Published on 12, July, 2020
Diagnosed with mild high-performance Aspergers aged 60 in 2015, I need to sort out adolescent complex trauma caused before Aspergers was known of. IQ 153-4, top career, dominant.
I have the tools to handle it, having consoled a simple instance, but can't find a CBT counsellor with both trauma and high-perf Aspie experience to monitor what will effectively be an adult form of CATT. Therefore, I need to extend the knowledge of a trauma-aware CBT specialist, per my NAS supervisor-counsellor.
Which takes me into needing a write-up on high-performance intellect. It's all very well saying we think differently, but let's get specific.
Hi Rahere
May I ask how much you understand about your own Asperger's? Are you aware of all the subtle and different ways it affects you in your daily life? 5 years is not actually very long to get your head around all the ways where you suddenly realise how different we are to *normal* people.
May I also ask how social are you? Do you have family and friends around you?
You utterly miss my point. You shouldn't diagnose without an understanding of the mechanism you're dealing with, and if, as seems to be the case, this is what's been going on, it's a breach of medical ethics. Firstly, I'm not disordered. Autism may be. Low-performance Aspergers may be, the other minor classifications likewise. I'm just differently ordered, more complexely ordered. So I'm looking at discrimination. Secondly, If nobody else is going to say what's what, then it's up to us to speak for ourselves.
What does happen in my case is that I routinely use most of my brainpower. I have only vestigial beta phase sleep. I may need to slow occasionally rather than have my neuroceptive subconscious trigger a full Innate Alarm System freeze as a form of meltdown, but it still leaves me faster than most.
The other cause of meltdown, I'd suggest, is mainstream abuse trauma caused by the disagnostic process itself. From one moment to the next, you label children as mad, bad and dangerous to know. You then force your brightest to drag along at the speed of the slowest donkey in the class, punishing them for the frustration the teacher's caused, and eventually excluding them. You're incriminating them.
I've been me for 65 years, and you're not redefining me on zero evidence. I'm not bothered if Norman Normal can't keep up, but I am annoyed how the top 1% of the population, or more, are trashed by his demands we be like him. His ilk caused me trauma I'm now addressing, and I need someone who's not going to abuse me to monitor. As a CBT Therapist who's trauma- and high-performance Aspie-aware doesn't seem to exist, I'll have to brief one. It would be better to haveva broader base, whence my question.
You seem to have assumed an awful lot from my reply.
I'm not diagnosing anything - you're the one telling us. I'm a mid-50s aspie too - but I've been around and I'm very self-aware. Your original post had me intrigued - especially you telling us your i.q. and that you're 'dominant'.
I just wondered what sort of person you are.
Let me go into the Tavistock in detail. In the early 1960s, it was recognised kids need an IQ diagnosis to identify issues early. A project started, and contact was made between my primary school and the Tavistock, building the reference base. They opened up normally with a profiling check, the same huge IQ test set to all, ages 7-13. My 8 year old classmates gave up quite early, I was just starting to struggle when the time was up.
Some months later, a delighted headmaster announced in assembly the school had been accepted, reading from their letter, "and particular congratulations go to Jeremy Main, who has the General Knowledge of a 14 year old." I felt the wave of hatred immediately. The bullying started, by 12 I was in protective measures. I've never really reintegrated since.
The GK test was followed by a cohort test, the morning of Churchill's funeral. Then the outliers were retested - to the delight of the donkeys, I was included. Then, finally, on my own at their Belsize Park offices, when I was 12. After the test, a short wait, the Head Honcho descended, congratulated me without explaining why. I was being added to the main baseline group, so I could never test again. It's in the maths. I was no more than a can of beans to them.
Roll on 50 years, Harley Street wakes up. IQ 153-4 aged 60 implies 160s at peak, so I can look myself up in the IQ baseline group, which is thin at that level. That early GK result corroborates it, before Binet they used GK vs age, 14/8.5=165%. I wonder who the first 163 was? The Tavistock's destroyed its records. The High Court just nailed their ethics for gender reassignment. I have nothing to add. They shouldn't have been allowed. I don't care if Sigmund Freud was one of theirs. They had a duty to tell me what they knew. I've lived my life unsupported with a hand tied behind my back as a result, believing myself normal. I am who I am, prizes and assessments be damned. But the resentment still has to clear, the damning knowledge that I could never be like the Neurotypicals. I now know it's futile to try.
The killer touch is the realisation I'm one of millions. We're kept isolated, denied a social life, denied family lives because we're the freak kept locked away in the tower. It's a miracle we're not still executed, burned at the stake. Human rights? I could spit.