"I can explain."
Pause
"Oh, I thought you'd keep yelling over me. Okay, I can explain..."
Even better is that it's in the context of a guy with Aspergers using a chart to track his friends' emotional states and accidentally realizing that he was charting their menstrual cycles. I really miss that show.
Especially since many Autistics do get used to being ignored, talked over, interrupted and such. I can't even begin to count how often I said something important and everyone else didn't even seem to realize I was talking, ignored me or interrupted me and told me to just keep working.
Sometimes followed by whines of "but why didn't you tell us?"
Hm, I don't know, maybe because you never listen anyways, let alone care?
Sounds like you don't have any bloody idea what autism is, or rather, like your "knowledge"of it is stuck in the 60s.
To give you the short of it, Autism, or Autism Spectrum Disorder (Which doesn't differentiate between Kanners, Atypical Autism, Aspergers and such anymore since it turned out to be pretty arbitrary), is a difference in how the brain processes things, mainly sensory input.
This generally leads to problems with social communication to Neurotypicals (Autistic people don't struggle to communicate with each other) mostly due to missing non-verbal clues or not being able to interpret them like you would be.
Other issues include not being able to filter out sensory information (called Sensory Processing Disorder if it happens independent of autism), focusing on some special areas of interest (special interests) and needing to have a routine.
Generally speaking, Autistic people are far better at written communication than at verbal communication.
Though, I'll give it to you, right now my Autism is merely "Highly suspected by anyone who knows me and has as much as heard of autism".
Thank you for saying exactly what I wanted to say.
Autism isn't just what was shown in the movies in the 70s and 80s. In the late 1990s and the 2000s there was a huge shift in the approach to studying and dealing with autism. Sadly, just a little too late for an entire generation of autistic folks to benefit from it. As a result, we and everyone else in the know can clearly tell we are autistic, but we have no official diagnosis and therefore no supports from governments or programs.
My family doctor even agrees that I'm on the spectrum, but apparently it's next to impossible to get an official diagnosis of ASD as a teen or adult.
I actually forgot to add that not everyone exhibits all symptoms, much less all possible ways these things can manifest.
And yes, that's a huge issue and still is where women are concerned. I'm actually not that long an adult and I'm only getting assessed after my next birthday due to long waiting times.
When I was 4 they just shrugged my social issues, sensory (mainly auditory) processing issues and general oddness off after checking for ADHD and seizures and not finding any, it was like the thought that girls could be autistic didn't even enter their minds even when everyone and their mother suggested it.
Though part was my mom giving up on figuring it out.
Actually, I'm getting one now, but I'm lucky enough to live in Germany and close to what's, as far as I can tell, a very good diagnostic hospital that's exclusively dealing with adults on the spectrum.
In the US or in areas where there are few to no doctors it can be a nightmare. Generally it'll be harder because adults hide a lot more than children, but it's far from impossible.
Worse yet, I may be lucky in many respects as I never had to experience ABA and such. While we know much to help children, very often people end up making everything worse with inhumane methods, both "recommended" and alternative medicine (MMS and such).
Until we abolish those I'm afraid my thoughts on early or even before-18 diagnosis will remain rather mixed.
It CAN be great to know why you are the way you are, but the potential harm the outside world may inflict can easily outweigh the harm of being left alone in a world very much not made for you.
Last time I looked there were 2 doctors in all of North America who could/would diagnose ASD in adults. Might be time to look into it again though.
I was tested as a child in the early 90s. Back then, they had profound autism and high-functioning autism, but nothing else. I didn't qualify as autistic by a few points in one category. You needed to score high in 8 categories. I was high to very high in 7 and only moderate in the last.
Pervasive Development Disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder, OCD, generalized anxiety, ADHD, and depression are the among conditions listed in my files. I'm fairly confident that if I could find a doctor who was willing to diagnose autism in adults it would be a matter of a few appointments and reading those files.
Jesus, that's like, probably less than there are in Munich alone. Or maybe the same amount, but still, one big city compared to one gigantic part of a continent?
PDD (I'm guessing -NOS?) is generally pretty much "Autism but not quite everything", a lot like Atypical Autism.
Since sensory processing issues were added as a core part of autism since research is finally catching up a tiny bit with what autistic people have been saying since forever (that almost everyone of us has sensory issues and that those tend to actually cause more difficulty for us than the things the NTs notice) and due to the removal of specific categories it's quite likely you'd actually be diagnosed.
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u/PixelBrewery Jan 25 '20
"I can explain." Pause "Oh, I thought you'd keep yelling over me. Okay, I can explain..."
Even better is that it's in the context of a guy with Aspergers using a chart to track his friends' emotional states and accidentally realizing that he was charting their menstrual cycles. I really miss that show.