Neurotypicality

nordmann80 — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 23:25:12 GMT

I noticed Neon and several others refered to people without AS as "Neurotypicals." Well I looked up the term and found this interesting article. Maybe some people are confused about the term; because according to this article, Neurotypicals are abnormal?

Understanding Neurotypicality

Neurotypicality is a pervasive developmental condition, probably present since birth, in which the affected person sees the world in a very strange manner. It is a puzzle; a enigma that traps those so affected in a lifelong struggle for social status and recognition. Neurotypical individuals almost invariably show a triad of impairments, consisting of inability to think independently of the social group, marked impairment in the ability to think logically or critically, and inability to form special interests (other than in social activity). It is my hope that this article will help us understand the very different world of the neurotypical.

Neurotypical individuals show difficulty in forming an individual identity, or in thinking outside of the bounds of the accepted norms of their social groups. It appears that each group a neurotypical belongs to will have its own set of "official" opinions, and each neurotypical within that group is expected to adopt those beliefs. As strange as it sounds, they generally do so very readily, and are not hesitant at all to help enforce those beliefs and ensure group homogeneity of opinion. There appears to be an innate drive for the neurotypical to fit in with groups in that manner, and their own innate opinions and desires are modified automatically to fit the group ideal. This bizarre lack of independence explains the tendency for neurotypicals to engage in fads of various sorts, or for the existence of certain trends. Neurotypicals will change the way they talk or dress according to these trends, and other neurotypicals will admire and imitate such "trendy" behavior. As such, neurotypicals are easy prey for TV commercials or other means of advertising that seek to portray the purchase or use of various products as socially desirable or "cool."

The need for neurotypical individuals to "jump on" the latest trend is a function of their excessive level of concern of how they are perceived by others. Neurotypicals form their self-image based at least as much on the opinions of their peers as they do on their own opinions. They do not perceive themselves as individuals in the manner that you or I do; they see themselves as individual members of a group, but in practice, the opinions of others weigh heavily upon them, and there is a great drive to obtain the acceptance and admiration of others around them, including complete strangers. There is a built-in tendency for neurotypicals to blend in, to become "one of the herd," so to speak. Most of them never realize how much their opinions are dictated by the group. They want the things that the group deems desirable, and they internalize that desire so fully that it feels to them as if it was an internally-motivated desire.

The overdeveloped social centers of the neurotypical brain are also responsible for their odd, inefficient communication style. We've all seen the strange tendency neurotypicals have to hide their true communicative intent beneath layers of often contradictory statements. They tend to state things implicitly rather than explicitly, and with a level of vagarity that often results in miscommunication. This appears to be an outgrowth of the neurotypical person's desire to maintain popularity and social status; they seem to believe that by stating potentially annoying or offensive things indirectly, their popularity will be better maintained. This obsessive concern with social standing makes communication with neurotypicals rather difficult at times. They are incapable of expressing things directly, in a manner that can be easily and unambiguously interpreted by anyone that knows the language. They are also limited in their capacity to interpret statements directly without trying to find hidden meanings in them; they often misunderstand the most basic statements in this way.

People with neurotypicality tend to communicate in a very vague manner. They make guesses as to the level of knowledge of the listener, and omit parts that the listener is presumed to know. It is rather obvious that this guessing will often be wrong. Unfortunately, the listener that does not understand will generally not ask for clarification of such ambiguities, for fear of the speaker thinking that he is stupid or ignorant. As is usually the case with neurotypicals, image and status is more important than effective communication and the truth in general. Communication between neurotypicals is very limited in this way, and the fear of being seen as stupid prevents either party from verifying the content of the conversation. As such, most miscommunication goes undetected by at least one, if not all, neurotypicals that had engaged in such a conversation.

The neurotypical individual typically has a very limited capacity for logic or rational thought. The most recent research on the topic suggests that neurotypical people are not able to separate their emotions from their logic, and they often confuse the two. This is an obvious explanation for the sometimes appalling illogicality evidenced in neurotypical behavior. Neurotypicals typically exhibit very limited critical thought, and they are easily led to believe some rather illogical things. Sadly, most societal positions that require logic and rational thought are occupied by neurotypicals, which is a function of their sheer numbers more than any fitness for the job. Such jobs include important functions like jurors, legislators, judges, voters, doctors, and many others. If their herd mentality did not result in excessive rates of reproduction, their numbers would be smaller, and they would be of more use in job titles like salesperson, receptionist, cashier, and others where rational thought is less emphasized than social interaction.

