Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Asperger's and/or Gifted Dx after Your Child's Dx?

I would dearly love to know what "gravitational insecurity" means! I suspect it's not what I think.

I am very similar to almost everything you posted here, so you are not alone. I have never thought of myself as "gifted", but I've always known I was the smartest person in the room no matter how big the room was -- my whole family is that way. My oldest brother flew under the radar all his life, except to people who really knew him, but the rest of us have always stuck out like sore thumbs. They didn't even have "gifted" in my school -- it was just competition between me and one boy for the top of the class, and teachers finding us things to do.

I've always been a social nightmare. In grade school, I had my nose in a book and didn't notice anything, but by junior high and high school I was being bullied and threatened and outcast, and I never had a clue as to why people acted that way toward me. Someone told me that if everyone had a problem with me, that the problem was me, but that didn't make any sense because I hadn't done anything wrong that I could see -- just pointing out the obvious and saying what I thought and what I knew. I'm still that way, although I have learned how to "make nice" a little bit better. But I still get depressed trying to figure out why people react to me the way they do.

I probably wouldn't even notice what Temple Grandin was wearing. I know there is a serious difference between me and normal women as far as that stuff goes -- I wear jeans from the thrift store, and t-shirts with funny stuff on them, and sneakers until they wear out and then I get a new pair, can't be bothered with makeup, cut my hair when I can't stand it anymore. I stand around on the edges when it comes to the parents at the school, feel like a wallflower all the time, despise crowds and social things.
As for Asperger's, I haven't been diagnosed by anybody but myself. When I started researching it concerning DS, I realized that if they had had AS when I was a kid, I would have been diagnosed with it for sure -- except my mom would never have let anyone hang the label on me. I took a quiz called Autism Spectrum Quotient on Facebook, not sure if the quiz posted here is that one or not, and scored a definite hit. It was my cousin who linked to it originally, and she was higher than I was -- and she has a son with AS, and I would not hesitate to say at least two other cousins have it as well.

Thanks, DeeDee... what I said was that "by others' standards" I am an underachiever; I'm fine with me, for the most part. It's the blasted social issues and misunderstandings that frustrate me so.

I do love that I 'get' my ds.

Okay, my ds and I both took this quiz. I could see where a few years ago I would have given more Aspie answers, but I came out fairly NT with only hints of Aspie thrown in. My son, however, almost balanced perfectly between NT and Aspie. LOL His 8 y/o reply was, "Well how's THAT supposed to help?"

My aspie score was 78/200. My NT score was 143/200.
My son's was 103/200. My son's NT was 107/200.

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply.

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I'm going to go ahead and do a general reply now; my full screen reply won't work for some reaosn and I don't want to post oodles of replies. I do so much want to thank you all for replying. It helps me so much to have your perspective. I simply do not have people like myself around me and it's so difficult to not feel as if I'm the one with the issue.

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Re: what Nautigal stated:

"Someone told me that if everyone had a problem with me, that the problem was me, but that didn't make any sense because I hadn't done anything wrong that I could see -- just pointing out the obvious and saying what I thought and what I knew. "
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I came to that place a few years ago when I began to ask myself if I was overlooking some of my own issues. Surely I wouldn't be having such conflicts if all was well with my own self. So, I, for the first time ever, really began to make a real effort to watch my own actions and to not be confrontational in any way. (I disliked this, btw, because I felt like I was being fake. Ack!) Still, nothing really changed, and if anything, I felt worse about it all because I was giving up a part of myself by doing this. So, I'm presently back at a place where I'm just shrugging my shoulders and doing a mid-life review.

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Re: Cricket2's post:

Thank you so much for taking the time to pick out the individual parts of my post; this truly helped me very much. It's as if you were inside my own mind, thinking as I do, when responding.

I esp. appreciate the comment on not getting both of your children, though you dearly love them both; that helps, too.

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Again, thanks to ALL of you who gave your input. I cannot tell you how very refreshing it was to read about your own experiences and thoughts; they mirrored my own.

I took it and showed up neurotypical for everything except social, at which point it tells me that "a high score is related to many psychiatric diagnoses and is sometimes required in order to get a diagnosis."

Which I already knew, given that I suffer from chronic "stress and overload" (shutting down and having a meltdown) and "consequences of not fitting in" (depression, being bullied, low self-esteem, mood swings).

Which is consistent with my particular problem of having extremely limited coping skills and social skills. I figure I'm probably 14 years old, emotionally.

My in-laws are apparently convinced that I have AS, whereas I consider myself more of a wandering social-emotional catastrophe.

I just tried that test and came up with 117 Aspie, 88 NT. And a spiderweb picture I won't even try to interpret!


Jon, I love it!

That's pretty funny, Jon. My whole DH's family is very different from mine; they are wonderful people but very LOUD and when we go out to dinner with them often many people in the restaurant stare at our table because it is so LOUD, which of course causes me acute embarrassment but I keep it to myself. They of course think I am mouse-like and somewhat strange. However, recently DH and I listened to the audio version of "Quiet," a book about the value of introverts and introversion, and was very much cheered. Thank goodness being introverted hasn't been pathologized (yet). Anyway, I'm not sure that's relevant to you but if so you might enjoy the book.
http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-I..._1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334496291&sr=1-1

Cheers!

FWIW, this describes me as well, but I scored highly neurotypical on the quiz. Meanwhile, my DD, who has a lot more ASD traits than I do, has an amazing sense of fashion, color, and style, and clothes are important to her (but she is not much influenced by trends...that is, she considers them but only adopts them if SHE likes them). Just another data point...

ETA: I just did the quiz for DD (as best as I could--I overestimated when not sure) and got:

Your Aspie score: 79 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 103 of 200
You seem to have both Aspie and neurotypical traits

Well, there you go.

Fascinating test. I also seem to have both Aspie and NT traits.

edited to add: and I have terrible trouble with the receptionists of my favourite (smart) Drs. What's with that?

FWIW, that test's results made no sense to me given the experience of being me, and were inconsistent with the results I have repeatedly got on taking a validated questionnaire-style autism test, and in the absence of validation data I hypothesise that this test is a pile of *&%$ :-)

Agreed. Online assessments of any kind are of no diagnostic use whatsoever. Better to see a reputable neuropsychologist and get an ADOS if one is concerned about the possibility of autism.

The pop-culture appropriation of "Aspie" is troubling; it reduces autism to a kind of personality quirk, instead of the lifelong disability it is.

DeeDee