Hacker News Reader

Comment by joenathanone | Hacker News Reader

I work in this field and I dislike takes like this, where individuals think they can speak for a whole group.

Also this “Having sensory processing issues doesn’t make you “a little autistic.” It makes you someone with sensory processing problems. Autistic people will understand your struggles and welcome you as a fellow neurodivergent cousin, but that’s it.

But in order for a person to be considered autistic, they must have difficulty in multiple categories spanning the spectrum.”

If someone says that they are ‘a little autistic’ they aren’t saying that they ‘are autistic’, they are just attempting to emphasize. Don’t destroy that by getting into a semantic debate.

View on HN

I don’t work in the field and I am not autistic. I have a daughter who is, and just recently spent holiday times with a family that also has members who are.

I don’t think neurotypical people can really empathize. I am saying this as someone who have had altered states of consciousness with psychedelics. It is not the same thing, but it was a different enough experience that I know that people who have not taken psychedelics or have had visionary experiences, cannot really relate to my experiences with altered states of consciousness, and those attempts at “empathizing” are shallow.

There are two kinds of things when we talk about empathy. One is the kind of empathy that comes from shared experience, and I doubt neurotypical people can really have an inkling of what it is like without having experienced altered states of consciousness.

The other kind of empathy is where one recognizes that the other person is suffering. The reasons and circumstances by which someone suffers is unique to the individual person, but what is shared universally is that each person has suffered.

Rather than empathizing with someone by saying they are a “little” or “a lot” autistic, it’s more precise to look at the person before you, in the present moment, and share the experience of suffering.

If we are talking about therapy, the author makes a great case for clinical outcomes being biased towards mitigating the impact an autist has on other people, and not the impact to the autist herself. The whole point of explaining the spectrum like a spectral signature rather than a gradient is to have a better framework for helping people.

I think your perspective is valuable. You so try to empathize but you also realize the limitations of your own perspective which, in my opinion and observations, is light years ahead of most people who think they do have the ability to empathize and consider radically different perspectives than their own. In reality most people have an incredibly difficult time considering different thought processes.

Very good point. I wish people would still use the word sympathy for expressing shared suffering, so that the word empathy could keep its original meaning.

Autism is still wildly misunderstood. It’s a big label on a very very big bag of diverse symptoms.

I don’t know how any reasonable scientist could gatekeep something so amorphous and loosely defined.

You can take a child to 4 different doctors and they will all diagnose “autism” differently.

It stands to reason no one knows the truth. We are all just making this up as we go along.

Honestly this is a massive problem in the psychological sciences. Most of the disorders are just collections of symptoms without any solid research tying those symptom collections to concrete issues in neurological circuits or biochemical signaling pathways. Work is being done to fix this, but its currently an absolute shit show in my opinion

> Most of the disorders are just collections of symptoms without any solid research tying those symptom collections to concrete issues in neurological circuits or biochemical signaling pathways.

This isn't true for autism, ADHD, bipolar or schizophrenia since some biological mechanisms are understood (even if these labels aren't perfect), so what are you talking about and what do you base it on?

The illnesses you mentioned are misdiagnosed all the time. DSM-V is a joke and so are most mental health professionals. They’re just fitting a list of symptoms to another list of symptoms based on what amounts to Levenshtein distance.

Anyone can be diagnosed with ADHD these days. And for all intents and purposes the patient might have 9/10 symptoms. But do they really have ADHD or is it something else? We don’t even have the capacity to figure that out right now because our understanding is so limited.

And if you think diagnoses are bad, wait 'til you see what passes for treatments.

True. A friend of mine got diagnosed with adhd and it was like 15 questions( mostly the same kind) et voila adhd.

I got adhd since a kid and i the test was the same. Only they asked the parents and not me. But i think i rly got it…

Its like the south park episode where kids got diagnosed because the bible bored them…

If you want to, you can spend 2 or 3 days and $5000 to get properly assessed by a neuropsycholoist to figure out what your issues actually are. That is laborious, time consuming and doesn't fit the 15 minute doctor visit medical billing model, so it comes down to a 15 question screener test for many.

