Asperger's Syndrome

[Weimar Pluto Knight VII]

Hmm, after reading Vincent's post, are we really not empathetic? I think we are, just people misunderstand and we end up hurting people instead of helping them. At least that's the way things are for me.

I did have an experience like that last night. I keep thinking a girl is upset with me when really it's not exactly me. If I know someone is upset or sad, I get that way, too, especially with girls, then I mess up somehow because of that or b/c of a misunderstanding, and it's like no more friend. So, I ultimately get labeled (by my dad at least, oh and by some people I care about) as a non-empath. Yeah, I think that's the most frustrating thing about me.

[My name is...something..?]

I've never even heard of it before.
I don't have any of the symptoms of it, so I'm about 98.7% sure I don't have it.
That percentage was pulled out of my arse.

[Shaun]

It can be difficult, but it's also like a sixth sense. I can sense whenever people are upset emotionally, even when they hide it carefully from others. The trap one can fall into is beleiveing that someone is upset towards you, and that's why only you can tell. Usually that's not the case, we're just that sensitive.

Hmm? No, that's not right. People with Asperger's syndrome have extreme difficulty reading body language. I do. I find it very hard to decipher somebody's mood from body language or the way they talk.

[Weimar Pluto Knight VII]

Yep, I can't. They have to say what they're feeling, or be crying or something. I have to pick up hints by what they say, and even then I misunderstand. Of course, usually they're pretty obvious about it. "Yeah, I don't feel like talking to anyone" or swears a lot even though they don't usually, or being more obvious, "I'm in a really bad mood." So, then I try to get empathetic by asking what's wrong? And also sometimes I think it's my fault. Then I get labeled as a horrible person one way or another.

[-N-]

Oh, you have Asperger's, too, Nik?

I doubt it. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be willing to diagnose me with it, but it's clear to me that my problems are my own, and they are not products of some 'disorder'.

Having met you, and having met a lot of people with Asperger's (they tend to aggregate at highly prestigious science colleges) I wouldn't consider you to have Asperger's. Disclaimer: I'm no shrink.

I don't have Asperger's. Is it okay for me to post here? Maybe if I have something to contibute. Asperger's definitely doesn't correlate to playing Final Fantasy. Did you all ever consider that maybe everyone here with Asperger's plays FF because this is an FF message board? The converse is also not true - I do not have Asperger's and yet I play FF. (Even that is dubious these days - I haven't been able to finish an FF, hell, any RPG, in about 1.5 years.) You may think that people with Asperger's are drawn to RPGs because they create an isolated world for the player to imagine living in, and I have no idea how substantial that claim is, but I guess I'd believe it if someone cited a report or something.

And finally, I've had a great time both working and socializing with people diagnosed with Asperger's, after the exacerbated awkward initial getting-to-know-you part. I can't stress how weird it is starting out and how rewarding it is in the end. Mind-blowing, man.

[Ender]

IMO a lot of anti-social people would like to have Asperger's because one of the "symptoms" that sometimes manifests itself is above average intelligence.

It justifies anti-social behavior and at the same time gives them a reason to think that they're better than people who deride them for being anti-social in the first place.

I'm certainly not accusing anyone on EoFF or anywhere else of that, just my opinion.

A key difference between an anti-social person and an Asperger patient is that the Asperger patient actually can't interact with others the same way normal people do because their brain processes information coming from people they interact with differently.

[Weimar Pluto Knight VII]

Neel, when I said correlation, I didn't say 100% correlation. You know what I mean. I'm conjecturing that it's more common for people with Asperger's to like FF or video games in general. How many people with Asperger's have you all met that like to play sports? I'm sure they're around, just uncommon.

[Vincent, Thunder God]

It can be difficult, but it's also like a sixth sense. I can sense whenever people are upset emotionally, even when they hide it carefully from others. The trap one can fall into is beleiveing that someone is upset towards you, and that's why only you can tell. Usually that's not the case, we're just that sensitive.

Hmm? No, that's not right. People with Asperger's syndrome have extreme difficulty reading body language. I do. I find it very hard to decipher somebody's mood from body language or the way they talk.

Every case is different.

I have trouble with expressing my body language. Everyone can't pick up when I'm angry or sad unless they know me really well, because I express them in different ways then most.

I can relate to you, because whenever people are hinting at something through body language or voice tone, I will probably miss it. So yes, I can find it hard to pick up on body language sometimes. As for emotion and how it shows up through body language, I have no problems.

The thing about how people generally describe Aspergers is that 75% of the information comes from people who have observed people with Aspergers, not the people themselves. So, as Weimar said, people think people with Aspergers are not empathetic. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are so caught up in being empathetic that while we could express it normally we're caught up in the intensity of it. Then when we express it people either miss it or misunderstand it.

Personally, I would state that people with Aspergers just have a different form of body language than other people. We're expressing a different form of body language that others don't pick up, just as we don't pick up their's.

It really depends on the case though. Aspergers is on the high-functioning scale of Autism, but within Aspergers there is a scale of its own. How high-functioning the person with Aspergers is on that scale will affect the case. There are other factors as well.

Then there is the chance that one could be misdiagnosed. There are probably lots of cases in which people are misdiagnosed as having Aspergers.

