Does Lori have Asperger's?

[Elok]

There are a couple of things she points to: my tendency to believe that the point of a conversation is to exchange information and figure out what's true rather than to socialize,

Sounds aspie. Albeit my favorite mode of conversation is dicking around with goofy jokes and wordplay with no particular end in mind.

poor time management and organizational skills that can make me extremely frustrated,

Hadn't heard of these as aspie traits.

not being good at describing my own emotions,

Nor this--that just sounds like "having a Y chromosome," the extreme-male-brain theory notwithstanding.

lack of empathy,

Lack of empathy, or failure to provide an expected sympathetic response?

and an intense need to research the heck out of whatever I'm interested in at the moment.

Could be an aspie. Could just be highly intelligent and interested in giving your brain something to chew on.

[Lorizael]

Given that I'm not my therapist, I don't think I self-diagnosed. There are other things she mentioned, too, but I was going with the ones that weren't solely attributable to social anxiety.

x-post

[Lorizael]

Hadn't heard of these as aspie traits.

This is something that doesn't appear to be on any official diagnosis, but which a lot of clinicians are noticing now. They're thinking that Asperger's is at least in part a problem with the brain's capacity for "executive function," and this includes things like organization and prioritizing.

Lack of empathy, or failure to provide an expected sympathetic response?

I do both. I have to remind myself to react to people a lot of the time.

[Lorizael]

Arse Burger's no longer exists as a disorder according to the DSM, so its clear you don't have it.

That's option six. Vote.

[Hauldren Collider]

What exactly are you expecting to accomplish by asking Poly to do an internet diagnosis of a complicated psychological condition?

[Aeson]

Arse Burger's no longer exists as a disorder according to the DSM, so its clear you don't have it.

He may be stuck in an alternate reality where it's always the '90s ... and thus would definitely have Asperger's like everyone else.

[loinburger]

I'm not sure if there's any benefit to seeking a diagnosis for Asperger's (or an affirmation that you don't have Asperger's). If you have a trait that you want to change, then go ahead and get therapy for it; but it's not like your shrink is going to say "if you don't pick up on social cues and you don't have Asperger's then you should do X, and if you don't pick up on social cues and you do have Asperger's then you should do Y." The only possible benefit is so that you can say e.g. "Hey, you know how I forgot your birthday? It wasn't my fault, it's because I have Asperger's," and odds are that won't have the intended effect (unless the intended effect is to further annoy the person whose birthday you forgot).

At the same time, there's not much harm in seeking a diagnosis (unless you use the diagnosis to annoy people whose birthday you forgot), but if you're paying your therapist X dollars per hour then you might as well spend the time doing something useful like learning how to remember people's birthdays.

[SlowwHand]

Asperger's is a part of the Autism spectrum. You don't "just change it".

Your therapist is probably correct. HIGH FUNCTIONING, which you're not paying enough attention to in your obsessing. Beyond the wide scope of Autism, there is also one for Asperger's. My grandson is on the Austism spectrum and many examinations have been conducted on him. He'll be 5 in June.

[Alexander's Horse]

Everything seems to be a syndrome these days. Help kids sure, but I'm not going to see a therapist to pay a lot of money and be told I have to come back next week and pay more money.

[Lorizael]

What exactly are you expecting to accomplish by asking Poly to do an internet diagnosis of a complicated psychological condition?

I know I've said this before, but I mostly ask questions of Poly as an exercise for thinking aloud about issues in my life. Writings things out, explaining my point of view--these are tactics that help me solve problems. I'm not actually expecting Poly to definitively answer my questions.

I'm not sure if there's any benefit to seeking a diagnosis for Asperger's (or an affirmation that you don't have Asperger's). If you have a trait that you want to change, then go ahead and get therapy for it; but it's not like your shrink is going to say "if you don't pick up on social cues and you don't have Asperger's then you should do X, and if you don't pick up on social cues and you do have Asperger's then you should do Y." The only possible benefit is so that you can say e.g. "Hey, you know how I forgot your birthday? It wasn't my fault, it's because I have Asperger's," and odds are that won't have the intended effect (unless the intended effect is to further annoy the person whose birthday you forgot).

At the same time, there's not much harm in seeking a diagnosis (unless you use the diagnosis to annoy people whose birthday you forgot), but if you're paying your therapist X dollars per hour then you might as well spend the time doing something useful like learning how to remember people's birthdays.

As far as the point of getting a diagnosis at all, there's the self-blame and guilt issue I'm trying to deal with. This doesn't really have anything to do with giving other people excuses for my behavior. I already do that. When I forget people's birthdays (not actually something I do; I have google for that), I tell them it's because I'm a horrible person. Finding an explanation for my behavior will, theoretically, allow me to stop thinking I'm a horrible useless hopeless person whenever I screw up. Hopefully, I can instead realize that my weaknesses are an expected part of how I developed, but that's all. Seriously, one of my biggest problems is that I believe I am fundamentally unable to change, that I am always stuck in a child-like mentality. But that ignores, you know, human nature. Of course humans change. Of course they grow. People with Asperger's might grow more slowly in some ways, but they're not stuck.

