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Author Topic: Aspberger's advice?  (Read 3893 times)

Criptfeind

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #15 on: May 10, 2012, 06:56:05 pm »

You're echoing someone who echoed you. So does this lead to a infinite echo?
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Reudh

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #16 on: May 10, 2012, 07:28:52 pm »

so iv been diagnosed with aspergers

its a form of autism that makes me super smart but cripples my social skills

any advice?


(id prefer advice from someone else with this condition but you can do some research if you like :/)


As a fellow member of the Asperger group, I can say that all one really needs to do is continue to behave normally- but me personally, I have benefitted massively from observing social behaviour and applying it through trial and error until I have a subconscious set of filters that before I say something says in my head "Is this likely to offend?" "Is this statement or question applicable to the conversation?" and so on until it satisfies a number of requirements.

Really, Aspergers requires no special treatment besides knowing yourself and your social limitations; and working to bring them down or workaround them.

(It's for that reason that I avoid alcohol and other depressants, as they almost completely (albeit temporarily) remove my ability to socialise.)

bukitodinos

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #17 on: May 10, 2012, 07:39:55 pm »

Actually if you don't mind me asking who diagnosed you? I've always wondered if it's something a general practice doctor does or if you have to visit a specialist?

a psychiatrist is what you need to diagnose you
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Reudh

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #18 on: May 10, 2012, 07:41:13 pm »

Or a psychologist.

bukitodinos

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #19 on: May 10, 2012, 07:42:23 pm »

yep
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Reudh

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #20 on: May 10, 2012, 07:51:44 pm »

Like I said, man... There's not really much to worry about Aspergers. It's a pretty light thing. I get by pretty well.

And while Aspergers does not 'make one super smart', autistic savantism often is comorbid with Aspergers.

Quote from:  Wikipedia (warning, no citations)
According to Treffert:[1]

    One in ten people with autism has savant skills.
    50% of savants have autism; the other 50% often have psychological disorders or mental illnesses.
    Prodigious savants have very significant disorder and disability, see Richard Wawro, Henriett Seth F., Jonathan Lerman.

A 2009 British study of 137 parents with autistic children found that 28% believed their offspring met the criteria for a savant skill, that is, a skill or power "at a level that would be unusual even for normal people".[7]

bukitodinos

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #21 on: May 10, 2012, 08:04:42 pm »


And while Aspergers does not 'make one super smart', autistic savantism often is comorbid with Aspergers.
 offspring met the criteria for a savant skill, that is, a skill or power "at a level that would be unusual even for normal people".[7]

again super smart was a "basic term"
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Reudh

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #22 on: May 10, 2012, 08:06:27 pm »

Ah, fair enough. :D

Aklyon

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #23 on: May 10, 2012, 08:42:19 pm »

You're echoing someone who echoed you. So does this lead to a infinite echo?
In a deep enough cave, probably.
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Tellemurius

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #24 on: May 10, 2012, 08:49:33 pm »

Don't worry about it man its not gonna hurt trust me. This only determines the people you meet, hang, love hate thats all.

Reudh

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #25 on: May 10, 2012, 08:55:11 pm »

Don't worry about it man its not gonna hurt trust me. This only determines the people you meet, hang, love hate thats all.

Tellemurius is definitely right. It's not a bad thing in the slightest. (It sometimes even makes for interesting talking points).

Agdune

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #26 on: May 10, 2012, 09:39:10 pm »

Believe it or not, TV tropes has an excellent article about Aspergers. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/AspergerSyndrome?from=Main.AspergerSyndrome. Not exactly going to win awards, but still a pretty nifty layman's description of how it all works and addresses some common beliefs.

While never having been formally diagnosed with Aspergers, I and pretty much everyone who knows me thinks I have the condition. Pick a trait and I either still exhibit it or did when I was a child, from eye-contact to delayed speech development and speaking with an accent for no reason, obsessive tendencies (re-reading the Red Dwarf Omnibus a dozen times before I was 11), lack of social awareness and my constant "stimming" (god that's an awful term), to just hating the hell out of corduroy and occasionally getting an utterly inexplicable desire to get or possess white soft smooth things and having to cut my grocery shopping short because I can't focus on anything that isn't shaving foam or yoghurt :p

Still, that said, either way I'm now in the least severe range. I used to be quite bad as a child, but put one hell of alot of effort into understanding people and behaviour, so now I can play the social game better than even most neurotypicals. I'm still far from 'normal' but I understand social norms and how other people form their perceptions well enough that I can consciously play the game they're all unconsciously playing and, well... essentially manipulate the hell out of it so I can be myself without people judging me or being dicks to me :p

I mean, Highschool years were singularly the worst years of my life, don't get me wrong. My lack of social awareness there, combined with the inherent asshole-ishness of teenagers made sure that I was close to suicide (or worse) a significant portion of the time. However once I got through it and managed to stop feeling revulsion whenever I remembered those times, I used anything useful I could from it. It was horrible, but it was a wealth of information regarding social interactions.

That time I had a bunch of girls in class start screaming at me that I stare too much? Well, I was staring because I honestly had no idea what I was meant to look at or do with my eyes when I wasn't using them. Lesson: don't stare at bogans, even if they are dressed in bright colours and constantly moving about/screaming at people or things in a way that unconsciously attracts attention. Focus on some inanimate objects or create an activity that *looks* like you're doing something and keeps your eyes in a non-dangerous direction.

