Asperger's Syndrome

[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.