Bad Sign Number Six Million And Twenty-One

[bloodyrosemccoy]

When your mom comes into your room and says, “Hi, honey! I found those T-shirt scraps you were looking for. Also, I think you have Asperger’s. Ask your psychiatrist when you see him again.”

What am I supposed to do with that? I told her that Asperger’s is the latest condition you can suddenly get by reading the Wikipedia article about it,* but when your mom decides that you have it, it kinda makes the Forer effect seem a little harder to discount.

If nothing else, it'll make for an entertaining round of Ask The Psychiatrist.


*Although let’s be fair—sometimes reading an article on a condition can be an epiphany. As in, “Holy shit! There’s a name for that characteristic of mine which people have commented on for years!”

Comments

[shadowofdoubt.livejournal.com]

I had someone call about a possible Asperger's diagnosis not twenty minutes ago.

And a couple years ago I had one of those moments of realization when I read about photic sneeze reflex. Although now I can never be a fighter pilot. *sadface*

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

My dad had that epiphany with photic sneeze reflex. As did a friend of mine who sneezes like a semi-automatic. If she breaks her record (I think it stands at 17), we're gonna give her a prize.

I did not know you could not be a fighter pilot because of that reflex ... although now that I think about it, it makes sense. Probably the cockpit of a fighter jet is a bad place to have a sneeze attack.

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

photic sneeze reflex

So THAT'S what it's called! *has epiphany*

[gethenian.livejournal.com]

Parental diagnosis is a more biased source than self-diagnosis.

There are reasons professional doctors are not allowed to be their children's primary physicians.


Unpopular opinion time: Asperger's is such a bullshit syndrome anyway. "You're smart and socially awkward and you act weird. The treatment is... to teach you to behave correctly. In other words... exactly how you teach any child in the world to behave properly, only with you it takes longer." What is the point of even diagnosing this nonsense? All it's saying is "you don't fall within the spectrum of accepted normal behavior and development, but you can still function, you're just annoying to other people." Ooooh, I must have some super special freak disorder, then! e.e

[fenmere.livejournal.com]

I have webcomicauthoritis.

[gethenian.livejournal.com]

I have collectorofweirdlookingrocksitis. D:

[gryphart.livejournal.com]

Word. It's the new ADD - I have no doubt that some people genuinely need medication/therapy/etc, but anecdotal experience says people tend to be overdiagnosed.

(Also, I think non-geek parents are more inclined to find fairly standard geek behavior abnormal, but YMMV.)

[beccastareyes]

I have Asperger's Syndrome. My little brother has high-functioning autism. Mom and my sister often comment how similar my brother and my behaviors are -- I was verbal at a young age and he wasn't, and mine were milder. (For that matter, I also have some other stuff besides being socially awkward and prone to obsessive interest -- there's the fact I am sensitive to noise, or the fact I'm nearly face-blind* and can't pick out conversations from background noise nearly as well as my peers seem to. Whatever pattern recognition circuits in my brain that are set aside for paying people things special interest appears to be less successful in my brain than baseline.)

* Meaning that I have a problem recognizing faces as distinct, to the point of almost missing relatives and friends in crowds because I wasn't expecting them and it took a bit to re-evaluate to make sure it was them.

[lookingforwater.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're able to just walk away from autistic spectrum disorders. It must be nice, being able to pass judgment on a set of experiences you'll never have. I'm happy for you, really.

Me, I don't get to walk away. I guess I just have to try harder. Gosh, why didn't anyone tell me to try harder before? If only I'd known, I too could be an entitled prick!

:D

[fenmere.livejournal.com]

Your point is well taken, by me at least.

But I think Gethenian isn't suggesting that people who are diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders just need to try harder, but that society should have a broader definition of normal.

His blanket statement is a bit off, and off putting, but that doesn't mean that Asperger's isn't overdiagnosed, either.

Whether or not someone is diagnosed with Asperger's, ADHD or what-have-you, our narrow acceptance of proper behavior and level of performance is a detriment. Sometimes we have to put a name to something in order to make it OK to give somebody accommodations, I suppose, but it would be nice if that weren't necessary some times, you know?

[lookingforwater.livejournal.com]

Your point I agree with.

His point is a steaming, ignorant load.

