Is There Anybody Else Here With Aspberger's Syndrome?

[Widget]

Quote:
There is no simple test especially when one is diagnosed as an adult. In many instances an adult Aspie has spent his or her entire life trying to figure out how to fit in and have learned to try and hide any differences. So if one is higher on the spectrum it isn't always apparent to the neurotypicals.
With that said there are many factors that lead to the Asperger's diagnosis. For me it is based on how I was a child (long before Asperger's was even recognized) and also the behaviors of other family members that suggest that Asperger's is in my family. Then there is just the gut feeling of not being 'normal'. It is how I know I just don't understand people. There is the lack of empathy, the sensitivity to certain sounds, smells and touch, the ability to ramble on about subjects I really like and many other factors.
So it is not just one thing but many that lead to the diagnosis.

 

[redhen]

What do you guys mean by lack of empathy?? What does it mean to you?

 

[Widget]

I'll try and give some examples. And I think it is more of a difficulty expressing empathy than actually not having any.

Years ago when the movie 'Steel Magnolias' was in theaters I went to see it. Not normally my type of movie but I was bored and had been told it was a good movie. When one of the characters was dying some women a few rows behind me were crying their eyes out. I remember thinking 'Why are they crying?' Then a minute later it came to me that they were crying because of a death. Part of me recognized that their reaction was not a bad thing but it still didn't make much sense to me. Okay so probably not a great example.

If someone at work says they don't feel well I don't go out of my way to ask how they are. I figure if they are there then they are well enough to work. I don't see the point of things like baby showers, birthdays or other celebrations. And I really don't get why people get so excited when they see a baby. I have very little emotional response to any of those situations. Or if someone asks how I am I will normally just respond 'Fine' and not ask them how they are. Okay that has more to do with the fact that it seems 99.9% of people who ask others how they are really don't care. It is just a socially expected question that I think is absurd.

Basically it is very difficult for me to relate to another person's emotional state. I can recognize that they are experiencing something but I can't easily put myself in their shoes and react based on that. I react more on logic than emotions. Or to put it another way I would probably make a very good Vulcan (for any Star Trek fans out there)

 

[cmjust0]

Quote:
For me, it means it takes a little thinking in order to share in someone else's emotion. It's like I have to take a second to try and process other peoples' emotional states intellectually and do my best to *call up* a similar emotion in myself. For most people -- as I understand it, anyway -- identifying with other peoples' emotions is apparently sort of an involuntary reaction.

If someone else is feeling something I've experienced myself, I'm a little better with empathy.. I still have to think about it, but not as much, and I can more easily correlate the way they're feeling to a way I've felt before. My ability to empathize has actually gotten better as I've gotten older and have experienced more things in life..

Obviously, there are times when someone will be experiencing something I haven't even come close to experiencing, so I'll have to try and think of some experience I've had that sort of approximates what's going on with them and do the math from there.. Most times, I understand that means I can only call up a fraction of what my intellect tells me the other person must be experiencing....like, me remembering how it feels to lose a pet versus their loss of a parent, for instance. Obviously, the two aren't even close -- and I get that. So, in those situations, I'll try to call up whatever I can and I might say something like "I can't even imagine how you must be feeling right now."

As one might imagine, I actually find myself saying that quite a bit. It's truthful, and people usually appreciate it. I think hearing that someone else can't even imagine what they're going through maybe helps validates the depth of their emotion, in a way. Plus, it's the best I can do.

People who are naturally empathetic might be wondering...what's the point in trying to actively call up an emotion you don't feel? Why bother? What's the point?

Good question! (

)

Empathy, as it turns out, is what keeps us from acting inappropriately. That's pretty much what it's for. Now, I've *tried* to simply intellectualize before and act in a way that I think would be appropriate, but trust me when I tell you that IT DOESN'T WORK.

To stand any chance at all of knowing what to say or do that's not going to make people go...dude, seriously?!?...you have to be able to *be* the subject of the emotion. So for me, doing what I can to call up an emotion and get in a certain frame of mind goes a long way toward preventing me from saying or doing the wrong thing at the wrong time..


Incidentally, something you will never hear me say nor write is "I know how you feel." Few things piss me off more than to have someone say to me "Oh, I know how you feel." Uh, no, you don't! You can't, because you are not me! Granted, my disdain for that particular phrase is probably related to my own confusion over how empathy works, but I stand by it anyway!

I don't care how good an empathizer someone is, nobody knows how anyone else feels and to even *suggest* it -- in my opinion -- is terribly arrogant.

