[Individuation]

I'm actually going to answer this at face value, hoping I don't piss of ALL the female aspies. What does AS look like in girls:

Moody and kind of domineering. Unable to deal with change. Generally highly intelligent. More likely to have obsessions that deal with language or the humanities than are men, who are more into machines and parts of objects. Often sort of seem to vacillate between being kind of childlike and being really, really self-possessed. Poor impulse control. Often either a lot of sexual partners, without being terribly conflicted about it in a self-esteem sort of way, or very few, very close sexual partners, or near asexuality. Not a lot of "dating," though, in the way most people seem to do it.

It can be really hard to separate the PTSD from adult female aspies from the actual symptoms of AS, so some manifest symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder (I don't, but I've seen it). Bipolar is another common mis- or co-diagnosis (again, not me, but I've seen it a LOT.)

 

[Individuation]

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Originally Posted by Justthatgirl Hala, your initial paragraph fit me spot-on. (As for sexuality, only one partner, I married him, and we're not as active as he'd like us to be. I just don't have the interest.) Your point about PTSD was also interesting because I know without a doubt that I have that. However, I wonder if all my life it was PTSD (grew up w/ abusive bi-polar parents) or if it was ptsd/trauma/Asperger's. do you know what I mean?

Yup. Grew up with my own bipolar nightmare of a parent. For a few years I was convinced I was bipolar, partly because I briefly saw a therapist who diagnosed every attractive woman who walked into his office as a comorbid bipolar/borderline. Seriously. I met his other patients, all the pretty girls had that diagnosis. Woman issues much?

Interestingly, the drug cocktails I've been on since the AS diagnosis (generally some combination of Wellbutrin/Adderall/Zoloft/Provigil) would send anyone with the slightest tendency towards bipolar into shrieking, spiraling mania. For me, they just about jolt me out of the executive dysfunction, and I'm choosing to sacrifice a bit more sensory sensitivity/proneness to meltdowns for the ability to focus and execute tasks, because I'm an adult and can do that. I doubt a parent would say "Oh, more sensory defensiveness and less interest in socializing? But he'll have an easier time pursuing his special interests? Sign me up!" However, I've seen adult auties make that choice all the time.

 

[Individuation]

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Originally Posted by Justthatgirl How old were you when you got dx'd w/ AS?

27 (5 years ago). However, it had been mentioned earlier, just wasn't official. The first psychologist to mention something with "Asperger" in the name (in 1994) thought AS was a personality disorder that looked like autism--it wasn't even in the DSM at the time. I was actually the first person I ever knew to have this diagnosis--I didn't really know anything about it until it was applied to me. I never thought it would be so well-known that anyone would ever have any idea what I was talking about; I remember people laughing at the name when I tried to broach the subject with them

 

[Individuation]

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Originally Posted by Justthatgirl I also needed order but couldn't make order for myself. I feel like I get overwhelmed very quickly and can't fix it. The lack of order in the house drives me nuts. Today at the zoo there was a lot of chaos and noise in one of the exhibits (an enclosed exhibit, aquarium-like) and dh was asking me a question but I couldn't respond. My brain shut down until I could get out of the exhibit.

Definitely. That's sort of why the cocktail of meds--to give me the ability to create some order, as opposed to getting kind of... paralyzed?

I have a pretty long list of things I just don't do anymore, that I used to try to do (ride subways, go to movies, things like that) which I tend not to make a big deal of because it makes a lot of people think that my life just isn't worth living if I don't do these things and it's so sad that I don't, while I just love being an adult because I can call the shots and just never go to a movie again.

I find (and this is just me) that there's a trade-off. If I'm very "high-functioning" in terms of work/energy/intellectual pursuits, such as getting lots of schoolwork done and making and keeping non-social plans, I tend to be seriously "low-functioning" in a dealing-with-people way and more sensitive to overstimulation and my environment. On the other hand, when I make the effort (as I did for most of my 20s) to sort of "de-autistify," I'm pretty much useless as far as accomplishing anything, because all my energy is going into, I guess, passing.

A quick example. I had a party in January (a real one, people over and everything, mostly because I thought my husband and daughter would like it and we'd never done anything like that before), after taking a semester off. I could NEVER have done something like that during a time I was actively engaged in academic work, I would be way too non-social.

I sometimes wonder if parents think about that, when they are doing so much social-skills training--that maybe the effort they're teaching their child to put into eye contact and the like will one day be taking up the energy he might have been able to put into composing or computers or something. I mean, whichever way you slice it, we're going to be crappy socializers; we may, however, get very good at the things we're good at--if allowed to.*

*Obligatory disclaimer: not knocking ALL therapies here, therapies can be good and I've had them. Just questioning if the baby doesn't get thrown out with the bathwater sometimes (isn't that a lovely expression?)

ETA: JTG, we've totally thread-jacked. Email me if you'd like!