aspergers?

[aww-my-bees.livejournal.com]

I (Berni) am having alot of trouble at the moment, so went to see a counsellor at the university I'm studying in. After a long talk, he said that I should make an appointment with the doctor to see if I have Asperger syndrome, something I have suspected I have had for many years now. My dad and two of my siblings have it too.
I was just wondering if anybody else in the community has been diagnosed Asperger? I am curious.
Steve, Jay and Ed do not have it, but I suspect Nikki may have it, and a touch of ADHD.
Berni

Comments

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

I don't, so I can't offer any insight.

Though I do sometimes wonder if there's not currently a tendancy to over-diagnose Asperger's and ADHD and similar things.

People like being able to neatly label and categorize things. (I share this desire myself.) Categorizing certain social difficulties as "Asperger's" is a handy way to tidy them away and stop worrying about them.

[aww-my-bees.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, I am not sure if I should go see the doctor or not, I mean, if I've got it, I'm still the same eh.. people I always have been XD and I have only told two close friends about being multiple, I do not want to tell a doctor about this.

[teh-kerry.livejournal.com]

We haven't got Aspergers, but we spent a long time being checked out for it by the psychiatrist (when we knew we didn't have it, but her dad thought we did *sigh*). The thing about it is that the psychiatrist told us that even if we did have it, there isn't really much they can do it terms of treatment, except encourage you to socialise and so on.

[aww-my-bees.livejournal.com]

Steve: I don't like beng encouraged to do anything, especially socialising with people, SICK!

Berni: My biological brother was diagnosed when he was little and put into mainstream schools etc, so I know that they can't do much in terms of treatment.
You see, this year is the first year I have lived away from the parental home, and I am struggling hard with routines, being introverted, coping with living on my own, not sleeping then missing lectures, finances... I have been having bad anxiety attacks as a result of this. This is why the counsellor suggested going to the doctor - as far as the univeristy side of things are concerned for me, I think that if I am diagnosed, I could get some help living on my own with regards to routine/anxiety issues. And I do not want to fail university when I could have gotten help :O

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't have to be forced to be social if you don't want. All the attempts people have made at "socialisation therapy" for us went over pretty horribly, on both our end and others'. At this point, we just figure that we relate with most people better through text, so that's what we do. *shrug* And we've often found that, in-person, we get along much better with the friends we met online first (and are living with one right now).

And, yeah, of course that subjects you to comments in the nature of "don't you feel deprived of a normal social life?", but "don't you feel deprived of...." has been asked about just about every human difference at one point. (Like, for instance, this body's skin is a bit deprived of pigment compared to mine.)

I think that if I am diagnosed, I could get some help living on my own with regards to routine/anxiety issues. And I do not want to fail university when I could have gotten help

That was the main reason we let ourselves be diagnosed. And it has been an enormous help to us, in that we were able to get assistance for our classes and some extra help. I would say to go for it, if academic issues are your main concern.

-M

[nat-leia.livejournal.com]

There are certain reasons to think I have it, yet I was diagnosed "only" as ADD/ADHD.

Did you, by chance, try to look around some communities/possibly support groups, for AS?

I hope not to sound as an over-teaching brat. :)

-Nat

[aww-my-bees.livejournal.com]

You don't sound like that at all :) Yeah, I've looked at a few forums and communities, they have helped me too.
I was just curious to see if any other multiples had been diagnosed with it. I was wondering if maybe having Asperger's was why I 'split' in the first place, as a way of coping - my headmates, especially Ed are good at helping me with routine, I just need some extra support, from the outside :)

[nat-leia.livejournal.com]

My experience with that has been that mostly I just raid my own line of thoughts and thinking about the world, their issues like anxiety etc. just made my problems worse... It were mostly advices coming from outsiders that seemed of any help.

We've improved our communication a lot so now I can get helped by headmates a little more if I choose to be front, but I quite prefer to be 'back' or 'middle' and let the more socially skilled people take care of the other things. :)

(Selfish as hell, said Shinji with a smile.)

Do you *think/feel* you split as coping mechanism? AND most of all, does it work for you? Sometimes splitting as coping can be fine, if it works in the first place. Cheers to you with that.

-Nat

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Donna Williams thinks she became multiple because she was autistic. I take her word for it, although there's a lot of stuff that Donna Williams says that I don't agree with. (Particularly in her third book, "Like Color to the Blind," which is all about-- I'm not making this up-- how she killed the others in her system so she could "be the real me.")

I wouldn't find that as worrisome if people didn't act like Donna Williams was the only autistic person who'd ever written a book, and, as such, can somehow be assumed to speak for all of us. (Although that seems to have happened to every autistic author, not just her.)

The main reason why I don't think it has any relation to why we're multiple, for our particular case, is that it doesn't really help us to appear 'more normal' (which Donna Williams said her other people were created to do). I think we looked less so, if anything; we got in a lot of trouble at a couple points for "lying" and "saying you're someone you're not."

[tej-agni.livejournal.com]

We have no experience with this, but I do hope they find something that is true for you.

Amalah

[stealthdragon.livejournal.com]

For us, the Aspergers + ADD is a body charactaristic. Everyone who lives in this brain is shaped by it, but in different ways.

Some Australian researchers have speculated that there's a connection between the autism spectrum and multiplicity, but to the best of my knowledge, no research has been forthcoming. There are several entries in the memories (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=multiplicity&keyword=autism&filter=all) about the possible overlap.

You might consider checking out asperger, for the general "Do I have AS" stuff.

Cheers,
- Kat

[tej-agni.livejournal.com]

there's a connection between the autism spectrum and multiplicity

We wouldn't fit in this category.

