[Desafinado]

I have this unique conundrum in that I suspect that I might be high functioning asperger's, but so far I have no way of really verifying this.

After doing a bunch of research over the years it seems like I have some of the symptoms: trouble focusing and communicating in large groups of people, tendency to use large vocabulary, occasionally 'off' social skills. The thing is, though, I seem to have enough intelligence that I can usually compensate for the lack of social skills, at least to the point where they're not overly noticeable.

A few years ago I saw a psychiatrist and asked him about this possibility and he negated it pretty much right away, which threw me right off. My inner experience seems to contradict his viewpoint, but after that I really just didn't know what to think.

In any case, I feel like if I could successfully define my current behavioural pattern I might be able to learn more about myself, and potentially get more support in the future.

Any advice appreciated!

[Hellion]

Hmm your best bet would probably be to see someone who specializes in Autism...so they can do a proper assessment. Here in the U.S that is much harder said than done, since it can be very expensive and difficult to find a proper professional.

A lot of psychiatrists in general aren't exactly very knowledgeable about autism...but yeah if you can compensate for your lack of social skills well enough you're certainly more high functioning than me....I can understand what I read about social skills and such but I still can't implement it in actual social situations.

[Desafinado]

Yea I think I may need to seek out a specialist, which unfortunately isn't so easy to do in Canada. Our health care is cheap, but harder to access.

[CantExplain]

If all you want is an assessment, you can do it privately and pay for it yourself. That's what I did.

[VagabondSoul]

I'm in a similar boat. I wish you the best with this.

[badmouse]

There is no such thing as high-functioning aspergers.

aspergers itself is often called high-functioning autism.

There are quite a few places on the web where you can learn a lot about behaviors associated with aspergers, and then you can go on to explore how people have dealt with that.

Sadly, support is not something you often find in the world of autism.

Best to you hope it all works out

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by badmouse

There is no such thing as high-functioning aspergers.

No? Mr T uses it to describe me, and he's a spectrum specialist.

[badmouse]

I'd love to know his source for that.

I'm an autism advocate in my county - I called several experts that I know before posting that. Maybe it's different where you are. Which is why we'd love to know what your information is.

Does it help?

[rosska]

The term "high functioning Aspergers" has always confused me. I see people use it a lot, but my PDoc said that Aspergers is only ever 'high functioning' in that it is at the upper end of the autism spectrum, but there is no actual Aspergers spectrum. Therefore there cannot be low functioning or high functioning Aspergers, just Aspergers or high functioning Autism.

I had to ask her for clarification on that after reading several blogs where people referred to themselves as having "high functioning Aspergers", but I could never find anything which stated the difference between that and just Aspergers. I wanted to know where I sat on that scale.

One assumption (a personal assumption), is that the phrase became popular as a way to distinguish it more readily from the lower end of the Autism spectrum when speaking to people who don't know very much about it.

[-jimi-]

Well there is milder and more severe Asperger's. Even if Asperger's is by definition high functioning autism. Those who have less intense trait are of course more at risk of never getting a diagnosis and they might never find out what was going on with them. Also, with an aspie like person related to me, I think there are issues with them not understanding themselves, because they don't have severe symptoms enough to be diagnosed (well functioning at home/work) so they are in this weird limbo not having AS but having very similar issues as I do. At least I can put things in a nice little box with a label on it.