Living in germany i got good healthcare and did allready some deeper analyses as a adult and its apartantly adhd. In the first message I meant as a child the test was not enough. But thank you for this hint :)

Often this deeper analysis is done on children and the 15 minute thing a quick initial screener :)

I had a bunch of assessment in early childhood but I didn't figure out what exactly my set of issues were until I got assessed by a very good neuropsych later in life. I really wish I knew about this stuff in late childhood, would've explained a lot more! It's also sad that there are not many good neuropsychs out there and it's hard to evaluate who is good for most people.

One thing for the other intelligent people out there, your intelligence can often mask that you are not performing to your full potential, because it compensates and makes you perform 'good enough'. Unfortunately our medical system is more orientated towards fixing the people who's lives are in a mess vs people who are just OK, so those who hobble along often don't get the help they need. Sometimes wish there was an equivalent of doctor that focuses on making people perform their best vs. good enough sometimes, kind of like a coach.

Not only is the diagnostic framework a joke, it's the basis of immense amounts of iatrogenic harm [0]

[0] "Anatomy of An Epidemic", Robert Whittaker

probably lying to get amphetamines, which enhance performance

Saying most mental health professionals are a joke is perhaps a little harsh in my opinion, after all they are trying to understand and treat the most mysterious and complex things known to man.

We don't diagnose diabetes with a list of symptoms because we have a lab test (where we have picked an arbitrary value, but that's another story). We have no lab test for add. That is frustrating, and I think that adhd is probably overdisgnosed, but I think most are doing the best they can.

Our knowledge of schizophrenia is primarily based on what medications alleviate the symptoms, this is something I learned from pharmacology and biopsychology textbooks. Same with ADHD. Autism, I'm not aware of any solid research pointing to overarching mechanisms so please do cite some if you are. I would love to read it.

Just because some symptoms are alleviated by a medication does not mean that must be related to the underlying mechanism. Many times medications are altering symptoms far removed from the initial cause.

Under the "mechanism" section in wikipedia there are multiple theories discussed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia

A steelmanned accurate take is that they are not biologically objectively confirmable. Which is more of an actual problem in psychiatry than other areas of medicine. Looking at say past x-rays and noting a tumor that went uncommented upon at the time on malpractice lawsuits for instance.

But notably also not done the majority of time in practice. It is seldom done to the level of say verifying your flu strain, let alone other more expensive and/or invasive tests which do not serve the patient's medical needs.

Maybe you should start by telling us what you are talking about.

Yes! Exactly! Is there a name for this phenomenon?

I don't think it's the answer you're looking for, but it's basically how I think about the scientific process: we ask all the wrong questions when we have the wrong mental models and the wrong vocabulary. But as our understanding improves, and as our vocabulary begins to map to the real world better, we start asking better questions and this unblocks science from progressing.

This is why its important for us to consider a broad variety of perspectives on a problem and to change our own perspectives. It's a complicated problem and its easy to get stuck on something that seems "almost kinda right enough that it sorta works"

Laying the tracks while the train travels down them. Absolutely agree with this. Some of us are better at connecting the dots than others. More literal/concrete people get stuck in the published or established wisdom and have a tough time thinking “outside the box”

Maybe they should split it into more specific categories.

Like we don't just say "you have heart disease".

Personally, I like the idea of reclassifying things based on biochemical mechanism. Not that this is any small undertaking, as we need to understand the mechanism that leads to the symptom(s) and develop some sort of reliable test for them. This goes for all psychological issues though, beyond just ASD

That's a good idea but nobody knows the mechanism for most brain diseases. When they know they say something like "you have a lesion in your right parietal lobe."

Yes but that is why researchers are actively working to change this. We are aware of the problems, but the system we're dealing with is large and complex.

It takes time and effort to learn about the mechanisms, just because we don't know right now doesn't mean we never will.