But that's me.

 

[redhen]

Thanks for sharing your stories with me..
I appreciate it!

 

[Widget]

Quote:
Not a problem. Sometimes it helps me understand more about myself when I try and explain things to others. Especially those who actually want to try and understand.

 

[chicken_china_mom]

I think I have a fair amount of empathy, but sometimes things do just go right over my head. I'll never forget going to the theatre with my kids father when Titanic was coming out. He wanted to see it, not me, and while watching the movie, I did find myself enjoying it. However, when they end of the movie rolled around, and Jack was dying in the water, there was nary a dry eye in the house. Except me. I remember looking at my kids dad, and he was crying, and I looked down the aisle, and men and women were all crying. I remember turning back to the screen and thinking "I should be crying too, she's losing her true love", but I just couldn't drudge up that emotion, it was too..."distant" for me. My kids father looked at me afterwards and he was like "You didn't cry? Are you THAT cold hearted?" And I had to stop and think, AM I that cold hearted? I just don't get moments like that in movies. Yes, I understand the concept of love, yes, I understand the loss, the emotion, etc, but I just can't match it to moments in my own life. Take for instance when a pet dies. I love that pet deeply when it's alive, and often bond more with my pets than I do with my family, but once that animal dies, I just sort of feel nothing. I don't want contact with the dead body (mostly because that's just one more thing on the list of things that disgust me), won't touch it, look at it, or think about it. It's no longer my "pet" once it dies. There are only about 2 or 3 animals that I can honestly remember feeling emotion over once they died. I've been accused of being very cold and cruel because I can't cry and go on about an animal dying. Sometimes I'll feel a twinge of sadness, but usually it's just like "Ok, it's dead, time to bury it." Makes me seem heartless, but really I'm not.

My first emotion after my second daughter was born was "Thank God that's over, I'm hungry, is there anything to eat?" Sure, they put her in my arms, and I looked down into her pudgy little face, but I felt nothing for her. Absolutely nothing. I was diagnosed 3 months later with PPD, and the medicine did help, but not for other things that I should feel emotion over. My older DD is a lot like me in that aspect. Times when I think she should be crying, she's not, and she appears to be unphased. It's usually when something is taken away from her, especially a book or a pet, that she will cry, and cry hard. I've been accused of being selfish, ignorant, cold hearted, etc., but I just don't see it that way. I have to sometimes make a conscious effort to sympathize. Last year in Jan of '09 my best friend died. Wonderful woman, I still miss her. I drove up to Chicago for her wake, I would have walked if I had to, and I attended the wake with my older DD and my aunt. I remember walking up to the casket and looking down at her, and I had trouble connecting her dead body to the friend that I loved so dearly. It was like my brain couldn't make the connection. I didn't cry as I stood there looking down at her, but I did cry when memories of her, when she had been alive, were mentioned. I thought there was something wrong with me that night. My older DD didn't cry at all, and my friend had been more like an aunt to her than anyone else. Instead she took my friends two youngest and kept them occupied so they weren't constantly wandering up to their mother's casket` and getting in the way. I remember thinking it was odd that she didn't seem upset, but the thought or autism or aspergers didn't even cross my mind at that time. I'm like that at wakes though. The one I took the hardest, and I didn't cry very much during it, was that of my grandmother. Thinking about her is what upset me, not seeing her body. Does that make sense? I often know what I should be feeling, and when to feel it, but I often just can't make that connection. Lack of empathy? I dunno, I'm still learning all about aspergers, and it would seem that I have A LOT of learning ahead of me.

 

[redhen]

Where did you take this online test? Can you put the link in here? Thanks!

 

[Widget]

Quote:
There are several tests. If you just do a search for Asperger's test you can find many of them. Some link to the official DSM-4 criteria. That's the Diagnostic and Statisical Manual of Mental Disorders. Other links are the various online tests that may or may not be accurate.

 

[chicken_china_mom]

Quote:
Here are the ones I took and had my kids take. This first link, it is not the official one, however, it gives a MUCH more detailed report than the official one. When you get to the results page and read all 14 pages. It gives a complete, detailed report of each section so that you can see not only IF you are an Aspie, but where your biggest issues would lie. It's a very helpful quiz in my opinion:

http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

And here is the link to the official Asperger's quiz. This is the quiz everyone is talking about where the average person would score around 16.4, but we're all up in the 30's.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html

You can look up more tests, but to be honest, the rest of the tests are really just this second test as they ask all the EXACT same questions. Hope that helps.