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.
Rahere said: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.
Here follows is a paper that has a very reasonable representational diagram that depicts the masking process that results when the personality embodiments are shielded with personae, as being socially shared and enforced behaviour sets, which are behaviourally mimicked from those dominating / manipulating us ~ and modelled (adapted) when we learn experimentally to dominate / manipulate others:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5509825/
Apologies for not dealing directly with your inquiries at this time, as I only just happened across your thread, and as a night-shifter I need to get some sleep or rest and figured that the above information may serve as a starting point. Also, there is a book called The Complete Guide To Asperger Syndrome. by Tony Attwood, if you would prefer to read that and abridge a synopsis more to your particularities involving the generally accepted nomenclature and so forth ~ here follows a PDF link:
http://www.autismforthvalley.co.uk/files/5314/4595/7798/Attwood-Tony-The-Complete-Guide-to-Aspergers-Syndrome.pdf
If any of that may be of assistance?
I've just scanned Attwood. He starts from DSM-V and dismisses High Functioning Autism because he can't diagnose it. That's not surprising because he's not been bothered to look. I'm actually offended.
He talks of two major domains of behaviour, repetitive/restrictive traits and social communication difficulties. I spent my career in environments demanding high neuroflexibility, and successfully so, weathering two complete reviews in the European Crisis Management centre. I've just picked up on Trauma Psychology, positing a new class of perception, transception, the awareness of the intangible, as it pops up everywhere from empathy to meridian technology to meditation to the numinous, and it's getting talked about. The treatments break down into gateway approaches to light, guided meditation as a path to access the amygdala memory. Pick your doorway. My mentor, an NAS supervisor, is talking about me training in CATT to create AATT as a result. This is not fixational behaviour.
What is often taken as that is my capacity to handle gigantic subjects. They may need a lot of work, my current one is still going strong after 16 years. It's because it encapsulates 5 eras of human history, and is at the centre of modern culture. Is that a fixation? Or is it because you've got the intellectual capacity of a teapot? I can at least cite an instruction from the Belgian Supreme Court to dig and not stop digging, and a more recent confirmation from one of the world's top art experts that what I'd come up with at the heart of the birth of the Renaissance is important. It's why I'm, academically, on the edge of the Warburg Institute.
The same can be said of the social communications issue. I'd no more expect the said teapot to try to follow me when all it's done is abuse itself on social media with the occasional "like". General social group theory recognises people are comfortable with others like them. Within 10-15 IQ points either side. That means nobody outside of the genius level. When I was at the 163 top, there was nobody above me, and only the 150s plus below! Communications are a two-way process, and I wasn't, until recently, the one cutting them off, so kindly stop making it my problem. If you want some maths, let's look at me (IQ 153-4), Norman Normal on the median (104) and Simple Simon on the bottom edge of what's taken as functional (70). 154/104 = 104/70. In other words, how Norman sees Simon is how I see him. The trouble is, there's not many simpler than Simon, but half of humanity's simpler than Norman! Turning it on it's head, Attwood makes a disclaimer for those outside the normal range. I must have been, on the top end.
In analogy, it's a bit like expecting a morse code receiver to handle frequency-hopping cellphone signals. It'll go yer-wot? We don't even have a way to communicate in native form, the way we actually think, although I wouldn't be prepared to bet we couldn't do it empathically. I've looked into my mentor's mind and told him something he'd never let on about, and I'm pretty sure the other high functioning aspie in the family can read mine too.
So I'll camp on my position, thanks. Unless someone tells them, we're not going to be heard. Natural group dynamics are being pathologised against us. We were born this way. It's got a genetic factor to it, so it's going to become more significant. It's time to speak.