It's sort of a self reinforcing problem though - a lot of studies trying to understand biochemical mechanisms are taking our existing subpar labels at face value. They generally don't have the sample size to get remotely close to detection of the probably double digit distinct disorders that are making up the "Autism" group. And that is further complicated by natural heterogeneity found even in control groups.

Personally I think coming up with better behavioral characterizations will be an important intermediate step to identifying bio mechanisms, because it leads to much more tractable lines of questioning. For example, we could be quantifying symptoms like rigidity and repetitiveness of movement, sleep quality, sensitivity in different sensory domains, etc. - which should be increasingly feasible to do at scale these days.

How would you go about treatment for illnesses that have no known cause?

There are illnesses where we have a known set of symptoms, a known progression, and known treatment options, but have yet to discover the underlying set of causes. You may be able to reliably diagnose, and treat, without understanding the mechanisms at play.

You're not going to be able to work with the bureaucratic side of the healthcare system without being able to say what they're being treated for. Those treatment options can be approved for one illness and not another, even when they share symptoms, because of known efficacies.

Having a name to call something helps, even when you have no idea about the mechanism at play.

In DSM-V they did the contrary. In DSM-IV, things like Asperger's, PDD-NOS, etc existed. Now, with V, it is all under the same umbrella: ASD ('Autism Spectrum Disorder' in short 'autism' or ASD).

I'm not sure why, but I know there was discrimination going on. People looking to e.g. headhunt idiot savants or high functioning autistics with Asperger's.

The DSM is ... well, it's a many-purpose compendium, but one of them is diagnosing people to get them a starting point. For insurance claims, for looking for specialists, etc. But it's certainly not in itself an expert manual. (While yes it is, but it's really not. Because it necessarily has to exclude the outlier cases, so it intentionally limits its own scope, focusing on the most common symptoms, and general descriptions of them. Which is very hard for psychological phenomena.)

And it was because it seems those are all caused by the same underlying biology, so they are the same disorder with differing levels of severity in their symptom categories. (Social/language and restricted repetitive behaviors.)

To add to the above, my understanding is that classifying autism spectrum disorders into subcategories (eg aspergers) didn't seem to provide much benefit and it made things more difficult to understand. At this point all of our limited interventions are similar and are focused on strengthening social skills, which applies whether you have aspergers or pervasive developmental disorder.

This may change again if we find benefit in subclassification (e.g. a treatment that benefits aspergers patients only).

> Also this “Having sensory processing issues doesn’t make you “a little autistic.” It makes you someone with sensory processing problems.

This filing-people-into-groups thinking is something that i see so often here on HN and I'm so bothered by it.

For me, i do what i feel i want to do, and make up names and concept for it afterwards if it seems necessary. Sometimes i don't have words for what i am doing. Its a lot of improvisation.

For some people, this process seems to be reversed... Like as if they need to be "validated" by external concepts, otherwise they don't do some things. And they feel relieved when they have a diagnosis like "autism". Not having a name/explanation for it seems like a barrier to them.

I don't know what i am observing here, but I'd like to know. Maybe this is like the inner-monologue thing, where humans vastly differ in some regard but are unaware of it.

Similar. I think because I've always been "kind of weird", and eternally baffled at so-called "normal" people expecting everybody to be like them. Like, we're allowed to be different, right? In practice you'll be ostracized. Unless you get an official diagnosis. Then you're allowed to be weird. Thanks for "accommodating" me, society. But how about we just don't structure it in such a stupid way in the first place? "No, you weirdo, stop being unreasonable. Go back to watching football."

That said, labels can be useful. If other people that are similarly weird have found some tactic (or substance) useful, you might also find it useful. For me, "aha, it's ADHD!" was a huge breakthrough, because it gave me a general direction to search for answers (and meds).

So, uh, to summarize: labels can be useful, but I wish society was not structured in such a neurotypical-centric way. Just let people be different. e.g. If someone says "I don't work well in an open-plan office", just believe them. They shouldn't need a doctor's note.

That problem could be attributed to the tragedy of the Commons.

Claiming you don't work well in an open plan office and being taken at face value would lead to literally everyone saying that, because surprise, most people don't work well in open plan offices (I'm very neurotupical and I hate it).