Neurotypicals have a very limited ability to concentrate on one topic for great lengths of time, or repeatedly. The apparent absence of special interests in neurotypicals is notable. Their concentrations on normal areas of interest like computers, machines, scientific interests, history, or other academic subjects, are limited, and are short in duration as well as relatively infrequent. It appears that nearly all neurotypicals share one singular special interest, and that is socializing. This is the only activity that the person with neurotypicality can engage in for more than short periods of time. The stereotyped neurotypical mannerism of "chatting," or communicating verbally with others even where no relevant or useful information is exchanged, is notable, and can be observed very often in neurotypicals that are engaging in perseverative social behavior. Why the neurotypical mind is limited in its flexibility insofar as selection of a special interest is not known at this time. This social interest is not terribly useful as far as society in general is concerned, and the neurotypical is unlikely to be capable of significant innovation, or of fostering societal advancement.

Without significant intervention, neurotypicals will continue to be dependent on us for generations to come. Unfortunately, the neurotypical herd mentality results in an excessive rate of birth of offspring that are genetically predisposed to be neurotypical, and as such the incidence of neurotypicality remains frighteningly high. Fortunately, the percentage of neurotypical births has been in decline recently, although it is still far too high for comfort. As long as the numbers of neurotypicals are so high, it is unlikely that they will allow us to institute any remediative efforts to help them overcome their disability. We may think it is so sad to see neurotypical children being trained to maintain a group mentality and to forsake true individualism, but at this point it is unlikely that the neurotypical parents of these children will be able to overcome their aforementioned logic impairments to realize how important intervention is if their children are to live to their fullest potential. It is up to us to educate them, and to get them to see that every child is entitled to greatness, even if he was diagnosed with neurotypicality. There can be hope for a better future if we can reach these children in time.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 9 replies

AS and NLD

fj — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 06:47:53 GMT

I've always been suspicious that NLD may end up getting "folded into" the Autistic Spectrum some day. I'm curious to know if any of you have run into NLD diagnoses or have strong opinions on this. I've always seen AS in my kid, and went to a neuropsych who seemed to leap upon an NLD DX and got extremely snitty and defensive when I (gently at first) challenged her assumptions and process just out of pure scientific curiosity. Then today while interviewing a Kaiser Dr on the phone, she echoed my theory without my even suggesting it, that many NLD DX's end up being re-diagnosed later as being on the A-Spectrum. Of course now as I write this, I realize Kaiser could be biased in another way, but I don't think this is the case based on how balanced and open our dialogue was.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 3 replies

Know of a good AS DX resource in San Jose?

fj — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 17:24:22 GMT

Posted an overweight topic on this the otherday and deleted it. Here's a slimmer one:

Off and on I've sought an official DX keep getting stuck with arrogant/irritating/often-incompetant neuropsychs, so thought I'd cast a wider net in the hopes that someone might have had direct experience and can make a recommendation. The Kaiser Center mentioned in the other thread here sounds great, but they seem to operate by referral only.

I have insurance, but I'm expecting to have to just create some debt and go out of my own pocket on this one, as I don't have time to fight the insurance co's, and I'm facing some specific situations that warrant getting this done very soon.

Anyone ever work with an expert in San Jose, or somewhere in the Bay Area? I just need a basic, reliable diagnosis. I've already completed about one third of the DX testing with someone and can probably transfer her data to someone else depending.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 2 replies

book by a teen aspie

janathemama — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 23:54:33 GMT

"Freaks, Geeks and Aspergers Syndrome", written by an Aspie Teen 13 year old Luke Jackson, Jessica Kingsley Publ.

does anyone else know it?

its fun and alive, really helpful., not just for teens

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 1 reply

AS & Gender

nordmann80 — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 16:50:28 GMT

Hi I'm new to the tribe. Wow I didn't realise there were so many women with AS? Statistically I was always told it was more common with men.

Some geneticists think since the father's genes are usually dominant, so when you pair up a shy, but intelligent man with an emotionally insecure woman (such was my parents), you have a higher probability of having a child with AS.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 11 replies

wondering how long THIS job is going to last

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 03:40:36 GMT

going downhill, this job is (word processing). i saw it coming.

one secretary… she's a bit... i don't really know how to explain it. i try to just avoid coming into contact with her. perhaps this incident will explain, it happened yesterday:

bertha walked up to the incoming job area, which is where a little counter, chair, incoming jobs box, etc. there is a trash can beneath it. she walked up, jumped back violently, theatrically, kicked at the trash can, and said quite loudly, “disGUSTING. i cannot STAND this.” and with overacted distaste, she kicked the trash can over against the wall of my cubicle. at the time, i just inwardly shrugged, went back to my computer screen.

today, the only other word processor leaves for lunch. bertha comes up, stands at the little incoming desk. i don’t pay attention, she’s there a while, she’s probably writing out a job ticket. then i see her stand up, look at me. i look at her. she holds out something in her hand and says,

“if i need this….” and leaves it hanging.

i just look at her. she’s looking at me, like she’s waiting for something. i say, “what’s your question?”

she says, “if i need this cd….” and again, leaves it hanging, just stares at me.

i’m really not understanding. i just look at her, still, and then say, again,”what is your question?”