I don't like that I need to have an official name in order to be weird without suffering social and institutional brutalization. It isn't right, and it isn't fair. But ignorant fuckwits don't get to swan in and invalidate my very real and very painful experiences because s/he is omg edgy.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I agree with your point. The old joke about "I'm not the one with the problem; everyone ELSE is" has more than a grain of truth to it. I was surprised to hear that Mom was (and still is) worried about my social development because as far as I'm concerned, I'm doing just fine. But it's not the "fine" most people have, so I guess it doesn't count.

[ishyface.livejournal.com]

Asperger's is such a bullshit syndrome anyway.

Fixed that for you.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Asperger's is real, and a real problem for people who have it. However, it's commonly mixed up with Assburgers Syndrome, which is a condition in which a moron on the Internet claims to have Asperger's as a ready-made excuse for their own obnoxious behavior and general jackassery. Asperger's, like other autism-spectrum disorders, is currently incurable but may be managed with effort. Assburgers, like other fucktard-spectrum disorders, may be curable with the judicious application of cranial trauma (testing is currently underway, with much enthusiasm).

[vogtalicious.livejournal.com]

He-he-he...I just saw someone with a shirt that said 'LOVE ME; LOVE MY ASSBURGERS'.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

FTW

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

My Mom did that. She was leafing through some book and decided that I had it based on the criteria that my childhood idiocy and such matched the symptoms.

She then went on to declare that my dad's genes were crap as both I and my half-brother had problems.

[nobleplatypus]

I just heard Tom Servo say, "Audience, what's your diagnosis?" in my head.

[bean-bunny.livejournal.com]

I swear I read this and said, "Man, what a strange post on Metaquotes. It fits, but I wonder why they put the footnote in? Sounds like something Padparadscha would say, though. Really, it's strange that SHE'S not the author of this meta oh my God what the fuck self."

So, in short, perhaps I'll go diagnose myself with a learning disability.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

In your defense, I metaquote every other thing she posts, so...

[westrider.livejournal.com]

From the anecdotes you've related on here, I would suspect that what you actually have is Shadow Syndrome, the mildest level of the autism Spectrum. You fit the patterns, but seem to be rather higher-functioning than the Asperger's Syndrome folks who I know.

Truth be told, I think Shadow Syndrome and Geekery are pretty much interchangeable terms in a lot of cases ;)

[vogtalicious.livejournal.com]

By 'Shadow', are you hinting at a non-verbal learning disability? Technically, this is the autism/Aspie spectrum, though to what varying degrees people have it is different.

FYI--My youngest brother has been diagnosed with--in the following order--'autism', 'mild autism', 'mild-autism-bordering-on-Asperger's', 'Asperger's' 'Non-verbal', and, the current one; 'We don't think he has a disorder, per se; he's just a very, very bright kid with a lot of odd habits and a big imagination.' These, however, were ph.ds diagnosing him; not his parents.

What would knowing you had Asperger's do for you, anyway? Why now?

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I'm not hinting at anything, that's the standard term for the lowest level of the Autism Spectrum. At that level, it ends up being less a Learning Disorder, and more a Social Interaction Disorder.

The most useful resources I've found are those that compare and contrast behaviour and interaction patterns between Aspies and Neurotypicals. It's cut down vastly on the misunderstandings and miscommunications since I got a bit of an idea of the different ways that we frame and discuss things, and especially in terms of understanding non-literal/figurative speech, which confused the hell out of me for years.

It's also helped guide me towards work that better suits me, has helped me understand why I've liked or disliked various jobs that I've had, and thus I've been doing better at finding jobs that I can actually handle and excel at instead of just wading through piles of frustration.

There should be more, but I just got back from work and I've got a headache and I can't really brain very well right now.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

In early grad school or late college, my mother told me that she'd been given a list of behaviors/tendencies/whatever by her school district because there was an autistic or Asperger's kid coming up, and the teachers were being briefed, ish. She said it read like a checklist of me.

Well, what does one do with that? I remember myself as being weird but normally so, and I've come a long way with fitting in-- I mean, I've been wearing socks regularly for more than a decade now, I tie my shoes, I eat slightly more adventurously.

It's kind of like learning from my most typical college roommate that while I thought I was fitting in perfectly, everyone knew me as the girl with the big glasses, the one who dressed funny. These days, if the subject comes up, I say that I probably could have been diagnosed if they'd checked me at the right time.