I could keep citing examples, but they're probably really only useful to me, in context. There are pretty well thousands, if I took the time to remember them all. Basically, my experience and understanding of Aspergers tell me to look at it this way; our implicit and explicit cognitive processes work subtly differently to neurotypicals. Our neurological makeup is apparently best shown as something like a torus, our associative networks and processes follow a fairly circular path and don't really like to make new connections unless they can latch onto that already existing torus. In practice, this means that in order to learn and understand things in a manner that's compatible with neurotypical's understanding of the world, we *have* to adopt a hierarchical, systematic method of thought and consciously learn and make amendments to that system, using our already existing ideas and concepts as a starting point. We can't rely on implicit schemas (Schema: shorthand for an understanding of how a particular concept works) in the same way neurotypicals do, because our implicit associations just don't work that way. We have to create explicit schemas and KNOW why we think this or that, or why this is appropriate or not, because those ideas aren't things that come naturally to us in a way that we can use in day to day life.

In order to operate in the same manner as a neurotypical, we have to explicitly learn things that they learn implicitly. That takes a hell of alot of time, effort and mistakes. However, if we put in that effort and get a hang of it, we're actually left far better off than them. Yes, it's a hellish and horrible experience to start off with (I still take antidepressants! :D) but creating those systems of concious awareness and understanding of social norms means we can use and analyse them in ways most people wouldn't even think of, because by necessity we learned their internal workings.

Hell, when I was in grade 7 I spent nearly a month trying to figure out what it was that made males or females attractive and what constituted "hot", not able to wrap my head around the idea that it was a subjective concept and that my classmates were just assuming there was an objective answer (they still do, btw), now just 10-ish years later I'm about to finish my psych degree and start a counselling degree. Counselling, the field where understanding social cues, body language, implicit associations and all-round emotional turmoil is of paramount importance, and y'know what? I'm fucking great at it. :D

Of course, at the end, I have to also point out that studying psychology and human interaction isn't completely necessary, I just strongly recommend it. Plenty of people with Aspergers get by without bothering to learn about people and just get into a field of work or life that interests them... which I understand, I couldn't stand other people before I started learning about how they operate. For most of my life other people just represented a lifestyle I couldn't understand, had friendships and romances I could never have and were impenetrable walls of overly emotional, short-sighted, knee-jerky, fuck-witted-ness. It's a stereotype, but has some kernel of truth to it; people with Aspergers do tend to be drawn towards hard sciency type positions or vocations; things with rather strict and clear guidelines on how they work and little need for dealing with other people. That's perfectly valid aswell, if it's what works for you. I've not spent a whole lot of time there but I'm quite sure almost every single chemistry student I've met must have some form of Aspergers :p

Edit: Just gonna yank the word "college" out of that 4th paragraph up there. Highschool was horrible, college was by comparison, awesome. Changing peer groups to friendlier people with more things in common is great for depressed teens. Still made mistakes, but at least I didn't get beaten up or humiliated in front of groups because of them.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2012, 10:15:32 pm by Agdune »
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Reudh

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #27 on: May 10, 2012, 09:58:13 pm »

Agdune, I am extremely similar.

I read the first to fourth Harry Potter books when I got them in 2000, FORTY-EIGHT times each.

I didn't really care about not having friends.

My speech was very delayed, and I tended to thrash and scream and bite as a child, because (according to old ladies) "He knows how to speak, but his body doesn't, and it frustrates him so much." The instant I finally was able to speak "I became a charming little gentleman," according to my parents.

I don't have inexplicable hatreds or obsessions for certain things, though when I was young the word "therefore" would send me into a frothing rage.

Same as you, Agdune, I'm in the 'least severe' range. I also put huge effort into understanding and analysing people. What those without aspergers do instinctively, without a second thought, I had to add that to my constant intellectual analysis of my situation at that time. Like I said, I can now keep up with/or be more sociable than your average guy.

And highschool was horrific. One girl used to hate me for no other reason that my voice, depending on my mood, is either extremely soporific or sharp and alarming. (It's now quite deep, and apparently, quite soothing.)
Basically if you're in highschool, you DO NOT BRING UP YOUR ASPERGERS. It's like painting a target on yourself.

I also had serious, very serious depression for a long time (whether it was comorbid, a result/symptom of, or unrelated to my Aspergers diagnosis I do not know), but the only antidepressants I ever took was chocolate. :P

And hey, the more interesting people I've met in my life have had at least a *touch* of autism or asperger's syndrome.

Kadzar

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #28 on: May 10, 2012, 10:00:34 pm »

so iv been diagnosed with aspergers

its a form of autism that makes me super smart but cripples my social skills

any advice?


(id prefer advice from someone else with this condition but you can do some research if you like :/)


As a fellow member of the Asperger group, I can say that all one really needs to do is continue to behave normally- but me personally, I have benefitted massively from observing social behaviour and applying it through trial and error until I have a subconscious set of filters that before I say something says in my head "Is this likely to offend?" "Is this statement or question applicable to the conversation?" and so on until it satisfies a number of requirements.
I think my problem now has become that my filters are too strong, and I quite often avoid any subject that might possibly offend someone, which has made me a less interesting person, I think.

Don't worry about it man its not gonna hurt trust me. This only determines the people you meet, hang, love hate thats all.

Tellemurius is definitely right. It's not a bad thing in the slightest. (It sometimes even makes for interesting talking points).
How can you stand to tell people you have Asperger's? I have trouble admitting it directly to people on the internet.
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Tellemurius

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Re: Aspberger's advice?
« Reply #29 on: May 10, 2012, 10:02:34 pm »

Because its not a bad thing? Try rolling it around with ADD and ADHD its not horrible man.
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