she drops her hands and says, pointing dramatically to a wall far behind her, over by the far-off copy machine, jumps back a bit and says, “it’s like you’re looking right thru me.”

i just look at her. i am clearly looking straight at the woman.

she jumps back a little bit more, dramatically. “it’s like, when someone talks to you, you’re like looking” and she points beyond her, to the copy machine. stares at me, eyebrows knitted in dramatic confusion.

again, i am looking right at the woman. i know, in a peripheral sense, what she is referring to (a girlfriend once made this remark to me.) still, within the context of my abilities to participate in this conversation with her, this is so not making sense.

i say nothing. she has asked no question, and made no statement i can respond to in any productive sense. she is just looking at me. i look back at her, expectantly, waiting. finally, i say, “what do you need?”

she’s giving me an odd look. “if i need these cds burned…”

i wonder how high this woman’s iq is. this can’t be the first time she’s submitted something to wp, she’s worked here for years. i say, “just put them in the incoming tray.”

she looks at the incoming tray. looks back at me. hesitantly raises what she has in her hand, looks at me, steps towards me, raises what’s in her hand at me, stares at me. as if she is utterly befuddled as to what is wrong with me.

then she puts whatever it was into the incoming tray and walks away without another word. i inwardly shake my head, and return, once again, to my computer screen, wondering how long THIS job is going to last.

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 1 reply

'Center for Autistic Spectrum Disorder's' Kaiser - San Jose

JessiTaran — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 03:50:32 GMT

My daughter has just undergone an extremely extensive testing process at Kaiser's new Autistic Spectrum Disorder Center in San Jose. The first day we were there almost six hours, the second day we were there for three. The diagnosis? 'High Functioning Autism'. So....apparently she is NOT bipolar at all, which is what we've been told she was since age 3. However, the treatment for autism is basically exactly same as it would be for BP disorder, so I'm not quite certain how this new diagnosis really affects us that much, except for that the phsychiatrist asssures us that now we're eligible for more government services (that is, IF said services hadn't been cut back to the point of being almost negligible...).

What I really want to know is what is the LONG TERM prognosis for children like my little girl? Is there any hope that one day she can lead any sort of regular life? Will she be able to have freinds? A career? A boyfreind? Does anyone know any high functioning autistic adults? What services are they provided with as they reach adulthood?

Jess

posted in Asperger's Syndrome - 7 replies

Asperger's Syndrome's topics - tribe.net

Creating Jobs for Autistic People

Objectum Sexuality on Good Morning America, April 8, 8 AM PST

Parenting Aspergers resource guide (Online E-book)???

overdiagnosis?

The Tone Of My Voice!

does anyone else...

Bonafide Nonprofit: Asperger's Intimacy Counseling & Education Project

How many in one family!

see this movie!

Aspies and eating (again)

please come help me

Summary Results of Asperger's and Sexuality Survey

Noooooo......dating

I believe I have been taken advantage of...

A Recent Blog -- Feedback Welcome

Communication exercise using AS as a model...

Hi everyone !

hyper-sensitivity to little sounds

Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

Aspies and Food

Interesting article about female Aspies!

Aspies in Books

A few questions

New take on Aspergers

Asperger Syndrome and serious illness?

Aspies or Autistic folks in the movies

aspie telepathic memos to pets

Natural Remedies for Hyperactivity

aspie teen and autonomy

Asexuality?

new tribes

Classes for ASpies

I'm not dead and I haven't been abducted by aliens....

tick tock tao

Using Aspergers to deflect

pack deltas pack psychology school

Anyone suspect...?

Aspie World

How Accommodating Should People Be?

Guessing at what "normal" is

Formal diagnoses

I'll Just Start Here

Child With Aspergers

The online AQ test of Simon Baron-Cohen

sayings

making a difference

Autistic Adult Picture Project

Aspie Career Corner!

other-awareness

New Tribe, Sex, BDSM and Tantra for people with disabilities

New Year's Eve Social Situation Survey

Anyone Else This Unlucky In Love?

Sports

I deleted the survey thread because...

rudy the red-nosed aspie

More links for Asperger's

coaching and diagnoses

What about pretend play?

Is there a relation between Asperger's and schizoid personality disorder?

the social cage and the hundredth aspie principle

John Moorman's Autism/Asperger's Theory

OT: Hardwired Gender Differences

Out Issues

Um...I began a 'Hidden Disabilities' tribe

Crime and punishment

another sex question on staying connected

anyone know of a good Aspie therapist

Anti-discrimination, autism, hate crimes...

ASD & Indigo

Best way to convey love to a partner with Asperger's?

Help

Pros & cons of written communication

Sex and Sensory Overload?

Curious parallels - aspergers vs multiplicity

Sillicon Valley Docs?

Are accomodations a limited resource?

what's the medical difference...

"Asperger Syndrome" tribe...

Diagnosis