moved

I like what you said about life of the high seas. The waves get high at times.
My apologies if I've offended anyone. Best wishes to you all.

because I have Hofstadter-Begin Syndrome

It does not sound freak. It sounds to me like a mild form of asperger (or a very mild form of autism). I suppose you are intelligent and very able to learn. To understand other people, their signals and the connect to other people can be improved by learning and training.

Example: Something simple like regulary playing board games with small groups can help a lot in the long run - and is joyful.

Great post

One of the most enlightened posts I've read on this entire forum.

I've also gotta say, the DSM can be pretty clumsy. Revisions nix some diagnoses, expand others, combine others etc. It's changed much since inception.

Please notice that that previous post of mine

earned me a 12-private-message-long diatribe with somebody trying to convince me that Asperger-NT is paramount to mankind's destiny,

while Hofstadter-Begin Syndrome, MVP-TOC-VCO disease and Iceberg-Einsenberg-Paris-Bordeaux complex "don't exist" !!! (Presposterous!!! I know they exist: I've got all the three of them!!!)

How do you call the obsessive-compulsive need of stalking people with private messages, pestering them until they admit that EVERYBODY is affected one or two (preferably two) syndromes?

How does the DSM call that humourless behaviour?

"BusterKeaton-JohnKerry Depressive Syndrome"?

"Freudier-Than-Thou Complex"?

I've been diagnosed with Asperger's by a clinical psychologist and I believe it's the main reason why I'm not on tour right now with Lady Gaga. I develop intense interests in one area, say creating an album, then out of the blue, switch to something else like writing a novel or studying about the life of black crows. It's an affliction I can't control. Two years ago I spent an entire year making a dance pop album which I didn't follow through with promoting. I simply abandoned it like a stepchild and started writing short stories and eventually a novel. Now I'm back to writing music again.

Another thing that has hampered my music career is the social aspect. Being that I've focused on creating dance pop music, it behooves me to visit the night clubs and listen to what DJ's are spinning. This is when my avoidance personality disorder kicks in. That, combined with Asperger's, keeps me out of the clubs, a detriment to an aspiring dance pop songwriter. Sigh. I take meds for depression but I fear a tour with Lady Gaga is not in the cards.

ok, let me see if I got this clear:

you hate going to clubs, you can't stand being squeezed by 5000 or 10000 people banging their head, gobbling drugs and drwoning in booze.

You'd rather sit in front of a synthesizer and make music because you love it.

While doing that, you'd rather be alone, or be with very few people who support you or just listen and let you live.

Moreover, sometimes your inspiration can't be limited by music and you turn to writing poems or novels, then you get back to music.

You have a strong focus of the quality of your music and care little about its commercial success.

This makes you unsuitable as an industrial drone.

And somebody diagnosed that as a form of mental illness.

Is that correct?

If the answer is "yes"...

1) the world is falling apart

2) clinical psychologists are morons.

All of them? Yes, all of them. As a category. The whole industry is a effing scam.

When you put it that way it really sounds like a true artists soul and nothing else. Something to be proud of, even if it may seem cumbersome at times.

Edit: But that's a romantisation of the situation.

Yeah I've got it!



oh sorry, thought you said asparagus

I suppose I should clarify. In addition to the social deficits that comes along with Asperger's, I also have Avoidant Personality Disorder. Being on the autism spectrum is crippling enough but being avoidant intensifies my tendency towards isolation. Although I take medication for depression it hasn't allowed me to burst forth from my shell, if you will. AvPD is a very real and debilitating condition suffered by many around the world. There is no cure, but psychological inroads have been made in the past few years.

It's not stopping you from sharing your thoughts and worries with millions on the internet, though.

I'm really sorry to sound cynical, but I never grasped psychology. It conflicts too much with Logics 101.


Again, Logics 101:

what happens when really A LOT of people, MANY MANY people become "avoidant"?

Suppose it's contagious, or hereditary, and seven billion people get Avoidance in afew years,

and the symptoms are: they don't meet each other anymore, but they spend a lot of time chatting on forums?

Is that a illness? Or a form of civilization?

This is obvious.

Just look around us

mmmhhhh...

with boiled eggs and a drop of olive oil...

yummy!

Can you imagine standing on the curb with RainMan and saying, "Okay RainMan, go ahead and cross the street." Instead of doing that, he'd just stand there dumbfounded, not moving a muscle. Then you yell, "Come on, RainMan! Stop playing around! You know you can cross the street!" Well, no, he can't. He has no control over his ability to cross the street. It really is like asking a dog to fly. Asperger's is a mild form of Autism, and because it's a spectrum, there are varying degrees of abilities and difficulties within it. Hollywood likes to sensationalize the extreme variations, but in reality, the majority of us pass for normal until some quirk gives us away. Beyond our disabilities, some of us also have to deal with folks who don't believe we're on the spectrum because we don't resemble those autistics "as seen on TV." What do we do? Just grin, bear it, and hope a brighter day comes along.

welcome on board.

That's what 6 billion of "partially insane" humans have been doing for millennia.

You are saying that all sneezes should be diagnosed as a "marginal form of pneumonia".

