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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

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.

manwe150 5y ago
I assume ‘empathize’ is meant there?
whalesalad 5y ago
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.
- 323 5y ago
  Maybe they should split it into more specific categories. Like we don't just say "you have heart disease".
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    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
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      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."
      - netizen-936824 5y ago
        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.
    - caddemon 5y ago
      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.
    - shakna 5y ago
      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.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    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.
    - pas 5y ago
      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.)
      - oaktrout 5y ago
        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).
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  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
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    > 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?
    - whalesalad 5y ago
      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.
      - DarylZero 5y ago
        And if you think diagnoses are bad, wait 'til you see what passes for treatments.
      - bratwurst3000 5y ago
        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…
63 5y ago
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).
- torstenvl 5y ago
  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?"
- Fnoord 5y ago
  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.
blueflow 5y ago
> 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.
- TOGoS 5y ago
  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.
  - obedm 5y ago
    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.
kstenerud 5y ago
> 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.
- Lhiw 5y ago
  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.
  - TOGoS 5y ago
    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:bitprint:O6E4KWAPG6L4HIECKUF5ZC22CWFVYKRU.QONNONZR6Z2SDUOMEHDR46A5WS27B4GVUNLZDBA&n2rHost= http://www.nuke24.net/projects/Playlister/?playlist-uri=urn:...
    - robocat 5y ago
hosh 5y ago
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.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  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.
- mtsr 5y ago
  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.
sidlls 5y ago
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.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  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).
bjourne 5y ago
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.
- rkk3 5y ago
  > 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.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    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.
    - selimthegrim 5y ago
      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.
kayamon 5y ago
> Don’t destroy that by getting into a semantic debate. And you've just done... what exactly?
threatofrain 5y ago
Also only about half of autism cases present with differences in sensory sensitivity. Not a core feature of autism.

manwe150 5y ago

I assume ‘empathize’ is meant there?

whalesalad 5y ago

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.

323 5y ago
Maybe they should split it into more specific categories. Like we don't just say "you have heart disease".
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  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
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    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."
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
      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.
  - caddemon 5y ago
    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.
  - shakna 5y ago
    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.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  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.
  - pas 5y ago
    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.)
    - oaktrout 5y ago
      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).
netizen-936824 5y ago
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
- guerrilla 5y ago
  > 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?
  - whalesalad 5y ago
    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.
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      And if you think diagnoses are bad, wait 'til you see what passes for treatments.
    - bratwurst3000 5y ago
      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…

63 5y ago

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).

torstenvl 5y ago
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?"
Fnoord 5y ago
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.

blueflow 5y ago

> 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.

TOGoS 5y ago
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.
- obedm 5y ago
  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.

kstenerud 5y ago

> 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.

Lhiw 5y ago
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.
- TOGoS 5y ago
  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:bitprint:O6E4KWAPG6L4HIECKUF5ZC22CWFVYKRU.QONNONZR6Z2SDUOMEHDR46A5WS27B4GVUNLZDBA&n2rHost= http://www.nuke24.net/projects/Playlister/?playlist-uri=urn:...
  - robocat 5y ago

hosh 5y ago

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.

netizen-936824 5y ago
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.
mtsr 5y ago
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.

sidlls 5y ago

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.

Fnoord 5y ago
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).

bjourne 5y ago

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.

rkk3 5y ago
> 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.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  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.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    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.

kayamon 5y ago

> Don’t destroy that by getting into a semantic debate. And you've just done... what exactly?

threatofrain 5y ago

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