Autism

[WezV]

yeah, like i tried to highlight earlier... a lot of behaviour associated with mild autism is pretty normal to most of us

the distinction does need making between 'autism' and 'aspergers' as many of us do sit on the cusp of aspergers but i am going to make the assumption none of us would fall into the 'autistic' label.  The term for it is ASD, autistic spectrum disorder, although i do think the word disorder is a bit unfair as it really does just boil down to a different way of looking at the world and in now way a disability.

I got called "shy" by someone the other day, i actually found it a bit offensive as a 31 year old man but i could see where they were coming from.   I would have preferred anti-social as it does fit better and seems less pathetic

i am rather focused, often blunt even and i dont waste words (in the words of my mother).  but 'shy' seems like such a negative label!!  i dont lack confidence in myself.  I may lack confidence in the people around me.  i do avoid eye contact, took me a log time to realise i was doing it till i had been accused of staring at chests once too often and i think i could be accused of being overly focused on a small amount of subjects .

having been someone who identifies these things in secondary school children and has attended many training sessions on the subject i know for a fact i wouldnt get through school now without an ASD label.  but $%&# it, its not a bad thing in any way.  it is not "full blown" autism with all that implies!  it is seeing the world a bit differently, being confused by that on occasion, responding to people a bit differently, being just a bit different (some of the time)!   i was raised to believe that being a bit different is all right, maybe because i was, maybe because my parents used to make some kind of sense.  (i do also have a mild physical  issue called diplegic cerebral palsy which was often blamed for my reluctance to engage in 'normal' behaviour, but i am rather lucky in that it only makes me a bit clumsy and rubbish at sports - so yeah, i did avoid all sporting activity as a child)


I still dont think i am a social person, but i am happily married with a lot of friends so i kind of start to assume my difference is ok with others, or my wife is cool enough that they put up with me ;)

[tomjackson]

I think your day-to-day activities and your job make a big difference as well.  I'm not particularily confident in social situations but my job has forced me to be business like and communicate a lot more.  It's a skill at the end of the day.

What I'm saying is I don't think self confidence is fixed.  The less social activity you have, the harder it will be to face those social occations.  You practice, you get better.
Being very anti social does not make you autistic.

I got 13 so on Andy's scale I'm a sh!t musician. So it's a good job that I think it's got FA to do with musical ability!

[_tom_]

hmm well I didn't take the test but after reading the thread I thought I'd do a bit of reading. Seems like I meet a lot of what comes under the wikipedia heading "repetitive behavior" and also the social problems. Dunno if it's anything worth worrying about as it doesn't seem to be getting any worse and if anything the social things are gradually improving.

[AndyR]

I like this thread. It's certainly made me think a bit about stuff I just regard as part of me and, I have to admit, "normal" :lol:

Hasn't really changed my viewpoint, but I think it's healthy for me to assess the assumptions I'm living by occasionally. And it's good hearing other people's experiences, it helps us all realise that we're not actually "different in being a bit different".

I used to worry about being "normal" when I was younger. I like really like "different", but you kinda don't want to find you don't fit into "normal"... I suspect everyone worries about this to some extent but, as far as I'm aware, I very rarely give it a second thought nowadays. The conscious thoughts of the last week for me have actually been more along the lines of "what effect do I have on the general well-being of the woman I live with" :lol: (anyone seen "As Good As It Gets" with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt? There's a glorious line in there "you make me want to be a better person" - I've been feeling that a bit this week!). There's also been a touch of "if I can type a little bit about what I've felt sometimes, it might help someone else reading it who, like me a few years back, might not realise that most of us are floundering around at least some of the time..."

I was talking to a woman at work about it yesterday. She's the same sort of age as me, and she went "to be honest Andy, most of the men I know are like what you're describing - get home from work or whatever and they don't want to go out and do a bunch of stuff, get stuck in a crowd of people, or anything else out of the normal routine... they just want to put the feet up, do what they always do, and recover... when they were younger, before getting settled maybe, they were just as likely to be the ones going hey let's get out and do such-and such...".

It came about because I was wondering how to get out of going to someone's leaving drinks without looking like a completely anti-social b@stard!


There's something I've thought of while making several of the posts I've added here, I think it's relevant, but I've not managed to fit it in so far. I think I read it somewhere, I don't think I worked it out on my own, but I have successfully applied it to myself and it seems to have helped one or two others I know who've had various issues coping with their lot in life over the years:

"the only thing wrong with you now is that you don't know you're OK..."

Realising and accepting that you're actually OK seems to take a hell of a weight off your shoulders sometimes.

I got 13 so on Andy's scale I'm a sh!t musician. So it's a good job that I think it's got FA to do with musical ability!

Yeah, I sort of regret posting that, it doesn't quite fit in to how I regard this thread now. It still makes me chuckle, though, and for me personally it's what led on to the more thoughtful stuff.


It's weird, isn't it, we're a bunch of gearheads "sharing feelings" on an internet forum... who sez that men can't be sensitive!!

So when's the next meet? I've been to a "social-only" one, and a "beer and gear" one, how-about if we have "chairs in a circle" support-group meet, and we take it in turns to "share our feelings"? For example, "Hi, my name's Dave, you all know me as Afghan, and I only managed to score 17 on the ASD test, so I'm not sure I should be here, but let me tell you about this one time I was with this girl..." :lol:

[JacksonRR]

"the only thing wrong with you now is that you don't know you're OK..."

Yep, that's about all there is to it at times. Have to realize it's time to put the shovel down and come on out of the hole.

"Hi, my name's Dave, you all know me as Afghan, and I only managed to score 17 on the ASD test, so I'm not sure I should be here, but let me tell you about this one time I was with this inflatable Miley Cyrus doll and shite got weird..." :lol:

[plastercaster]

I got 16, which is less than I expected considering my teenage years when I really liked to follow the lines that shadows made on the floor  :? (At night I cycled perpendicularly across the shadows of streetlamps, which made me wobble across the street like a drunk  :lol:)
Also I used to feel quite socially awkward and solitary but I made the effort in social situations and it's paid off. I think it's true of almost everyone to some extent though.