Another way to look at it is that we've evolved as a society to go out of our way to try to accomodate people with different needs when necessary. Being given an office if you have ADHD is great. Try to go back 100 years and you'd be fired from the factory instead for not being a perfect cog in the machine.

So it's actually beautiful we are able and willing to accomodate others, when for most of history that wasn't the case at all.

>Like as if they need to be "validated" by external concepts, otherwise they don't do some things.

I don't know, I could imagine struggling with their life and blaming themselves for it. A diagnosis might well provide some relief from that.

> If someone says that they are ‘a little autistic’ they aren’t saying that they ‘are autistic’, they are just attempting to emphasize. Don’t destroy that by getting into a semantic debate.

It's like saying "I'm actually 1/16 Cherokee!" as a form of group-identifying empathy. Note: It is not.

> I work in this field and I dislike takes like this, where individuals think they can speak for a whole group.

People like us have been trying desperately to get people who "work in the field" to understand us for decades, with little success. This is but one example.

I say to myself I'm a little bit autistic. But I'm not really sure.

I fit the profile of person one in the article.

The reason I'm wondering / even looking at autism is because the meds for my ADHD just make everything worse even at really small doses and I don't really know what to do.

Yeah, there seems to be a bit of overlap between ADHD symptoms and being anywhere other than the extreme neurotypical end of the autism spectrum.

As an ADHD person, one thing that has helped me a lot is listening to ADDitude Mag podcasts[1]. Listening to people who are experts in the subject and are ADHD themselves has been quite validating. Like, yeah, we're not stupid, but the normies sure make us feel that way sometimes, huh! I recommend the ones with Ned Hallowell, especially.

So maybe you're not ADHD, or maybe you are but that's not your main problem. There are probably similar podcasts or forums or communities for people that are 'weird' or mildly disabled in other ways. I guess I'm trying to be helpful because I relate, and I know how alienating it can be, but the best I can come up with is to quote Timothy Leary and say "find the others." Easier said than done. You can talk at me if you want. :)

[1] A collection of them I generated from some RSS feed: http://www.nuke24.net/projects/Playlister/?playlist-uri=urn:...

> normies

I really think that is an incredibly divisive and reductive way of looking at people. In my experience, everybody has mental problems, but you usually don’t get to learn of someone’s individual struggles unless you are very close to them.

I am guessing you have a job, and maybe you dislike how you feel others judge you for your personal difficulties with your symptoms. You appear to judge others, who have their own personal struggles with their own quirky symptoms, perhaps which you don’t empathise with because they don’t happen to have ADHD?

I really like the jokingly serious way this is said at 12:15 to 13:30 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctz6eJ3Pr94

> > normies

> I really think that is an incredibly divisive and reductive way of looking at people.

This is actually one of the problems in neurodiversity discourse, too: neurotypical doesn't actually qualify as a neurotype, and probably no one is neurotypical.

Well, maybe that was a bad choice of word on my part. I don't think of the majority of humanity as being judgemental assholes. Most of the people that I actually interact with are nice and understanding, because everybody's got their own set of problems, and we can use all the mutual understanding we can get. But there are certain people, especially in positions of authority, that are able to turn their ignorance and lack of imagination into /my/ problem (teachers I had decades ago, or grandboss at previous job, for example, which is part of the reason I am currently /not/ employed). I'm really complaining about systemic problems, not individuals.

There's a difference between "1/16th Cherokee" and "growing up on a reservation with grandfather".

The full context on the conversation is important.

In this conversation: I'd like to know more on how to define: people like us.

For better or worse, I would never know unless you told me, and to use your metaphor, the very fact that you can socially interact here on HN at all more or less puts you in that camp of being 1/16 Cherokee and then stating "people like us".

Of the individuals I interact with on a daily basis, some can't vocalize or interact in any meaningful way beyond grunting, but of the ones that could, most would likely end up banned or shadow banned if they tried socializing on HN.

