Could you identify with what is said on these forums and NOT be on the spectrum?

I just wondered what anyone might think, there is just so much common ground and shared experience among the diversity.  I wonder if anyone NT could empathise with it all.  I can see why NT's might read some of it if they have partners or relatives on the spectrum and they are trying to understand, but I wonder if it makes sense to them. The fact that so many are finding their way here and finding kindred spirits and soul food seems like a form of diagnosis to me.  Anyone?

Parents
  • I did a lot of research and soul searching before I braved joining here and dipping my toe in this online water.

    like you said earlier, the reading and researching led to a holy crap, slap me with a brick realisation and things clicked for me and everything seemed to fall into place.

    yes I am married, I have a child, I hold down a full time job...I can act and perform like a "normal-ish" puppet....but often get it wrong and crash and burn at the end of the day....or panic internally...

    no I have not a formal diagnostic...and there seems little support out there for adults anyhow....I don't think that ASD is just a fashionable badge, it is the realisation that you are different, that life, connection, communication and belonging are a massive challenge...it has meant that some have also sunk into depression along the way, and find it difficult to learn life's rule book and put on that "brave face", that "mask"...and anxiety is everyday 

  • Maybe I was a bit too vague, I didn't mean people just arriving here out of the blue, but assumed that from a long held sense of 'not fitting in' people had begun to search.  It seems like one bit of research has led to another for most of us until we got smacked around the chops with the realisation that ASD is really the only thing that makes our lives make any narrative sense 

    I'm sure that every human alive could identify with bits and pieces, it's the amount of it and the constancy/persistance that makes it different to the norm. And I fully accept that nobody is normal. There was something else I was going to say, but I've forgotten it...

Reply
  • Maybe I was a bit too vague, I didn't mean people just arriving here out of the blue, but assumed that from a long held sense of 'not fitting in' people had begun to search.  It seems like one bit of research has led to another for most of us until we got smacked around the chops with the realisation that ASD is really the only thing that makes our lives make any narrative sense 

    I'm sure that every human alive could identify with bits and pieces, it's the amount of it and the constancy/persistance that makes it different to the norm. And I fully accept that nobody is normal. There was something else I was going to say, but I've forgotten it...

Children
  • the academic attainment is only down to books being more forgiving than people and my way of trying to understand the world around me...a result of an over analytic head

  • Questions are good...but wish sometimes that the answers were more common.

    you are right about IQ levels which can also hamper diagnosis or reticence to seek diagnosis... as I gave said in this thread... I have two degrees and a masters, a husband, a son and a full time job...how could I possible be Aspie and why would the NHS fund my diagnosis? 

  • Thanks Ellie, it is a spectrum and I guess I am / we are mainly talking about ASD in people with average or above IQ and no coexisting learning difficulties, but perhaps I'm wrong on that? I have more questions than answers.

  • Hey Spotty it is an interesting exploration...

    i like your comment re: narrative sense and we are talking about a spectrum after all..