Levels of Aspergers

[Progster]

I don't think that's it's so much the case that there are different levels of Asperger's, but more a different spread of symptoms and coping mechanisms - how well you 'function' really depends on the coping mechanisms you have developed. I have a job where I work one to one with young children, and over the years I have learned to do this and cope with many of the challenges that it poses, even though I find this very difficult. One may say that I'm very 'high-functioning', but as soon as I step outside this and have to do something new I don't know how to approach it. I also don't like talking much and can't communicate well in social groups, so in such a situation I would probably not be able to speak and remain silent. Or I would speak, but manage to get out what I want to say by interrupting the conversation going on because in group conversations usually that's the only way I get to speak.

In discussions with other people with AS, I've had 2 issues:

1. I don't talk much, the others talk incessantly. I have slower audio processing and I don't get to speak.
2. They talk about in depth about special interests that I don't share with such as video games, so I feel that I'm on my own and excluded from the conversation and I get bored.

 

[SD_David]

I think it's all part of the wider Autistic Spectrum and thus it's going to effect people differently. I've met alot of aspies IRL and I think I'm somewhere in the middle. Some people I've met were so extrovert and carried themselves well socialy that I wouldn't have thought they even had AS if I didn't know better; but some others I met had virtualy no social life and weren't living independently.

I've travelled abroad on my own, I have a job and while I'm no Casanova I've had a good amount of girlfriends including one long-term relationship (4 years). And yet sometimes in certain social situations the negative aspects of AS can appear and make me feel so much 'lower level' if that's the correct term to use.

 

[OkRad]

HFAs are in a tight spot. We have more depression and suicide rates are higher because we don't even fit in with our fellow Auties and Aspies :-(

I went to a group, too, and it was awful. I liked them and wanted to connect, but even the moms were asking if I worked there.

Then I volunteered at a place for Auties and Aspies and THIS was a wake up call. I was functioning at a much lower level than the LFAs because I had no help. They were dressed nice and had food and all the things to keep them alive while I was staggering in in the same clothes from two weeks, unable to eat or care for myself and it was a real WTFH moment.

HFA need a separate categegory maybe? Some of us a severly deisabled.