I don't discount your experience in the least, but for the individuals I personally know, work for and with, one of the most valuable things they can receive is someone taking the time to empathize with them. Most people don't and they end up having no or very few friends and/or otherwise being social outcast.

The "1/16 Cherokee" example seems to be clumsy adaptation of social techniques for trying to connect via commonalities. The intent counts for a bit. It certainly isn't effective or pleasing to the target, but it is an attempt to bridge and group-identify. That they aren't unconnected strangers with no link.

Arguably this a symptom of other conceptual issues (like needing genetic connections for kinship as opposed to universals). But it is a step of progress and a reason to educate rather than shun or scorn.

I think there's a difference between someone saying they are "a little autistic" when talking to someone who is definitely autistic as a form of self-identification, vs them trying to figure out if they have autism themselves and put the pieces together of why they seem a bit different than everyone else.

I've recently started wondering if I'm a little autistic myself. I would never say that I am in response to someone who tells me that they are. But I fit the description of person 1 almost to a T, minus the thumb sucking and chair rocking, but plus trouble dealing with driving to where driving on an unfamiliar road will ruin my day. Am I autistic? I have no idea honestly.

Maybe it's different for people with AD(H)D than Asperger's, but I don't get it. There is nothing good with having a brain disability. Aspie pride is about as dumb as people in wheelchairs being "proud" of being born without functioning legs. And to Homo Sapiens the brain functions I lack is almost as important as walking ability. Asperger to me hasn't meant "a little quirky" like Sheldon Cooper. It has meant total inability to "get" other people and their intentions. Asperger may have made me an awesome developer but if there was a pill or treatment to cure it, I'd take it in a heartbeat. People calling Asperger their "superpower" is laughable.

> Maybe it's different for people with AD(H)D than Asperger's, but I don't get it. There is nothing good with having a brain disability.

So what you want people who aren't average to consider themselves inferior? I don't know why people wouldn't be able to find good things or positives from a disability.

> People calling Asperger their "superpower" is laughable.

Asperger's looks pretty over-represented in the richest people in the world. Dyslexia is also over-represented. Bill-Clinton, Obama, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison were all not raised by their biological fathers. Plenty of other examples. Adversity can be a super-power.

Larry Ellison has an ASD diagnosis? TIL. The guy runs and breathes Oracle like a true psychopath. Then again, psychopaths and autistics can get along very well.

As for your other point. You need to overcome or work around your weaknesses. Everyone has to do such, but for some it requires more (out of the box thinking) effort. For example, I have ASD and get disgusted by certain foods (smelling or seeing them). I explained this to my employer and colleagues when I got hired (they were aware I am autistic). What they do is they ask if it's OK if they buy/eat X (I don't wanna get into the specifics) and I ACK it (usually). They know if I look weird or go away what's going on.

I think the point was Ellison was adopted, bracketing that with dyslexia, etc as an adversity. No one would ever accuse Bill Clinton of having autism.

> Larry Ellison has an ASD diagnosis? TIL.

Not to my knowledge, just was offering a counterpoint to the GP who seemed to think there are only negatives to adversity, like ASD. In that example "No benefits of [adversity]" Where the adversity of not being raised by your biological father might make you significantly more likely to be a billionaire or POTUS.

Thanks, I guess I missed some context. A billionaire, he is. A happy human being? A useful addition to society? I mean, all your examples have controversies but this one seems to stand out. Speaking of outliers: it lacks statistical analysis. I don't think anyone would argue a man not raised by their biological father cannot be successful (if we describe billionaire or POTUS as successful). Rather, what is the % of highly successful compared to men being raised by their biological father highly successful. We can at least apply statistical analysis on that, combined with a definition of successful (cause mine is guaranteed different because mine includes ethics and values it much higher than power or networth); we can't on autism because of undiagnosed people, while diagnosis also denotes some kind of impact or severity (incentive to become true positive). Ie. there are likely loads of people on the spectrum yet functioning (false negative). Then there's those who can't afford a diagnosis (false negative), and then there's the misdiagnosed (false positive/negative).

