Reply #83: Part of this - a large part - is better diagnostic techniques

[hifiguy]

I was born in the mid-1950s. Got the normal vaccines of the day, which were a fraction of what kids get these days. I was a weird kid. A VERY weird kid Bookish, socially inept with peers, highly intelligent, preferred the company of adults, had limited and fanatical interests. I was also "academically gifted" and accelerated two years in school at the outset. Had a ton of social problems, was a constant bully magnet, never fit in anywhere. Finally had two "nervous breakdowns" in my early teens and was diagnosed as everything from "maladjusted" to borderline schizophrenic. None of these were accurate

Thanks to hypnotherapy, Valium and certain self-administered herbal compounds :) the extreme social anxiety resulting from a very traumatic childhood was somewhat controlled and I managed to get through my late teens and early twenties OK. Thrived and excelled when I went to college and and Ivy League law school. I was still odd but in that context it didn't matter. Fell on my face in the professional world due to my social ineptitude and the class structure of my chosen profession, where who your parents were was a big deal. And I was as working class as they come in addition to my social difficulties.

Beat myself up for years for "not getting it", lost job after job despite an academic resume most people would kill for. Then I was diagnosed as Aspergers by three different therapists, including a psychiatrist. That explained everything. As one therapist put it "you raise others' 'red flags' but only on a subconscious level. You project just off enough that people realize it, but not consciously and reject you without even knowing why." I can't do direct eye contact with humans but can with my cat, don't do small talk, have a small set of things I am passionately interested in and don't give much of a hoot about anything else. I am relentlessly logical and I swear I was born an atheist and a skeptic. I've always been that way and always will be. It's the way my brain is wired. I always use Data from STNG as an explanatory example when people ask or are clearly curious about the way I am.

The biggest problem is that nerdy kids like I was (and I am still a nerdy adult) were always out there but there was no name for us. Now that there's a name for it, it can be applied and is, perhaps overly enthusiastically. Not every slightly nerdy or shy kid is on the spectrum. I certainly was. And I suspect most of these diagnoses are made to Asperger's and its cousin HFA. Classic Kanner's autism is pretty damned hard to misdiagnose. Same spectrum but very different presentations.

It's a genetic thing, IMO, and I think these days, with the rise of IT professions that are geek-magnets, more geeks are marrying other geeks and reproducing the neurology of autism spectrum disorders at a higher rate than ever before. Many in the earlier generations of geeks like mine have never had a date much less a relationship.

After years of reading and research, I am convinced that this is a genetic variation related to internal brain wiring, as normal as being gay or left-handed. It's a normal human variation and it just IS. We are born the way we are and nothing can change it. And society had better start getting used to us.

I would not change one thing about myself and am at last comfortable in my own skin. I have issues, but so do neurotypicals, and I would not trade my problems for theirs.