Sadness should then be labeled as "sub-level depression"

and from midnight to 6 am everybody would suffer of "temporary, nocturnal chronic fatigue syndrome".

Not to mention grumpy cable-tv repairmen [Schedule-Related Temporary Mutism], Tired Workmen [Salary-related Fatigue Syndrome], hitters in a slump [Playoff-Related Arm Paralysis], dumped girlfriends [Week-Long One-Target Stalking Rage Syndrome].

People who dislike crowds, people who need crowds, people who hate mathematics, people who love loud music, people who cringe at loud music, people who yell like mad when stuck in slow traffic, people who can't help finding a job because they expect to be trated well, people who behave like assholes with their employees...: EVERYBODY IS SICK, then!!!???!!!

There's no place for character, morals, free will, chance, environment, economics, lifestyle, choice, philosophy?!?

Everything is MEDICAL?

Who benefits from having functioning people with human limits being labeled as "clinically ill"?

I mean, besides Big Pharma?

My guess:

Since most people expect others to do certain things, and are very unforgiving when they cannot or will not do these things, a label like that will shut them up and make them a little more accomodating.

It's kind of engrained in our genes to not be accomodating of perceived flaws, but rather try to stamp them out = bullying. One can imagine how this would be effective from an evolutionary standpoint; if a person cannot change then it is destroyed or rejected and the group stays strong. But since we are not social darwinists and this sort of thing is totally out of line with our modern understanding of morality, a different approach is needed. The labels further understanding, and force the ignorant masses to see that particular things cannot be changed in a person, and need to be left alone and accomodated, if that person is to remain healthy and functioning. And as people in this thread have taught me, they also further the understanding of oneself, and in light of society's harshness and rigidity, also the acceptance of one's perceived bad qualities. So that, maybe, both society and the individual can arrive at your comfortable conclusion and be just a little bit more decent and forgiving to one self and another.

Edit:
And of course big pharma uses this to push stuff into people veins. Mistaking the cat for a washing machine. Thinking the human brain can be fixed with a spanner. But it's easier to medicate than give up hope. The problem is deep and the system too complex. What to do? It is certainly feasible that drugs help in some cases. But one should distinguish between what is broken and what is just unusual. Clinical depression is surely not something one just accepts and moves on from, but a problem that needs fixing. It would seem that a psychologist (if he is sufficiently knowledgeable and adept) is a much better tool for fixing than the blunt instrument that is pharmaceuticals. As for quirks, they don't mean your broken. They don't need fixing. I think that's very unhealthy. They need accomodating.

Look while you may not believe in the areas of psychology and its practice, many disorders that fall under it are very real to the sufferers of them.

I don't have asperger's(that I know of), but I do have ADD. That means I have a chemical imbalance in my brain that affects me in areas of attention, long term planning, impulse control, social interactions, organization, among other things. They started evaluating me for the disorder at age 4, I was given an official diagnosis at 8, and boy did that save me.

For people like me, when we take stimulant medications we don't get the "feel good" thing that recreational users do. It doesn't really give us more energy(but it does keep one awake), in fact once I started on stimulant medications all acting out in class, hyperactivity, and any troubles I was having disappeared.

But, that being said, I do believe that in addition to medication, there are things one can do to strengthen one's own mind to deal with their disorder(in certain cases). But, not all of us can function normally through mental will power alone, our brains won't allow us to. One of the things that I was first told when I was diagnosed was that the stigma surrounding ADD(and many psychological disorders) are unfounded.

Taking adderall(or any other stimulant medication) for ADD is no different than having glasses for poor eyesight. You need a set of lenses to bring life into focus; while I need an adderall in the morning.

If I wasn't on adderall today I wouldn't have made it this far into my own post because I would've forgotten what I was writing about or become disinterested without realizing it(which is f***ing annoying btw).

So while I may not have aspies(the topic of the thread) I thought it would be important to say that just because you don't believe in my disorder, in the struggles I experience with normal daily tasks, or that there are loads of people truly suffering from a mental disorder doesn't mean we're not here.

Thats like saying because you don't believe in homosexuality, homosexuals don't exist. Its just not true.

P.S. I know there are some minds that will never change on the subject but for the ones that are open to change, thank you for listening!

That's very interesting. I apparently don't know a lot about these things. My view was that in general the purported disorders were anomalies of the cortex. I didn't know ADD was rather because of chemicals. That obviously means that medication is the sound option. Maybe operation, if that could correct the fault.

Yup, I actually only recently found out that it was because of a chemical imbalance, and I've had my ADD diagnosis for 15 years(oh the ignorance of childhood)!

I doubt there will be a surgical manner of correction just for the simple fact that ADD manifests itself a little differently in every case. Whilst ADDers fall under the same set of criteria there are wide variations in what deficiencies a person has. Some are more hyperactive, some are more impulsive, some are more inattentive, but they all are sufferers.

I like to think I do but I'm pretty sure I don't.
Shyness is a totally different thing right?

Yes, aspergers and adhd are a specific set of criteria that need to be met. If you really think you might have one of these disorders go see a doctor.