> A billionaire, he is. A happy human being? A useful addition to society?

haha. personally never really met any of them so can't really touch that : )

> I don't think anyone would argue a man not raised by their biological father cannot be successful

Not only successful, but significantly more likely to be meteoriticy successful from the adversity.

For other claims, sure the waters get muddy but the lack of ground truth is less relevant for the extreme success case. Aspies are wayyyy over represented in the top 10 richest people.

People think “High-functioning Autism” means they’re savants… Some terminology choices can yield comical misinterpretations.

Your comment comes across as condescending, full of assumptioms, and plain ignorant but I want to address them.

Let me start with an analogy. Imagine the brain as a circle. That's the brain of a normal person (sometimes called normie in quich vocabulary). The brain of someome on the spectrum is oval instead. Society assumes all brains are circles, and is build around that. Does that make ovales useless? Only if you look at it from the myopic point of view of society assuming and requiring circles.

You furthermore say 'Asperger to me means X'. Asperger was (DSM-V ditched it) a description of traits and the person with an Asperger's diagnosis checks some of these boxes, but everyone's different [1]. You zoomed in on one specific trait, but ignore the rest. I'll leave it to you to judge on what that says on your capability to assess Asperger traits.

My father had MS. He ended up in a wheelchair, but he didn't start in one. MS is a disease, autism is a personality trait. You cannot cure the latter (they can't cure MS either, only stop the progression but that's specific to some diseases and perhaps one day the scientific community overcomes that hurdle). The brain size/shape is what it is which is why some people who are autistic insist in them being called autistic instead of them having autism. I try to be relaxed when it comes to language, but my wife (also diagnosed with) has a different take on matters. Since autism and Asperger's has its pros and cons, calling it solely a disability is myopic and, if extrapolated, outright condescending and flat out ignorant.

Back about my wheelchair father, growing up with a father who is chronically ill and who tries to find peace around it gave me compassion and respect for disabled people, or those who are in need. Not only that, the old man was legally blind. His hearing though! He probably had undiagnosed autism, but he could hear details and draw conclusions from such which I could not. Because I was not trained in it as a blind person.

People who call Asperger's their super power are just boasting they are able to benefit from their oval more than it harms them, or so they are trying to imply such. There's probably a context to such a situation, and perhaps an other reason it annoys you.

[1] In a support group for people with ASD (after properly diagnosed) the diversity, hurdles, and benefits become clear. There's common grounds, but also so many differences! I have this with my wife who is diagnosed as well (^2)

Let's be honest, all of this is really motivated by empathy, the goal is to avoid thinking of people with ASD as "worse" than other people.

The reality is that nobody would want their child be autistic. People with autism have an extremely high unemployment rate. So clearly, it's not a neutral personality trait. You don't get diagnosed with a personality trait.

I say this despite suspecting that I could be on the spectrum. But I'm annoyed by the trend of bending reality just because it makes people feel better.

> Let's be honest, all of this is really motivated by empathy, the goal is to avoid thinking of people with ASD as "worse" than other people.

In general, in discussions, there's a lack of empathy, and I believe its valuable to build develop such.

Creating empathy was indeed part of my motivation. It also puts emphasis on a supply and demand issue.

> The reality is that nobody would want their child be autistic

My wife and I are autistic. Its likely (but not guaranteed) our 2 children are autistic.

According to your statement, in your humble opinion, not only should I not have been born, we should not have gotten children (we did use double folic acid dose on second because scientific research suggests it helps against certain autism traits which are perceived as negative. On first we did not yet know we had ASD though we suspected it and were on waiting list for diagnosis) because of the high risk of neurodiversive children. Some of my wife's friends said the same. Thanks for the advice.

That being said, yes I would have been deeply unhappy with a child born with a severe disability, for example syndrome of down. My wife would have been happy. We likely would have split up because if that, its a risk we took. But I recognize it is my view on syndrome of down, and my issue with dealing with it (not sure why... I grew up with neighbor kid having it). Its kind if like I am biased against it, generalizing. Even though I saw a beautiful film about it: Yo, Tambien. The issue lies with me, not people with syndrome of down. And perhaps, maybe a bonding process would have successfully happened because with my 2 children it is difficult to fathom I would not love them for how they are. Annoyed at times? Sure, but that is a given.