And that kind of leads into the other reason why being able to give a name to all of this might be useful. Another one of my really big issues when it comes to social situations is that I feel distinctly like an alien, like an outsider. Whenever I'm in a group of a lot of people, there's this almost palpable film between me and everyone else that makes it seem as if I am an observer at best in all that's going on. So the consequence is that I think my problems stem from me being not human, different from everyone else. But again, that's not true. At most, I represent a phenotypic variation, but still fundamentally human. There are millions of people out there that feel the same way, and they feel that way because that's just how brains develop sometimes. I'm not actually a poorly designed alien.

Really, a lot of this is a technique for fighting the depression. My depression means I filter out almost all information that contradicts my belief that I'm a failure. If I can find ways to remind myself that this blanket statement is not exactly true, I can fight the depression.

[Lorizael]

Every Asperger's checklist includes a ton of stuff that normal people also do, which is how you end up with so many people self-diagnosing themselves with Asperger's when they're really just nerdy and socially awkward. I'm neither and still exhibit 3 out of the 5 behaviors you listed.

Also, it's really great that you have 3/5 of those behaviors, but do any one them impair you to the point that you can't function? Because all 5 of them do for me. Thinking that assessing who is right and who is wrong in a conversation might just seem quirky, but what it really means is that I am essentially lost during most conversations. One person asks a question, and then the next person says something vaguely related to that question, and then the conversation just keeps going on from there. But no one answered the goddamn question! So I'm just sitting there trying to figure out when I can inject myself into the conversation to give the correct answer, and everyone else has completely moved on. So I just sit and stare at people instead, because I have no idea how they make the conversational leaps they do.

Poor executive function accounts for almost every single one of my failed life choices. It's why (until recently) I couldn't hold a job for more than a year, and why I always dropped out of school after a semester. When my plate gets full, rather than break it apart and do bite-size chunks here and there, I become completely overwhelmed by all of the absolutely everything I have to do, have a private freak out, and then give up.

I'm not good at describing my own emotions, which means that I'm really not good at conveying them to other people. The best example of this is that I have never told my parents I love them. Why not? I don't have a ****ing clue. Am I an emotionless monster? I don't think so. When I think about the very real possibility of my father dying of a heart attack, it scares the **** out of me. But for some reason, I am completely unable to express this to either of them.

Lack of empathy, or an inability to give appropriate responses to people, means that most people think I'm a cold, uncaring, arrogant, *******. Which doesn't exactly make me come off very well. Most of the time, I just have no concept of how to give people emotional support. Should I hug them? Offer my condolences? Say I'm sorry? Give them a solution to their problem? I don't ****ing know. And yeah, most of the time I don't have a very intense reaction to other people's emotions. If I do care, it's in a very abstract way.

Needing to research the crap out of stuff also just might seem quirky, but it's not when I do it to the exclusion of all other activities. Many a work day is wasted by me staring at the computer trying to make sure that every detail of whatever creative endeavor I'm currently engaged in is plausible, accurate, and fully fleshed out. Maybe that just makes me a curious guy. Or maybe it means that I lose sight of what's important and don't get done what needs to get done, which eventually endangers my job by letting things pile up until I freak out because it's so unmanageable.

There are also some distinctly Asperger-ish traits I have that are pretty typical but also resemble social anxiety, which is why I didn't mention them earlier. I don't do well with loud, unexpected sounds. And while that can be said of most people, I don't get used to them over time. They make me jump every time. And when loud sounds are coming from people, and I'm packed close together with them, I become physically ill. There comes a point when I absolutely must escape social situations and get fresh air because otherwise, well, I don't honestly know what would happen otherwise. What's more, I can't stand being touched unexpectedly, or pretty much at all. I can steel myself when I need to shake someone's hand, but other than that I avoid physical contact if at all possible. I have never touched a member of my family except when absolutely necessary to appear normal during family gatherings. Being social for too long is physically exhausting and usually gives me a headache.

[DinoDoc]

Lori: You do realize that this is a made up disorder (evidenced by its exclusion from the DSM) glommed onto by every internet looser in an effort to explain why they have poor social skills, right?

[Felch]

You don't have Asperger's. You're an intelligent and well adjusted person who lives in a ****ed up world. There's nothing wrong with retreating into your mind and avoiding connection with the idiots who are only going to drive you crazy.

[Lorizael]

The consensus of the APA is not that Asperger's doesn't exist, but that it's indistinguishable from high-functioning Autism. There's a fair bit of controversy about this, but I don't have the expertise to say who's correct here.

Are there false positives when diagnosing Asperger's? Probably. Could I be one of them? Sure. Am I just an internet "looser" with poor social skills? No. My problems run much deeper than that.

[DaShi]

The consensus of the APA is not that Asperger's doesn't exist, but that it's indistinguishable from high-functioning Autism. There's a fair bit of controversy about this, but I don't have the expertise to say who's correct here.

Don't worry. DD is.

Are there false positives when diagnosing Asperger's? Probably. Could I be one of them? Sure. Am I just an internet "looser" with poor social skills? No. My problems run much deeper than that.

You're problems are all in your head. Stop focusing on your failures. Think about your successes. You're actually doing really well.

You're not DD. You're not Ben. You're not DFG. These thoughts alone allow me wake up with a smile each morning.