It all gets very confusing when people try to generalize. Just as I can't say that all people with Aspergers have a case like mine, you can't say that all people with Aspergers can't understand body language.

"a lack of empathy, little ability to form friendships, one-sided conversation, intense absorption in a special interest, and clumsy movements."

That, for example, I don't agree with at all. Yet this is the information an encyclopedia has on Aspergers. As I said, this information is probably based on some entry in a medical textbook by a stuffy psychiatrist who observed one or two people with Aspergers and generalized.

[Alive-Cat]

I can't even comprehend what my mental state is. Sometimes I can be the most relaxed, outgoing person in the world, reading other people like a book. Other times I can be so revved up for no reason that I can't sit still, or contain myself. I'm so painfully shy around new people that I can get to the point of making myself sick, but if I approach the situation with confidence I can be treating them like a best friend before I even know them. I can be very much an idiot a lot of the time, like when slicing up fruit, I'll hold it in the air and risk stabbing myself with a knife, but I don't see the problem at the time. I feel so much empathy towards everyone and everything (I'm highly sensitive) that practically anything can make me cry, or get extremely depressed. I also get extremely depressed for no reason, and other times I can get so hyper I'm not able to control my actions. I would say that I have manic depression, but I have plenty of periods, even days at a time, when I feel totally normal and regular and experience none of these problems. As for general Asperger’s, I show a lot of the symptoms and then another time none of them. I excel the most in my year in English and other times I can't get my brain to work.
Basically, I am a teenage boy.

[Reine]

Hmm, after reading Vincent's post, are we really not empathetic? I think we are, just people misunderstand and we end up hurting people instead of helping them. At least that's the way things are for me.

I did have an experience like that last night. I keep thinking a girl is upset with me when really it's not exactly me. If I know someone is upset or sad, I get that way, too, especially with girls, then I mess up somehow because of that or b/c of a misunderstanding, and it's like no more friend. So, I ultimately get labeled (by my dad at least, oh and by some people I care about) as a non-empath. Yeah, I think that's the most frustrating thing about me.

As for the empathy thing, well, I only tend to care about those I know, a lot of the time I dont really care or barely consider the feelings of those I dont know.

[Weimar Pluto Knight VII]

Yeah that sounds like me. Usually with girls, I care about them enough for them to think I'm going to too fast or something, and it's very frustrating. I have no friends b/c of who I am.

[Reine]

I only have one real friend, and what do you know, he has Asbergers as well

I would agree on the high intelligence thing posted earlier, as almost every person with Asbergers ive met has been really smart and seemingly beyond your average joe. According to what people say, I supposedly have a very high IQ myself, but im highly skeptical of this

[Weimar Pluto Knight VII]

Yeah, I only get along with people with Asperger's. There's these few guys I know that occasionally play video games with me, but that's it. That's pretty much all we do, so I've recently begun to think there's no point to my friendship with them.

[Reine]

Yeah, like my mate, we mainly hung out because it was school, but afterwa it ended, the main reason we remained friends was because the obsessive trait we have was locked onto a project that had been going since 2001, (yeah, that story saga thing)

Nowadays, as its pretty much been ground into the dust by the realisation that it will most likely never come to be (The original plan was that it was an imaginary FF game that we made ourselves, but grew into something so much more) weve drifted apart.

An annoying trait I have when it comes to friends, is that i seem to regard them as temporary, like a quick solution to a problem, or remaining friends through a common goal. When said goal ceases, friendship usually breaks off almost immediatly.

[Shaun]

IMO a lot of anti-social people would like to have Asperger's because one of the "symptoms" that sometimes manifests itself is above average intelligence.

It justifies anti-social behavior and at the same time gives them a reason to think that they're better than people who deride them for being anti-social in the first place.

I'm certainly not accusing anyone on EoFF or anywhere else of that, just my opinion.

A key difference between an anti-social person and an Asperger patient is that the Asperger patient actually can't interact with others the same way normal people do because their brain processes information coming from people they interact with differently.

I can see where you're coming from. However, in my case, I was already diagnosed with dyspraxia at an early age. My brain IS different. I have co-ordination problems, I hate crowds, I hold my pen awkwardly, et cetera. I only found out about autism in general, and Asperger's syndrome a few months back. But I was intrigued. I have most of the symptons on the autism Wiki page, but almost all of the symptons on the Asperger's syndrome page.

Furthermore, there's somebody in my college who has Asperger's. I usually talk to him online, but I've talked to him in-person before. He told me once that he always thought I had Asperger's. Who's better in making a judgment than an actual Aspie? When I said I wasn't so sure if I had Asperger's, he said that he was sure I do and, as I mentioned to him my mum said she thought I had it, well, that was convincing enough, apparently. I just wanted to clear up that I'm not using this stuff as an excuse for my life. This is a quest to find out who I really am.

Vincent, Thunder God, I am sorry to generalise. I guess that is my fault. I don't like the idea that I'm the only isolated person in this world, so I suppose that's why I do it. I know there are fairly social Aspies. In fact, I met one. But she was a bitch... I'm not even going to go into that though. I know all Aspies are different.