> People with autism have an extremely high unemployment rate. So clearly, it's not a neutral personality trait. You don't get diagnosed with a personality trait.

(Unemployment is at an all time low in my country.)

Employment isn't what defines you in life, in my opinion. Unemployment is a supply and demand issue with only losing parties (unemployed, society, government). Not only one losing party. It doesn't have to be this way. I am convinced every human wants to be functional in society, with respect to their being (things they cannot change). In my country, companies need to hire a percentage of their employees as disabled people, and they need to work around the negative connotations of their disabilities. That doesn't imply they're bad employees though. Just that they have a different manual.

Thing is, I went to an education where everyone had an autism diagnosis. I have seen diversity in neurodiversity. I have met people on the spectrum who have high potential, or who have achieved such. After I finished education I got hired because I am on the spectrum, and I function. My colleagues are happy with me as their co-employee, and I love being part of this team.

In short, supply and demand was met.

> I say this despite suspecting that I could be on the spectrum.

So, your post is some kind of possible self ridiculing? What you said is akin to saying people of colour [a trait you are born with] are subhumans, then saying you might have some lineage if some foreign culture, or that you are a POC yourself, or got friends who are POC. Chapeau.

Well, the way I see it, the difference between autism and anxiety disorder, OCD or insomnia is that autism is seen as an inherent, unchangeable part of ones identity. It's who you are, not something you have.

So autism being considered negative is much more harmful and damaging to the person's psyche than anxiety disorder for example.

Which is why there's been a push for normalizing and destigmatizing autism. Similar is true for LGBT+. It's why racism is considered so harmful - it's very hard and unsettling to think of yourself as inferior to others.

My problem is that I think this push has gone too far, to the point where reality is being bended.

> My problem is that I think this push has gone too far, to the point where reality is being bended.

I think it still has a very long way to go before it can actually start bending the other way.

A personality disorder is also something which usually lasts your entire lifetime. We need to work around our disabilities, whether its being in a wheelchair, deaf or bad hearing, insomnia, anxiety, or something else. There's various ways to do that, for example learning more about your disorder from credible sources, cognitive therapy, drugs/medicine, or an aid/device such as a hearing aid, or good ol' helping each other out.

Example of the latter: a friend of my wife is autistic (proper diagnosis, in fact they met during post-diagnosis support group), too, and he can work (he has own company), but he is unable to clean his house. Its too much chaos for him. So my wife does it for the time being, as his housemaid couldn't deal with him, and recently quit. And soon, my wife is getting paid for that work. Because of that, we'll both officially work, and we get free morning daycare for our toddler instead of having to shell out 200 EUR/month. Its a win-win-win.

> autism is a personality trait.

> The brain size/shape is what it is which is why some people who are autistic insist in them being called autistic instead of them having autism.

> Since autism and Asperger's has its pros and cons, calling it solely a disability is myopic and, if extrapolated, outright condescending and flat out ignorant.

I think I'd be more comfortable with people calling it a disability than people calling it a personality trait... That feeds into the point that the article is addressing.

Right, I missed a mark there. Rather it would be a list of personality traits being linked to autism. Neurodevelopmental disability or neurodevelopmental disorder fits better (implies incurable), but it has a negative connotation; precisely what I wanted to address.

The article could have used a 3D cube to describe the spectrum. Then you get the colors and tints of it. Some people describe all the traits with spectrum, some severity of specific trait. 3D cube covers both, kind of like a 3D spectrogram, just multiple charts. The text then becomes context, and you immediately notice visually the differences. Context is still very much relevant though.

I thought the article was good but missed the mark on the comparson of suffering. In general, high functioning autistics are (seemingly) more intelligent, and intelligent people seem to suffer more from things like depression, weight of the world being on their shoulders. My 3 y.o. (who appears to be intelligent and likely on spectrum) doesn't realize such yet. Innocence is a blessing in disguise.