[stealthdragon.livejournal.com]

In order to fit people into tidy little boxes, we'd need about seven billion of them, now. And they'd always need to be changing. :)

Given how little we know about how the brain works, I think that it's one of many possibilities. But, as I said, there's no data in either direction.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

I am not a multiple, but I have Asperger Syndrome.

[weirdiguess.livejournal.com]

The girls have an Asperger's diagnosis.

[memorysdaughter.livejournal.com]

I have Asperger's Syndrome, plus about a million other things.

In which I borrow your post to get kind of soapboxy.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

We don't mention this on the community very much these days, but... we self-identify as autistic. We have a collective-body dx of Asperger. We're slightly more skeptical than most about the idea that there are only three ways to experience autism which can be neatly divided into three categories, partly because of personal experiences with our skills and traits fluctuating all over the place.

We do worry about talking about it much, not because we care much about people going "omg everyone says they have Asperger's Syndrome nowadays u fake," because most people tend to perceive us as quiet and withdrawn or odd rather than deliberately obnoxious after the fashion of the stereotypical "I have Asperger's so I can't help it" claimant. (Although, yes, people have come up with some very embarassing excuse-making in the name of autism, but they certainly do the same with multiplicity.) We definitely don't look "socially normal." Anyone who watched us do certain things for a long period of time would agree that we didn't approach them in a "standard" fashion. If there's a need for doctors to put a label on that in order for it to be "acceptable" to other people, I can accept that as a "necessary evil."

The main reason we worry about talking about it, though, is because we worry that people will tell us that it somehow invalidates us from talking about multiplicity-- that if we're "atypical," somehow nothing we say about our own system and how it works could possibly apply to other multiples in any way (even though I think this is far from the case), or that we've distorted and misrepresented our own life by not mentioning the autism bit very often.

Not that we ever claimed to be normal, to be an average or typical multiple, that we believe any such thing can be said to exist at all, or that we're presenting ourselves as a model of anything for anyone, but people will sometimes write a lot of odd assumptions into what isn't said, in our experience. Sometimes *anyone* who speaks a lot about a certain thing will be accused of trying to make their experience the standard or saying there's only one right way to do it. No, we know we're not the only multiple system out there with a webpage about it, really.

But it's no different than... being multiple and also being physically disabled, or being multiple and something else that most people would consider a mental disorder (whether you consider it one or not), or being multiple and gay. Or what have you. One experience doesn't negate or cancel out the validity of the other.

-Misu

Re: In which I borrow your post to get kind of soapboxy.

[miut.livejournal.com]

I've seen the "you can't represent [group] because you also experience [something else] and so are impure" stuff in various places, too. Quite recently, I was told that I shouldn't talk about being autistic too much because people might think I was representative of all autistic people - never mind that I haven't ever claimed to be representative of all anything.

A lot of people seem to have a particularly odd idea regarding "differences from the norm", too... that you're restricted to one (i.e. being autistic or being gay or being plural or being physicall disabled, etc.), and anything more than that is suspect. And that if you do experience more than one kind of "difference", you should pick one alone and only talk about that. I occasionally worry about discussing various aspects of my life because of that.

Re: In which I borrow your post to get kind of soapboxy.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Quite recently, I was told that I shouldn't talk about being autistic too much because people might think I was representative of all autistic people - never mind that I haven't ever claimed to be representative of all anything.

Yeah, just for having our webpage up, we've gotten some slightly nasty commentary thrown our way about setting ourselves up as the ultimate experts on everything plurality-related. I think the "you think you're the experts on everything" might result from mistaking formal style for snobbery-- we're supposed to put people at ease by "talking casually," apparently. Some of us can do that, but some of us can't, or can't do it all the time, and in any case, we thought it would be inappropriate to an informational page.

I think the... running into people who tell you to stop talking about your experience as part of X group because people will think you're representative of everyone in X group is hard to avoid, but incredibly frustrating nonetheless.

And that if you do experience more than one kind of "difference", you should pick one alone and only talk about that. I occasionally worry about discussing various aspects of my life because of that.

Yes-- that's the most concise description we've seen of it so far, I think. I was trying to get at something close to it in my post, but ended up rambling. But yeah, you have to have (or only talk in public about having) that one difference you pick, and that one only. Admitting to anything else makes your own descriptions of your experiences somehow less reliable or valid, because the "typical" member of that group (and again, I'm not sure I even believe there is such a thing) is supposed to have only that difference, and be "normal in every other way." If you're not, it's like you said, you're seen as "impure" or even "contaminated" by belonging to other groups. There are several groups we're afraid to be very vocal in, for fear of being accused of "not really belonging here" and similar. (And then you end up feeling like a game of hot-potato or something-- being thrown around from one group to another because nobody wants to be caught with you.)

...I think maybe it's related to the "we're just like you except for this one difference" attitude that has frustrated us in a lot of activism communities. (And when they talk about "needing representatives" of a certain type, it always seems to be either June Cleaver-types or people who fit the "supercrip" stereotype or its equivalents.)

-Misu

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Informally diagnosed autistic by a specialist in '84. *points to what sethrenn is saying*

Note that Asperger autism is a specific range of behaviors; it doesn't just mean "an autistic person who talks" -- check out Paul Collins' book Not Even Wrong, a real eye-opener. And page-turner :)

[phen0type.livejournal.com]

I should have replied to this earlier, but we are formally diagnosed with AS, although we do not all manifest the traits in the same way, and there are many of us who can socialize fairly normally. As we're separate people, it shows up differently in our individual behaviour.

Richard of Fen Group