6 ms·

In my experience, anything that allows one to better model their feelings can have significant impact on life. That might come from a diagnosis, though I haven'

by tzar 9y ago

In my experience, anything that allows one to better model their feelings can have significant impact on life. That might come from a diagnosis, though I haven't experienced that myself. When someone says, "Nothing is wrong with me, I'm just autistic" they might feel as though they can stop predicting how they'll respond in a certain situation—or as a result of a certain decision—based on what others expect of them. Instead they have the opportunity to anticipate themselves without judgement and stop doing things that hurt them.

TomK32 9y ago
That and all this acting can be exhausting or make you avoid such situations altogether.
quadrangle 9y ago
Or you just get distorted view from the streetlight effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
- tzar 9y ago
  I'm not sure which you're thinking of as the streetlight, the diagnosis or normality? Both are saying, "What you're after is here." It's up to oneself to follow the lead that resonates the most.
  - quadrangle 9y ago
    The diagnosis. Normality puts bias mainly on the WHAT in "what you're after". The streetlight-effect is about the idea that you think you'll find what you're looking for by looking at the available information. The concern is: a complex human being with a ton of influences and factors cannot be diagnosed in ways we don't know how to diagnose. So, diagnoses represent the street-lit areas of knowledge, the stuff we understand somewhat. It's possible that the deeper insights come from places that we don't understand well and don't know how to diagnosis (so are like the dark areas where it's harder to find what you're looking for, but where the thing you're looking for might actually be). The point is: if a diagnosis really is the insight you need, then great. But it's not NECESSARILY. So, it's not true that getting the diagnosis is always worthwhile. There's a cost to spending time getting diagnosed for things and it might be at the expense of not spending time elsewhere. And in SOME cases, the diagnosis doesn't even approach the area where the real issues are. In short, the street-light-effect says: "if we figure out how to measure something, we can risk ignoring the enormous significance of all the things we don't know how to measure". The "streetlight effect" isn't about the light it's about the searcher being silly by looking only where things are already lit up even though that's sometimes not where the thing they are looking for is.
- dkarl 9y ago
  Yeah, that could be a risk, especially in the absence of a professional diagnosis. Autism spectrum disorder comes with a ton of comorbidity, meaning that there are a lot of other problems that commonly coexist with autism, and informal online communities for Aspergers seem to downplay that aspect pretty aggressively. There are places where you can basically copy-paste a description of social anxiety disorder and they'll tell you you're an Aspie. I suspected Aspergers might be part of the picture for me, but things like that made me decide to and wait and see if my therapist brought it up.

by tzar 9y ago

TomK32 9y ago

That and all this acting can be exhausting or make you avoid such situations altogether.

quadrangle 9y ago

Or you just get distorted view from the streetlight effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

tzar 9y ago
I'm not sure which you're thinking of as the streetlight, the diagnosis or normality? Both are saying, "What you're after is here." It's up to oneself to follow the lead that resonates the most.
- quadrangle 9y ago
  The diagnosis. Normality puts bias mainly on the WHAT in "what you're after". The streetlight-effect is about the idea that you think you'll find what you're looking for by looking at the available information. The concern is: a complex human being with a ton of influences and factors cannot be diagnosed in ways we don't know how to diagnose. So, diagnoses represent the street-lit areas of knowledge, the stuff we understand somewhat. It's possible that the deeper insights come from places that we don't understand well and don't know how to diagnosis (so are like the dark areas where it's harder to find what you're looking for, but where the thing you're looking for might actually be). The point is: if a diagnosis really is the insight you need, then great. But it's not NECESSARILY. So, it's not true that getting the diagnosis is always worthwhile. There's a cost to spending time getting diagnosed for things and it might be at the expense of not spending time elsewhere. And in SOME cases, the diagnosis doesn't even approach the area where the real issues are. In short, the street-light-effect says: "if we figure out how to measure something, we can risk ignoring the enormous significance of all the things we don't know how to measure". The "streetlight effect" isn't about the light it's about the searcher being silly by looking only where things are already lit up even though that's sometimes not where the thing they are looking for is.
dkarl 9y ago
Yeah, that could be a risk, especially in the absence of a professional diagnosis. Autism spectrum disorder comes with a ton of comorbidity, meaning that there are a lot of other problems that commonly coexist with autism, and informal online communities for Aspergers seem to downplay that aspect pretty aggressively. There are places where you can basically copy-paste a description of social anxiety disorder and they'll tell you you're an Aspie. I suspected Aspergers might be part of the picture for me, but things like that made me decide to and wait and see if my therapist brought it up.