> Maybe it's different for people with AD(H)D than Asperger's, but I don't get it. There is nothing good with having a brain disability.

I don't really like the whole 'ADHD is my superpower' line either.

There are issues with the medicalization of neurodivergence, too, but nobody is obligated to feel like being neurodivergent is 'really a blessing' in their own case.

As an autistic person, I usually find people saying that they're "a little autistic" without really being autistic a little demeaning. They're trying to tell me that they understand, I get that, and I genuinely appreciate the attempt at connection. However, I literally have this label because I am different and they cannot really understand what it's like, so it just comes off like they're trying to tell me the way I feel about something doesn't matter or like my troubles aren't real because they claim to experience something similar (even though they literally don't because they're not autistic).

I recommend reading up on what the psychologist John Gottman calls a "bid for connection," specifically about not taking it at face value but recognizing it as a genuine attempt at building rapport.

Nevertheless, you aren't alone in interpreting such bids in a negative way. I sometimes ask people, especially defense clients, straight up: "Are you a person who finds comfort in discussing times when others have faced similar problems, even if there are still a lot of differences? Or would that make you feel that you weren't being heard as an individual?"

What matters is the context or even what isn't being said.

For example, it can imply the person is saying they recognize a (typical) trait in themselves. It can also imply the person does not have a diagnosis, but does recognize themselves in the description. Or it can imply the person is interested in figuring out if they have a diagnosis. It can imply an affirmation of sympoms ('oh, now that you say it, I do recognize X or Y in your behavior). It can also be used to create common ground or sympathy. I wouldn't assume harm though (theory of mind!).

I have an ASD diagnosis and it was not a matter of a 15 minute questionnaire as suggested elsewhere in this thread with regards to ADHD. Yes, I did need to fill in a questionnaire. After that I had to wait almost a year til the diagnosis process was started. It included detailed historical analysis of a parent ('hetero anamnese'). I would like to assume all ASD diagnosis are proper, though mine was after DSM-V was introduced so I have autism but no specific label.

From what I understood, its being discussed in the scientific community AD(H)D is merely a variant of autism.

When I see a movie like Girl, Interrupted or Ik Ook Van Jou it is supposedly about a young woman with borderline (BPD) but all I see is a young woman with autism instead. That's just my personal take though.

I don’t agree with this take. I have social anxiety and difficulty empathizing with people in certain respects. One of my children who is diagnosed has these two issues and some sensory and dexterity issues, issues with adapting to changing circumstances, and a very limited ability to regulate their responses to frustrating situations to the point where they’ll go on rants with crying and anger that is white hot (a “meltdown”). This child is what is commonly called “high functioning,” though: anybody who has not observed them long enough could easily only ever see one of these behaviors/traits, and the child is in a regular classroom and has been identified as quite gifted in some subjects.

I’m not on the spectrum, and would never claim “I’m a little autistic.” I might have before I had the kid, but definitely not now. My kid’s autism symptoms are really minor compared to many, but it’s so far beyond the kinds of quirks you’re referring to as to be obviously and starkly different.

My oldest is a daughter of two parents with ASD diagnosid and certain things have to go in her way, she needs to know in advance what happens, and she has difficulty adapting to a situation. In my country, you can only get an autism diagnosis at age 4, and she's well into 3 years old. These temper tantrums or meltdowns are common for age 3 though.

PS: We were both misdiagnosed as having anxiety disorders (GAD and avoidant, GAD and agoraphobia respectively). I also got Ritalin prescribed against fatigue (because I could not officially get ADHD diagnosis as adult according to my psychiatrist this was back during DSM-IV). It would not surprise me if other people with social anxiety diagnosis (also) have ASD, but as usual if you can function in society with your current diagnosis (or lack of it), who cares, it isn't worth the hassle (time, money, effort).

I assume ‘empathize’ is meant there?

Also only about half of autism cases present with differences in sensory sensitivity. Not a core feature of autism.

> Don’t destroy that by getting into a semantic debate.

And you've just done... what exactly?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com