9 ms·

I'm diagnosed. No brain scan required, but heteroanamnesis was. People who know you well like your parents or partner will be extensively interviewed. As well a

by Fnoord 3y ago

I'm diagnosed. No brain scan required, but heteroanamnesis was. People who know you well like your parents or partner will be extensively interviewed. As well as yourself, and you (and they) will get many questionnaires which will be cross referenced. Doesn't feel like an insult at all to me. But then again I've long ago accepted the way I am (society does not). The way I feel is constantly between bored and overloaded. Simple tasks can overload, yet complex matter or social settings (birthdays, dinner, chrores, etc) can bore me. I have this with programming but also putting the dishes in the dishwasher but also in gaming. There are too many possibilities. Yet I really dig the freedom to explore the puzzles. Because if the sandbox is too strict, I feel trapped. Which is why vi is a great editor but also one I will never fully master. And that's OK; c'est la vi.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
> Doesn't feel like an insult at all to me. That’s too funny. I should have known better! I didn’t mean it literally as a personal attack. This comment describes how I meant it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39050062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39050062. I definitely appreciate that it was taken literally. I often do that unless I’ve already encountered the phrase.
wkat4242 3y ago
That sounds very familiar. Either being bored or completely overloaded. Both are pretty demotivating unfortunately.
SequoiaHope 3y ago
I had such a hard time researching autism after someone mentioned it might apply to me because I found most articles to be very stigmatizing. A lot of language like "ASD is a developmental disorder that impairs a person's ability to communicate" etc. Looking for actual examples now, I am seeing more nuanced language (eg "People with ASD may respond differently to the world"), but the stigmatizing language I previously found really put me off of it for a long time. Slowly I have embraced my differences as somehow on the spectrum, but I still sort of have this feeling of "different people are different" and I question whether pathologizing differences is that useful. Though I do hear people who say that diagnosis was helpful to them.
- s1gnp0st 3y ago
  Yep, I think it's a useful phenotype, not a disease unless the degree to which the otherwise useful traits manifest causes one to struggle to live a happy life.
  - skissane 3y ago
    > Yep, I think it's a useful phenotype, not a disease unless the degree to which the otherwise useful traits manifest causes one to struggle to live a happy life. Yes, it is important to distinguish phenotypes from disorders. If one has the phenotype, but isn’t impaired by it to a clinically significant degree, one does not have the disorder (ASD), but one does have the broad autism phenotype (BAP; aka the broader autism phenotype or subclinical ASD). [0] The number of people who have the phenotype without the disorder is likely several times those having the disorder. The broad phenotype is particularly common among close blood relatives (parents/siblings/children) of those with the disorder. It is also has an elevated prevalence among STEM professionals. I think it is unfortunate there is not greater public awareness of BAP and its distinction from ASD. Probably many of the people who describe themselves as “on the spectrum” in a colloquial sense have BAP not ASD. [0] strictly speaking, one can speak of a narrow autism phenotype (phenotype with the clinical disorder) and a broad(er) autism phenotype (phenotype without the clinical disorder), which together make up the autism/ASD phenotype as a whole. Given the distinction between the two is clinical, it is possible in theory for the exact same phenotype to be broad for one person and narrow for another - one person might be in a less supportive environment which produces clinical impairment, the other in a more supportive environment in which impairment remains at a subclinical level - impairment arises through phenotype-environment interaction, it is not always inherent to the phenotype in itself
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
      > BAP Thanks! I will remember the categorization. It’s certainly useful to distinguish between a person who needs a full-time caretaker and one who can hold a full-time job where the only categoric similarity is “they think more like each other than not”. I’ll try not to use ASD for myself anymore.

by Fnoord 3y ago

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago

> Doesn't feel like an insult at all to me. That’s too funny. I should have known better! I didn’t mean it literally as a personal attack. This comment describes how I meant it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39050062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39050062. I definitely appreciate that it was taken literally. I often do that unless I’ve already encountered the phrase.

wkat4242 3y ago

That sounds very familiar. Either being bored or completely overloaded. Both are pretty demotivating unfortunately.

SequoiaHope 3y ago

I had such a hard time researching autism after someone mentioned it might apply to me because I found most articles to be very stigmatizing. A lot of language like "ASD is a developmental disorder that impairs a person's ability to communicate" etc. Looking for actual examples now, I am seeing more nuanced language (eg "People with ASD may respond differently to the world"), but the stigmatizing language I previously found really put me off of it for a long time. Slowly I have embraced my differences as somehow on the spectrum, but I still sort of have this feeling of "different people are different" and I question whether pathologizing differences is that useful. Though I do hear people who say that diagnosis was helpful to them.

s1gnp0st 3y ago
Yep, I think it's a useful phenotype, not a disease unless the degree to which the otherwise useful traits manifest causes one to struggle to live a happy life.
- skissane 3y ago
  > Yep, I think it's a useful phenotype, not a disease unless the degree to which the otherwise useful traits manifest causes one to struggle to live a happy life. Yes, it is important to distinguish phenotypes from disorders. If one has the phenotype, but isn’t impaired by it to a clinically significant degree, one does not have the disorder (ASD), but one does have the broad autism phenotype (BAP; aka the broader autism phenotype or subclinical ASD). [0] The number of people who have the phenotype without the disorder is likely several times those having the disorder. The broad phenotype is particularly common among close blood relatives (parents/siblings/children) of those with the disorder. It is also has an elevated prevalence among STEM professionals. I think it is unfortunate there is not greater public awareness of BAP and its distinction from ASD. Probably many of the people who describe themselves as “on the spectrum” in a colloquial sense have BAP not ASD. [0] strictly speaking, one can speak of a narrow autism phenotype (phenotype with the clinical disorder) and a broad(er) autism phenotype (phenotype without the clinical disorder), which together make up the autism/ASD phenotype as a whole. Given the distinction between the two is clinical, it is possible in theory for the exact same phenotype to be broad for one person and narrow for another - one person might be in a less supportive environment which produces clinical impairment, the other in a more supportive environment in which impairment remains at a subclinical level - impairment arises through phenotype-environment interaction, it is not always inherent to the phenotype in itself
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    > BAP Thanks! I will remember the categorization. It’s certainly useful to distinguish between a person who needs a full-time caretaker and one who can hold a full-time job where the only categoric similarity is “they think more like each other than not”. I’ll try not to use ASD for myself anymore.